The Time magazine website put out a hit piece on the Second Amendment today. The title of the article by Michael A. Lindenberger, Ten Years After Columbine, It’s Easier to Bear Arms, says it all, the implication being that people should be less able to bear arms. There are many places where the article needs to be corrected for spin, so I will address them in order.

In the first paragraph we are told, “What happened that day in 1999 also seemed to wake America up to the reality that it had become a nation of gun owners - and too often a nation of shooters.” America has been a gun owning nation since revolutionary times, so I doubt people suddenly realized that in 1999. The last part about shooters is incorrect, if by shooters he means murderers, as most gun owners are not deranged killers.

Lindenberger then describes how, “Texas lawmakers are mulling a new law that would allow college students to carry firearms to campus (Utah already makes this legal).” It then quotes a student named Woods who asks why they would allow this and that Woods thought it was a terrible idea. Well, actually it is a very good idea. A student who goes on a killing spree like Cho Seung-Hui (2007 Virginia Tech) who killed 32 people could be stopped much sooner with less people harmed or killed if another student or teacher was armed.

There was a case not long ago where a student was suspended due to failing grades and started shooting people. Two students who heard the shots ran to their cars where they had to keep their guns, since they were not allowed to carry on campus. They ran back and confronted the shooter, who then threw down his weapon while other students jumped him. The story received very little mainstream media attention, and of the news outlets that did, they neglected a key part of the whole story. James Eaves-Johnson wrote about this story one week later in The Daily Iowan. He wrote: “Unfortunately, the media did not point out that the ‘intervening’ students were armed. A Lexis-Nexis search revealed 88 stories on the topic, of which only two mentioned that either Bridges or Gross [the students who stopped the killer] were armed. A Westnews search exposed worse results. It revealed 112 stories, of which only two mentioned the armed students.” Most only reported that students jumped the shooter. Why? Because this is just one out of possibly millions of examples of defensive gun use, which goes contrary to the perception that the media wants to create concerning guns.

Lindenberger goes on to describe Woods’ gun control efforts as being “up against powerful headwinds - and not just because of the powerful gun lobby that often strangles gun-control laws.” ‘Powerful gun lobby’ and ’strangles’ are not exactly neutral descriptions.

The article continues with, “…that restrictions on guns have eased rather than tightened in the wake of tragedies like the one at Virginia Tech.” You can tighten them all you want, it will not deter someone who is determined to do others harm. Again, greater restrictions only encourages greater harm in the future.

Lindenberger then ironically says, “Indeed, the debate seems to be almost one-sided nowadays, with an ongoing backlash against gun control.” The debate is indeed one-sided with the mainstream anti-gun media, as is evidenced by Mr. Lindenberger’s article. He also includes a link to pictures of the Virginia Tech massacre, but no link to pictures of armed citizens who stopped violent crime. His article then describes the various states that have enacted or strengthened pro-self defense laws, as though that is a bad thing.

In describing pro-Second Amendment bills or laws, Lindenberger says, “Other legal responses have been more creative still.” Notice how he trivializes these ‘legal responses’ as being ‘creative’, as though helping people defend themselves is not something to be taken seriously.

Unwittingly Lindenberger stumbles upon the crux of the whole problem with gun control, but does not see it. He mentions how Washington, D.C. is “murder-plagued” and has the “strictest gun-control ordinance in the country.” Yet he does not seem to be able to put those simple facts together. If all that gun control worked, why is Washington, D.C. “murder-plagued”? It should be the safest place to live with the least violent crime, but it’s just the opposite. Which just goes to show it isn’t the gun, but the people.

Washington, D.C. is like a liberal experiment in gun control that went horribly wrong. They believe, falsely, that if you remove the guns, the violent crime will go down. It doesn’t occur to them that we have laws against crack cocaine, yet people still buy and use crack despite it being illegal to produce, sell, or possess. The same thing holds true for guns and crime. You can ban guns (as they did in D.C.), but the bad guys will still be able to get guns for their crimes. The only people you hurt are the law-abiding citizens who are now disarmed and helpless against the criminal element in society. James Eaves-Johnson asked, “No one would believe that people in Iowa City don’t smoke marijuana or that underage college students don’t find ways to procure alcohol. Why should we be any more naïve when it comes to rules against firearms?”