The Southern Illinoisan, a small-town newspaper out of Carbondale, Illinois (home of Southern Illinois University – Go Salukis!), doesn’t seem satisfied by its sagging circulation numbers.
So, in an effort to push them (further?) into irrelevancy, they publish an inflammatory editorial to share with they surely assume are the unwashed masses that are their subscribers.
“…The U.S. has a gun problem and a certain segment is stockpiling arms. Just 34 percent of American households own firearms, the Pew Research Center reported last year. But gun sales are at historic highs. Meanwhile, any proposed regulation on firearms — highly efficient tools specifically designed to kill — is met with squeals from the right-wing ideologues and gun industry’s lap dog, the National Rifle Association. The gun cult is, one-by-one, tearing down state-level restrictions, such as concealment permits. It’s an assault on reason and the rule of law. Enough is enough.
Firearms have a place in American culture. Yet they’re so widespread, so easily accessed, the U.S. is one of the most violent countries in the developed world. [Scumbag’s name redacted]’s father gave him a .45-caliber pistol for his 21st birthday, Reuters reported.
“At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries,” President Barack Obama said Thursday.
It’s time for real gun control — universal background checks, ownership transfer limits and mandatory cooling-off periods. The insane have run the asylum for too long….”
So, we gun owners are insane cultists?
If I were a subscriber to The Southern Illinoisan, I’d be calling to cancel my subscription and ask for a refund.
Here’s my quick reply to their pathetic piece.
Congratulations, The Southern, on falling for the hoax that was the NY Times’ opinion piece “The Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat”.
Do you take the time to fact check?
You cite some stat provided by “Police Executive Research Form”.
You *can’t* even get the name of the mysterious group right. It’s the “Police Executive Research Forum” and it’s funded by the MacArthur Foundation.
What is the MacArthur Foundation? Since you didn’t research it, here’s what Capital Research found:
…”the MacArthur Foundation showers money on arms controllers, including in the 2001-04 period the Arms Control Association ($650,000), the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation ($575,000), the Center for Defense Information ($650,000), the Federation of American Scientists ($2.5 million), the Pugwash Conferences ($350,000), U.S. Pugwash ($150,000), and the Union of Concerned Scientists ($1.4 million).”
But it’s not just gun control advocates it supports. There’s more: “A subsection of MacArthur’s funding of research on “pursuit of security here and abroad” is labeled “protecting fundamental values.” Here all of the grants go to left-wing groups including the American Civil Liberties Union ($1.25 million), the Center for Democracy and Technology ($250,000), the Center for Investigative Reporting ($250,000 “for support of a documentary film entitled No Place to Hide: Stories from a Surveillance Society”), the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law ($65,000 “for work designed to reduce the evidence of hate crime and likely landlord and employer discrimination toward persons of Middle Eastern ancestry”), the League of Women Voters Education Fund ($225,000 “for support of the project called Local Voices Citizen Conversations on Civil Liberties and Secure Communities”), and Physicians for Human Rights ($200,000 “to send three two-person teams to the Afghanistan region to monitor and document the human rights situation there”).”
Let’s call this tragedy what it is: An insecure, unstable, drug-abusing social misfit who has nothing to live for decides the only way he’s ever going to get the world to sit up and take notice of his pathetic existence is to commit an atrocity.
He does the unthinkable, and suddenly the mainstream media makes him famous, telling Mr. and Mrs. America every detail of his pathetic life.
Why is it America’s mainstream media and our society seem to glorify sociopaths while demonizing those who wish to be able to protect innocent life from social misfits and anti-social violent criminals?
Your editorial is making the rounds, make no mistake about it.
I love this paragraph: “The U.S. has a gun problem and a certain segment is stockpiling arms. Just 34 percent of American households own firearms, the Pew Research Center reported last year. But gun sales are at historic highs. Meanwhile, any proposed regulation on firearms — highly efficient tools specifically designed to kill — is met with squeals from the right-wing ideologues and gun industry’s lap dog, the National Rifle Association. The gun cult is, one-by-one, tearing down state-level restrictions, such as concealment permits. It’s an assault on reason and the rule of law. Enough is enough.”
I would expect this writing from Mother Jones. But I got it instead from a newspaper in Southern Illinois? What’s wrong, boys and girls? Are you not losing subscribers fast enough that you’re trying to alienate the vast majority of your remaining readers?
We can agree on keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and lunatics.
Did it occur to you that this young man was already a prohibited person, by law, when his father illegally gave him this gun for his 21st birthday? What’s more, his mom didn’t trust him with it (sanity prevails) and took it from him, only to have this monster misfit steal it from her to commit this atrocity.
The buck stops with this lunatic.
And for the record, unlike you, I won’t write or publish his name or likeness to give him one more iota of notoriety.
You would think a small-town paper in the middle of a very gun-friendly part of the state wouldn’t be alienating its target audience. Then again, perhaps your editorial board isn’t composed of homegrown locals, but instead big city bigots.
Did I read that right only 34 percent of American households own firearms? Or should it really read “only 34 percent of American households don’t own firearms”? I’m a 62 year old gun owner and I or no one in my family or no one I know has ever said that Pew or any other research group has ever asked them if they are a gun owner are they only the people on the other side?
Ditto.
Let’s put it this way, if some stranger called you up and asked you if you had guns and how many, just what would you tell them.
I’d say “no, I lost them all in a boating accident.”
I suspect most gun owners would be reticent at best at divulging their status to strangers. At a GSL meeting? Now that’s not strangers, that’s family.
I think a better way of reporting it would be to say “34% of Americans were willing to admit to gun ownership when called by a stranger.”
Your mileage may vary.
I will never forget that sad day when John B told us of the boating accident 🙂
It is just too bad that those guns didn’t put their life jackets on. For all of them to drown was truly tragic…
All true. Pew should state “34% of American homes ADMIT to owning firearm.”
Sorry John, I didn’t read you whole response, you beat me to it.
Are you referring to the Carbondale paper, The Southern Illinoisan?
Yup.
no its The Southern Illusion. This is why I dont read it anymore
I find it funny that the research company’s name is Pew….everyone knows little boys run around saying pew pew pew, when they are playing cops and robbers! 🙂
The deadliest school massacre in American history, 45 killed 38 of whom were childern was done with dynamite, it’s the intent of the heart and you can’t pass laws to regulate that. Goliath was killed with a stone, are we to outlaw rocks? To say it’s the gun is just ridiculous.
I was just mulling over the idea of subscribing to your paper, but this scathing anti-gun foam spewing from your ink just proved to me once again, why alot of people refer to your paper as the Southern Illusion. Definitely I will not subscribe to your paper, especially when you go out and insult me as part of the NRA. As a responsible, law-abiding citizen, I abhor your accusations to those who own guns legally and have pledged to use them responsibly. I am a Life Member of the NRA which teaches, and advocates responsible gun ownership, hold educational classes to teach responsible gun handling and discharging to our youth, so that no one gets injured. I guess, a public retraction and apology will be in order in case you want to remain a viable newspaper in town.
The Xouthern is a wonderful newspaper which covers many local issues which would not see the light of day. It also has excellent specials including recent articles on consumer fraud and landlords issues. The fishing editor does an excellent job of covering local fishing hot spots. Just because the paper takes a stand on one issue you disagree with should not influence your opinion of the paper. No gun control legislation has a chance of passing on the state or federal level so lets get our guns out and head to the range after I finish reading my Southern which I have read every morning for years.
Checked with my son. He laughed when I asked if he got the paper when he was at school.
Gosh, I wish I had a subscription I could cancel. I’d LOVE to write them a short, terse letter, kind of like the ones Obama writes.
Mr. Blowbama:
Wouldn’t Norway be considered an “advanced country?”
Don’t they have rather strict gun laws?
It was just a few years ago that a lunatic killed 77 people there.
How does that fit into you tired old rhetoric?
But then, truth has never mattered to you, has it?
In Norway you would have to apply for a permit to be able to buy a gun. If you did not already have a membership in a shooting club – used to be minimum 6 month – or you have passed the necessary classes for hunting permit you would not gen one. The process takes 6 month or more depending on where you live. When you apply you have to state manufacturer, model and caliber. Permit granted you take it to a licensed dealer and you might have the gun within reasonable time to pick up. The dealer gives you a temporary slip that will be your permit to buy ammunition. 2 to 3 month later you will get your gun card in the mail. When you buy ammunition there are quotas depending upon caliber, and so on . Yes and it has not lowered the crimes committed with guns because in Oslo you can buy a fully automatic AK-47 without any of this as Brevik stated. He just wanted to do it legally because “he was not a criminal ????” There are no shortage of illegal guns on the streets of Norway. Hells Angels even employed a Gunsmith to produce.
Nice. I dumped my local paper many years ago when they wrote against concealed carry. I always enjoyed reading my hometown paper as a kid. I don’t miss it at all today.
once again you can’t regulate and control all those who might be a danger..
It is a heart problem,not a gun problem.
If the person that wrote this garbage ever needed my help because he/she didn’t have a gun, and I did, but he/she was being beat up, and/or wife being raped, I would just tell him to dial 911 since all of my weapons aren’t the ones that he must think that I should ever have purchased.
5 million NRA members = 5 million lapdogs for the gun industry.
That’s a lot of dogs.