Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Newtown and the NRA

pewsocialtrends.org Hugh Bailey:

A group with both the standing and expertise to effect change is trying to make it happen. United Physicians of Newtown, formed in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook killings, wants to turn the gun debate away from the usual contours and focus the discussion on public health.

There ought to be some common ground. It's a regular refrain from the no-gun-regulations crowd that since cars cause thousands of deaths maybe we ought to ban cars, not guns. But the issue isn't banning. The issue is that cars and driving are heavily regulated, and as a result are much less harmful than they might otherwise be (for instance, because of seatbelts). The same is true for alcohol and cigarettes, both of which can cause serious harm but neither of which are banned.

United Physicians of Newtown is the group I'm a member of, and have been writing about here and here. The group does not fund raise. But we are into policy.

Morgan Whitaker:

'They call me crazy, yet the people doing the finger pointing are doing things that are absolutely bizarre,' Wayne LaPierre said, adding, 'It's time to take a look at the insanity that's consumed the media and too many in this town.'
Of course we have learned that majority of the NRA's 5 million members don't agree with LaPierre, who argued that no new laws should be pursued to address gun violence, beyond arming teachers. A recent Johns Hopkins University survey shows 75% of self-identified NRA members support universal background check laws, a policy LaPierre opposes.

He also claimed that 'the vast majority of Americans' favor trained armed police and security officers in every school. Apparently LaPierre's definition of 'vast majority' is a two point margin, because an ABC News/Washington Post poll asked this question in the last week and found only 50% of Americans agreed with LaPierre, compared to 48% who disagreed. Moreover, support for that idea has declined in since the question was asked in January, only a few weeks after the Newtown school shooting.

LaPierre wasn't only confused about how Americans and his own organizations members feel about the issues. He also claimed that gun ownership is at an all-time high in America, despite a report released just this week that shows gun ownership has declined in the last four years.

Chicago Reader:

Shannon Hicks, a reporter and photographer for the weekly Bee of Newtown, Connecticut, was perhaps the first journalist to arrive at the Sandy Hook Elementary School last December 14 to cover what turned out to be the massacre of 20 children and six adults. She took a picture of children leaving the school that showed up the next day on the front page of the New York Times, and a couple of weeks ago she served as the entree into Rachel Aviv's New Yorker story [behind paywall, alas] on the Bee's response to the massacre.

In typically understated New Yorker style, Aviv brought her report into focus with the following paragraph:

"After the second class had been evacuated, the education reporter came to retrieve the memory card from Hicks's camera, and Hicks went over to the Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue Company, which had just arrived. She bunched up her knee-length skirt and pulled bunker pants over it, and put on boots, a turnout coat, and a helmet. With three other firefighters, she set up a triage area near the school's baseball field, laying out medical bags, collars, backboards, and stretchers."

Reporters don't commonly double as volunteer firefighters. Reporters don't commonly surrender their memory cards and stop reporting the biggest story of their career because of a volunteer obligation. What obligation'as any Chicago reporter would ask you'could possibly exceed serving the people's right to know?

I read Aviv's article because someone in my book club, a retired Chicago homicide detective named Jim Hennigan, sent us all an e-mail recommending it. He explained in a later e-mail that Aviv's story interested him because it was about "how the practice of that craft [journalism] might complement one's membership in a community or be challenged by it."

More politics and policy below the fold.
Under reported story: Maryland will be the 18th state to ban the death penalty, 6th in 6 years. http://t.co/...
' @pourmecoffee via Tweet Button