ANALYSIS: The establishment (i.e., “legacy”) media is continuing its subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, game of using different terms than “gun control” to describe ongoing efforts designed to infringe, impair and restrict the right to keep and bear arms, a practice some folks have dubbed “camo-speak.”
Examples of this can be found by simply going on the popular search engine Google and tying in “gun control.” One is suddenly able to click on thousands of news stories which provide real time examples of how the press packages its coverage of gun control.
For example, when WESA in Pennsylvania reported on new developments in the murder of Breckenridge Police Chief Justin McIntire almost two years ago, the story was headlined, Pennsylvania gun-reform group takes aim, again, at ‘Glock switch.’ But CeaseFirePA isn’t a “gun reform” group, it’s a gun control lobbying group.
Out in Michigan, both WWMT and WZMQ are reporting about efforts to push more gun control in a state where anti-gun Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has signed several strict laws already.
The headline at WWMT: “New gun reform legislation in Lansing looks to expand on laws already in place.” In the lead paragraph, the report said “several gun reform advocates” are pushing for “more legislation dealing with guns.”
The headline over at WZMQ was also semantically challenged: “Advocates push for more gun reform legislation.” The first paragraph in this report stated, “Gun reform advocates flooded the capitol today to talk with lawmakers about a long list of bills they would like to see pass.”
Notice how none of these people has ever defined “gun reform.” It’s because the definition boils down to gun control. Restrictions on the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Not long after he was elected—both popularly and via the Electoral College—Donald Trump’s earlier promise to sign national concealed carry reciprocity legislation gave the media an excuse to drum up some hysteria. ABC News reported on the controversy with a story headlined, “Gun violence prevention groups brace for Trump to keep promise of ‘concealed carry reciprocity.’”
This is “camo-speak” at its more refined stage. Gun control by any other name is still gun control, and these groups are far less interested in preventing violent crime than they are in banning lawfully- and constitutionally owned firearms.
“The move would allow gun owners with concealed carry permits to travel with their weapons to all 50 states, even those that do not honor out-of-state permit holders from doing so,” ABC News lamented.
And this brings us around to a myth perpetuated by the media about national reciprocity, courtesy of a federal case now before the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
By no small coincidence, a very interesting 28-page amicus brief has been filed by several gun rights organizations including the Second Amendment Foundation, California Rifle & Pistol Association, Second Amendment Law Center, Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, Second Amendment Defense and Education Coalition and Federal Firearms Licensees of Illinois. They are represented by attorneys C.D. Michel, Joshua Robert Dale and Konstadinos T. Moros at Michel & Associates of Long Beach, Calif.
Buried way back on Page 24 of that brief is a paragraph which puts the lie to the long-running claim by reciprocity alarmists that such a law would force states to essentially acquiesce to the carry laws of other states.
The case, known as U.S. v. Metcalf, involves a Billings, Mont., resident who was prosecuted for carrying a gun within a “gun-free school zone,” that invisible 1,000-foot perimeter surrounding each school in the country in an effort to prevent school shootings. The problem for Gabriel Cowan Metcalf is that he lives across the street from an elementary school, which shouldn’t surprise anybody.
According to World Population Review, Montana has the highest per capita household gun ownership (66.3%) of any state in the union. Furthermore, the brief features a Google map of Billings pinpointing each school in the central-Montana city. It’s nearly impossible to drive through Billings without entering a gun-free school zone as defined by the federal law.
But to the point, here is what the attorneys representing the various groups note, which really punches holes in the argument of acquiescence:
“Another exception is for individuals licensed to carry by the state they are carrying in; but as more and more states become ‘constitutional carry’ states where no permit is required (like Montana), this exemption puts more otherwise law-abiding citizens at risk if they can only carry without a permit. And as for those carrying through school zones with permits issued by the other states but honored via reciprocity, ‘[t]he ATF has taken the position that a nonresident who is licensed by a state through reciprocity alone, giving recognition to a permit issued by another state, is not ‘licensed to do so by the State in which the school zone is located’—licensure by that state through reciprocity is not, in their view, licensure by a state.’ (Emphasis added.)…As visitors from out of state are the least likely to know where schools are located, they are the most at risk of an unintended but nonetheless serious criminal charge.”
SAF’s Alan Gottlieb summed it up: “The Metcalf case is a textbook example of what is wrong with the ‘gun-free school zones’ act. The law was written as a solution to school shootings, but in the process, it effectively disarms and legally jeopardizes law-abiding citizens who live within a picked-out-of-the-hat 1,000-foot perimeter, or those who simply travel through such areas in the course of their daily business.
“Pick any rural community in the country,” Gottlieb observed, “and you will find schools within close proximity of business districts, supermarkets and gas stations; places visited daily by legally-armed, peaceable citizens.”
If, gun owners might observe, the Ninth Circuit—by some miracle of common sense—declares the Gun-Free Zones Act unconstitutional as a result of the Metcalf case, the establishment media is going to have a dilemma. The press will essentially be compelled to call reciprocity opponents bald-faced liars when it comes to their most oft-repeated argument.
Sure, the media will blame Trump and Congressional Republicans for erasing this “gun-safety measure” which, incidentally, has never prevented a single school shooting anywhere in the United States.
Now comes the bigger question the media will have to answer: If anti-gunners have been dishonest about this, what else have they been lying about?
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
