When a mainstream media news org wants to hide its editorial bias while promoting same, ye olde “letters to the editor” is a blessing. The Washington Post, for example, can publish a rant laden with anti-gun animus claiming “it wazzunt me!” Even though, of course, it usually is. But those stories are “news,” dontcha know. A letter to the editor is the voice of the people! Unedited! Unfiltered! Yes well . . .
That assertion falls apart when the letter in question comes from a rep from a lobby group, rather than John or Jane Q. Public. In fact, you have to wonder if the WaPo and its ilk don’t solicit letters from the usual suspects to further the editors’ agenda. They certainly further the writers’ agenda, letting them piggy-back on the news org’s SEO.
To wit: a “letter to the editor” from Lori Haas, the Virginia state director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. Ms. Haas’ 501(c)(3) works with “impacted community members to create a voting bloc trained to advocate for policies that reduce gun violence.”
No surprise, then, that Ms. Haas would pen an anti-pistol polemic for the resolutely anti-gun rights elitists at the Washington Post. Guns are unwelcome on college campuses consists of three paragraphs. Just for fun, let’s fisk them one at a time.
As a mother whose daughter was shot when a gunman killed 32 innocent students and wounded 17 others at Virginia Tech, I was horrified by the Sept. 29 Metro article “Va. Tech student is fasting for gun rights.”
See what’s happening here? The Post is not satisfied with publishing a relatively unbiased news report on the Virginia Tech student fasting for firearms freedom. The paper feels the need to stick the knife in. But they can’t do it themselves; a civil rights protest is a leftie’s sacred cow, after all. So the WaPo turns to Ms. Haas to do the dirty for them.
Ms. Haas is the perfect vehicle. She can — and does — wave the bloody shirt for gun control. Which is the antis’ go-to “heart over head” strategy when it comes to promoting public policy that puts the pubic at risk. She’s horrified I tell you! Horrified! Or as Kurz said, the horror, the horror.
A lone protester wants to carry a gun on the Virginia Tech campus. The overwhelming majority of students and staff do not want guns at Virginia Tech or on the majority of college campuses. More than 95 percent of college presidents oppose guns on campus.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. The right to keep and bear arms is a natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right. As such it does not depend on popular support — especially amongst ivory tower intellectuals who have no more experience of urban hellholes than the inhabitants of those hell holes have of Kierkegaard.
Ms. Haas would have readers believe that it’s one gun-loving nutcase against the entire higher education system. Which is almost but not entirely true (e.g., Students for Campus Carry). And again, see above.
The fact is guns are twice as likely to be used in suicides as in homicides, with 58 people dying every day by suicide by a firearm. In a space meant for growing and learning, but also with known high risk factors for gun violence, such as alcohol and drug use, guns do not belong.
Ironically enough, college students’ appetite for illegal drugs helps fuel the [non-suicide] “gun violence” (on campus and off). That being as it is, it’s hard to believe a woman whose child experienced the horror of an unopposed gunman on campus would argue against “allowing” students, teachers, administrators and/or law-abiding visitors to defend themselves by force of arms.
Hard but not impossible. It’s easier, psychologically, to focus on gun control than spree killer control. Just as it’s easier for The Washington Post to publish a letter to the editor than to write up yet another anti-gun editorial.