Guns

It has only been a week since the Associated Press learned that its reporters' privacy and the confidentiality of their relationships with sources were violated on a massive and unprecedented scale by Eric Holder's Justice Department in April and May of last year. DOJ has admitted that it secretly obtained the call records for 20 personal and business lines used by over 100 AP reporters and editors. Despite its insistence that they were looking for the person who leaked information about a foiled terrorist plot, there is reason to believe the DOJ's fishing expedition was a childish response to the wire service's refusal to let the government crow about the foiled operation before anyone reported on it.

In the wake of all of this, the AP, appears determined to soldier on as the wire service more appropriately described as the Administration's Press. That's about the only way one can view the Saturday afternoon dispatch from the AP's David Espo and its accompanying headline:

MSNBC’s S.E. Cupp is used to being the only conservative on a show. Every day she co-hosts The Cycle where she spars with her three ultra-liberal co-hosts, so her appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher on May 18 was nothing new for Ms. Cupp.

Appearing on Friday night, S.E. confronted ultra-liberal host Bill Maher and his two liberal guests, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times over her objection to a national gun registry, which she summed up as simply a means to “be able to track me.” [See video afer jump.]

Bill Maher on Friday once again exposed himself as a total hypocrite.

Minutes after telling his HBO Real Time panel "the Second Amendment is bulls--t," he admitted having two firearms in his house - "one upstairs and one down" - claiming, "As long as we live in the gun country, I ain’t giving up my gun" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Joe Scarborough is outraged, OUTRAGED, that any senator could have opposed the gun bill which went down to defeat.

Oops! That was a month ago and it now appears that Scarborough is having second thoughts on this since he wondered aloud today if the government could be trusted with performing background checks in the light of the revelations of the IRS scandal in which that agency targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups. First let us look at Scarborough in the video below the fold in full outrage mode in April when his over the top anger at the gun bill opponents was chronicled by NewsBusters' Executive Editor, Matt Sheffield.

Sometimes it's what they neglect to mention that's more revealing than that was.

Disgraced former CBS anchorman Dan Rather, now broadcasting from obscure AXS TV on the high triple-digit end of the cable dial, told Rachel Maddow of an incident back when he was a reporter devoted to hounding Richard Nixon. (Video after page break).

As she appeared as a guest on Monday's All In with Chris Hayes show, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry described the conservative "red" parts of her home state of Lousiana as "not thinking about or caring about the 10-year-old children in my neighborhood who are shot while walking down the street" as she and host Chris Hayes discussed a recent mass shooting at a parade in New Orleans and advocated more gun control.

After Hayes described two distinct perspectives on guns as being the background of people grew up hunting and the point of view of people who have been shot, Harris-Perry added:

In another case of advocacy journalism by NBC, the network's NBCNews website published an article pushing for greater gun control, citing the work of a pediatrician trade group. NBCNews.com senior writer Maggie Fox began her story by approvingly gushing that "to pediatricians, gun control is a public health issue, not a political one."

The entire article is full of quotes portraying the American Academy of Pediatrics' "renewed push to try to get Congress to pass gun control measures" at odds with the NRA and other pro-gun groups.

How many times have we heard establishment press members, particularly broadcasters, insist that no one on the left side of the gun control discussion wants to take away anyone's guns? Just a few examples include CNN's Piers Morgan, CNN's Carol Costello, and MSNBC's Alex Wagner, even after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was quoted in the New York Times before Christmas saying that "confiscation could be an option." Currently, New York, as Hot Air's Jazz Shaw noted in late April, actually is confiscating guns, based on "the exercise of reasonable professional judgment" of "mental health professionals."

Though I'm sure they'll try, the deniers are going to have a hard time explaining away what the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs has reported with accompanying audio. After the conclusion of a hearing of New Jersey's Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, an open mic captured the following discussion among three Democratic senators (HT PolitiChicks via Instapundit; internal link and bolds are in original):

Teasing an upcoming panel discussion on Wednesday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer proclaimed: "Today's Professionals are going to weigh in on what could be a game changer in the gun debate, a plastic pistol undetectable by most security systems that almost anyone can make at home using some modern technology." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Fretting over details being released on how to construct the weapon using a 3D printer, Lauer posed this questions to the usual group of liberal pundits: "What do we do about it?" Attorney Star Jones admitted that there wasn't much that could be done under existing law, "other than really step up our efforts at gun control....if you make the behavior, the penalty for the behavior, the possession of a gun, no matter how it's manufactured, much more stringent."

The extent of the media's influence to shape public opinion was on full display in a new Pew Research Center poll that shows, even though gun crime has dropped by half since its peak in the mid '90s, most Americans (56 percent) wrongly think gun violence has increased.

In an L.A. Times article that highlighted the poll, Emily Alpert posited "It's unclear whether media coverage is driving the misconception that such violence is up. The mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., were among the news stories most closely watched by Americans last year, Pew found."

On Tuesday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose and Norah O'Donnell pressed Senator Joe Manchin about a possible new push for gun control in Congress. Rose wondered how Manchin and his allies could make legislation "more palatable to those people who may be afraid of it", while O'Donnell bluntly asked the Democrat, "Are you frustrated with the NRA?"

Manchin was their only guest on the gun issue. The CBS anchors had an opportunity to provide balance by asking Senator Bob Corker about his support for gun rights. Instead, Rose and Gayle King peppered the Republican with questions about his recent game of golf with President Obama: "Do you pull out all of the stops to beat him, or do you think, he's the President – I'm going to let him win this one?" [audio available here; video below the jump]

Appearing on Monday's Tonight Show, NBC Today co-host Savannah Guthrie told Jay Leno that President Obama was "deeply disappointed" by gun control legislation being voted down, prompting the late night host to complain: "Why do you think he's not able to close a deal? This seems to happen a lot....how come Obama hits this wall sometimes?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Guthrie acknowledged: "I think the criticism is that he hasn't quite learned how to work with Congress to get some of his initiatives through." But then she offered a defense of Obama by touting his supposed accomplishments: "I know if he were sitting here he'd say, 'Wait a minute, what about health care reform?' There have been big parts of his agenda that he has gotten through."

The air was thick with disingenuousness on Saturday’s Today show as NBC conducted a long-distance interview with the daughter of the slain Sandy Hook Elementary School principal. Co-anchor Erica Hill brought up the charge that Erica Lafferty has been used as a prop by the gun control crowd. Of course, in the process, NBC was using Lafferty as a prop during that very interview.

Lafferty was in Houston, ostensibly hoping to meet with leaders and members of the NRA at their convention. Ever since the Sandy Hook shooting, Lafferty has been active in the push for stricter gun laws, and Hill mentioned this. But then the anchor added, “You have also been accused of being used as a prop. Is there anything that you think you could have done differently to change the outcome in Washington?” Lafferty scoffed at the notion: [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

Apparently not even Chris Matthews listens to Chris Matthews. On Monday's Hardball, the liberal anchor compared the speeches at the National Rifle Association's 2013 convention to the Nazis. Three minutes later, he decried the use of Nazi comparisons. On the same program, Matthews insisted that the Republican Party has forgiven the assassination  of GOP President Abraham Lincoln.

As he played clips of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck at this past weekend's convention, Matthews railed, "First of all, it's Hitlerian, generally speaking, demagoguery. It's always about righteous indignation. All great demagogic speakers talk about how they're coming to get us." The host then played a clip of Beck showing a satirical poster of Michael Bloomberg as Vladimir Lenin. Mistaking this for Nazis, Matthews huffed, "But this idea of making moderate politicians like mike Bloomberg, who's really a centrist, into some sort of...what? A Nazi?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

On the Friday, May 3, Politics Nation, MSNBC host Al Sharpton fretted over the video that was played at Friday's NRA convention in Houston to introduce Rick Perry which shows the Texas governor firing at targets with an AR-15. Sharpton began the segment:

On Friday's All In show, with the words "The Sickness" displayed on screen behind him, MSNBC host Chris Hayes began the show with a commentary in which he tagged the NRA as a "far-right fringe organization" that "might be spelling their own demise" by celebrating the defeat of the universal background check proposal. Hayes:

ABC reporters over the weekend huffed that the National Rifle Association took a "victory lap" and sneered that the gun group was "using" the Boston bombing at their recent convention. Reporter Reena Ninan on Sunday chided, "NRA leaders found a way to use the recent bombings in Boston, even shooting tragedies, to expand support for their organization."

On Monday's Good Morning America, correspondent Jon Karl worried, "When it comes to guns, don't expect this crowd to give in on anything." He then parroted Ninan, insisting that the NRA "even invoked the manhunt for the Boston bombers." What Vice President Wayne LaPierre actually said in reference to Boston was this:

After conservative radio host Dana Loesch tweeted about firing "all manner" of guns with friends at her local range this past weekend, CNN's resident gun police Piers Morgan swooped in to badger her.

Twitchy had the exchange. Morgan mocked Loesch's gun range tweet, "Yee-haw!" and pointed out, for all those unaware, that the AR-15 rifle she tweeted a picture of was "The assault rifle used at Aurora & Sandy Hook." When Loesch replied that everyone shooting were "law-abiding citizens," Morgan invoked the Newtown shooter's mother: "Like Mrs Lanza?"

As NewsBusters previously reported, CBS Late Show host David Letterman spent a week last month attacking Senators as stooges - mostly Republicans, of course - for opposing recent gun control legislation.

One such Senator, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, told WABC radio's Aaron Klein Sunday, “That’s kind of a badge of honor. Any time you get Rachel Maddow or Letterman or those people to call you names that means you are winning."

Time was, several decades ago, that local and regional news in many parts of the country served as a bit of an antidote against the relentlessly biased national establishment press.

That certainly isn't the case in Aurora, Colorado, site of last year's horrible theater murders at the alleged hands of James Holmes. Dave Perry, the editor of the Aurora Sentinel, wrote a column on April 25 proving that he is not fit to hold his current position, especially when it comes to overseeing reporting on Second Amendment matters. Among other things, he characterized the National Rifle Association as "the real terrorist threat here in America" whose members are "guilty monsters" who should be "sent to Guantanamo Bay for all eternity" (bolds are mine; HT Instapundit):

Coming up next on MSNBC, further evidence of the link between global warming and the National Rifle Association, which the gun lobby inexplicably continues to deny ...

How reassuring it is for liberals to trot out their various all-purpose boogeymen to blame for whatever frustrates liberals at any given moment.

The staunchly pro-gun control Chris Matthews on Friday sneered that the National Rifle Association is doing a "dance of death" in celebration of their victory over Barack Obama. Regarding senators who voted with the gun group, the Hardball host mocked, "These are the guys who took the easiest vote in American political history. They backed the NRA." He added that "it was almost a religious experience for these clowns." (Couldn't that last part be said of journalists in relation to Obama?)

Regarding speakers at the NRA conference in Texas, Matthews snarled, "I think it might be a dance of death over the President's political grave, is what it really is. " [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Former Democratic governor Ed Rendell appeared on the program and blamed the organization for future horrors: "Imagine the blood on the hands of the people who voted against this common sense bill."

On Thursday's The Last Word, MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell attacked the owners of the gun maker Crickett as "merchants of death" after a five-year-old boy in Kentucky, without adult supervision, used one of their guns to kill his younger sister: "The names I want you to know are the merchants of death, the merchants of this death, the guys who made and sold the rifle that killed this two-year-old girl. "

Good Morning America's Jeff Zeleny on Friday hyped a Senator being "slammed" by pro-gun control voices at a town hall. Yet, the same network back in 2009 worried about Tea Party town halls "getting ugly." Highlighting a New Hampshire event with Republican Kelly Ayotte, Zeleny featured multiple snippets of Americans impacted by gun violence and summerized that they are "trying to understand how so many senators voted against something eight in ten Americans support."

In comparison, on the August 7, 2009 edition of World News, Charles Gibson lectured the Tea Party: "...In meeting after meeting, there's been a pattern of disruption - opponents of change shouting at members of Congress so loud that at times police are called in." He fretted, "White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said today, 'We can discuss these issues without being uncivilized. It's the same thing I tell my six-year-old.'"

Once again, MSNBC has outdone itself with extreme comments on the subject of gun control.  The morning after MSNBC anchor Martin Bashir sacrilegiously altered the Lord's Prayer to portray the NRA as ghoulishly bloodthirsty,  Morning Joe panelist Donny Deutsch railed against members of Congress who oppose expanding background checks. 

At one point in his tirade, Deutsch leveled a rather sexist complaint against a female conservative senator, suggesting that she was not true to her "primal" feminine instincts to abhor guns.  [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.}

For the second time on Piers Morgan's CNN show, Breitbart's Ben Shapiro got the better of his host as on Thursday he goaded Morgan into calling for a British-style handgun ban in the U.S.

"You're from the UK, why don't we go with a full gun ban?" Shapiro challenged Morgan, who, audibly flustered, admitted, "Listen, we've discussed this. The UK has 40, 50 gun murders a year, America has 12,000. Why don't we try our way?" He then promptly switched the topic. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

On Friday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah noted start of the National Rifle Association's convention in Houston, Texas by declaring that it "gets under way as the country engages in a heated gun control debate." In the report that followed, correspondent Gabe Gutierrez described the event as "a nine-acre gun show in the middle of a national gun fight."

Gutierrez acknowledged the recent "major congressional victory" of the gun rights group and lamented failure to pass gun restrictions: "After mass shootings in Aurora and Newtown, the NRA's opponents seemed to have momentum....But two weeks ago, a bipartisan compromise on expanded background checks for commercial gun sales was shot down in the Senate."

If you read local newspapers on the ground in the Granite State, it becomes pretty clear that the national media's drive-by attack on Kelly Ayotte is rooted in the liberal media's desire to push gun control, not the actual facts on the ground. The faux fury over Ayotte's vote against the Manchin-Toomey gun background check bill is rather underwhelming, in fact.

To make one thing absolutely clear, there were more Ayotte supporters than detractors at the town hall where Erica Lafferty attacked Ayotte for her vote. Lafferty, you may recall, is the daughter of the slain Sandy Hook Elementary School principal. Shawn Millerick of the New Hampshire Journal reported today that anti-Ayotte protests outside a town hall appearance were staged by Organizing for Action -- which is basically an undead form of the Obama for America presidential campaign:

Leading off Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams eagerly touted gun control supporters going after Republican New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte at a recent town hall meeting: "Pushing back. A tense moment as a U.S. senator gets an earful about her no vote on gun control." Williams hopefully added: "And with lawmakers home from Washington on a break, is this about to start happening more often?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

While Williams promoted the incident as a genuine public uprising, emphasizing "9 of 10 Americans support expanded background checks," he failed to mention that President Obama's campaign machine, Organizing for Action, was motivating many of the anti-Ayotte protests. On FNC's Special Report on Wednesday, anchor Bret Baier reported: "OFA took to the streets of New Hampshire at the end of April for an impassioned protest against [Ayotte]...One sign spattered in what appears to be fake blood reads, quote, 'More shot in one day than marathoned.'"