Monday, May 10, 2010

PSH Over Firearms At Our Paper?

Who could have predicted it? Zounds!

Yes, like clockwork; as predictably as the Reasoned Discourse that breaks out whenever antis are challenged, my city's own Fishwrap And Sports-Franchise Booster -- er, what, what's that? Oh, it's still called "The Indianapolis Star," just like it was a real newspaper for grownups an' all. Anyway, they are frettin' over firearms in Indiana, especially here in Indianapolis (still trailing Chicago in firearm deaths, despite that city's bigtime illegalization of handguns in a state that regulates guns in every way Our Mr./Ms Editor could want, to no discernible effect).

Let's get out the Big Mean Fisking & Mockery Machine and see what this individual's on about.... (You'll have to wait on the link, as the piece is not posted yet: paying customers first! 'Sup now).

After praising efforts by police to "zero... in on the most crime-ridden neighborhoods and known worst offenders" (well, duh -- and you mean they haven't been? What's up with that, was the previous plan that everybody gets their fair share, 0.25 Terry stops and 0.1 dynamic entries per year?), Our Dear Scribe then avers that despite the "reticence" of some unnamed generic public safety officials about "the notorious weakness of Indiana's gun laws" (Notorious to whom? And remember, now, this is the state where if you take one step -- one single step! -- off your own land with your own handgun and you don't have permit, you are committing a felony, unless the gun was unloaded, "in a secure wrapper" and you were transporting it to buy, sell or get it repaired) -- where was I? Oh, yes, those "reticent public safety officials," who were just patting the hand of the poor, timid Editor, assuring he, she or it that the ease with which criminals lay a-holt of "illegal firearms"* is the main reason nearly 50 Hoosiers (or perhaps this figure counts Indianeapolitians alone; he's not clear. Slept through that class in J-School, did we?) have been killed by gunfire thus far in 2010 -- and every last one of them a deacon of their faith, pure and guilless as the driven snow, with lives filled with Good Works ahead of them, cut down at the very threshold of sainthood by -- oh, sob -- guns! Not, if you please, by wicked men wielding guns, or even noble men in the process of defending hearth, home, family and fortune. Nope, 'twere the gun what done it. So much better if their enemies had merely shoved their victim's sweet heads under the workin' bits a steam hammer to be beaten to a bloody pulp, I guess, or only hacked out their beating hearts with an obsidian knife; anything, so long as it didn't go bang!

But -- bravely suppressing a single, crystal tear of pure moral outrage -- the dear, sweet, loving Edit-thing insists, "...the problem doesn't stop with illegal firearms.*"

...And proceeds to launch into a shopping list of civilian-disarmament whines and wishes. In order:

- "...limit the number of guns that can be lawfully purchased at one time." Like the one-gun-a-month laws that have been shown in several states to not reduce the use of firearms in crimes; I believe Virginia's is up for repeal. Such a measure also short-circuits a Federal effort you'd think the writer would favor: buy more than one handgun from the same dealer within a few days and the dealer has to fill out ATF Form 3310.4 and send copies "to the designated State police or the local law enforcement agency in the jurisdiction where the sale took place." Jeepers, wouldn't that help 'em find, you know, folks doing big, fat straw purchases?

- "...the Indiana general Assembly voted to seal off the public records of gun permits." (License To Carry Handgun records, actually). The paper, as I have previously reported, managed to find a handful of baddies who -- at the time they were issued LTCHs -- had done nothing that would disqualify them under State or Federal law. How, you might ask, did the paper identify these miscreants? Why, because they subsequently did commit acts that disqualified them! And lost or were in the process of losing their carry permits. Yes, the system worked -- but because there are no tea-leaf readers at the Indiana State Police (where they check one's criminal record when applying for an LTCH), the paper wants to "fix" it. Ah, Precrime: interesting science fiction but it didn't work out well even there.

- Accuses (praises!) police of "not being Second Amendment absolutists." Gosh, Mister or Miz Editor, what if they stop being First Amentment absolutists, too? Will you still sing fondly of them when they come getcha after your next gripping expose of favoritism, crime or corruption within IMPD?

- Admits law enforcement will "have no shortage of weapons to confiscate...within the limitations imposed by loose state laws." So what's your beef?

- "Of course, getting guns out of the wrong hands is only part of an ambitious strategy of heading off crime before it happens..." (h'mm, just addressed this) "...A few ounces of prevention from the Statehouse would be welcome." I can only gather from this statement that taking guns from the right hands would be the other part of Dear, All-loving Editor's "ambitious strategy. "

Ambition, indeed. C'mon, then. Take them. Molon Labe. Just you try.
__________________________
* Whatever that means -- from context, not NFA weapons lacking a tax stamp. Maybe it means "illegally-possessed?" But that would mean blaming the poor, innocent victim-of-society who is pointing the thing at one's face and demanding free money, oh dearie me no, no, no.

9 comments:

Stranger said...

Now, now, Madame! The Greeks had no V and that is very clearly what passed for a chiseled beta - here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molon_labe

Mu omega lambda omega nu Lambda alpha beta eta

Which reads like a prep school sorority list, but come and get it is close to the original.

Stranger

og said...

Does "Molon Lave" mean "Come and wash them"?

Sorry to be a pedantic puke this early on a monday.

Roberta X said...

I feex.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

To get back to the meat of the story, this sure would be a great town to start a newspaper in.

Roberta X said...

If one did, it would be necessary to call it The Daily Fishwrap just to restore cosmic symmetry.

Montie said...

Roberta,

We had a record year for homicides in Tulsa last year at 71. The Mayor responded with a layoff of 135 cops (although, to be honest, he did hire back 19 of them with some federal grant money).

The State Legislature has responded much more effectivley with an open carry bill which is currently languishing on our somewhat wimpy Governor's desk, while he contemplates whether he can sign it while holding his nose at the same time (open carry - only stinky to liberal Dems.)

Why is it that in mostly conservative midwestern cities, the newspapers seem to be oddly out of touch and liberal? The "Tulsa World" frequently comes out with some editorial doozies similar to the Indy "Star". Yet they are dumfounded as to why their subscription and news-stand
sales have fallen off a cliff.

Geodkyt said...

Montie,

Most major newspapers (even in secondary markets) are owned by the same people as own The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.

Oligarchical Ideological Isolation -- it's not just for academia anymore.

wv: "triffin" -- The act of finding out one has fallen behind the Circle of Life in regards to large alien plants.

sam said...

Ooh, I bet that left a mark!

You were en feugo, lovely lady, a fine rant.

Idiocy knows no bounds, especially with the fourth estate.

And they don't even try to disguise it, anymore.

Don said...

No fair bringing up the crime rate in Chicago or the crime rates in Illinois! That's mostly caused by Indiana's lack of common-sense gun laws anyway.