Please notice that I didn’t say high quality!

I will admit to not having much complimentary to say about the Lexington Herald-Leader, what would pass for my ‘local’ newspaper if I actually took the newspaper.¹ And once again, I can see the agenda of the Herald-Leader editors:

Firearms purchases spiking amid pandemic, FBI data suggest. These states have the most

By Dawson White | August 4, 2020 | 10:35 AM EDT

Americans appear to be purchasing more guns during the coronavirus pandemic, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

June saw a record 3.9 million background checks associated with firearm sales — the most of any month since the FBI began tracking the data in November 1998. In July that number dropped slightly with more than 3.6 million background checks, according to FBI data.

Every month this year, background checks have well-exceeded those for the same month in 2019, the data show.

At least I can give the newspaper credit for realizing that the word “data” is plural!

Several more paragraphs follow, detailing the various numbers. Then we come to this line:

The June spike in background checks came as demonstrators took to the streets across the country to protest police brutality following the death of George Floyd.

The headline talks about the COVID-19 pandemic, but the reactions following the killing of Mr Floyd weren’t over the pandemic, but over the fact that the left were trying to limit law enforcement; when you weaken the police, crime increases, and has increased in those very liberal cities where the police have been most under fire.

Firearm purchases have been known to spike following national tragedies, CNN reported, with federal law enforcement seeing a 39% jump in firearm background checks in 2012 the month of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, compared to the month before.

How can any journalist credibly write that, or any responsible editor leave it like that, as though it was the killings at Sandy Hook that were responsible for it, rather than the once-again stepped up calls by the left to restrict our Second Amendment rights? Is this what passes for quality journalism these days?

Of course, the article writer, Dawson White, does not work for the Herald-Leader. Rather, he’s a McClatchy reporter, and I previously noted the bankruptcy filing of The McClatchy Company (MNI), which owns the Herald-Leader, before the wave of closures due to the virus. However, article headlines are normally the work of the local paper editors.

The entire story pushes the notion that it is the pandemic which has pushed the increase in background checks for firearms sales. The idea that maybe, just maybe, people seeing the images of riots and destruction in cities like Seattle, Portland, Chicago, New York and foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia would think that they needed to be able to protect themselves is downplayed. Crime has surged in those cities, and others.

As of 11:59 PM EDT on August 3^rd, Philadelphia had seen 257 homicides, a 34% increase over the same day last year. I have previously noted the dramatic rise in killings in the City of Brotherly Love, which I directly attribute to the terrible government of Mayor Jim Kenney and District Attorney Larry Krasner. 2018 and 2019 saw a surge in killings under those two, after Mayor Michael Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey left office.

And now, in 2020, Philly has already seen more homicides than all of 2013 and 2014, and will soon pass 2015 and 2016.

But McClatchy and the Herald-Leader somehow can’t see that it has been the surge in crime, more than the pandemic, which has led to the increase in the desire to own firearms. It’s almost as if they have an agenda, or something.
____________________________________
¹ – I pay for The Washington Post, but have to depend upon the few free articles allowed by The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Herald-Leader that I can get each month.
____________________________________
Please visit my Red State story archive for more of my articles.
My personal website, The First Street Journal, includes articles not necessarily in Red State’s paradigm.
You can follow me on Twitter.