THE MEDIA'S BIAS AGAINST FIREARMS

Paul Gallant

"Shield for the Gun Industry" made front page headlines in The Journal News,
recently. Directly below was another prominently featured story: "A Weapon is
Fired, a Life Ends, a Family Mourns."

The message is clear: Guns cause bad things to happen, and innocent victims
and their families pay the price.

Contrast this with a headline from the South Bend Tribune on Feb. 7, 2002:
"11-Year-Old Shoots, Kills Assailant Threatening his Grandmother." According
to the Tribune, on the evening of February 4, an 11-year-old boy found his
grandmother, Sue Gay, with a box cutter held to her neck by 27-year-old Tony
Murry. The fifth-grader ran upstairs and retrieved a handgun.

Despite Murry using Gay to shield himself, enough of the attacker was
exposed, and the youngster fired one shot, hitting Murry in the chest. As the
newspaper detailed, "The fifth-grader may not have been just a lucky shot.
This is a family that knows guns."

St. Joseph County Prosecutor Chris Toth later stated, "The young man
reasonably believed his [grand-]mother and himself to be in danger of dying .
.  . He did what he had to do."

How many Journal News readers ever heard about that story? What about the one
from Muncie, Indiana's, June 6 Star Press: "Woman Shoots Ex-Boyfriend."
Deputy Police Chief Terry Winters said, "Everything we have points to
self-defense."

When it is estimated that, in America, guns are used three to five times more
frequently for defensive purposes than for criminal purposes, how is this
possible? Sloppy journalism?

According to John R. Lott, Jr., the reason is more insidious.  In "The Bias
Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control is Wrong"
(Regnery Publishing, 2003), Lott provides convincing documentation of
systematic media bias against firearms, and willful non-reporting of the
utility of guns in the hands of ordinary citizens.

Lott chastises the media's distorted reporting on the effects of present gun
laws, and the incessant call for even more restrictions. "The notion that gun
control laws might be counterproductive is never given any credence. . . The
debate over gun control is skewed in favor of stricter laws because we almost
never discuss the positive effects of guns: that they often save innocent
lives."

In a recent conversation, renowned civil rights attorney and criminologist
Don B. Kates told me: "I can certainly say that, when criminologists and
constitutional lawyers study the issues, pro-gun people do not become
anti-gun, but anti-gun people, often very reluctantly, become pro-gun to some
extent at least." That's what happened to Lott, who started out exploring the
firearm debate as a neutral but curious researcher.

But the publication of his earlier research findings which questioned the
efficacy of restrictive gun laws, incited ferocious ad hominem attacks, and
baseless attacks on his professional integrity, from those who champion even
harsher gun laws.

His ordeal has caused Lott to question their sincerity. "What could possibly
be the goal of increased regulations if gun control doesn't reduce crime and
frequently increases it? . . . I have come to believe that the ultimate
objective of most gun control advocates is to gradually eliminate the private
ownership of guns."

Is this why stories of successful self-defense with a gun never seem to make
their way into The Journal News?

Despite the growing body of criminological evidence that casts doubt on
conventional wisdom about firearms, in all the discussions of local workshops
on crime, rape, and domestic violence reported in The Journal News, never
once can I recall the option of armed self-defense even being mentioned.

Is it because accurate information might cause some to choose a course of
action that could aid in derailing the political agenda of civilian
disarmament?

The Journal News would serve its readers far better if it reported a truer
accounting of firearms in America.


           The writer, a Wesley Hills optometrist, is chairman, Gun-Owners
		 for a Safe Society and a Senior Fellow at the Independence
		 Institute, a free-market think-tank in Golden, Colo.