The Houston Chronicle’s lead editorial on Dec. 8, “Border war / Flow of guns to Mexico endangers Texas safety,” reaches the level of journalistic malfeasance.
At the least, the paper’s editorial board is incompetent for not getting the basics of gun terminology right, and for not resolving the internal contradictions in the piece.
First, the premise: That guns sold by Texans to Mexicans endanger Texans’ safety. According to the vaunted Chronicle reporting duo of Schiller and Althaus, of the 1,131 guns traced from Mexico back to Houston suppliers, how many were involved in crimes in Texas? The editorial doesn’t say—so how can the premise be proven without that salient fact? And a search of the Chronicle’s own story database didn’t turn up any Texas crime stories that had “Mexican” guns as an angle.
Onward. In the fourth graf, the editorial asserts, “… consumers in Texas can purchase unlimited quantities of cheap imported assault weapons, or .50-caliber sniper rifles strong enough to shoot down helicopters.”
In current military parlance, armies go to war with automatic weapons—pull the trigger once, the gun keeps firing. If there are such things as “assault weapons”—then full-auto M-16s, FALs, AK-47s, and AK-74s are them.
Semiauto versions of those models, such as the AR-15—pull the trigger once, get one “bang”—aren’t widely used by military entities, so they aren’t “assault” rifles, by reasonable and current definition. They are military-style semiauto or autoloading rifles.
In that vein, I look forward to the Chronicle calling pro-choice abortion advocates “fetus-killers”—sorta accurate, and just as charged a political term as “assault weapon.”
To people who will debate whether the use of serial commas is a gross journalistic threat to The World as We Know It, the editorialists could take the time to get this important technical point right.
And, oy veh, the danger that .50-caliber sniper rifles pose! Can you cite a single instance in the Unites States where a “fitty-cal” has been used in a crime? No, you can’t. How about downing a helicopter in the U.S.? No. That’s just silly.
In fact, I would assert that the original .50-caliber sniper rifle—the muzzleloading open-sight blackpowder Kentucky rifle—has killed far more Americans than .50 BMG-chambered guns have. Thus, would you outlaw long-barrel muzzleloaders as well? They have a proven track record as domestic killers, rather than a reputation that is just made up by your writer.
(Besides, CheyTac’s M-200 bolt rifle chambered for the 408 CheyTac cartridge is arguably the best sniper gun in the world. With the right ammo, it’ll shoot through stuff like trucks as well, or better, than any .50. But that’s a little too “Inside Baseball” for this discussion.)
The Chronicle also mischaracterized legislative events when it opined that the Bush Administration “weakened” the 1994 federal background check law. To my reading, that sentence implied that Bush did that all on his own.
Actually, Congress passed, and the president signed, the Tiahrt amendment that required BATF not to release tracking records to media and other gun-confiscation groups that would violate gun-owners’ privacy. Law-enforcement agencies still have access to the data. So that law wasn’t “weakened” at all, in terms of gun-sale control.
The Chronicle also asserts that “… it is in Americans’ interest to upgrade our regulation of gun sales.” But why? John Lott, Jr.’s analyses, DOJ studies, and other work have conclusively shown that military–style-gun bans have no significant effect on crime in the U.S.
Material supporting my statement is easily searchable online. So if I can find it, why can’t the Chronicle?
Elsewhere, I found it laughable that the editorial stated: “The import ban [on military-style rifles] embodied the spirit of the Second Amendment, which cites regulation, as well as the right to bear arms,” as part of public security. The “well-regulated” wording in the Second Amendment refers to the “Militia,” not to guns.
There were other mistakes and misapprehensions in the editorial as well, but I grew fatigued trying to sort them all out.
To sum up: In the Dec. 8 “Border war” anti-gun tract, the Chronicle’s editorial board showed willful ignorance of practically every aspect of the gun-civil-rights debate, and those of us who know something about the topic realize that the paper’s staff cannot be convinced to set aside its myths and mistakes simply for the cause of fair-and-balanced opining.
This editorial was shoddy and hoplophobic work, and you richly deserve whatever excoriation your readers, the gun-rights community, and your gun-product advertisers heap on you.
