Op-Ed Mangles Reality In Attempt To Push Gun Control :: 03/26/2021

I really shouldn’t expect much from CNN, and generally, I don’t. The network still tries to pretend it’s a neutral news source, yet runs the most biased stories it can find.

They really can’t help themselves.

Yet it seems they opted to run an anti-gun op-ed that takes the cake. While op-eds are supposed to be opinion, so that’s not the issue, what’s fascinating to me is how the writer seems to do such a poor job of making his case.

The recent shootings in Boulder and Atlanta have put the issue of gun violence at the center of America’s national discussion, and both tragedies demand greater attention be paid to how racism and gun violence, especially mass shootings, intersect. Specifically, America’s legal, educational, and policy structures must untangle the relationship between gun violence, race, democracy, and public safety.

Note the word “race” there. It’ll come up again.

At a policy level, Congress and the President should pass common-sense gun control laws, complete with stringent background checks, and an assault weapon ban that would reduce the likelihood of mass shootings and gun violence. Educationally, our public schools and institutions of higher education should be leading a national, data-driven conversation about gun violence as a national public health crisis. It is a crisis, like the Covid-19 pandemic, that affects all of us differently.
Right-wing narratives suggesting that Americans’ second amendment birthright — along with White patriarchal power structures — are under assault spread not only among hate groups online but in Congress. “Every time that there’s an incident like this,” observed Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis, “the people who don’t want to protect the Second Amendment use it as an excuse to further erode Second Amendment rights.”

Classic argument by assertion, regarding “White patriarchal power structures.”

Now, first, I do want to give someone credit for capitalizing the word “white.” If you’re going to capitalize “black,” then it’s only right to do both. I tend to opt to do neither, but at least it’s consistent, which is a win in this day and age.

As for “White patriarchal power structures,” this is a tired mantra from anti-gunners these days. See, they’re trying desperately to link gun rights to racism, so they make statements like this without really offering much in the way of evidence, hoping that if they repeat it enough, you’ll believe them.

Further, the author fails to also note that black gun owners are the largest growing sector of gun buyers in the country. They might not be buying a lot of guns right now, but that’s probably more reflective of the fact that store shelves are empty rather than any other factor.

Race plays a central role in America’s twisted history of gun control. When Black folk, from Malcolm X to the Black Panthers, tried to apply their Second Amendment right to bear arms in the service of defending Black lives against racial terror they were violently repudiated. California passed gun control legislation in 1967 in order to stop armed Black Panthers from keeping watch on local police who they alleged were brutalizing Black residents in Oakland and surrounding neighborhoods.

It’s interesting how the author manages to address the racist origins of gun control in this nation, yet still advocate for it. After all, the first gun control laws in this country weren’t created to disarm white men and women, but minorities, particularly blacks.

During Reconstruction, when the South couldn’t get away with a lot of that kind of thing, they passed more general gun control laws, all with the sure knowledge that no white sheriff would prosecute a white man. In other words, they were still all about disarming black men and women.

In other words, gun rights’ very existence is an affront to a one-time white patriarchal power structure.

And yet, he still manages to push for the very gun control that was originally meant to disarm black men and women and leave them to the mercy of people like the KKK.

I could go deeper into this screed, but it’s more argument by assertion and little in the way of logic. Instead, the author continues to twist facts and reality.

It’s troubling that even CNN couldn’t see this for the BS it actually is. Then again, I’m clearly expecting too much of some people.

https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2021/03/26/op-ed-mangles-reality-push-gun-control-n42620