After two months of delay, and two fine columns cancelled, the Arizona Republic is running my column today in the editorial section. Murders in California finally got them to act. The deception of the Shannon's law press party in Dec. (the first story) and the horrendous spin of the ATF gunshow sting in Feb. (the second article) were not enough to move them. Both prior pieces are referred to in today's paper, and will be posted on my website in full in a day or two (use the New Stuff button).
In case you miss today's paper, here's the story as originally wrtten.
Alan Korwin, Author
The Arizona Gun Owner's Guide
http://www.gunlaws.com
It sickens me to write about the latest murderer in California. The national media is enthusiastically aggrandizing this monster in headlines, color photos and flashy graphics across America, and I'm against this in principle and practice. I hate to think my work is related to the frenzied, ethics-free distortion this represents.
I would much rather expose the deceit of people who would strip you of your rights in the false name of crime prevention, at events like the Shannon's law press party last December. Hard police statistics I gathered showed random gunfire had increased, contradicting the carefully staged power-broker stunt that assured us everything was ust fine. Self-evident errors and phony posturing got ink instead of thoughtful news about a deadly serious problem, as I carefully documented. I failed in my effort to get that published, so no one saw the rotten underbelly of our grand new law.
More recently, the preposterous spin of a federal gunshow sting stole the stage, and though I wrote and rewrote the story behind that story, it too languished unpublished until it's timeliness faded. The "gunshow loophole" phobia so many readers have was torn to shreds by evidence in that story. But the slant deflected it all into a call for even more laws, perfectly timed to back such proposals by leftist legislators pushing their latest infringement bills.
The sting made it clear we have every law necessary to empower the authorities, if they'd only make the arrests. We can imprison thousands of these criminals forever, even put many to death. What else would a reasonable person add? Editors never gave that balancing verbiage space despite my best efforts. Itwill be on my website, gunlaws.com, in a few days.
Now we have a solitary criminal act in California, and you can already hear the call for more laws ringing through legislatures. We're setting public policy based on acts of homicidal maniacs, and the media, fawning and glorifying these psychopathic misfits are complicit in the destruction of our American values. The criminal here was completely banned from having a gun, bringing it to school, and certainly from using it on anyone. That is breathlesly overlooked and subverted into a call to annihilate the rights of everyone who didn't do it.
When is a murder in a distant land news in your own home town? Every day the media trumpets a tragic death a thousand miles away, 270 people wake up dead because their doctors killed them, by mistake (Associated Press, "100,000 die from doctor mistakes annually"). Some died right near you. Some were killed by the same doctors, in the same hospitals. None wanted to die. The doctors don't want you to know who they are because you might -- get this -- sue. Every day reporters continue glorifying a single crime-related fatality somewhere, they neglect to report that doctors mistakenly killed another 270 people, again.
Imagine the political landscape if the emphasis changed.
The murder's story might be accurate, but its presence on page after page is a wholesale deception -- propaganda that helps collapse our critically ailing system of self-governance.
President Clinton was right when he implied crime is valuable because it helps pass so many new laws. Thanks to an immoral, or maybe just stupid, fourth estate, government aches to take your household firearms away, erase the Bill of Rights, and substitute a cell phone for self reliance. Fifteen people were shot by the time 911 arrived. Instead of more law -- California has the most in the nation -- maybe it's time to repeal the noxious federal ban on self defense at schools, and have someone teach teachers that a madman who's reloading is vulnerable to a baseball bat or a tackle, or worse.