Guns

Currently in Connecticut, unlike New York, handgun permit records can't be made public. Nutmeg State legislator Stephen D. Dargan, a Democrat from West Haven and co-chairman of the legislature's public safety committee, wants to change that. Borrowing from some of the specious reasoning used by Gannett's White Plains, New York-based Journal News to justify publishing an interactive map of two…

I'm almost surprised that the Politico's web site background isn't all black because of news delivered by its "On Media" reporter Dylan Byers on Tuesday. The "bad" news is that "gun control" as a media obsession appears to have largely disappeared, especially when you consider that some of the primary remaining stories on the topic are about David Gregory's illegal but unprosecuted (as of yet…

It's no secret that the debate over gun rights has been a contentious one, and that was clearly on display during Wednesday night's edition of Fox News Channel's “Hannity” program. Throughout the segment, the guests -- left-wing attorney Leo Terrell and conservative lawyer Jay Sekulow -- tried to talk over each other to get their points across, but before it was done, Terrell put his hands…

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, on Thursday’s edition of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, implored liberal New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer to push for more gun control. After noting that students from Sandy Hook Elementary School had finally returned to class after the tragic shooting, Mitchell pressed Schumer: “Is something meaningful going to happen on guns this year?” An appreciative…

Monica Davey's Thursday front-page New York Times story on rising homicide numbers in Rahm Emanuel's Chicago ("A Soaring Homicide Rate, a Divide in Chicago") was suspiciously silent on the utter failure of the city's strict gun laws, but vocal about sorting the annual homicide numbers into patterns of race and class (as if equality among homicide victims would be preferred). Davey focused on…

On New Year's Day, perhaps before he learned that his current employer's enterprise would be sold to Al Jazeera, Current TV's David Shuster took to the bandwidth of the Huffington Post to ask that former NBC/MSNBC colleague David Gregory apologize for his December 23 gun magazine-waving stunt on Meet the Press. Get a load of the sense of self-importance Shuster gives the Sunday news show (…

The battle over laws limiting gun ownership and use is far from over, but Rev. Al Sharpton is already looking ahead toward the next “weapon” he feels should be regulated. During his radio program last Friday, the MSNBC talk show host responded to a caller who asked: “What happens when the criminal goes to knives, Al?” Sharpton's answer: “Then you deal with knives.”

Less than two weeks after a New York regional newspaper created a national controversy by publishing an online map of registered gun owners in its circulation area, the Journal News has once again brought attention to itself by hiring armed guards to protect its employees, an obvious case of hypocrisy given the publication’s virulently anti-gun editorial stance. As you would expect, the…

Just when it seemed that the controversy over gun control based on remarks from Piers Morgan couldn't get any stranger, the CNN weeknight talk show host wrote a lengthy article for the UK's Daily Mail newspaper in which he made a bizarre threat. “If the country doesn’t change its gun laws," he wrote, “I would, as a concerned parent first … seriously consider deporting myself.”

When the White House initiated the “We The People” website for persons to use in getting the attention of the Obama administration by accumulating at least 25,000 electronic signatures, I don't think they expected it to be used as much and as often as it is. One of the complaints that has surpassed the halfway point is a petition to have NBC News reporter David Gregory arrested for using a…

So it's come to this: While those who gather by the hundreds, thousands, and sometimes even by the hundreds of thousands in support of conservative causes or against liberal ones usually are either ignored, underestimated, or denigrated by the establishment press, one gun-grabbing advocate protesting at a local gun show gets sympathetic treatment in one-third to one-half of a two-minute segment…

Just as the open casket for Emmett Till's funeral in 1955 was a grisly wake-up call to Americans about the need to seriously tackle civil rights issues in America, so grisly photos of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting crime scene could be a "transformational" moment in the gun control debate. Or so mused Jim Vance of NBC's Washington station WRC-TV the other night, passing on the suggestion…

Turnabout is fair play. A week ago, Gannett's White Plains, New York-based Journal News published an interactive map containing " the addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties" (previous related posts are here, here, and here). Like so many others throughout the U.S. and even throughout the world, Dylan Skriloff, Editor-in-Chief at the Rockland County Times,…

Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast has some tough talk for the D.C. Police investigating NBC's David Gregory. In an interview with the NRA's Wayne LaPierre on Sunday's Meet the Press, Gregory had produced an high capacity magazine on-air in violation of D.C. gun laws, thus attracting a police investigation. Kurtz lamely implied that although Gregory broke the law, he shouldn't be prosecuted for…