Known by many conservatives and libertarians as “Associated Propagandists,” the Associated Press (AP) for many years has been “hit-or-miss” when it comes to journalistic fairness.
Monday, I noted the good work of the AP’s Ken Sweet, who uncovered the fact that one of the most vocal boosters of a new plan by VISA, MasterCard, and American Express to apply special sales codes to gun store purchases was New York City Comptroller Brad Lander – who just so happens to be a Trustee of multiple public-sector retirement plans that are heavily leveraged in each of those credit card companies.
But it’s often slim pickings when it comes to the AP output, and for every offering of decent reportage, we who monitor journalism anticipate multiple examples of leftist bias on display.
This is one of them, and it also reflects the decades-old habit of dinosaur media members utilizing unbalanced, agenda-driven “reports” as the unquestioned bases for their own unbalanced, agenda-driven “reports,” propagating the misinformation through the “news” medium as if ripples in a pond, all spreading from a leftist-dropped stone.
On September 2, the AP released a piece by Bernard Condon purportedly covering an “AP analysis” and lamenting the fact that extrajudicial, gun-grabbing, so-called “Red Flag” statutes “get little use, as shootings, gun deaths, soar.”
Of course, Condon didn’t bother to discuss the extrajudicial nature of the gun-grabs, nor did he correctly label them as the gun-grabs that they are, but his lassitude didn’t stop MSN from propagating his piece, nor did it stop major television outlets such as ABC national, ABC 7 in Chicago, and KSL in Utah, from spreading the prefabricated and tilted narrative.
Indeed, none of them added any clarifying information. Not even that Chicago news station bothered, despite the opening of his piece focusing on the Windy – and bloody -- city:
“Chicago is one of the nation's gun violence hotspots and a seemingly ideal place to employ Illinois' ‘red flag’ law that allows police to step in and take firearms away from people who threaten to kill. But amid more than 8,500 shootings resulting in 1,800 deaths since 2020, the law was used there just four times.”
Just what entails an “ideal” place for government agents to breach most of the Bill of Rights is something Mr. Condon doesn’t address.
Nor does he address the fact that Chicago ranks as the 19th most violent U.S. city so far this year, despite, as Law Enforcement Today (LET) noted in 2019, it and Illinois imposing some of the harshest prohibitions against legal firearms ownership in the nation.
As the LET staff wrote at the time:
“The problem seems to be (both in Chicago and around the country)… that legal gun owners are not the ones causing the issues.”
And Mr. Condon’s report is lacking – or downright incorrect – in many other ways.
For example, his opening sentence errantly claims that “red flag” statutes allow “police to step in” (quite a euphemism for what actually is armed agents of the state invading a home and stealing private property) and said cops “take firearms away from people who threaten to kill.”
That latter claim, about “people who threaten to kill,” is not right.
If people had threatened to kill other people, then statutes regarding criminal threatening and verbal assault would come into play.
“Red Flag” statutes are thrown at folks who have not been accused of any crime, and the agents of the government act without proper warrants, seizing property and punishing people without trial or even any accusation of criminal behavior.
Mr. Condon should be ashamed to call himself a journalist, if he ever does claim to be one, and the Associated Press might want to consider a name change to "Associated Propagandists."
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But it gets worse, because the gist of Condon’s piece – again, a gist carried and amplified by numerous news outlets – laments the “lack of use” of this towering insult to human rights, this incinerator of the US Constitution, and this middle-finger to the courageous 18th Century people who fought for American liberation from Britain.
Check out another of Condon’s memorable quotes, one that not only presses the fallacy that these “Red Flag” statutes are morally acceptable, but utilizes the cliched and typical leftist ploy of bouncing off of a leftist “expert” to directly state the most brazen form of the claim, offering cover to the so-called “journalist” and “news” site in question.
“AP found such laws in 19 states and the District of Columbia were used to remove firearms from people 15,049 times since 2020, fewer than 10 per 100,000 adult residents. Experts called that woefully low and not nearly enough to make a dent in gun violence, considering the millions of firearms in circulation and countless potential warning signs law enforcement officers encounter from gun owners every day.
‘It’s too small a pebble to make a ripple,’ Duke University sociologist Jeffrey Swanson, who has studied red flag gun surrender orders across the nation, said of the AP tally. ‘It’s as if the law doesn’t exist.’”
And then this sort of spiced nonsense -- assuming not only the ethical and constitutional validity of “Red Flag” statutes, but also assuming their efficacy (something that should never be part of any consideration of an immoral act in the first place) – gets spread throughout the left-hefting pop media, including a video presentation from lovely CBS News.
So, let’s offer what they disregard and/or dismiss.
As I’ve noted for MRCTV, so-called “Red Flag laws” are not “laws” – they are statutes, operating under “color of law” and in utter contempt of Natural Law, the latter of which centers on Natural Rights. They breach the Second Amendment, forbidding Congress and any level of government anywhere in the US from passing any statute that infringes on the right to keep and bear arms. They violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unwarranted searches and seizures. They violate the Fifth Amendment prohibition against seizure of freedom, life, or property without due process of law. They violate the Sixth Amendment assurance of a fair and speedy trial before a public jury. They violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment (for, how can someone be punished with property seizure if he not had a trial or even been accused of a crime?)… And they violate the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment reiteration of the right to due process.
Condon never touched that, and neither did any of the parrots who repeated his devilish drivel.
Neither did they mention that “Red Flag” statutes don’t target the criminals who get their guns via circumventions of the already unconstitutional regulations and mandates imposed by states and the feds. They didn’t mention the fact that as peacefully-minded people have acquired more guns in the US, the overall trend in the US has been for violent crime to go down. They didn’t mention that criminally minded people tend to change their behavior and avoid places where they have an expectation that they might encounter an armed target. And they didn’t mention that mass homicides can be, and have been, carried out by people who use devices other than guns – things like vehicles, bombs, and blades.
The left is going to keep pushing the term “Red Flag Law” as they try to get more Americans to absorb it as part of daily parlance. They will continue to fudge data and exclude the most fundamental factor of it all: the right to self-defense. So this means more honest effort will be required of people who believe in the ethical treatment of their neighbors and in honoring those who fought for freedom. We will have to work harder to fight their falsehoods and propaganda…
And call them out anytime we see this kind of dangerous, arrogant, utter nonsense.
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