Balanced journalism, Contra Costa Times-style

Columnist Tom Barnidge makes some . . . interesting assertions in his "According to the NRA, we need guns to keep us safe" screed.

NOT EVERY member of the National Rifle Association is a gun-toting survivalist with an ammo belt slung over his shoulder.

Thank goodness for Tom clearing that up--I'm sure many readers were confused, and under the impression that "EVERY" one of the NRA's approximately 4 million (and growing) members are "survivalists" (what's wrong with putting some effort into survival, anyway?), who apparently own belt-fed firearms.

At this point, though, Tom hasn't really even gotten warmed up. Now he gets down to business:

The Second Amendment, which protects Americans' right "to keep and bear arms," has been dissected, parsed and mulched so many times that no one knows for certain what it really means.

Is that so, Tom? David E. Young certainly seems to have a good idea (good enough to be cited six times in the Heller decision)--good enough for 838 pages of exhaustively researched scholarship. And that's not all of his work on the subject. David Hardy seems to have a pretty good idea of the meaning, as do Dave Kopel, Stephen Halbrook, and quite a few others.

Was it intended to protect states' rights to arm a "well regulated militia" against an overbearing national government as the wording suggests . . .

The wording somehow "suggests" that, without mentioning the word "states" (it does mention the right of the people, but perhaps Tom was thinking of Dennis Henigan's version of the Second Amendment, in which "the people" go unmentioned).

. . . or does it mean that every American has the right to strap on a shoulder holster in the morning and keep an Uzi under his pillow at night?

No histrionics there, eh? I of course, can't imagine what the problem would be with people "strap[ing] on a shoulder holster in the morning," and I fully support their Constitutionally guaranteed right to do so. As for the "Uzi under the pillow," it sounds rather uncomfortable, but it's not my place--or anyone else's--to forbid it.

Because the amendment dates to 1791, the authors are unavailable for comment, leaving the matter to advocates such as [former NRA president Sandy] Froman to provide enthusiastic, if decidedly partisan interpretation.

As opposed to Tom's evenhanded, impartial interpretation.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this part:

And the organization's stance against an assault-weapons ban was a matter of definition: Assault weapons, as described by proponents of the law, would have included even semiautomatic weapons used for deer hunting.

If she really said that, I have one more reason to castigate the NRA--because however so called "assault weapons" are defined, and however little use they have for "sporting purposes," any gun rights advocacy group that doesn't fight such a ban tooth and nail isn't worth a glass of spit. In Froman's and the NRA's defense, though, it is extremely plausible that Tom paraphrased her very poorly.

The next part surprised me a bit (my emphasis added)

That explains the NRA's stance against gun registration. When a government sets out to disarm its citizenry, she said the task is too easy if gun owners' names are stored on a database.

For those of us not yet convinced the feds' grand plan is to strip us of our inalienable rights, the visions of doom seem a bit over the top.

So is Tom acknowledging that private gun ownership is an inalienable right? Sure sounds that way, but it's not very consistent with anything else he says--especially when he ends the piece with what sounds like an endorsement of a government monopoly on force.

Besides, we've seen what happens when a well-regulated militia takes up arms against the government.

You might know it as the Civil War.

We also know what happens when there isn't an effective citizen militia to take up arms against the government.

It's called the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge killing fields, etc.