On Tuesday, Jesse Jackson, the Brady bunch -- not the TV folk but the anti-gun lobby -- and other liberal activists rallied against “the national scourge of illegal guns” in cities around the nation.
The networks ignored the event, probably because turnout was so embarrassingly low. The Chicago Tribune reported that “about 200” piled out of three buses in Lake Barrington, Illinois, the Chicago-area protest keynoted by Jackson himself. The Philadelphia Inquirer said “about 200” showed up in Philly. The Dallas Morning News reported about 60 demonstrators in South Dallas, and AP said “about 100”attended the Washington, D.C. event held in nearby District Heights, Maryland.
Anti-gun activists were counting on good coverage if they had big turnouts, and no negative coverage if they didn’t. It’s the flip side of how the media cover pro-life rallies, downplaying enormous crowds and playing up the handful of counter demonstrators. In this case, the networks chose to look benignly in the other direction. The gun grabbers know that liberal journalists don’t like guns. Or, rather, they don’t like private citizens owning guns and taking personal responsibility for their own safety and that of their families and property.
How do we know? From the loaded coverage night after night on the networks and each day in major newspapers. A new CMI study, The Media Assault on the Second Amendment, documents seven months of media coverage of gun issues, and explains how the media are taking potshots at the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
The media had a field day during the week after the Virginia Tech campus shootings on April 16. The major broadcast networks ran nearly 30 total stories promoting gun control, with another 24 from CNN, 9 in the New York Times and 20 in the Washington Post. The message was delivered with machine-gun regularity: lack of gun control led to the massacre, so more gun laws might prevent another massacre.
Armen Keteyian of CBS Evening News quoted the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and noted that Virginia Tech (which had recently imposed a total gun ban on campus) had fought Virginia’s “hunting culture” in a desperate effort to “safeguard the student population.” Seung-Hui Cho clearly was not deterred by Tech’s gun ban.
Conspicuously absent from the coverage were the many documented cases of guns used by citizens to thwart criminals. According to a survey by the United States Journal of Criminal Law, more than 2.5 million people annually use a gun in self defense. You’d never know it from the media’s preference for lurid murder pieces.
From January 1 to July 31, 2007, ABC, NBC and CBS ran a total of 650 murder stories. During the same period, self defense cropped up once on ABC, once on NBC and was absent on CBS. ABC’s John Stossel referred to two cases of armed self defense on the May 4 edition of 20/20, and NBC’s Today Show on April 23 featured former Miss America Venus Ramey, 82, who wielded a shotgun to chase off an intruder.
During the Tech aftermath, talk radio and Internet blogs filled some of the information gap by noting relevant incidents like the two Appalachian School of Law students in 2002 who grabbed their own guns to capture a man who had killed three people on campus. The networks showed little interest in the possibility that a similarly armed Virginia Tech student or professor might have stopped Cho before he slaughtered 32 souls in Blacksburg.
Another tactic that the media are using in their assault on gun ownership is making selective, misleading comparisons to other nations. NBC anchor Brian Williams noted on April 17, the day after the Tech massacre, that Great Britain “outlawed handguns, and anyone caught with one faces a minimum prison sentence of five years. They are so opposed to guns here that not even police officers on routine patrol carry them. Now gun violence is rare.” Williams ignored Britain’s long history of strict gun laws and unarmed “bobbies,” and the recent rise in knife violence and other crime. He also declined to mention countries like Switzerland, where male citizens are required to be armed with assault rifles and ready for militia duty, but where there is little gun violence. Or South Africa, which has some of the world’s most stringent gun laws but has a rate of gun homicides of 74.57 per 100,000 population, contrasted with New Zealand, with weak gun laws and only a 0.18 rate of gun homicides per 100,000 people.
Even after the Virginia Tech story cooled, the media continued its portrayal of lawless cities in need of more gun control. A classic example was ABC World News Sunday’s hit piece on July 8 blaming “rural” Pennsylvania’s law makers for a 2007 crime wave of shootings in Philadelphia. After Rep. Steve Capelli, the single pro-gun rights legislator featured in the story, gave a statement, the camera went to a crime scene, followed by a gunshot, and then this from reporter David Kerley: “That argument is being echoed across much of the country, as rural sensibilities continue to rule the gun debate. And cities like Philadelphia prepare for another night, and another shooting death.” Rural people, bad. Rural people with guns, worse. Rural people with guns cause Philadelphians to shoot each other.
Did the anti-gun lobby get the best possible media treatment of their rallies on Tuesday? You might as well ask, “Does the Brady bunch have CBS, NBC, and ABC on speed dial?”
This article was adapted and updated from an August 28 Washington Times op-ed. CMI Senior Editor Brian Fitzpatrick assisted with the article. Robert Knight is director of the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center.
















Editor at Large
Comments Policy
If you're in or near Maryland
August 29, 2007 - 17:02 ET by sarcasmoOr even if not, and you just want to annoy control-freaks from afar, this group is run by a very fine person who actually knows politics in MD.
JMR
Rally online with fans of Dr. Ron Paul.
Check out what the socialists and gun-grabbers are doing
August 29, 2007 - 18:28 ET by Mr. KafirIn Kal-ee-for-nee-ya:
AB=Assembly Bill
All sponsored by Democrats!!!! (*spit*)
Anti-gun = Anti-America.
August 29, 2007 - 18:41 ET by bassndudeAnti-gun = Anti-America. Just my thoughts on the matter. But true.
Save a SeAL, club a liberal!!
Anti-gun bias in the
August 29, 2007 - 18:50 ET by motherbeltAnti-gun bias in the media?????
Ya think???????
It's not just the 2nd Amendment that is under assault
August 29, 2007 - 19:05 ET by c5thenThe first amendment is under assault with the help of the MSM too.
The right to freely exercise your religion (if you are a christian) is under assault as well as the freedom of speech.
Liberals always feel that they should control other's behavior for their own "good".
The day that "politician" became a career choice is the day we started losing the Republic
Celebrated August 28
August 29, 2007 - 20:13 ET by Carbon Sasquatchby purchasing a new gun. Traditionally, National Buy a Gun Day is
April 15, but if the Rev. Jackson wants it to be a semiannual event,
I'm up for that. Got this cute little Savage varmint rifle in .17
HMR, put a scope on it and sighted it in just now in my front
yard.
Celebrating With Carbon
August 29, 2007 - 22:51 ET by ViperCarbon, I have not heard of the National Buy A Gun Day, but I'd like it to be more of a quarterly event. I can say that I celebrated with you today with my newest addition of a Rohrbaugh R9S. I hope your weather was good to sight in your new rifle and have to say that I am a bit jealous that I cannot sight mine in in my own yard. I had a great day at the range though!
I can never understand why some think more laws will be the answer. After all, law abiding citizens are not the problem and all another law will do is give these people more power and control. But as it is often discussed at NB's, facts, individual responsibility and common sense do not enter into it.
As an aside, I have added some new links (NewsBusters etc.) to my new website and invite everyone to take a look at it and invite you to e-mail me there with any comments or suggestions about the site as well as any additional links you think may be of interest.
bin Laden's 9 11 changed soccer Mom's into gun Mom's
August 29, 2007 - 22:57 ET by Lame CherryI find it absolutely amusing in looking back at the anti fur, anti life, anti hunting and anti gun campaigns which in an amazing piece by Parker Dozhier 20 some years ago he tracked that all of these movements were the same gay, liberal, anarchist groups showing up at the same events.
Americans were suckered by their propaganda, but after deer started killing the kiddies when Mom ran into them, Lyme started killing gramps and grams and now West Nile is giving everyone a headache.....all the urbanites are learning that nature might look pretty on PBS, but it is murder on humans.
The same case happened on 9 11. There already was from illegals and the rampant Liberal let loose criminals a growing trend of people who were figuring out calling 911 meant at least a police officer showed up to call the morgue to haul your body away.
bin Laden changed all that as much as all these illegals in awakening the slumbering American who thought they out grew John Wayne, Gunsmoke and the stories Grampa used to tell about hunting deer with his Winchester.
Soccer Moms got rightly scared and smart after 9 11. If people with box cutters were sawing people's heads off and the illegal was raping a 10 year old down the street, these Mothers decided bring a gun to a bin Laden fight was a great idea.
These American women.......and yes even feminine males in their suits and playing golf and tennis started noticing something when a Smith & Wesson was held in their hands.......they noticed how filling that grip felt in their hands.......they noticed how smooth that blue steel looked.........and wow did they notice they liked it when that gun went off........it felt powerful.......they felt in control....and when they hit targets they felt accomplished like they had never felt in their lives. For the first time they felt in control of their destiny........they felt what it was like to be an American.
No more did these Soccer Mom's worry about someone who owned a gun, because they owned a gun, were trained to use it and could discuss it with other friends and educate their children.......and no more were they crawling to the phone in hearing noises outside at night.......they simply got there gun, dialed 911 as they gathered their children.....told the dispatcher they were armed, in their bedroom with their children and would calmly wait for reinforcements.
Jackson and Brady can continue to milk this dead cow for money, but Americans have changed into Americans again. It is why that dufus John Kerry goes "duck hunting" or his buddy Tim Johnson comes stumbling out of a corn field with a huckster like Tony Dean to try and con American Soccer Mom's that they are gun owners too.
As factual data has proven, an armed society is a polite society....and those communities loaded for burglers and rapists do not have crime because the criminals flee before the armed citizen.
There are allot of bad things that happened on 9 11, but while bin Laden scared allot of Soccer Moms.........those people on Flight 93 showed those Mothers they could fight back like the heritage of Davey Crocket at the Alamo.
The best headline I saw this week was a liberal reporter scowling about America is the most heavily armed nation on earth with so many guns per America. I can only say GREAT! I have been shot at twice in my life and I did not appreciate it, but all that does is make me value the God given Wisdom of our founders more.
The only thing I would change in this is for the government to employ a policy which was always been in America to have cheap, well made guns and ammunition for all to utilize. That policy has served America well.......and it is why the Japanese never tried to land in mass in California and why Soviets sat up at night unable to solve the problem of you could never conquer America because the whole country was a sniper's pit blazing away with guns.
Teddy Roosevelt advocated the above and it kept America from being invaded since the War of 1812.....pretty good deal this Second Ammendment and all those illegal guns..........because it was criminals with guns known as George Washington and the Minute Men who turned them on an empire and buckled it.....just like Andy Jackson did in New Orleans.
America is going to need those guns in what is coming and thank God we have them.....and thank God the idiocy of bin Laden has a God given silver lining as it made American wake up in mass and start arming the greatest militia the world has ever known, the free American citizen.
There are no such things as illegal guns........and if you have armed citizens there will will be no such things as criminals using guns as they will behave themselves in fear of a lead shot solution.
In honor of John Browning, the creator of the American firearms line.
*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS
Soccer Moms
August 29, 2007 - 23:39 ET by ViperLame Cherry, I enjoy your posts as you often have a lot of points to bring up. I did like this sentence in particular, "No more did these Soccer Mom's worry about someone who owned a gun, because they owned a gun, were trained to use it and could discuss it with other friends and educate their children." and the key words for me are educate their children. I am all for educating our younger generation as opposed to the indoctrination we now have.
Not trying to show my age, but when I was younger, we could bring our guns to school and the teacher would put them in the closet. We would get them after school to go hunting on the way home. No misconduct, no school shootings, and never any problems that I was aware of. Can you imagine that happening in todays plotitcally correct climate? But... there was discipline and right and wrong at that time.
I bet that out of the 100 or
August 29, 2007 - 23:09 ET by Prez RudyI bet that out of the 100 or 200 or so protesters, 95% of them probably own a firearm themselves, or maybe some even brought theirs with them.
Shooty or No Shooty
August 30, 2007 - 09:10 ET by smitty031If you like rifles then check out the dissident frogmans blog...
He smacks down AFP for the 2 unfired cartidges pic in the news the other week. I got the link from LGF
http://www.thedissidentfrogman.com/blog/link/like-a-suppository-only-stronger/
I couldnt stop laughing!
I'm not sure what Brian
August 30, 2007 - 18:54 ET by FlashmanI'm not sure what Brian Williams is smoking but Britain is awash in gun crime and the politicians are in full denial about it. Remember here we're talking about a country that has gun laws that make the ones in effect in Washington DC seem like the wild west.
" The Home Office figures - which exclude crimes involving air weapons - show the number of deaths and injuries caused by gun attacks in England and Wales soared from 864 in 1998-99 to 3,821 in 2005-06. That means that more than 10 people are injured or killed in a gun attack every day."
Source : http://www.timesonli...
Flashman, I read that the latest gun crime
August 30, 2007 - 19:17 ET by RJin Great Britain is being driven primarily by young men. This means they are able to access guns at will, and that it's not some kind of holdover of pre-ban gun owners.
Williams is either a deliberate liar or he's incompetent. It disgusts me that Williams, typical of the MSM, is able to blatantly misinform Americans and have no personal consequences.
I do have a few friends in
August 30, 2007 - 19:58 ET by FlashmanI do have a few friends in the police back in England and from what they tell me it is mainly being driven by the younger segments of the population. Couple the recklessness of youth with the fatalism of long term unemployment and apathy and add to the mix an underground culture that sees a gun as the ultimate accessory and you have a recipe for disaster.
Most of the guns are coming in with the illegal immigrants, predominately although not exclusively from Eastern Europe, since the smugglers know that drugs and guns are a lucrative sideline.
Some areas of Britain are practically no-go areas for the police. That being said there are areas of Britain in which it's extremely safe to live and work.
There's a reasonably fair site for UK figures here.
http://www.crimeinfo...