The dramatic effect of this article is not that it questions the effectiveness of the DC Gun Ban, but that it has been published in one of the most Liberal newspapers in America ... The Boston Globe.
More important, it is republished from another of the most Liberal newspapers in America, the Washington Post!
Effectiveness of D.C. gun ban still a mystery
By Paul DugganThe Washington Post / November 18, 2007...
WASHINGTON - Three decades ago, at the dawn of municipal self-government in the District of Columbia, the city's first elected mayor and council enacted one of the country's toughest gun-control measures, a ban on handgun ownership that opponents have long said violates the Second Amendment.
All these years later, with the constitutionality of the ban now probably headed for a US Supreme Court review, a much-debated practical question remains unsettled: Has a law aimed at reducing the number of handguns in the District made city streets safer?
Although studies through the decades have reached conflicting conclusions, this much is clear: The ban, passed with strong public support in 1976, has not accomplished everything the mayor and council of that era wanted it to.
Over the years, gun violence has continued to plague the city, reaching staggering levels at times.
In making by far their boldest public policy decision, Washington's first elected officials wanted other jurisdictions, especially neighboring states, to follow the lead of the nation's capital by enacting similar gun restrictions, cutting the flow of firearms into the city from surrounding areas.
"We were trying to send out a message," recalled Sterling Tucker, the council chairman at the time.
Nadine Winters, also a council member then, said, "My expectation was that this being Washington, it would kind of spread to other places, because these guns, there were so many of them coming from Virginia and Maryland."
It didn't happen. Guns kept coming. And bodies kept falling.
There are many facets to this story. Not the least is that the Main Stream Media, at this late date, seems to be shifting its viewpoint from "If it saves one child, it is worth the effort" to "it isn't saving any children, why do they (D.C. politicians) continue to push this failed effort?"
No, not direct quotes ... but the implication is clear: the rats are deserting a sinking ship.
The 'sinking ship' is the failed anti-gun policy of Washington, D.C. And 'the rats' are the Liberal Main-Stream Media outlets which are desperate to divorce themselves from what the perceive to be an unsupportable political position: Gun Control at the Municipal Level.
As far back as April, 2000, The Globe was attempting to position itself as a moderate in the Gun Control debates.
On the other hand as recently as December, 2005, The Globe referred to the NRA as "... the powerful arm of the gun lobby".
At the same time, and in the same article, The Boston Globe referred to:
... gun control advocates in Congress [who] have been trying unsuccessfully to close the so-called ''gun show loophole," which allows unlicensed sellers to peddle their weapons at gun shows without having to perform background checks on buyers.Pro-Gun = Lobby
Anti-Gun = Advocates
...
Boston Globe = Slanted News
And in April, 2007, Globe Columnist Derrick Z. Jackson bemoaned the "how toothless the Democrats are on guns at home."
Jackson goes on to say:
Last week's massacre at Virginia Tech that claimed 33 lives has done little to reignite the gun-control debate. One expects nothing from the Bush administration and the Republicans, who beginning with the 2000 elections have received 92 percent of the $9.1 million in campaign contributions from gun-rights organizations, according to the Center for Responsible Politics. [ED: link added]This commentary is clearly bent toward the Liberal (eg: anti-gun) viewpoint, which is more in keeping to the Globe policy than the most recent article. The Globe-sponsored columnist, as recently as seven months ago, is clearly an anti-gun advocate in that he is not willing to consider, let alone advocate, a position which accepts the possibility that responsible individual ownership of firearms on a college campus might have played an important part in deterring a massacre.
The Democrats, not officially beholden to the National Rifle Association, have been cowards more concerned about reelection in centrist districts than the trauma to American children. The same Reid who bemoans the loss of life over a failed Iraq war said about Virginia Tech, "I hope there's not a rush to do anything. We need to take a deep breath." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ignored a question by a reporter on whether Virginia Tech would inspire Democrats to revisit gun control. All she said was, "the mood in Congress is one of mourning, sadness, and the inadequacy of our words or our actions to console the families and the children who were affected there."
"Inadequacy of our words or our actions" was a Freudian slip. None of the home pages on the websites of Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards says anything about guns in relation to Virginia Tech.
But in November of 2007 ... just over a half-year later .... The Globe has published a column not in the "OPINION" section, but in the "NEWS" section, which seems to support the proposition that 'The D.C. Gun Ban Is Not Working.'
Given the forum, and the context, it's difficult to conceive of a statement by the Main-Stream Media which is more supportive of the concept that the 2nd Amendment is, and will be defined as, an Individual Right of the American Citizen.
It seems fair to interpret this article as the single most emphatic acceptance that, as far as the MSM is concerned, the Gun Control movement is D-E-D- Dead.
And Good Riddance.
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