Maybe I Missed Something – Aren’t Newspapers Supposed To Support The First Amendment?

When I grew up in the 60s and 70s in Greensboro, North Carolina, our local newspaper, the Greensboro Daily News, supported free speech. It had editorialized against the Speaker Ban Law which banned anyone with Communist Party connections from speaking on a state university campus. It featured great editorial writers like Jonathan Yardley and Edwin Yoder who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize later in their careers. The editor was Bill Snider who would get crosses burned in his yard for his support of civil rights.

So you can imagine my feeling when I read one of their most recent editorials arguing against free speech in the name of safety. It began:

Imagine a gun you could build in the privacy of your home in much the same way that you assembled model cars and planes as a youth.

A few clicks of a mouse and — voila! — you’re in business.

We have the know-how. We have the technology. And we should have the common sense not to use it.

You know where this is going. The unsigned editorial in the News & Record (combination of the old Daily News and Greesboro Record) was applauding the move by Attorney General Josh Stein (D-NC) to join the lawsuit in Washington State seeking to prevent Defense Distributed from publishing its files of code for 3-D printing and CNC machining.

No matter that these have been on the Internet since at least 2013 and thousands of us have copies of those files on our computers. No matter that it is 100% legal to make your own firearm so long as you are not a prohibited person and it is not a fully automatic firearm. Of course, they didn’t tell you that part in the editorial. Nor did they say that it would cheaper and easier to go to Lowe’s for parts and Harbor Freight for tools to make your own more substantial firearm.

As I commented on the story on their website:

When a news organization ostensibly dedicated to a free press AND to free speech editorializes against speech it doesn’t like – and make no mistake computer code is speech – it sets a horrendous precendent. What speech will you next want to subject to prior restraint? Will it be conservative speech by an African-American like Mark Robinson? Or will it be something said by a pro-life teen?

Where does it stop? You don’t have to like what is said and you can argue against the ideas contained in that speech. However, in our somewhat free society it should and must be allowed.

It is a bad precedent for any news organization to argue for censorship of free speech. The Greensboro Daily News and Record editorial staff ought rightly to be ashamed of themselves.

These Two Democrat Attorney Generals Are Hypocrites

At the instigation of NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D-NY), a number of attorneys general, all Democrats, have signed on to a letter opposing national carry reciprocity. They specifically oppose HR 38 sponsored by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) and S. 446 introduced by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).

Schneiderman is joined in the letter by the attorneys general of Massachusetts, Oregon, Virginia, Rhode Island, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut, New Mexico, North Carolina and the District of Columbia.

The full letter can be found here.

Here are some pertinent excerpts from the letter:

Each of our States allows concealed carry—as do all 50 states—but with
carefully considered and long-standing substantive and procedural protections
designed to address public safety concerns in our localities. Under the legislation,
our residents would lose the protections that their legislators and law enforcement
agencies have deemed appropriate, in favor of rules made by States legislating for
very different local conditions. Rather than creating a new national standard for who
may carry concealed firearms, these bills would elevate the lowest state standard
over higher ones and force some States to allow concealed carry by people who do not
qualify under their laws.
This forced acceptance of the most permissive standards
would also affect determinations about the proper level of safety training necessary
to justify concealed carry and the criteria governing whether a person is too
dangerous to carry a gun in a crowded place.

 It goes on to misconstrue the limitations that would be put in place by HR 38:

The result of the proposed legislation would be a proliferation of potentially
dangerous or irresponsible non-residents with concealed weapons in the States, cities,
and towns across America that have made local judgments that certain regulations
on the carrying of such weapons are necessary to protect public safety. Furthermore,
the House bill would override some state laws that prohibit carrying concealed
weapons in bars, schools, shopping malls, movie theatres, subways, or parks.
States
would not be able to enforce those restrictions; nor would local law enforcement
officers reacting to specific risks to the public in such locations, which have tragically
been the site of mass shootings in recent years.

 The text of HR 38 specifically says that state laws governing carry and posting of private property as well as the posting of state or local government properties including parks will not be superseded by this bill. In other words, these attorneys general have stated a bald face lie.

Now to the hypocritical part. Both the commonwealth of Virginia and the state of North Carolina recognize permits from all other states. The law in Virginia was changed when Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA) joined with Republicans in passing HB 1163/SB 610. This was considered a rebuke of Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (D-VA) who unilaterally revoked reciprocity agreements with 25 states. Herring was the beneficiary of almost $1.3 million from Bloomberg’s Independence USA PAC.

Likewise, the state of North Carolina’s law were changed effective December 1, 2011 to recognize unilaterally all permits issued by any state. North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein (D-NC) ought to be aware of this because his own Department of Justice has a webpage devoted to this. While to the best of my knowledge, Josh Stein didn’t receive money directly from Michael Bloomberg, the North Carolina Democratic Party did received $250,000 from him in 2016.

Mark Herring and Josh Stein are out and out hypocrites. They want to deny a right to the rest of America that the visitors to their own states enjoy. Citizens of Virginia have a chance to get rid of Herring this fall but we in the Tar Heel State have to wait another three years before we are rid of anti-gun Josh Stein.