Why CCW Makes a Lot of Sense.

[mikcap]

Amen to this!

EDITORIAL: The forgotten virtue of firearms - Washington Times

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

During Christmas week, a registered sex offender with a conviction for attempted murder used a gun to take three hostages at a Wytheville, Va., post office. Not too surprisingly, the national media gave the crime extensive news coverage. Such sensationalism leaves a distorted image about what happens with guns every day in the United States. When guns work to stop crime, there's not nearly as much drama to sensationalize and, as a result, that much less coverage.

In Oklahoma City the previous week, an armed citizen singlehandedly stopped an attack that surely would have resulted in a multiple-victim public shooting. The media gave the event scant attention. The scene went down when a Marine, who was on leave and came home for the holidays, started firing in an apartment parking lot. Before anyone was harmed, another man aimed his permitted concealed handgun at the attacker and ordered him to put down his weapon. The shooter dropped his gun and ran into his father's apartment, barricading himself in. Three-and-a-half hours later, the man surrendered to the police.

A Marine with a gun who wanted to cause harm would surely be able to maim or kill a lot of people. Those dead bodies would have attracted exhaustive coverage. Of course, corpses are newsworthy in our sensational culture, but when an armed citizen stops an attack, the heroism rates barely a blip on the national radar screen. In this case, a search found just one television news story on the incident, and it left out the identity of the man who saved the day. In our confused times, murderers, it seems, are more interesting than heroes.

An important detail that is neglected in news coverage is that all the multiple-victim public shootings in America - crimes in which more than three people were killed - happened where legal concealed handguns are banned. The Wytheville post office is such a gun-free zone, not to mention that the felon who committed the crime was banned from possessing a firearm anywhere. The Oklahoma City attack was stopped because the man who stopped it could carry a concealed handgun.

Often what's true and what makes good TV are two different things. But either way, news standards don't give people any idea about the costs and benefits of people owning guns. Police are extremely important in stopping crimes, but police understand that they almost always arrive on the scene after a crime has occurred. Heroic actions of citizens who stop attacks deserve a lot more attention.

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[ZRT600]

Amen.

[TheFreeman]

Good news is no news to the media.

[Snowman23]

Goodstuff.

[BigStick]

The Washington Times huh, good for them. The logical thinking in this article seems to me like the "common sense" stuff the Liberals keep talking about. I don't think that's what they have in mind when they say common sense though, is it?

[64zebra]

nah.....there isn't any bias against gun/gun owners in the media





if they would start highlighting the stories of people using firearms to defend themselves/stop crime they wouldn't have enough airtime to show all their anti-American/2A drivel poor excuses for news and truth

[Harryball]

Thanks for sharing. Maybe there is hope.

[CowboyColby]

Good post! Nice to see something in the news on our side instead of saying they need to take all our guns away or stiffer laws for gun control.

[Guardian]

Darn good article. I will keep saying it, until one national news network takes the leap forward and starts showing what positive comes from guns, none of them will.

We definitely have become a country of sensationalism for sure.

[OldVet]

Gun used in crime gets 24/7 coverage for a week.
Gun used to prevent a crime.
Huh? Does that happen? Does CNN/NSNBC/FOX/you name it even mention it?

So what does that tell you about the anti-gun bias of the major news networks. Or even the local news in most cases. Just not sensational enough to garner the Neilsen ratings.

Now if some law-abiding citizen happens to get get arrested and sued after shooting said BG (who, no doubt, "was a good boy" according to family that wouldn't bail him out otherwise), that [I]might[I] make the evening news.

[oneshot]

Thanks for sharing. Maybe there is hope.

Goodstuff.

^^YEP^^^^^^^


"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man: brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." Mark Twain

[ccw9mm]

That needs to be published in every single paper in the country.

It won't be, but it needs to be. Simple people need to understand. The goal of criminals is fairly simple. That goal is made far more difficult by simply taking steps to avoid and defend. So long as the head-in-sand approach is taken, not much will change. Heck, the average person might as well try something else, since past actions haven't done a darned thing to stop crime.

[gilraen]

Excellent article. Everyone should have a copy of that. It might not change a die-hard anti-gunner, but it might change the minds of many fence-sitters.

Thanks for posting it.

[BigStick]

So what does that tell you about the anti-gun bias of the major news networks. Or even the local news in most cases. Just not sensational enough to garner the Neilsen ratings.

How are those ratings compiled anyway? I heard somewhere there is something like 5000 black boxes in "randomly" selected houselolds that are counted for the ratings for our entire country. I think the whole system is messed up, the broadcasting networks base all of their programming on those 5000 homes? What those people are watching certainly doesn't represent me or my friends and family.

I'm not an expert, but what percentage of people need to be polled to get a truly representative picture? 5000 representing >300,000,000 doesn't seem right to me. I think they need to come up with a better system.
-----------------additional research---------
ok, so there are 25,000 homes monitored for 114,500,000 homes with TVs. So still only .02% of households, and biased demographically to those who accept being monitored (according to Nielsen ratings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) Still not a very accurate percentage if you ask me.

Cue paranoia:
Although, at the same time, I dont' like the idea of a camera in the cable box watching everything that goes on in my livingroom to determine what I watch.

[JDE101]

Amazing. Seems like there is at least one news reporter/writer in DC with their head screwed on correctly. Needs to be a whole lot more around the country!