Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Fine objective journalism on the assault weapons ban:
Check out this [1]Reuters story:
Gun control activists, health care advocates and law enforcement
groups geared up on Tuesday for a last-ditch effort to prevent a
1994 ban on assault weapons from expiring next week, but even its
most ardent backers acknowledge the drive is all but futile.
But the influential National Rifle Association gun lobby,
meanwhile, said it would "not take anything for granted" as it
works to send the ban into oblivion.
Pro-control forces are "activists," "advocates," or "groups." The
anti-control forces are the "gun lobby." As I've mentioned [2]before,
would journalists who say "gun lobby" call NARAL and other groups on
NARAL's side of the issue the "abortion lobby"? Would they call the
Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press the "press lobby"? Would
they call the NAACP the "black lobby"?
Would they say "The gun control lobby, health care lobby, and law
enforcement lobby geared up in favor of renewing the ban . . . . But
the influential gun rights advocates at the National Rifle
Association, meanwhile, said . . ."? Well, we see that this writer
certainly doesn't.
The story goes on with twelve paragraphs, of which each one
paraphrases, quotes, or describes the stance of a pro-gun-control
advocate. Only three of them even mention the views of pro-gun-rights
advocates, and there only to say that "the NRA has fought [the ban]
fiercely," to quote a pro-gun-control advocate ruing the NRA's power,
and to say that Republican leaders oppose the ban -- none of them
express the pro-gun-control advocates' arguments:
Ban advocates called on President Bush to intervene and get
Congress to act. But Bush, who in his 2000 campaign promised to
sign legislation, has been publicly silent for months as the clock
ticked.
The ban on such weapons as Uzis and AK-47s will expire at midnight
next Monday unless Congress votes to renew it. While warning that
high-powered guns and large-capacity ammunition clips could flood
America's streets, even the most ardent backers of the ban in
Congress admitted that it is almost certain to lapse.
"The likelihood (of extension) is remote," said California Democrat
Sen. Dianne Feinstein. House Republican aides concurred, and
predicted that ban advocates would not have an opening to try to
get legislation through this week.
"I'm trying to put pressure on the president," said New York
Democrat Carolyn McCarthy, elected to Congress after her husband
was slain in 1993 by a gunman on a Long Island, New York, train.
"This whole thing is in Bush's court."
Several public opinion polls, including one released this week by
the National Annenberg Election Survey, have found deep public
support for the ban, even among many gun-owners and conservatives.
But the NRA has fought it fiercely.
"The NRA is an extremely powerful group, there's no two ways about
it," said McCarthy, adding ruefully that politicians "don't want to
tick them off" two months before elections.
EARLIER EFFORT SUNK
The Senate did vote to extend the ban earlier this year, but as
part of a larger bill on gun-maker legal protections that was later
sunk at the NRA's behest. Republican leaders in the U.S. House of
Representatives strongly oppose the ban and have not allowed a vote
on it. McCarthy had hoped to force a vote this week, but said she
would not be allowed to bring it to the floor under House rules.
With the clock ticking, groups favoring a ban on the high-powered
weapons have tried to draw public attention to it. The Brady
Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has a full-page ad running in the
New York Times and Washington Post asking, "Why does President Bush
want to put cop-killing guns back on the street?"
More than a dozen leading health groups, including the American
Academy of Pediatrics, the Physicians for Social Responsibility and
the American College of Emergency Physicians jointly called for the
ban's extension on Tuesday, describing gun violence as a public
health crisis.
"It is a health-care crisis and it is an incredibly costly
health-care crisis," said Amy Sisley, an emergency room doctor at
the University of Maryland Medical Center, speaking on behalf of
Physicians for Social Responsibility.
She said 90 percent of spinal cord injuries in the United States
are caused by gunshot wounds and noted that $1.8 billion a year is
spent on spinal cord injuries.
Major law enforcement groups, including police chiefs from big U.S.
cities, plan to rally for the ban's extension at a Washington
memorial for fallen police officers on Wednesday.
Then, finally, two, count 'em, two paragraphs from pro-gun-rights
forces, both quoting only the NRA (as opposed to the many
pro-gun-control people and groups quoted or paraphrased in the earlier
paragraphs), and only one counting anything remotely approaching a
substantive argument:
The NRA in a statement posted on its Web site dismissed the
campaign for the ban as a "PR show to blame inanimate objects for
the acts of criminals."
But warning its well-organized and highly motivated members against
complacency, the NRA said, "We have come too far in the past 10
years not to pull out all the stops in the next week and a half to
ensure that this ban expires as Congress intended, and becomes
nothing more than a sad footnote in America's history."
Of course, to Reuters' credit, this is followed by a couple of
paragraphs discussing the substantive anti-assault-weapons-ban
arguments: that even a pro-gun-control leader acknowledged that the
current assault weapons ban had no real crime-fighting effect; that
many serious observers argue that assault weapons are not materially
more dangerous than other weapons that could easily be substituted;
that the assault weapons ban turns on largely irrelevant cosmetic
factors such as whether the gun has a bayonet lug; and that before the
assault weapons ban, assault weapons were likely used in about 2% of
all gun crimes? (See [3]here for pointers to supporting evidence.)
Just kidding. Of course there are no such paragraphs.
Many thanks to Dan Schmutter for the pointer.
References
1.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=3&u=/nm/20040907/ts_nm/congress_guns_dc
2. http://volokh.com/2002_08_04_volokh_archive.html#85316505
3. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_08_14.shtml#1093048226
_______________________________________________
Volokh mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
