Saturday, June 20, 2009

When is an emergency not an emergency?

When the liberal press (redundancy alert) writes a story about something that they don't like.

Consider today's Washington Post. The lede:
The D.C. government released emergency regulations yesterday that greatly expand the models of handguns that District residents can own, a shift designed to stave off another lawsuit over its compliance with the Second Amendment.
Emergency, get it? Pretty serious, I'd think, especially when you read into the story to find this:
Several council members who voted to implement the District's gun policies declined to comment yesterday, saying they had not reviewed the changes.
Wow. It was so much of an emergency, that the city council voted for it without even reading it.

So what was the emergency? Well, the story talks about (and even quotes - points for fairness there) Tracey Hanson, the DC resident who lawyered up with Alan Gura. But again, why the emergency nature? The usual suspects at the Brady Crowd are out talking about "Common Sense" gun controls, so where's the coverage of the non common sense controls that DC just ditched? All we get is a hint:
It's the second time in less than a year that city leaders have had to back away from some of the restrictions they put into place immediately after the Heller decision. Initially, the council permitted residents to register only revolvers, not semiautomatic pistols. But the ban on semiautomatics was lifted in September because of pressure from Congress and gun rights groups.
The only explanation that makes sense is that the reporter (Tim Craig) is so clueless about guns that he is simply incapable of writing a coherent story. Emergency legislation passed without the council even reading it - why did they think they were going to lose in court? What, in other words, constitutes non-common sense gun controls, per the Washington DC city council?

If you want to know, don't bother reading the Washington Post. They can't figure it out. I'm sure glad they have all those layers of editors and fact checkers, though.

DC gun control - falling to pieces. Fortunately, there's a country song for that.

1 comment:

TOTWTYTR said...

The emergency of course is that they don't want to go back in to federal court. Who knows what the judge might decide?

So, DC residents will now be able to have any gun on the approved lists of MA, CA, or MD. That's progress of a sort, I guess.