Sean Higgins at the WashEx finds yet another case of a major-media “fact-checker” burying inconvenient facts to slander gun owners.
Washington Post Fact Check columnist Glenn Kessler gives Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, “three pinocchios” for claiming, as he did yesterday on Fox News Sunday, that so-called right-to-carry laws reduce crime. So, that’s settled then? There’s no evidence that the laws do that? Err, no … as Kessler’s own column indicates.
“When right-to-carry laws had a surge in popularity in the 1990s, a common liberal argument against them was that this would lead to an increase in gun violence. Stands to reason, right? More guns means more gun crime.”
“Except it didn’t happen. Gun violence overall has declined, horrible incidents like Friday’s notwithstanding. Economist John Lott has argued in his book, More Guns, Less Crime (written with David Mustard) that the concealed carry laws actually reduce crime. It was his work that Gohmert was presumably referencing.”
Well, among others.
Read the whole thing. Sean Higgins at the WashEx shows where the WaPo left the whole “fact” thing behind. It seems they find facts that conflict with a tidy narrative to be just too confusing.
Y’know, as the mainstream media slowly dies off, you’d think one of them might figure out that a feature that checks the facts of the MSM’s legions of biased, narrative-driven “fact-checkers” would be good business.
Unless the media, like the Democrats they support, are banking their entire future on the “low-information consumer”.
My, they are getting worked up, aren’t they? Once again their most bitterly despised enemies are Americans who disagree with them and who have done nothing illegal or morally wrong.
I don’t for a second believe that the haters on the Left have any feeling at all for the people that were killed, or at least not any more than I do when I hear about the death of someone I don’t know. Sad, yes, and unjust if it’s murder or someone died young. But this much emotional involvement? They can’t even name the victims, for God’s sake. It’s just lunatic hate.
Facts are the early casualties. Regime Radio & MSM are very relieved that the election is over because now they don’t have to pretend to be anything other than the propaganda arm of the Democrat party – witness the wall to wall coverage. Particularly NPR who doesn’t let 12 minutes of air time go by without returning to the narrative chanting points. This is their big chance, they intend to have Chicago style gun laws enacted nationwide within the first 100 days. With potentially 2 SCOTUS retirements coming up the dream is to have nullification of the 2nd amendment an established fact by 2016.
Terry, you don’t believe the haters on the left have any feeling for those killed? I would say many of them…MANY…were practically wetting themselves with giddiness over this tragedy and the chance to further their agenda since their every attempt until now has failed miserably.
Thank you liberals and democrats for getting elected some of the most disgusting and dispicable human beings alive to office, including Barack Obama.
The outcome of the gun debate is predictable and predictably ineffective. The short answer is that Americans are prepared to live with higher gun deaths so that they can have guns, just as Americans and many fine liberal Europeans and Canadians are prepared to live with highway deaths in exchange for higher speed limits. Fast cars and drunk drivers kill more people than guns, but we’re not going to lower speed limits to 30 mph (50 kph) and ban alcohol, are we? Enough Americans believe that guns are a fun hobby and/or a bulwark against tyranny that we aren’t going to do anything like what some may suggest.
The mental health debate will be an interesting one. In the wake of books like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” we closed a lot of mental health facilities. People seem to selectively recall that this was because they were expensive. More so it was because the mentally ill didn’t want to be in these padded prisons, and most of them do no harm on the outside. We have yet to find a solution that prevents widespread homelessness, and I hope that this will spur greater efforts and budgets to find better residential solutions to the mentally ill and homelessness, but we’re not about to lock up all the crazy people again. It didn’t work the first time, and it won’t work now. Adam Lanza, although troubled, would never have been institutionalized, and would likely never have been put on a list to prevent gun purchases either. You can’t punish every person with mental illness because one of them shoots up a classroom. Any grouping that included Lanza would be a large and vocal minority of the population.
The most interesting question that we should be asking ourselves is how should we be directing the energy and ambition of young men in the 21st century, so that the less successful among them don’t decide to lash out at society by killing schoolchildren (with a gun or a knife), raping women, joining gangs, or spending their days getting drunk or high? In generations past we have sent our young men off to fight wars, told them that they should be the primary breadwinner for a wife and family, or otherwise given them an attainable goal. When attained that goal yielded them respect and/or a family to care for, and in general a sense of purpose and satisfaction. As we transition into our globalized information economy, the least successful of our young men have no useful role in our society, and their numbers are swelling. Whether or not we take measures to control gun ownership and better treat the mentally ill, we will continue to have frustrated young men looking for trouble. If we don’t find something for them to do, a charismatic populist will eventually channel their energies for political ends, and we won’t like the outcome.
Emory said: “but we’re not about to lock up all the crazy people again. “
Actually we do. In jails and prisons usually for relatively short sentences with minimum to no therapeutic contact and then its back under the bridge for them. Agreed, the 19th century model of institutionalization isn’t effective but neither is using the justice system to manage them.
and “and most of them do no harm on the outside.”
Obviously you’ve never had the joy of having a mentally ill person in your family – they can and do destroy other peoples lives.
that’s not true kel. Our family has had personal experience. Our church does outreach at group homes as well.
But hey nice try….
Unfortunately, it’s hard to determine how crazy is too crazy. As I mentioned in a different post, the killer in this event might well have been considered to be a lovable nerd, or poor, shy, bullying victim in a prime-time sitcom, until he did what he did.
The likelihood to cause harm “to self or others” is great criteria for forcing care on a person, but is awfully hard to predict. I really doubt if many of the soccer moms or media who said that say saw it coming really did. It may make sense after the fact that an oddball acts acts like an oddball – to put it mildly – but behaviors that make sense after the fact are not necessarily great predictors of future actions. I hate to engage in the same absolutism about mental health issues that is being applied to the firearms situatiom.