All Postings from November 2003

11/17/03
More discussions on the biased media coverage of the Appalachian Law School Attack

Bernie Goldberg's new book, Arrogance, has a whole chapter that discusses how the media covered the Appalachian Law School attack. Just as I expressed concern about the media coverage in an op-ed piece and later in my book, The Bias Against Guns, a questioner notes that Goldberg comes to the conclusion that "But one of the themes you explore in your new book is that there are some cases, on some issues, where it's really quite hard to conclude that the bias is not deliberate, particularly in the case of guns used for self-defense." Goldberg did his own Nexis search that came to a very similar conclusion to what I obtained and he points to similar Nexis and Westlaw searches that were also done by James Eaves-Johnson. Goldberg notes that despite his concerns about the media, "It just didn't make any sense" that the media could so universally hide the fact that guns were used defensively to stop this attack, but that his Nexis search reached "basically the same conclusion. And I said, 'Nah. You cannot have either a hundred or two hundred papers and only less than five of them reporting that the guys had guns who subdued the gunman. Can't be.'"

There are now three additional searches after the one that I did that get extremely similar results. Goldberg has appeared on everyplace from the Rush Limbaugh radio show on November 7th (a subscription is required to listen to the archived shows) to an interview with Tim Russert on CNBC on November 15th where Goldberg discussed the Appalachian Law School case as an example of media bias. I thought that Goldberg was quite effective in both cases and it is nice to see that the work that I did is receiving this level of attention.

Additional discussions on questions raised about the media coverage of the Appalachian Law School case can be seen on my web site at 9/11/03 and 9/6/03.

11/16/03
Sources for Defensive Gun Uses

For More Guns, Less Crime, The Bias Against Guns, and some of my op-ed pieces I have at least partially relied upon Nexis/Lexis searches to discover defensive gun uses, but that method is very time consuming and it is not available to everyone. Fortunately, there are a few sites that I reference for defensive gun uses. One that provides an excellent search engine for types of cases is provided at goodguyswin.org, a list of the most recent cases is available at keepandbeararms.com, and some fairly old cases can be found on the NRA site. The search engive at goodguyswin.org is very powerful, but the references there tend to be at least a few months old. The NRA used to also have a section on more recent cases (and they probably still do someplace), but I haven't been able to find it since they have revamped their website. A new site that I just saw very recently is by Clayton Cramer, though there appears to be a lot of overlap with the keepandbeararms.com web site.

11/14/03
How Much Difference is There Really Between the Democratic and Republican Presidential Candidates on Guns?

My piece in the Washington Times today argues that the differences between Bush and the Democratic Presidential candidates is actually relatively small on guns, with the exception of one important issue. The bottom line though is this: "The fate of more regulations lies in who controls Congress, not the presidency."

11/13/03
Banning Nonexistent Plastic Guns

My piece at Tech Central Station today discusses the extension of the so-called plastic gun ban that is likely to shortly be passed by the Senate.

11/10/03
WSJ data indicates that Rumsfeld was correct

Early this year there was quite a debate about Rumsfeld and myself discussing the relatively low murder rate in Baghdad. My quoting Rumsfeld

apparently outraged many people. Well, it turns out that Rumsfeld was correct. The Wall Street Journal reports that the murder rates this year were as follows: July, 92; August, 75; September, 54; and October, 24. As I pointed out,

Only in July does the number of murders in Baghdad even approach half the rate found in Washington, DC.

My discussion on 7/26 also makes related points.

Update: I have been asked about previous questions on this issue. Please note that my previous posts linked to above go into these questions, such as the previous AP story that didn't differentiate war deaths from murders.

11/7/03
The Harm from Gun Locks

My piece at Tech Central Station today notes: