J.D. Prose – 12/16/12

This page was last updated on December 18, 2012.

Time for talking is over, gun control now; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; December 16, 2012.

According to his Twitter page, Mr. Prose is a self-described “Surly progressive.” As you read this opinion column and his Twitter “tweets,” keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the BCT. In addition to being an entertainer/pundit, Mr. Prose is a part-time reporter covering political stories. Ask yourself this. When a pundit gives his political opinions in one part of the paper, can he be trusted to report politics objectively elsewhere in the paper? After all, would a person whose opinion is 1+1 equals 3 report 1+1 really equals 2? Does he have a “Chinese wall” in his head to keep his opinions from bleeding into his reporting? (You may recall NPR claimed it fired Juan Williams for doing exactly what Mr. Prose does.) If it can get worse than that, Mr. Prose has made name-calling and personal attacks a foundation of his columns. If pushed, I’d be willing to bet Mr. Prose would try to excuse his writing by claiming he’s paid to be controversial and stir debate. The problem is, you don’t need to get into name-calling and personal attacks to accomplish those goals.

You can find the archive of my Prose column critiques here.

Below is a detailed critique of portions of this column.

Given Mr. Prose’s body-of-work, I’m not sure why anyone would take him seriously on any topic, let alone one this serious. Throughout the piece, Mr. Prose engages in his usual demonization of people with whom he disagrees. Fast-forward to the end and you’ll find Mr. Prose did not provide his definition of “gun control” and made no recommendations in his 582-word rant. The only previous NRA-related Prose piece I found was “NRA misses the mark in going after mayors.”

Mr. Prose wrote, “Then you can shrug and give your meaningless condolences and go back to the alternate universe you live in where gun control doesn’t reduce shootings. Tell it to the rest of the civilized world where it does.” You’ll note Mr. Prose didn’t provide any examples. Chicago and Washington, DC, must be free of – or have very low levels of - handgun crime, right? Here are a couple of pieces supporting “gun control” and opposing it addressing efficacy. How’s that “war on drugs” working out?

Mr. Prose used a fellow lefty pundit as a data source and wrote, “America accounts for 5 percent of the world’s population, he [CNN’s Fareed Zakaria] wrote, yet we have 50 percent of the world’s guns. Yeah, half. Of the world.” This is another one of those meaningless “America accounts for x percent of the world’s population yet we consume/have y percent of the world’s ________ (fill in the blank)” factoids some people like to present. It’s intellectual laziness.

Would someone explain what “gun culture” means? If I didn’t know most of them since we were kids, I couldn’t tell you which of my friends own guns and which don’t. I suspect “gun culture” is like the mythical “war on women;” it sounds good but has no basis in fact.

Mr. Prose wrote, “Yet, dead Americans are just unfortunate collateral damage in some antiquated nod to a Second Amendment written when this country thought slavery was no big deal.” “When this country thought slavery was no big deal?” Perhaps Mr. Prose should read Article I, Section 2 (The House) of the U.S. Constitution. Let’s also consider the words of Frederick Douglass during an 1852 speech: “Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. … if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made?” I should note Mr. Douglass did not always take this position. Mr. Douglass gradually came to this conclusion during his many years of working in the abolition movement.

Getting back to the Second Amendment, the anti-gun crowd (primarily leftists) wants us to believe it’s primarily about hunting, personal self-defense, et cetera. Wrong. Having just fought a war to rid themselves of what they considered an unjust government, our Founders were wary of government power. The Second Amendment is about “We the People” being able to defend ourselves from our government should the need arise. Article I (Declaration of Rights), Section 21 (Right to Bear Arms) of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania states, “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.” The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 was even more explicit about the “right to bear arms.” Chapter I, Article XIII stated, “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” The last thing overbearing (read “leftist”) governments want is an armed citizenry. Does anyone believe countries like Red China, North Korea, and so on ban gun ownership to protect their citizens from each other? I can’t say for sure, but I suspect King George III wished he banned gun ownership in America long before the American Revolution.

Finally, consider the following quotes from a couple of Obama administration appointees. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton once said, “Never waste a good crisis.” Former White House Chief of State Rahm Emanuel once said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” When Mr. Prose wrote “gun control now,” he probably meant “now,” when we’re more likely to think with our emotions instead of our heads.