The New York Times is on an anti-gun jihad. (Again. Still.) Yesterday, the Gray Lady revealed the shocking news that people who’ve paid their debt to society are reclaiming their gun rights. The money shot: “That question — whether the restorations pose a risk to public safety — has received little study, in part because data can be hard to come by.” A dearth that doesn’t give the Times a moment’s pause for thought. Today, the Business Day section feels free to conflate, confabulate and kvetch about firearms confiscated by the TSA—without troubling with the facts of the matter. Well, there are some. Underneath the headline Knuckleheads and Worse, Bringing Guns in Carry-ons, snarky Joe Sharkey [above right] goes all of ten paragraphs before launching his own dietribe [sic] . . .
This particular firearms issue, to me, reflects a culture in which laws covering the possession of guns are becoming increasingly looser. Lots of Americans carry guns. While I haven’t carried a firearm since I was required to in Vietnam, I happen to live in southern Arizona, where the Wild West is not that distant a memory.
In about an hour, for example, I can drive to Tombstone, site of the fabled gunfight at the O.K. Corral. But during that drive across the desert, I can also reflect on the fact that one of the events leading to that 1881 shootout was the insistence by Virgil Earp, a marshal, and his brother Wyatt that their antagonists, the Clanton and McLaury brothers, adhere to Tombstone’s ban on carrying firearms in town.
Few of the most ardent firearms advocates would argue that it’s a good idea for a passenger to try to board an airplane with a gun. But I have to wonder, given the white-hot politics of gun control, whether some travelers adequately understand that it is an extremely serious offense to deliberately try to take a gun onto a plane.
That, dear readers, is Mr. Sharkey’s way of saying guns-on-planes advocates are nuts and gun owners are stupid. While we could (and have) debated the reasons why some lawful firearms owners forget to remove their gun from their carry-on, or attempt to smuggle their weapon from point A to point B, suffice it to say this security issue has caused untold amounts of pain, fear, suffering, murder and mayhem. Oh wait. It hasn’t.
To his credit, Sharkey leaves it to The Brady Campaign to tell the Times’ intellectual audience who’s pulling the stupid gun owners’ strings.
“It could be that people aren’t getting the news that you just don’t bring your gun to the airport,” spokeswoman Caroline Brewer tells the Times. “The National Rifle Association in recent years has been trying to expand the number of places that people can take their guns — restaurants and bars, stadiums and other places. So it could be that there is a sense by some gun owners, why not take my gun to the airport? Maybe people just aren’t getting the word that, listen, you simply don’t bring your gun to the airport.”
Kinda dumb. Sorta like the people who don’t get the “shall not be infringed” part of the Second Amendment.
UPDATE via email from Mr. Sharkey: “You misrepresent what I said, which is that people who forget they have a gun in their bag at an airport checkpoint are knuckleheads, and in violation of basic gun-safety precepts. Any responsible gun-owner should agree with this. By the way, I belong to the NRA. JS”