What’s missing from this story?
This story (h/t David) notes:
A major pro-gun group took aim at award-winning Boston Globe business columnist Steve Bailey yesterday, saying he violated federal law while researching a 2005 anti-gun column and should be fired.
The Second Amendment Foundation, which is based in Bellevue, Wash., said it sent a letter to Globe Editor Martin Baron yesterday citing previously undisclosed details about the column, which described a gun purchase.
Bailey provided new details of the purchase Tuesday on former House Speaker Tom Finneran’s WRKO AM-680 radio show. Bailey said he gave a New Hampshire man money to buy a gun at a gun show and expensed it to the Globe.
Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb said: “Bailey admitted to committing a federal felony on live radio, and he also involved the Boston Globe in his criminal enterprise by having them reimburse him for the illegal purchase. He claims he gave the gun back to the New Hampshire man, and doesn’t know where it is now. Bailey’s admission is simply outrageous.”
They do not mention in the story that the president of an anti-gun group was also involved in the illegal straw purchase:
During the show a reporter, Steve Bailey of the Boston Globe, explained how he and Rosenthal had attended a gun show in New Hampshire over a year ago. The trip was supposed to prove how easy it was for criminals to buy a handgun in New Hampshire. They actually found that it was not possible to do so without violating several laws.
Rosenthal explained that when he tried to purchase a handgun from a licensed dealer, he was told he could not because he was not a resident of New Hampshire. Bailey and Rosenthal then explained how they brought a New Hampshire resident with them, supposedly a prison guard, who was able to pass the background checks and purchase the gun for them. Bailey even stated on Finneran’s show that the Boston Globe paid for the gun. When asked by the hosts of the show if he had committed a straw purchase, Rosenthal admitted that he had indeed conducted a straw purchase to prove a point.
Might be an important detail.
Update: To be clear, it’s the Boston Herald that did not mention it. I haven’t found the original Globe article yet. In an email to Glenn, I typed Globe instead of Herald. It was a mistake and not an attempt to lambaste the Globe. I notified Glenn of that once I saw that he said The Globe and not The Herald. It’s an important detail to leave out that a paper (even a rival) is rather cushy with an anti-gun group, which was my point. My point was not that The Globe didn’t mention it.
Update 2: Can it be both? A good summary of the story so far.
Update 3: Via Glenn and Tim in comments (whose google-fu is stronger than mine), no disclosure here at The Globe. Why don’t they mention the involvement of an anti-gun group’s president? Oops.
July 19th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
How about staging an accident and showing how easy it is to commit insurance fraud? Or go out and buy some cocaine with money obtained from mugging an old lady.
July 19th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Some defense lawyer hotshot says that Bailey (and I presume, by extension, Rosenthal) probably didn’t violate federal law because they gave the gun to the straw purchaser afterward. I’ll admit that I’m not an expert on this law, but I doubt it matters a whole lot what the disposition of the firearm in question is so long as the shadow purchaser took possession at one point.
The transaction was a straw purchase, and Bailey should be call to task for it.
July 19th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Live Free and Die
July 19th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
[…] In an update to the bit on what The Boston Herald left out of the story comes this: […]
July 19th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
You don’t even know which newspaper you’re talking about. What kind of fool gets the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald mixed up? Why should anyone trust anything you say on this blog?
July 19th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
I addressed that and i didn’t even mention the name of the paper in the post. I typed the wrong name in a private email. But the globe, in fact, did not disclose that fact.
Err, because I corrected my error? And it was an error no one would have even known about (except Glenn) had I not disclosed it?
But thanks for playing.
July 19th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
The earliest example of this sort of journalistic ruse involved William T. Stead, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette in London in the 1880s. He bought a 13 year old girl and had her shipped to the Continent to show how easy the white slave trade operated. He entrusted the transport of the young girl to a young reporter named George Bernard Shaw.
The resulting stories raised such a ruckus in Britain that Parliament was forced to raise the age of consent. First, though, they passed a law making it illegal to purchase young girls and ship them abroad, tried and convicted Stead under the statute and kept him locked up for more than a year.
GBS got an interesting idea for converting the behavior patterns of a young girl and the rest, as they say, is history.
July 19th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
IANAL, but wouldn’t the transfer of a handgun from the resident of one state (Bailey) to a resident of another state (the prison guard) without going through a FFL and filling out a 4473 be a federal felony in and of itself?
July 19th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
This is interesting. I might say it is extremely interesting. Don’t these guys have anything better to do than make life tough for other people?
As a past class 1 FFL holder (1980-’88) I was always wary of strawman deals. I believe that an alert dealer can usually spot a straw man purchase because the buyer will be interested enough to go on about the merits of his choice, and state his proposed use, but if the client is taciturn you don’t know if he’s hiding something or if he’s just like that.
Clearly these cretins committed a federal crime, and suborned a citizen to do their dirty work. Do they want we should kiss them?
Sheesh!
Charlie
July 19th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
If you or I had done this we’d be stocking up on soap-on-a-rope. Why aren’t they? Hopefully it’s just a matter of an intelligent and thorough DA taking his time to collect the evidence and build his case.
July 20th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Hey, they meant well.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Bailey responds:
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/07/20/the_atf__me/
July 20th, 2007 at 11:40 am
[…] That’s the best you can do? I mean, you broke the law and then failed to mention the involvement of anti-gun group’s in your, uh,…. And somehow that’s the fault of that evil gun lobby? Twenty months ago, a lifetime in […]
July 20th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
I hadn’t thought about it but that’s probably correct, particularly in the case of a handgun.
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:50 am
[…] Amendment Foundation is sticking to its guns about alleged journalist Steve Bailey (prior coverage here and here) breaking the law: Boston Globe columnist Steve Bailey is having a hissy fit about finding […]
July 24th, 2007 at 10:16 am
[…] see from my logs that the Boston Globe is checking us out. I wonder why that […]