Thursday, May 29, 2014

Leonard Pitts is running out of words

Or so he says in a recent editorial. Funny, he always seems to have plenty to say when exploiting a tragedy to further his political agenda.

And there should be plenty of words left over from the one-sided diatribes he pours out regularly. I don't expect editorial writers to have balance, they are by definition, there to promote their employers policies and politics. But I suppose one can hope.

There certainly are plenty of words left to go around about the recent shootings in Isla Vista. Pitts didn't have any problem finding words to lay the blame for this as the feet of the NRA. And he didn't have any problem finding the words to bleat out provable falsehoods like " a statistical matter, a gun in the home is far more likely to hurt someone you love than to scare off a burglar"

The American Journal of Criminal Law states that you are far more likely to survive violent assault if you defend yourself with a firearm. And there's this from a national crime survey:

I can find the words to point out that a person is five times more likely to drown in their own pool or 17 times more likely to accidentally poison themselves than be injured with their own firearm. The data goes on and on. But apparently Pitts can't find the words to point this stuff out to his readers.

Michael Bloomberg's (and he's no fan of the Second Amendment) BusinessWeek magazine even pointed out that the Isla Vista shooter passed three separate background checks when buying his weapons. They stated that the only way to prevent such a determined nutbag as Eliot Rodger would be completely outlawing private ownership of firearms and forced confiscation of weapons currently legally owned. Sensible existing laws simply cannot stop someone from committing a crime, any crime. Pitts was right here at least -- he didn't have the words to put his actual gun grabbing agenda in the paper.

And true, he didn't have the words to point out that the cities with the strictest gun control laws have the highest violent crime rates. Nor was he able to find the words to mention that 60 - 70% of gunshot victims are repeat criminal offenders. Or that 90% of all violent crime in this country does not involve firearms at all and studies show that criminals overwhelmingly state that they avoid committing crimes when they suspect that their potential victim might be armed.

Sadly, I don't think Pitts is running out of words at all. He'll be ready to go when the next tragedy occurs, exploiting it to demonize his political opponents and gin up outrage among his ill informed readers.


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