Even better than blaming guns. Blame chicken. Maybe it’s a chicken plague?

In comments, Guav:

Lots of unpossibles here in just the last two months:

Bronx Girl, 15, Shot In Head By Stray Bullet
Teen Pulls BB Gun On Cops, Gets Shot In The Face
Drive-By Shooting On Lorimer Street In Brooklyn
Bronx Student Shot Outside High School
Brooklyn Teen Fatally Shot Outside Brownsville High School
Stray Bullet Kills 92-Year-Old Bronx Woman In Her Home, Teen Arrested
Teen Shot Dead In Flatbush Coffee Shop
13-Year-Old Queens Boy Fatally Shot in After-School Fight
Bronx Mom Killed In Afternoon Gang Shootout
Brooklyn Drive-By Shooting Leaves 2 Dead, 1 Wounded

Maybe instead of banning guns, Bloomberg should just ban Brooklyn and the Bronx. Or teenagers.

NYT Columnists Who Blamed Conservatives for ‘Right-Wing’ Killings Ignoring Fort Hood Massacre

One of the big takeaways I hope the average Joe get from the coverage of Ft. Hood is how the press got almost everything wrong.

Did the press get anything right when the story broke? Other than shots were fired.

Whenever there’s an accidental shooting, the press uses passive words about how someone was shot. Or how an object did an action like gun went off. The list goes on. But, generally, they don’t say anything about gun safety and things that actually may be helpful to other people. So, I was rather surprised by this bit in the St. Petersburg Times:

Basic gun safety in Hillsborough County shooting could have saved daughter

Firearms experts across Tampa Bay on Monday said they knew what could have saved the life of federal public defender Melissa Kupferberg.

Basic gun safety.

A message the bears repeating. Basic gun safety would eliminate nearly all accidental shootings. Hats off to the press here for getting that message out.

Update: NSSF has more, along with some resources for the press.

And there’s that whole matter of him being investigated for his online postings of threats and suicide. So, why wasn’t he investigated? If not that, why not at least inform his commanding officers of his tendency to talk about suicide bombing? The hints were there. Another in a line of fatal intelligence failures, I suppose.

Also, Pattycakes tells us that the narrative is shifting. I think after this incident, most folks won’t approve of that kind of PC scrubbing. The press is loathe to speculate about the shooter’s religion and that being a factor. But within minutes they were speculating about stressed out soldiers going crazy. No one should be saying that Muslims are inherently violent. That’s wrong and bigoted. But tiptoeing around the issue that violent acts that have been committed by someone whose religion influenced them is not. It’s called reporting. And the press needs to stop acting like it doesn’t exist.

Of course, the press couldn’t get the guns right. In less than 44 minutes, the guns went from sniper rifles, to uzis, to M16s, and lastly we learn it was handguns. I’m surprised the press didn’t throw in a gratuitous AK-47 reference for consistency.

The newspaper was investing time and resources generating stories, but these other sites, run mostly as a hobby, were linking to those stories and moving the conversation about the articles elsewhere.

“There was a point at which KnoxViews was really taking off,” McElroy says, “and it concerned me as I thought, ‘Is the nexus of community dialogue going to be shifting away from the News Sentinel to an Internet forum, and what does that mean for our future?’”

KnoxViews had—and continues to have—an openly progressive tilt, so to forfeit the lion’s share of community dialogue to a site driven by a particular set of political and social values could have marginalized a great many other community voices; or it may have run them into their own respective realms, creating echo chambers of like-minded people rather than a Darwinian common ground where the best ideas survive.

So when the Sentinel relaunched its site in 2007, it linked comments to usernames and allowed them for every article. The effect was palpable. Randy Neal, founder of KnoxViews, says he immediately noticed an exodus from his site to the News Sentinel’s; with the help of some contentious local issues, before long knoxnews.com was hosting nearly 50,000 comments a month. The crisis of irrelevance had been averted.

Interesting. A forum was a threat to the local news rag. The local news rag opens comments and that impacts the forum’s traffic. Of course, about two years ago, was also when Knoxviews decided that dissent would not be tolerated. I find that funny.

But the leader of the aliens, Anna, is a charismatic speaker who people get really into. Some characters compared the devotion to the visitors to religion and messiah figures. Anna spoke of hope and change. The visitors offered universal health care to the people. And the press agreed to ask questions that would not portray the visitors in a negative light. I don’t know if the writers of the show did that on purpose but a lot of the things were rather similar to criticism of Obama and some things were definitely similar to Obama. I laughed.

Update and bump: Also, seriously, 29 spaceships enter the atmosphere and hover above major cities. And people don’t bug out? If giant space craft landed over Maryville, me, the wife, and the kids would be hitting the back forty with lots of guns, skinning bucks, running trot lines, and doing other things from Hank Jr. songs. I wouldn’t be hanging around to see what happened.

Update: From Bitter, similar thoughts at the Chicago Tribune.

And Michael says:

Don’t you just love MSM growing pains?

Via ACK, comes some whining about linking and crediting and whatnot. Yes, a blog is complaining that someone dared to draw traffic to it.

BTW, sparky, shouldn’t your post there link to the offending piece? I know these hyperlink thingies are hard for the press sometimes but that seems a bit, err, inconsistent.

Update: Grantham tackles both the hyperlink and the though questions:

How long the breadcrumb trail has to be before you are ripping off other people’s content is a very good question. Kleinheider did the right thing, but the editor of the Nashville City Paper online probably didn’t.

Links and such are an interesting thing. For instance, this morning I was doing some blogiating* and realized I had over 34 tabs open in the browser. So, by the time I had commented on something, I’d forgotten where I read it. As such, I likely didn’t credit one of the members of the breadcrumb trail. And that happens all the time.

* I think I just invented a new word.

“In the current case involving threatening communications made to attorneys representing a defendant in the Christian-Newsom murder trial, the FBI’s investigation into this matter was recently and prematurely exposed. In addition, the News Sentinel revealed yesterday the precise subject matter of a federal grand jury subpoena it received concerning this crime, citing the “newsworthiness” of this development and the absence of an explanation by the FBI as to why the subpoena’s secrecy was important.

“While the News Sentinel’s disclosure may indeed serve “the interest of transparency,” the revelations made to date may also provide the person or persons who committed the crime with the strategic knowledge necessary to now successfully frustrate this important investigation. This is the reason the United States Attorney’s Office asked the News
Sentinel not to disclose the issuance or substance of the subpoena.”

Two shot in LA synagogue. Still on the loose. Little speculation on this one in the press.

And the FBI killed the leader of a mosque in a raid. While the NYT won’t tell you a lot of things, Moe Lane will.

But let’s make sure we continue demonizing Oath Keepers, who the press will tell you are domestic terrorists despite not terrorizing anyone.

Update: Looks like Dobbs was the victim of a rule four violation.

The FBI has expanded its investigation of reported death threats against the attorneys for the alleged ringleader in the torture slayings of a Knox County couple.

The News Sentinel was served Monday with a federal grand jury subpoena for information related to a comment posted in September on its Web site, knoxnews.com.

On the advice of corporate counsel, the newspaper turned over the information late Monday to FBI Special Agent Gregg Harmon.

Back in the 1990’s the NRA couldn’t pay to get ads in many major publications. The ads would not be accepted even when offering to pay above the existing ad rates (and most ads are discounted from the published rates).

We confess to harboring some reservations about the concealed carry law. Our fear was an increase in guns in public would result in more guns being displayed prematurely and/or more accidents.

White said recently: “All the fears over conceal and carry have never manifested.”

We concede the point.

Anecdotal evidence does not suggest an increase in accidents or unprovoked gunplay.

The evidence, however, does show people defending themselves from harm.

Newscoma notes a councilman used the word blogger as a slur. Well, to people in power, it probably is. After all, when they want a message out, they usually go to the press because they have a cushy relationship with the press. The press, after all, has to play nice if they wish to continue having access. Being a concerned citizen with an audience is threatening to those in power.

Over at PJ Media, the reaction from the press to the show is highlighted:

Naturally, the first few critical salvos against the show were anything but positive. Newsday and Variety dubbed the show “aimless” and “toothless,” respectively, both bemoaning its lack of an angle.

By angle, they mean the show doesn’t demonize gun owners or the Second Amendment. Had the series taken an aggressively pro-gun stance, said critics likely wouldn’t like that particular angle one bit. The critics were likely expecting another Bowling for Columbine, one of Michael Moore’s many slanted polemics.

Whatever happened to introducing a topic and letting the audience draw its own conclusions?

Newsday goes further, saying Ryan is selling “death” even though many of the customers make it clear they want to own a gun to protect their loved ones against intruders. That critic should have holstered her biases at the door.

From Gun Porn

Well, they do share the name of the inventor of the machine gun and sound suppressor. Also an ad for the Remington 870.

A few years back, I would never have imagined a men’s magazine catering to young men (some even say metrosexuals) would be advertising evil black rifles. Fantastic. Oh and go get your man card.

I think I’ve fallen back in love with Freedom Group.

The FBI says the number of police officers slain in the line of duty fell sharply last year.

Bureau statistics list 41 law enforcement officers killed in 2008. The list includes one FBI agent, Sam Hicks, who was shot and killed during a drug raid outside Pittsburgh.

Felony killings of police officers haven’t been that low since 1999, although police officer support groups — which use different standards to count officer killings — say the number of officers killed hasn’t been this low since the 1960s

It doesn’t fit the narrative though so don’t expect a lot of reporting:

… considering it occurred during a year where concealed carry permit applications skyrocketed nationwide, along with the sale of ammunition, handguns, and so-called assault rifles.

Gun sales went up, and the killing of law enforcement officers went down. Just another inconvenient truth.

The Intelligencer Journal /Lancaster New Era negligently published a story that questions the NRA’s solution to the problem of “illegal guns” without calling and asking us.

My understanding from NRA folks I’ve talked to is that the press rarely calls them.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s educational campaign on modern sporting rifles has added a new long-form video (long for the Web anyway, five minutes) to accompany its 30- and 60-second messages. The campaign is designed to reach a wide audience in the hunting and target shooting community, with emphasis placed on educating sportsmen whose preference for traditional-looking firearms can lead them to misunderstand AR-15-platform rifles and to even describe them as “assault weapons,” which inadvertently lends support to elected officials and organizations who want to ban these rifles.

In the Chicago case, the justices are considering whether the 2nd Amendment should be applied to the states by either the 14th Amendment’s due process clause (which applies to “persons”) or its privileges and immunities clause (which protects only citizens). The court should say yes, even as it reaffirms its assurance in its 2008 decision that government may still impose reasonable restrictions on the right to bear arms.

This is no time for the court to start picking and choosing when it comes to the Bill of Rights.

The last sentence being reserved to editorial boards.

So does Yahoo news.

Meanwhile, CNN hasn’t updated the recession watch page since 2008. What’s different?

Boy, talk about alienating your base.

The Union City Daily Messenger printed an article from The Tennessean stating that 70 cities have banned guns in parks.That may sound like alot but below you will find the facts. According to Tnhometownlocator.com there are 95 counties and 343 incorporated cities in Tennessee,that is 438 entities combined.That leaves 368 that have not voted to opt out,or not voted at all.If my math is correct that means 5 out of 6 allow it.So much for fair and balanced media.

The shameless grandstanding on this meaningless topic has been pathetic pandering. And by the way, how much time has been spent by various state and local lawmakers this year on guns-in-whatever topics as opposed to say, oh, education?

Trouble is, the pandering by lawmakers, time spent on the issue, and the bogus claim that it was the year of the gun are all overstated and exist largely in the imagination of Tom Humphrey. This year, the legislature passed five or so gun bills out of how many total bills? Hardly a giant margin. Knox County passed one gun resolution, out of how many? Thirty or so? A whopping 3ish%? Hardly an indication of how much time is spent on this.

Where most of the time was spent on these non-issues was at editorial boards and opinion pieces at your paper. Just saying.

The Tennessean is the only Nashville news outlet to correctly report that felon who sold the gun that killed Steve McNair plead guilty to felon in possession of a firearm.

Half of mobile homes in the south. Which would put the other half in the north?

Four months after the adjournment of a state legislative session dominated by gun bills

Ah, hyperbole. There were, what, four or five gun bills out of how many bills? Anyway, this isn’t a post about that, it’s a post about this:

Lawmakers heard testimony on a bill to allow people with handgun-carry permits to keep their guns in their locked vehicles on their workplace’s parking lots regardless of their employer’s policy on the issue. Current law allows employers to ban weapons from all their property, including parking lots.

The Rep asks whose rights are superior?

On one hand, a property owner can decide what otherwise lawful activities they allow on their property, which is also why I oppose smoking bans and such. On the other hand, my car is my property and their parking lot is available to the public.

Not a bill I’m particularly excited about.

Meanwhile, the group has removed its handy counter that tallies how many members they have.

Seriously, anyone seen any mention in the press? I have not.

Guns in parks ban evokes threats
Two officials who support idea get e-mail they deem ‘threatening’

Definition of threat:

1 : an expression of intention to inflict evil, injury, or damage

Perusing the article, I see no actual threats. I see these folks talking about how they feel threatened. But no actual threats. Odd that. And:

Broyles has taken no legal action to investigate the e-mail.

and

I felt very threatened personally, but they did not say anything that would injure me. My fear was damage to property.

Did anyone actually threaten your property? You just said they didn’t threaten you, which pretty much makes the article bunk. If there were actual threats, by all means let’s see them. And I will gladly condemn anyone who is threatening our local politicians because it’s criminal, does more harm than good, and should not be tolerated. If there are threats, they should not be tolerated and you should prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. But the fact you’ve taken no legal action leads me to believe your accusations are probably overstated.

Just because someone uses harsh language to disagree with you, it doesn’t mean they are threatening you.

There’s one black among the Atlantic’s top 50 most-influential commentators. Thirty-eight of them are white males. Hmmmmmm. Haven’t some of them been playing the race card?

Is Mayor Bloomberg adding mayors to his gun control front group without permission?

Not the first time I have heard that allegation.

Though 46 mayors have left, press coverage focuses on those that stay in.

Also, fact-checking their ads.

From Political

See David Hardy.

Update: In comments, Tam says maybe not.

Seriously, some tech guy at business week suggested the outage be investigated. Wow.

I think if you look at the way the magazine has changed over the last several years, we’re getting a lot of stories that are more angled toward the point of view of the writer and there’s plusses and minuses to that in many ways. On the one hand, we’ve found that we want to be part of a conversation and to be in front of the conversation means not just recording one perspective and another, just going back and forth like that, but saying this is what we can bring to the story and this is what we think and then we start off this conversation that hopefully goes forward.

Doesn’t fit the narrative.

Chicago’s WGN couldn’t believe we have the right to keep and bear arms out here. I had to tell them most places have RKBA, a surprise to them in their little cloister. “Do people shoot each other on the streets a lot?” They actually asked that. These folks aren’t in a bubble, they’re in a vacuum, they get nothing. “With your new guns-in-bars law, which has created quite a commotion here in Chicago, are there shootouts in bars?” I’m not making this up.

And we all know there are no shoot outs in Chicago.

Update: It’s like there’s a well-orchestrated campaign or something?

Media Barely Noticed Legal Gun-brandishing By Leftist Black Panthers in 2000 Protest

Well, they barely noticed the most recent one to do that was black.

Contessa was speaking generally and not about that specific person with the automatic weapon.

Generally? So, you were assigning stereotypes to a broad group of people? Supposedly trying to address bigotry in this country while being bigoted yourself seems to lessen your point. It’s OK, they’re only gun owners.

And, of course, it wasn’t an automatic weapon.

Via Glenn.

Heck, the press is covering non-threats more vigorously.

Via Tam.

Off-the-record sessions, such as the ones White House reporters have traditionally attended, are meant to shape the message, not to inform the public. So the next time someone decries the new media, point to the above cozy arrangement as an example of what is getting busted up.

Meanwhile, a summary of those Nazi/Racist/Brown shirt protesters.

A black man lawfully carries his AR-15 at a political rally. The press loses its collective shit, tossing it over in the corner with its objectivity. And the reactions from the pro-gun side are varied. I’m on record as saying it’s a poor marketing decision. Some say it’s good. Others say it was a bad thing. First, the scenario:

those open carry advocates at yesterday’s event in Arizona arranged for a police liaison the day before the event, and were constantly afforded security by the Phoenix Police Department and had at least one known Secret Service agent shadowing them to assure they were following the law. These citizens were never anywhere near the President, nor did they attempt to go anywhere near the Secret Service’s security perimeter that cordoned off the event and the building in which it was held.

A rather different picture than the one painted by the press who acted as though the situation was out of control. The press never tried to interview the guy. Rather, just displayed their ire and distrust of a black man with a gun.

Several gun bloggers also thought it was a bad idea:

Sebastian: part of breaking down stereotypes and misconceptions about gun owners being deviant or abnormal is to act normal. Normal people do not walk around with AR-15s slung over their shoulders

Jeffy Weffy: I have to waver, though, on slinging on a rifle as you protest an event — regardless of who the speaker is — because it naturally coarsens the conversation and serves no justifiable purpose other than to attempt, by visual means, to silence the other side by an implied threat that you will use whatever means possible to achieve your side’s goal.

David: I can’t say as I’m fond of the idea — the media is quick to portray gun rights activists as menacing or intimidating, and there’s no reason to set the stage for just that.

Conversely, other gun bloggers disagree. Commenter Steve says: How long will it be before the public starts to think, “Wow, this is about the tenth/hundredth/millionth time somebody wore a gun to an event……AND NOTHING HAPPENED!!! It’s news because it’s unusual. Once it’s usual, it will stop being news.

Well, it just takes once. Robb addresses the marketing aspect: THE MEDIA HATES US. Get used to it. We will never get good, national coverage. To worry about how the media is going to portray us is asinine. Because of their inability to remain objective, more and more people are no longer trusting the MSM, but that’s still going to be a thorn in the side of gun owners for decades to come.

Linoge brings the civil rights analogies.

And Oleg offers: Showing up with openly carried arms took bravery and preparation. I am sure that the people using their Constitutional rights would have been molested had it not been for the media and individual attention. The admission by the various reporters that open carry is legal in many states is the payoff from the calculated risk taken by the demonstrators.

Sebastian rounds up reaction.

As for what I think? It’s good and bad for the reasons outlined above. The question is was it more good than bad? Frankly, your average non-gun-nut that I have discussed this with seems unconcerned by the whole idea. And, as long as there’s no violence, will remain unconcerned. Seems like a win to me.

In Arizona, I still have some freedoms

Last night, I read Glenn’s and Brannon’s Heller High Water(Mark?) Lower Courts and the New Right to Keep and Bear Arms which noted the gun control movement’s failure to denormalize gun ownership and Heller was a testament to that. I would say an incident like this may, in the views of some, go too far. Sure, it’s their right but I think it may be a poor marketing decision.

Update: Meanwhile, the black gun-toting libertarian speaks.

I think so. He just happens to be a calculating sociopath with a cause.

Racist is dead. Long live racist.

Tam seems, err, unimpressed.

But: The former vice presidential candidate, who resigned as governor on July 26, gave a speech Saturday night at the Anchorage banquet which capped a four-day National Rifle Association seminar.

A banquet is a gun show?

And so, in the new tradition of newspaper folks, I immediately contacted the AP and asked them to sue him for using my joke to amuse his reader!

Actually, you should send him a bill.

Because alcohol service was the critical factor addressed by the law, and because all bars were deliberately included in the bill, calling the law a “guns in bars” law is really a fairer description of the legislation than the “guns in restaurants” title its proponents put forth.

Odd. Since, just before that, you noted there is no definition of bars in the TN code. Seems pretty twisted to me. After all, bars is a difficult term to define since the law doesn’t spell it out. And establishments that serve alcohol is definitely a more accurate term and factually correct in nearly every case.

But that’s not the best part. This bit in the KNS a couple weeks ago makes it funny:

A proposal allowing off-duty law enforcement officers to carry their weapons in Tennessee establishments that serve alcohol has been signed by the governor.

Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen signed the measure late last week and it takes effect immediately.

Supporters of the law say it’s necessary to make sure law enforcement officers receive the same privileges as handgun permit holders under another new law that takes effect Tuesday. Under the measure, handguns can be carried in bars and in restaurants that serve alcohol.

Note in this article it’s not until handgun carry permit holders are introduced that establishments that serve alcohol mysteriously become bars.

When it’s for police they refer to establishments that serve alcohol. When it’s for handgun carry permit holders, they’re bars.

Nope. No bias here.