The PBS NewsHour, hypersensitive to threats to “gun safety” measures (their words), sounded unpleasantly surprised on Thursday evening’s edition by a federal appeals court ruling allowing people under domestic violence restraining orders to have guns, based on the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision in June 2022.
NewsHour invited on a journalist specializing on what his organization terms the “gun violence crisis” to give his take. It’s part of a PBS pattern emphasizing what its journalists benignly term “gun safety” (i.e. regulations and restrictions) and talking non-journalistically of the “deadly epidemic” of gun violence (as if guns are contagious) and the misnomer of “assault weapons,” all while downplaying the 2nd amendment right to bear arms as an antiquated provision.
NewsHour co-host Amna Nawaz went straight to ideology in her lead-up to the interview with Chip Brownlee, gun journalist from The Trace:
Nawaz: One of the nation's most conservative appeals courts has struck down a federal law that banned people under domestic violence restraining orders from owning guns. The decision, which only applies in the 5th district of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, is just part of the massive legal fallout from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the 2nd Amendment last year, and it could signal how courts will decide on firearms cases for years to come. Joining me now is Chip Brownlee, he’s a reporter with The Trace, a nonprofit news organization that covers gun violence. Chip welcome to the NewsHour. Let's just start with the immediate impact. So does this mean anyone in Texas or Louisiana or Mississippi who has a domestic violence restraining order can now legally own a gun?
….
Nawaz: So the reason those laws were in place in the first place we should note, there is a well-established connection between domestic violence and gun violence, right? Tell us about that.
Brownlee: Probably about a fourth of the homicides that are done with guns in the United States are in some way related to domestic violence or family violence. About half of the women in the U.S. who are shot and killed with a gun every year are shot and killed in domestic violence incidents. We know from the research that having a gun in this situation raises the risk of a domestic violence murder by about 400%....
Neither Nawaz nor her guest had much sympathy for the “originalist” philosophy of the Constitution, commiserating over the apparent ridiculousness of the Supreme Court’s 2nd Amendment decision.
Nawaz: I found this line really striking, Chip, in applying the new standard they say the law is quote, ‘an outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted.’ So they’re essentially saying what, because domestic violence wasn’t a crime in the 18th and 19th century then this law is unconstitutional?
Brownlee: “Pretty much, yeah….
NewsHour pushes gun-fear on a regular basis. A small recent sample: Co-host Geoff Bennett opened the January 23 show: “Good evening. We begin tonight with the deadly epidemic of gun violence in America -- a problem with no letup in sight. In California, authorities are trying to determine the motive behind this weekend's shooting in Monterey park.”
On January 27, Washington Post reporter Ruth Marcus suggested gun violence was contagious: “Until we stop this proliferation of gun violence, which is a uniquely, disturbingly American phenomenon, whether it’s mass shootings or individual shootings, we are suffering from an epidemic of gun violence.”
On February 7, Bennett used the meaningless, manufactured term “assault weapon” to spread fear of guns: “And federal authorities foil an effort by racially-motivated extremists to use assault weapons to bring down Baltimore's electrical grid.”
A partial transcript is below, click “Expand” to read:
PBS NewsHour
February 9, 2023
7:44:25 p.m. Eastern
Co-host Amna Nawaz: One of the nation's most conservative appeals courts has struck down a federal law that banned people under domestic violence restraining orders from owning guns. The decision, which only applies in the 5th district of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, is just part of the massive legal fallout from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the 2nd Amendment last year, and it could signal how courts will decide on firearms cases for years to come. Joining me now is Chip Brownlee, he’s a reporter with The Trace, a nonprofit news organization that covers gun violence. Chip welcome to the NewsHour. Let's just start with the immediate impact. So does this mean anyone in Texas or Louisiana or Mississippi who has a domestic violence restraining order can now legally own a gun?
….
Nawaz: So the reason those laws were in place in the first place we should note, there is a well-established connection between domestic violence and gun violence, right? Tell us about that.
Chip Brownlee, The Trace: Probably about a fourth of the homicides that are done with guns in the United States are in some way related to domestic violence or family violence. About half of the women in the U.S. who are shot and killed with a gun every year are shot and killed in domestic violence incidents. We know from the research that having a gun in this situation raises the risk of a domestic violence murder by about 400%. So these laws, these were tried to kind of prevent those by having in place a prohibition on a person having a gun if they’re under these restraining orders. Because you can imagine if somebody goes to the length to get a restraining order they feel like they’re under an emergency situation, that they need protection, and those are probably the most dangerous situations that somebody can be in.
….
Nawaz: I found this line really striking, Chip, in applying the new standard they say the law is quote, ‘an outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted.’ So they’re essentially saying what, because domestic violence wasn’t a crime in the 18th and 19th century then this law is unconstitutional?
Brownlee: Pretty much, yeah….
