D.C. v. Heller Eyewitness Wrapup: Part 4

News Distortions

THEM: “People have been waiting in line all night for front row seats,” usually with pictures of people lined up on the white marble steps of the Court.

REALITY: People who had to line up overnight (“the rabble” as a lawyer friend called them) sat in the back, lucky to get in at all. Front row seats were packed with honchos. No one waited on the steps, this was forbidden. Before being led in, the wait-ers were assembled on the steps and then directed inside.

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US: Why is the Associated Press so consistently anti-rights in their gun reporting, and why do they flatly refuse to correct any of the egregious even self-evident errors they make on the subject constantly?

AP (Mark Sherman): I have no idea what you’re talking about and we make error corrections rapidly all the time. And no, I forgot to bring any business cards.

US: Well have you ever done any stories on the good that guns do?

AP: Uh, what do you mean exactly?

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THEM: The District of Columbia has a ban on handguns in the home.

REALITY: The District of Columbia has a ban on any operable gun, sidearm or long gun, at home. They also ban transporting any gun through the city, meaning you can’t get a gun to your home, which will remain even if the laws under examination here are overturned.

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THEM: The Washington Post saw fit to mention that the “commands” of the Second Amendment were “written more than 200 years ago.”

REALITY: A similar derogatory slap at free speech, speedy trials or any other guarantees of the Bill of Rights seems unthinkable, but for guns belongs on page one.

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THEM: The New York Times used every shibboleth about gun rights in the book -- it’s a subject the Court has not addressed since 1939 (this is the 64th gun case since then, many with direct 2A implications); how far the “newly recognized right” might go (you just want to smack these bigots); this is the first time in history an individual right will be “embraced” in 2A; and I haven’t gone past their introduction.

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THEM: USA Today says the Court may find (for the first time in history of course) that 2A “gives people an individual right to own guns.”

REALITY: The Second Amendment doesn’t give rights, as the informed portion of the public widely knows, it guarantees existing rights against government interference. USA Today also saw fit to bring up the argument, which it at least identified as from “recent decades” that 2A is somehow related not to “the people” named in the Amendment, but to the National Guard (which, uhh, began in the early 1900s).

Read more: Getting Seats

 

Tags: D.C. v. Heller, Supreme Court