Yesterday’s Daily Digest included a link to National Public Radio‘s Armed ‘Good Guys’ And The Realities Of Facing A Gunman, a fair and balanced report on a defensive gun use. Earlier today, Morning Edition aired TTAG’s contributor rabbi’s defence of Sheriff David Clark’s call for armed citizens. Today, NPR ran a piece called Are Shooting Ranges The New Bowling Alleys? that only gave a nod to VPC civilian disarmament agitator Josh Sugarman (“Bowling alleys pose no lethal threat to participants; shooting ranges pose a risk to users”). And now TTAG reader Rossi reports on another even-handed look at firearms in “Gun Stories.” (Make the jump for his description of the piece.) It’s almost enough to make a right-thinking conservative reconsider his or her opposition to the network’s taxpayer subsidies. Almost . . .
It looks like NPR is trying very hard to maintain the appearance of balance. I was listening to their show “The Story” today, and the episode was named “Gun Stories.” (You can find the web page for that episode here and the complete audio file here.) The first 21 minutes of the show were narration about, and an interview with, Joel Myrick, who was the assistant principal (and first responder) at the 1997 Pearl High School shooting.
At the end of the interview, they gave him eight and a half minutes to talk about his view on guns, society, and armed guards in schools. There were no combative interruptions, and no cutting him into out of context soundbites. He honestly got to say his piece. Not everything he says is TTAG (i.e. there’s a a bit of Jeanne Assam‘s “I’m exceptional” attitude), but the intervew is REALLY worth listening to….it’s golden, IMHO.
He covered a lot of good points:
- “guns are not bad”
- this society is violent, and removing guns would not change that
- the cases we hear about in the news are not representative; in 99% of cases (his statistic) the situation is averted because of a gun
- we already protect the things we care about with guns
- having an armed School Defense Officer would be no more discomforting than having an armed officer at a mall or stadium
- He even discusses Cooper’s 4th law (although not referencing it) when he talks about not taking a shot because the background was not safe.
They did follow his story with two minutes of someone who had decided to give up guns, but 21 min vs. two is an AMAZING balance.
Whether you use it or not, you really ought to take the time to listen to this. Like I said before, the interview piece is at the front of the episode, and the last 8.5 minutes of it is the best part.
There were a lot of mildly positive to neutral things embedded into today’s episode of Morning Edition, – enough that I probably would have written about them – but nothing as good as the stuff linked to above.