Great Analysis from WSJ

Here's an excellent summation of the current situation from the WSJ's OpinionJounal.com today:

Yes, the usual suspects have attempted to use the murder spree on campus as evidence of the danger of guns in America. But as unlikely a combination of leaders from Harry Reid to George Bush has been as one in warning we should avoid a "rush to judgment" in the wake of the killings.

That's progress of a sort, even if the Democrats' abandonment of the issue flows more from political calculation than principle. Political calculation, after all, is based on something beyond mere politics. The Democratic Party may have decided that gun control became a political liability in the 1994 and 2000 elections, but that doesn't go far toward explaining why that is so.

First, as we noted earlier this week, what happened in Blacksburg was evidence more than anything of the fact that there are sick and evil people in the world willing to do harm to others for no earthly reason. Pushing much beyond that point is political opportunism.

But over the past decade and a half, evidence of another sort has been accumulating. Violent-crime rates peaked in 1991, according to the Justice Department, and have fallen steeply since. Over the same period, gun-control laws in many states have been relaxed. Correlation does not equal causation, but it does make it difficult to argue that greater legal access to guns drives up levels of violent crime.

It's interesting to me that the only voices harping for gun control are the mainstream media (MSM). For years the overt bias of the MSM toward guns has been hidden behind the Democrats apparently endless crusade. Now that the Dems are silent, the MSM is exposed for what it has been all along, the primary driver for gun control in America...I have said this before...there was never a "public outcry" for gun control. Instead, there was a media elite who were in bed with urban Dem politicians. With the Dems standing down, the MSM are revealed as the little man behind the curtain.

I urge you to read this brilliant essay from Jonah Goldberg at NRO, titled "Emotional Vampirism:"

I’m sick over the Virginia Tech story. But I’m sickened of the Virginia Tech “story.”

That is, it’s at moments like this — the “aftermath” stage of some horrible event — when the press, particularly television news networks, are most proud of themselves that I find them the most repellent.

Never doubt for one minute that far too many of the MSM are our sworn blood enemies. Even my Sweetie has been appalled at the amazingly biased coverage...for example, the media meticulously discussing the lack of a "waiting period" in Virginia while failing to mention that the psychotic waited more than 30 days to purchase his second firearm, or the MSM talking about magazine capacity while overlooking the little fact that the psychotic reloaded — and since no one was fighting back, he could have used a single shot pistol and just kept reloading!

Check out this update of MSM spin, lies and general misinformation compiled by Confederate Yankee:

This tragedy at Virginia Tech is horrible, but the reporting of it thus far is showing us either the professional media is a bunch of bumbling incompetents, or are agenda-driven deceivers.

I'm not sure which possibility frightens me the most.

Amen!