Blatantly Biased News Article
I came across this article yesterday and I felt it was a perfect example of the biased reporting on guns that has become commonplace. Whilst I know this isn't anything new, I felt this was a good candidate to examine so as to separate the facts from the hysteria.
Here is the article: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/new...ectid=12264127
When you click on the article it has a full-length title, but the title it had when it was on the NZ Herald main page was, "Texas passes chilling new gun laws."
There is no question that title was editorialising or personal opinion. There's no explanation of how the laws are "chilling," or what that even means.
The article was originally from news.com.au, but the NZ Herald chose to reprint it, so they can still be taken to task for it.
The laws themselves were largely a non-story. They made some fairly minor changes to make life easier for people who carry firearms legally, ensured that landlords couldn't ban their tenants from legally owning firearms, and made it legal to posses and transport firearms in a natural disaster, state of emergency, evacuation, etc. That last point was to prevent a repeat of what happen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana in 2005. The then governor ordered that all civilians be disarmed and had SWAT teams going around threatening to kill people if they didn't hand over their firearms and evacuate their homes(whether they wanted to evacuate or not). Those actions violated the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and a bunch of other laws as well, and were widely viewed as a fiasco. Other states have also passed laws to prevent that exact situation. In regard to the specific shooting they mention in the article, these new laws would have at best increased the chance of one of the victims being armed and able to defend themselves, and at worst would have made no difference to the outcome.
I am surprised that Texas hasn't yet gone all the way and removed the requirement for permits to carry firearms altogether.
So far 16 states have those laws, commonly referred to as "Constitutional Carry," and have had good results.
There have been no increases in crime or accidental shootings, and in many cases they have decreased.
It's a bit of a win-win, as far as both freedom and safety are concerned.
I'm sure those laws will be passed in more states in the near future, as they have become very popular recently.
To put it in perspective, in 2009 there were only 2 states with Constitutional Carry, and as of September 2019 there are now 16.
3 states have already passed those laws just this year. 2 other states have voted in the laws only for them to be vetoed by their governor.
On top of all that, the overall murder rate in the US is at the lowest it's been since at least the mid-1960s. Not so bad news after all...
