Ever since the Newtown mass shooting, the liberal media have pushed for a fresh round of federal gun control, insisting that such measures are needed to keep guns from falling into the wrong hands, even though the efficacy of such measures is doubtful. But what about guns potentially falling into the wrong hands thanks to the malfeasance or incompetence of government officials? Shouldn't the media highlight those instances and call the government to account for them?
Well, the Washington Post reported in Friday's newspaper that the "U.S. Park Police has lost track of thousands of handguns, rifles and machine guns in what a government watchdog agency concluded is the latest example of mismanagement on a police force trusted to protect millions of visitors to the city's iconic monuments." Even so, it appears the broadcast networks have thus far ignored the story.
A search of our DVR system found not mentions of the missing guns on either Friday nor Saturday on either the evening or morning news programs for the broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC. A similar search turned up no hits on CNN or MSNBC, although various Fox News programs have noted the development.
Thankfully, Post reporter Peter Hermann noted, "There is no indication that police guns got into the hands of criminals." But that being said, "the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that the Park Police might not know if they had."
"Investigators found 1,400 guns that were supposed to have been destroyed or melted down. An additional 198 handguns donated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are sitting in a building in Anacostia but don’t show up in official records," Hermann noted.
"[T]his report makes agency management sound like the Left’s political caricature of an irresponsible gun nut: cutting regulatory corners, buying a ton of weapons they didn’t need, and treating their weapons carelessly. Perhaps the government should get its own firearms paperwork in order, before demanding more from the rest of us," Human Events writer John Hayward argued in a June 28 piece at the conservative paper's website.
I would add that the liberal media should likewise hold the government's feet to the fire and highlight these abuses. If the media are truly concerned with keeping guns out of the wrong hands rather than in simply pushing a liberal gun control agenda, they'd do their jobs as government watchdogs and bark at such utter incompetence by the Obama Department of the Interior.
