Once again, columnist Jack Kelly indulges himself in his usual taste for highly selective reasoning ("Media vs. Guns: Liberals Ignore the Facts to Keep Pushing Gun Control," Jan 6).
After citing several irrelevant studies that appear to show a drop in violent crimes in inverse proportion to the degree of prison incarceration, he proceeds to make an apples-and-oranges argument that actually undermines his own: i.e., that when criminals are put behind bars there are fewer deaths by guns. "When the law-abiding are permitted to carry concealed handguns, crime rates drop."
But, of course, deranged Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was not behind bars. And further, "The massive coverage the news media accords to their evil deeds gives shooters the notoriety they crave." Lanza's suicide suggests he wasn't in the mood to hang around to enjoy the celebrity.
When Mr. Kelly says, "Some elite journalists, in their advocacy of gun control in the wake of that horror, have abandoned all pretense of fairness and objectivity," one needs to ask fairness to whom? The National Rifle Association? Assault weapons toters?
No one who considers the issue seriously denies the power of deterrence and the Second Amendment's validity, but nowhere in his column can one find the slightest attempt to address the real truth: that is, the proliferation of mass-assault weapons and their capacity to inflict carnage.
Convoluted logic has no place in the long-overdue, sustained debate of this tragic issue.
JIM HOHMAN
Friendship
First Published: January 13, 2013, 5:00 a.m.