Media Silence is Deafening about Important Gun News

[JuergenG]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/30/...rtant-gun-news/

Media Silence Is Deafening About Important Gun News

By John Lott

Published September 30, 2011

Murder and violent crime rates were supposed to soar after the Supreme Court struck down gun control laws in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Politicians predicted disaster. "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence," Washington’s Mayor Adrian Fenty warned the day the court made its decision.

Chicago’s Mayor Daley predicted that we would "go back to the Old West, you have a gun and I have a gun and we'll settle it in the streets . . . ."

The New York Times even editorialized this month about the Supreme Court's "unwise" decision that there is a right for people "to keep guns in the home."

But Armageddon never happened. Newly released data for Chicago shows that, as in Washington, murder and gun crime rates didn't rise after the bans were eliminated -- they plummeted. They have fallen much more than the national crime rate.

Not surprisingly, the national media have been completely silent about this news.

[EJER Fuchs]

Newly released data for Chicago shows that, as in Washington, murder and gun crime rates didn't rise after the bans were eliminated -- they plummeted. They have fallen much more than the national crime rate.

Proof that perception is more powerful than fact. That the onerous laws were struck down had little actual effect on the number of LAWFULLY owned guns in the streets. Each city obstructed implementation of the court's order as much as possible for as long as possible; refusing to let gun stores open (DC) and refusing to let ranges open while requiring qualifications on those ranges (Chicago). Each city also imposed a very expensive, protracted licensing process. Consequently, there was no real change in the number of people "carrying" in either city.

The same alarums were heard 25 years ago, when Florida struck its difficult handgun licensing policy and made the licenses "shall issue" to those not forbidden from gun ownership by law. The change was in response to a string of violent rapes.

There was no string of homicides; no nervous housewives shooting mailmen, no running gun battles over parking spaces, no suburbanites shooting each other over dogs crapping on their yards. There WAS a reduction in the number of attacks on women, however.

The far larger story, and also getting far less coverage than is should, is the debacle of the Obama administration ordering US gun dealers to sell arms to Mexican criminals; a plan implemented by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) as "Operation Fast & Furious." Not surprisingly, the guns the Obama administration ordered the dealers to sell in violation of US law killed 2 US Border Patrol officers and numerous Mexican police. Obstructions and cover-ups have followed in the wake of the revelation of this plan and the Congressional investigation thereof.