Hindsight from The New Gun Week May 20, 1998
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
As with any other reporting, producing a newspaper like Gun Week on the current three-times-a-month schedule involves adhering to certain rules of journalism.
With a gun publication, we have to try to be more objective and accurate than most of the general media. Sometimes stories can be picked up from general newspapers and television reports, but often these must be checked against other sources, because they tend to be inaccurate in some respects when reporting or commenting on gun-related matters.
The Internet is another source, but on-line sources can also prove to be unreliable, oftentimes because the material one sees has been input by someone who is copying from other sources-a process that can allow for inadvertent mistakes-or because the Internet story may be incomplete or contain opinions added by a party or parties unknown.
There is also the question of vocabulary. At Gun Week we try to avoid some of the favorite expressions of the general reporter or editor which often conjure up unfriendly images of guns and gunowners. For example, a person carrying a concealed firearm is often referred to as "packing heat" in the general media, a term which has a gangsterish connotation. When a shot or two is fired, even by a law-abiding citizen in defense of life or property, the general media often says that the person was "blasting away," a reference which sounds indiscriminate and is negative.
You also will not find us using the term "gat" or "weapon," which have threatening and sinister connotations, when we can just as easily use knife or handgun or baseball bat or the actual implement in the story. Also we don't use "weapon" as a substitute for the name of a specific tool when that tool is not used as a offensive or defensive weapon.
We don't really look for favorable terms when it comes to guns; we just try to be as subjective as we can.
For most of the year, there is always plenty of news for Gun Week to report, especially while Congress and most state legislatures are in session. Indeed, sometimes it seems like we should be a daily newspaper in order to keep up with the volume and speed of news related to firearms and related matters. These are heavy news days.
At other times, particularly after most of the state legislatures have adjourned for the year, it may seem that new developments are so few that we are experiencing "slow news days." But one thing that can be said about reporting on firearms-related matters, there is usually more news, not less. This has been especially true throughout the Clinton Administration.
If things aren't happening in Washington, or the state capitals, they are very likely taking place in cities and towns across the country, or in United Nations forums around the world, or almost clandestinely in various diplomatic meetings related to trade agreements and other government-to-government matters.
Of course, every journalist has the problem of stories that break just before an issue is finalized, or just after it has gone to press. In addition, editors have to decide which stories are important enough to warrant reporting, and how much information is really to inform readers. (USA Today has an editorial policy which focuses on lots of short, concisely- -written news reports that might run from one to 12 paragraphs. A major city newspaper might take five to 10 times as much space to report the same stories. In each case, the editors' decisions are based on their understanding of their readership as well as what the editors themselves believe to be important.)
Gun Week is no exception to this rule. Even so, there are occasions, like today, where this column, usually the last to be written for each issue, provides the last best chance to convey last-minute or previously missed news. The column also provides the opportunity for some commentary when it seems appropriate.
Other News Briefs
Some of the following items fall more into the overlooked category than in the late-breaking vein, but they seem to deserve mention in our pages.
On April 17, The Washington Post reported that in Lewistown, near Frederick, MD, a 31-year-old woman shot and killed her ex-boyfriend in her trailer home when he not only violated a protective order but forced his way into the trailer and advanced on her despite her warnings.
The forced entry came "literally moments after" two sheriff's deputies who had accompanied her home at her request and left her, right after searching the trailer for intruders at her request. She had fled the trailer and sought police help after coming home and finding that her trailer had been ransacked and burglarized. She had immediately suspected her estranged boyfriend, with whom she had had at least two previous confrontations.
Second degree murder charges have been filed against the woman, but even the Frederick County's chief prosecutor questions whether the charges will stick.
"Protective orders are only so effective," he said. "It's basically a piece of paper. It doesn't physically keep them away."
A firearm, however, is a form of protection that can keep them away, even if one must later defend the use of lethal force.
When the concealed carry law in Kentucky was reformed this spring by HB-318, which has been signed into law, a little-mentioned provision of the new statute is that it allows pastors and preachers who have been issued CCWs to carry concealed in church, presumably to protect the congregation and the collection basket as well as the clergyman or woman. The congregation and employees of the church, however, are prohibited from carrying concealed in a place of worship. They can, of course, still carry openly in church, if they so desire.
On April 28, New York City passed an ordinance requiring that all handguns sold in the city be equipped with a safety-locking device. The bill, Int. 69-A, was co-sponsored by City Council Speaker Peter Vallone and Public Safety Committee Chair Sheldon Leffler, and was dedicated to the memory of an eight-year-old child who was allegedly killed as a result of an accidental firearms discharge. Sponsors of the bill also cited the school shootings in Jonesboro, AR, and Edinboro, PA, as evidence that the gun-lock ordinance was needed, although it was never explained how such a law could have prevented those incidents. In the Arkansas case, the suspects reportedly broke into a house and forced locks on a gun cabinet to obtain the guns used in the shooting.
The passage of the New York City lock ordinance was promptly hailed by John Garden, chief executive officer of Saf T Lok, a gun lock company that had actively lobbied for the ordinance, and which hopes to see it become a national law.
Since there are so few legal guns sold in New York City, it is unlikely that the ordinance will do anything more than harass the very few law- -abiding citizens who are licensed to own handguns in the Big Apple.
Gun Export Ban
In an earlier issue of Gun Week, we reported that the Clinton Administration was planning to move toward blocking the export as well as the import of firearms. The principal targets of any contemplated new ban would be European countries who allegedly re-export the firearms they import from the US.
On April 22, The New York Times reported that the Clinton Administration had notified the British Government during a UN crime committee meeting in Vienna, Austria, that it was revoking all pending licenses for the export of American firearms to British companies.
Germany, France and Italy are likely to be the next countries to have been told that export licenses would be revoked.
The Times reported that American officials claimed that this was only a first step, that the White House was considering a plan to block firearms exports to all 15 European Union nations unless they enact laws guaranteeing that the guns they import will not be re-exported without permission from Washington.
For the Clinton Administration, and many other countries, the model for international regulation of firearms trade would be the treaty signed by the United States and other members of the Organization of American States last November.
It was during the same late April meeting at Vienna that Tanya K. Metaksa, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, spoke out against the anti-gun treaties being discussed in UN forums with little public insight. Metaksa accused some of the UN officials of trying to interfere with the internal affairs of member nations, and of attempting to abrogate the US Constitution, especially its Second Amendment protection of the right to keep and bear arms.
The New Gun Week is published three times a month by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) on the 1st, 10th, and 20th. Hindsight is a commentary written by SAF President and Gun Week Executive Editor Joseph P. Tartaro. This commentary may be reprinted so long as credit is given to the author and the publication. For more information or to subscribe, write Gun Week, PO Box 488, Buffalo, NY 14209, or call 716-885-6408 Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST, or inquire on Compuserve to John Krull, Production manager-JohnSAF@Compuserve.com or gunweeksaf@broadviewnet.net
Also, check out the New Gun Week at http://www.GunWeek.com
