From the editor | Here we can tell the truth

Sometimes I imagine a scenario where, due to some weird misunderstanding when I was just starting out in journalism, I'm offered a job in a mainstream newsroom. And, in fact, I worked as a newspaper reporter for a few years after college – in rural Wyoming and Colorado. I can almost hear myself asking, “Excuse me, Mr. Editor, but all those legally armed citizens aren't actually committing crimes. Just look at the crime numbers. So shouldn't we be questioning gun control laws that only target the law-abiding?”

It is possible that the editor called the human resources department from his desk.

What America's 1^st FreedomIf I couldn't tell the truth here, I would move on. But if I didn't tell the truth, the NRA would move me on. That's the way it is here.

This is an important distinction. The NRA represents the search for truth in an age when the word “truth” has been twisted beyond comprehension by placing the word “my” before “truth.” Likewise, the phrase “living Constitution” has been used by those who do not want the 27 words of the Second Amendment to be taken literally.

And this goes beyond newsrooms.

For example, William English, an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, was summoned, attacked in The New York Times And he has been accused of all sorts of professional misconduct because he had the audacity to conduct a large and honest survey on defensive gun use.

They pursue the English in order to, as he did in The Wall Street Journal“to deter other academics from conducting similar research and to influence courts when states lose the case.”

English oversaw the 2021 National Firearms Survey. Data from that survey of 54,000 American adults estimated that citizens use their guns for defense about 1.67 million times annually; in fact, the survey found that “in most defense incidents (81.9%), no shots were fired.”

For gun control activists in politics and the media, this finding had to be marginalized. They don't want people to know that law-abiding Americans need their freedom.

English said that the “attorneys general of Illinois and Washington have begun issuing subpoenas for his “documents and communications.” Meanwhile, members of the media have contacted him “armed with politicized arguments identical to those used by the state attorneys general in their subpoenas.”

However, the media could not find any real problems with the survey. English's survey questions were peer-reviewed. He hired a professional polling company that is also “used by researchers at institutions such as Stanford, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

“The results of my poll are difficult to refute because they are consistent with other independent polls conducted nationally by Pew and Gallup,” English said.

So why don’t these members of the mainstream media just ignore English?

“The Just and other media are signaling that they will cut academics who bring up inconvenient facts,” English wrote. “Progressive law clerks and prosecutors are violating long-standing norms and laws in the service of political agendas. Many journalists are carrying water for these causes….”

English concludes: “If these reporters want to expose a well-funded, ideologically motivated conspiracy to undermine objective weapons research, all they have to do is look in the mirror.”

To help, forward links to America's first freedom Article to any journalist in your area who supports gun control activists.