Alphecca

Weekly Check on the Bias

Welcome to the November 15th edition of my (almost) Weekly Check on the Bias by media regarding guns and the Second Amendment.

Deer hunting season is underway in most states and there's something comforting about hearing the crack of rifles in the distance as men, women, and often their children engage in one of the oldest activities here in America. (No, not election campaigning! Mercifully, that one's over with for now...) Hunting and putting food on the table (can you believe that Thanks Giving is just over a week away?) helps reconnect us to the roots of our nation, before there were Shaws and Winn Dixies every few towns and if you wanted to eat and feed your family, you HAD to hunt, or at least raise something you had to butcher yourself. It's also still (not withstanding the rising cost of many state hunting licenses) the most economical way to fill a freezer for the Winter.

Here's how things used to be, as captured by artist Karl Bodner at Wincher's Creek in the upper part of the Missouri River (this is only a partial of the entire etching circa 1851?) as shown in the book The Discovery of the World by Albert Bettex.

Elks and bison indeed. Actually, considering the exploding deer population in many states, it still is!

This is the time of year when most local (smallish) newspapers treat hunting as a way of life for many. A quick search on Yahoo under "hunting season" in the news section will turn up many MANY pro-hunting, unbiased articles. Needless to say, don't look for such in the New York Times... I won't list them here, rather I'll concentrate on a couple of unusual ones. First up, a nice snarky comment for the Illinois Governor from the Peoria Journal-Star (IL):

Deer hunting politician

Minnesota Gov. Tom Pawlenty shot a 4-point buck on opening day of his state's firearm season last weekend. That got us wondering whether Gov. Blagojevich might spend some time in a tree stand when Illinois firearm season opens Friday?

Nah, might muss his hair.

As my mentor might say, "Heh".

As more city mice move to rural areas and try to tell the country mice how to live, the issue of posting one's property often comes up. One town in Missouri had several residents who wanted to post "no hunting" signs in their yards. The town council voted it down but for a much different reason than to protect hunting; it was to protect the image of the town as a place to move to because it didn't have a hunting "problem". From St. Louis Today:

Clarkson Valley residents will not be allowed to have "No trespassing, no hunting" signs in their yards during deer hunting season, though a few residents were allowed such signs briefly in October.

The Board of Aldermen on Nov. 2 voted 3-2 to reject a proposed amendment to the city's sign law to allow such signs. Under the proposal, the signs would have been allowed from a week before through a week after the archery hunting season for deer.
[...]
Twichell said she thought the sign proposal "would have been a way to resolve requests from residents who would like to have these signs."

But Schiller said the signs could deter potential homebuyers in the city.

"If I was looking for a home to buy and I saw signs saying 'No trespassing, no hunting,' I would assume there was a problem — when there's not — and think twice about buying a house there," she said.

In Vermont (I checked with the local town clerk) you only have to file a $5.00 dollar fee and "register" your property as being posted, and then you can put up posted signs. Hunters are supposed to (but often don't) stop by the town hall to review the list of posted properties.

This is a looming problem as the NYC/LA crowd decides (and can afford to) buy up huge tracts of old farms and forest so they can experience the simple, "rural" life. But please don't clutter it up with actual rural natives who might want to put food on their table or just hike and fish on the property. It's the typical hypocrisy of the left, the limousine liberals who infect our great nation and work to prevent all the poor from actually enjoying our open spaces. Media mogul Ted Turner is the ultimate worst offender, owning over a million acres of land. It's really too bad that he didn't follow his father's footsteps.

Michigan has a large and proud population of hunters. You wouldn't know it from this repulsive op-ed from the Detroit News:

This is the moment when the guy I'll call Dave -- because that is his name -- devolves from a sophisticated man of words and letters into a savage hunter of helpless creatures.

Oops. I meant to write "evolves" and "intrepid" hunter of "wild creatures," but my fingers slipped.

But such is my point: Hunting season separates those of us who want to hug gentle Bambi from those who want to kill and eat him, after skinning him and dressing him and hanging him by his dainty hooves in the garage.

Gosh, not too many loaded phrases there! And then the marketing department of the Detroit News wonders why their rag sells so poorly in the "finger-regions" of the state. Of course, the Detroit News editoral writers find no problem making excuses for the mutants of their city that hunt human prey all the while calling for more gun-control measures.

To end on a good note, up in Wisconsin where they have an excellent program that promotes the donation of deer meat by hunters, thanks to a record harvest so far, food-banks are seeing a record amount of donations. From the Duluth News-Tribune:

MILWAUKEE - Food pantries are reaping the rewards of Wisconsin's early hunting season and an overpopulation of deer.

State hunters had donated nearly 4,000 by the start of last week to food pantries as part of the state's venison donation program, said Laurie Fike of the state Department of Natural Resources.

She said when the state's traditional nine-day gun season ends this month, the figure easily could top an all-time high of 10,000 deer.

Hunters typically give away about two-thirds of their annual kill. The meat is taken to butcher shops throughout the state and ground for distribution to charitable groups.

Donations rose to 6,771 last year after testing found that chronic wasting disease was limited to some areas and more pantries joined the program.

An early gun hunt in more than half the state's deer management units and the renewal of earn-a-buck rules in more than two dozen units also probably will boost venison donations, Fike said.

Earn-a-buck requires hunters to tag an antlerless deer before they an harvest a buck. Many hunters are donating the antlerless deer, said Bryan Woodbury, a DNR biologist and wildlife damage specialist.

A total of 122 butcher shops in 53 counties outside the disease zone are taking part in the donation program this year, up from 117 in 2003. Each already had received more than 100 deer by Nov. 8.

Each deer typically provides 40-45 pounds of ground meat. In the first four years of the DNR-sponsored program, pantries distributed more than 1 million pounds of ground venison.

You won't find the New York Times mentioning or providing any positive commentary on this effort either. So what is the Old Gray Lady chattering about? Well... They're still blathering about the election of two weeks ago. Columnist Nicholas Kristof examines the role that gun control played in the election:

Nothing kills Democratic candidates' prospects more than guns. If it weren't for guns, President-elect Kerry might now be conferring with incoming Senate Majority Leader Daschle.

Since the Brady Bill took effect in 1994, gun-control efforts have been a catastrophe for Democrats. They have accomplished almost nothing nationally, other than giving a big boost to the Republicans. Mr. Kerry tried to get around the problem by blasting away at small animals, but nervous Red Staters still suspected Democrats of plotting to seize guns.

Moreover, it's clear that in this political climate, further efforts at gun control are a nonstarter. You can talk until you're blue in the face about the 30,000 gun deaths each year, about children who are nine times as likely to die in a gun accident in America as elsewhere in the developed world, about the $17,000 average cost (half directly borne by taxpayers) of treating each gun injury. But nationally, gun control is dead.

And he then provides a handy list of measures that Democrats should take regarding the gun issue:

"You can tell whether a camera is loaded by looking at it, and you should be able to tell whether a gun is loaded by looking at it," said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Professor Hemenway has written "Private Guns, Public Health," a brilliant and clear-eyed primer for the country.

We take safety steps that reduce the risks of everything from chain saws (so they don't kick back and cut off an arm) to refrigerators (so kids can't lock themselves inside). But firearms have been exempt. Companies make cellphones that survive if dropped, but some handguns can fire if they hit the ground.

Professor Hemenway notes that in the 1990's, two children a year, on average, died after locking themselves in car trunks. This was considered unacceptable, so a government agency studied the problem, and General Motors and Ford engineered safety mechanisms to prevent such deaths.

In contrast, 15 children under the age of 5 die annually in fatal gun accidents in the U.S., along with 18 children 5 to 9 years old. We routinely make aspirin bottles childproof, but not guns, even though childproof pistols were sold back in the 19th century - they wouldn't fire unless the shooter put pressure on the handle as well as the trigger.

Well now, while we all think any death is a tragedy, how much risk is acceptable for any product designed to improve or protect our life? Liberals will gladly accept 70 or more deaths a year from the use of the erection drug Viagra but suddenly balk at 33 accidental gun deaths of children? Trial-lawyers not withstanding, most folks accept the risk that a miniscule percentage of people will have an allergic reaction to a vaccine that will save the life of many millions of people. Apparently the urge for satisfying sex preempts safety but the urge to protect oneself or one's family does not.

Of course, the fact is that many firearms makers already have loaded-chamber indicators and a safety built into the back of the grip of the guns that they make. The hysterical Kristof doesn't mention this. He also doesn't consider that while a car should be made safe, a gun, by it's very nature is dangerous and is meant to be used immediately when it is suddenly needed to fend-off a mutant. I suppose we could require such safety devices but that adds a lot of cost to an item, a gun, that is most needed by folks who can least afford to pay for extras; the poor who live in crime-infested urban areas and probably need the protection provided by a firearm the most.

Let me repeat myself: No one wants to see a child die from an accidental handling of a gun but the benefits far outweigh the risks of such a device. Kristof claims there are 30 thousand deaths from firearms each year. Yes, there are, but most of them are from -- yes, accidents -- and more likely suicide, and by mutants being shot by police, or by other mutants.

Kristof offers more advice such as:

Finance research to develop "smart guns," which can be fired only by authorized users. If a cellphone can be locked with a PIN, why not a gun? This innovation would protect children - and thwart criminals.

That's a nice thought but it doesn't work and is silly. Why? Because if the "smart gun" can only be fired by one person, then everyone in the household must buy their own "smart gun" which simply increases the risks that Kristof warns about. I.E.: The Wife buys a gun for protection. She's away on a business trip and the spouse can't use the gun when drug-infested mutants break into his home. Or maybe both parents are away and the child can't protect himself.

Nicholas then summerizes:

Would these steps fly politically? Maybe. One poll showed that 88 percent of the public favors requiring that guns be childproof. And such measures demonstrate the kind of fresh thinking that can keep alive not only thousands of Americans, but the Democratic Party as well.

Kristof doesn't provide the name or link to that "one poll" but he is completely wrong if he thinks the Democrats will win with such gun-control measures. Democrats (liberal ones) will stand on their heads to support an unfettered First Amendment but will also do back-flips to abridge the Second. And because of that, they will probably lose a couple states and Senate and House seats every election. Hmmm... Maybe I should keep my mouth shut!

Turning to other issues, the Pioneer Press (MN) sensibly (and unusually) falls into support for local gun ranges. From an editorial:

Former city dwellers who have moved to the country have learned — GASP! — there's a shooting range down the road. Some have filed nuisance suits against the ranges, which, we'd point out, were there long before the encroaching neighbors. Range owners have been trying to get legislation through the Legislature in anticipation of more problems as formerly rural areas become increasingly more suburban.

Frankly, we're no more sympathetic to people who want to shut down gun ranges than we are to those who want to close smelly pig farms or slaughterhouses. Just because an existing business shatters someone's vision of country idyll doesn't mean it should be sent packing.

We thought DFL Rep. Rebecca Otto offered a good solution. She proposed that homebuyers moving near gun ranges sign a disclosure statement stating that they know who their neighbors are.

"It's a no-brainer," Otto said. "It's like moving next to a gravel pit."

We agree. Unfortunately, the real estate lobby managed to sideline this sensible proposal. A gun range protection bill made it through the House last session but never made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Fed up with the legislative process, range owners are hoping to reach some sort of compromise with municipalities. Les Bensch, owner of the Viking Valley Hunt Club in Ashby and one of the principal spokesmen for range owners, will host representatives from the Minnesota Association of Townships, the League of Minnesota Cities, and others later this month. Among the topics they'll discuss is a noise standard for ranges.

"If someone files a nuisance suit, that's hard to fight," Bensch said. "But a noise ordinance takes it out of the nuisance category and puts it into the control category."

Here again we have the city mice moving to the rural areas of our states and trying to control and squash the country mice. These are the same limo-liberals who move next to an airport and then exclaim, "Hey, keep it down!"

I'm glad that the Pioneer Press has come down on the side of sensibility. I regret that the local ranges have decided to go for a noise-ordnance rather than correctly fight for their rights. As I mentioned before, we have the rich folks moving into our neighborhoods and taking away our rights. They post their "estates" so no one can hunt or hike them. They grow impatient when waiting on line at the local mini-mart because the real residents engage in social, polite, civilized conversation about their families and local events. They ruin every area they move to. I'll keep it at that since I try not to launch into rants in this weekly post...

You know, in trying to determine whether a story is biased one way or another, good people can disagree. An article in yesterday's Washington Post covered the efforts of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. I saw it via the Yahoo Gun Control Debate Page:

Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, always carries a gun because you never know when you'll need it. But which one to carry and how can be complicated, he said, much like the choice a woman faces in accessorizing her outfit with the right shoes. Today, he picked a compact black .40-caliber Kahr pistol, slipped it into a special holster and dropped it in his front pocket.

Arriving for lunch at a Topeka's Steakhouse 'n' Saloon not far from his suburban home, Van Cleave confronted another choice, an annoying one. Because the restaurant serves alcohol, Virginia law says he can't carry a concealed weapon inside. He would have to wear it in plain view. So he chose a different holster, one that fits inside his belt, leaving the gun exposed. Then he sighed.

"It's a pain to re-conceal it. Sometimes you may have to literally do a striptease," he said. "Isn't it asinine that I even have to worry about that?"

He walked into the restaurant. No one blinked. "Smoking or non?" the waiter asked.
[...]
The league has been scolded privately by national gun rights advocates for openly carrying en masse. Some league members showed up with weapons in full view at a September gun rights conference in Crystal City as the C-SPAN cameras started to roll. Conference organizers asked them to conceal or leave.

Joe Waldron, executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, wrote in an e-mail that was later circulated on the Web that Van Cleave and league members threatened to turn the event into a "see the gun nuts wearing guns on their hips conference."

State Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle (R-Virginia Beach), a former police officer and a gun rights advocate, and other lawmakers have warned the group that their "in your face" open-carry tactics might serve only to galvanize the opposition. "They are turning a smoldering spark into a raging fire right now as the state becomes more urban and less rural," he said. "That's a battle that they may be likely to lose."

David F. Snyder, a Falls Church City Council member, is a case in point. When Van Cleave and league members carried weapons to a recent meeting to protest a gun control proposal, Snyder became more determined to fight them.

Several readers and bloggers also sent me a link to this story. One called it a "very pro-gun story" and another said, "...notice the sneering, barely contained contempt for gun owners throughout the piece." It's interesting that several pro-gun readers can view the same newspaper story in much different lights. I mention this only because I also receive criticism on occasion for my views on a particular article. My own opinion is that the writer, Brigid Schulte, did a decent job of reporting on the story and included pro and con quotes from (and in equal amounts) both and I might point out that the "anti" quotes came from pro-gun supporters and organizations. There was only one single mention by a gun-control group.

I can't ask for more than that from a newspaper story or it's writer. If you'd like to add your emotional or (better yet) financial support to them, the web site for the Virginia Citizens Defense League is here.

One last news story (hat-tip to Say Uncle) about shooting clays, and it's in the New York Times! Of course, it's in their business section... From the NY Times article:

It may come as a rude shock to fans of traditional country club sports, but more Americans take part in sports involving guns than play tennis and golf combined. The list, of course, includes hunting and recreational shooting, but also a blend called sporting clays, in which shooters plunge into nature not to stalk deer or ducks but to test their skill at hitting clay targets that fly through the air or bounce across the ground.

Sporting clays, a British import, has gained popularity in the United States in the last two decades, in part because it does not carry the social stigmas associated with wounding or killing wildlife. In fact, sporting clays is often described as golf with a shotgun because it poses the challenge of completing an outdoor course where terrain and weather conditions are important factors. But to sporting clays enthusiasts, the allure of their game is much more primal than that of golf because it still harks back to the ancient urge to hunt.

"The appeal of sporting clays is that it's the closest thing of all the mechanical, man-made practice exercises to real bird shooting," said James Gubelmann, 57, an architect in Morristown, N.J. "It not only helps you become a better shooter, it's fun."

According to organizations that track sports popularity, more than 40 million Americans participate at least once a year in hunting or recreational shooting. By comparison, 26 million people play golf and 9.6 million people play tennis at least once a year. Gary Mehalik, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said that 23 million people are target shooters and estimates that 9 million of them take part in sporting clays. More than 1,300 shooters competed in a sporting clays national championship tournament last month in San Antonio.

Of course, they title the article, "A Blood Sport Skips the Blood but Scales Up the Bang" as if they were covering Roman gladiators. None-the-less, it is to the credit of the BUSINESS SECTION editor (certainly not to the editorial or news editor) that such a story appears at all. You will be shocked to learn that they even mention several clubs where all NY Times interested readers (2, 3?) can sign-up to enjoy the sport.

Okay, this edition is WAY LATE and I'd better get it up. Thanks to all of you for stopping by!

Posted by Jeff Soyer at November 15, 2004 01:25 PM