Guns in America: An Untold Story
By Jeff Knox
(October 3, 2014) We’ve all heard the old newspaper saying, “If it bleeds it leads,” and we understand that dramatic stories of blood and carnage are attention-getters and ratings-boosters. The public likes a good horror story, and the news media know it. Horrific murders, especially those involving multiple victims, are particularly good sellers. It’s just a fact of life that the core business of media is to “sell papers,” and the advertising in them. But the core mission of the media is supposed to be to inform the public – you know, report the news. One area of that mission where the dominant media falls woefully short is in reporting on cases of armed self-defense – even when the actions of the defender clearly saved many lives – and one of the tactics they use when they do report these events is to set the hero apart as something other than a regular armed citizen.
When a worker at a food processing plant in Oklahoma went on a rampage, killing and decapitating one woman and stabbing another several times before being stopped by several shots fired by a senior executive of the company, the hero was repeatedly described as an off-duty sheriff’s deputy. That hero, Mark Vaughan, was the Chief Operating Officer of the business, and all agree that had he not had his gun readily available, the terror rampage would have taken several more lives. But painting his actions as those of an off-duty deputy is something of a distortion. That characterization suggests that he wasn’t an armed citizen, but rather a cop just doing his job. This helps them to preserve the fiction that only police are qualified and trustworthy enough to go about armed. In fact, Vaughan is a Reserve Deputy in Oklahoma County; a volunteer position requiring only 11 hours of service per month. While I don’t mean to denigrate that service, and I’m sure some of the training he received through that service helped, Vaughan was not acting as a deputy; he was acting as a concerned citizen and coworker.
Probably the most prominent case of this type of distortion was when Jeanne Assam, who was a volunteer for her church’s security team, charged into gunfire to stop a heavily armed, rampaging murderer as he entered her crowded church building. The media referred to her as a “volunteer security guard” and placed heavy emphasis on her prior service as a police officer. Like Vaughan and Ken Hammond, an off-duty officer who interrupted a mall rampage in Ogden, Utah, Assam’s service as a police officer was used to paint her actions as those of a police officer, not as an armed citizen,
Emphasizing a police connection helps opponents of citizen carry to maintain the fiction that armed citizens are more of a threat to society than they are a benefit. Media up-plays police connections, while underreporting and down-playing defensive shooting incidents where no police connection can be drawn, thereby promoting the meme that only cops can effectively use guns to stop criminal violence and save lives.
In reality, regular people carry guns every day, and regular people use guns to stop criminal attacks and save lives every day.
Throughout this past summer, collections of stories about homeowners, good Samaritans, store clerks, and grandmothers who used guns to defend themselves and others, were published in USA Today. They were stories of regular people, most with little formal training, who were determined to be ready in a crisis; to be their own First-Responders if trouble called. It was unusual to see these stories, and for people like me, who believe in the responsibility of every citizen to take a stand against barbarism, and the right to have the tools needed to take that stand effectively, these stories were a refreshing reminder that our beliefs are well-founded in reality. The sad part of seeing these stories in print in a major, mainstream publication was a single word printed at the top of the page: “Advertisement.”
These were all true, recent stories, culled from newspaper and TV reports across the country. I’ve looked at every one of those original reports and many follow-up stories. Some of them are quite heroic, and all are worth knowing, but the only way any of these stories made their way into the pages of USA Today was for someone to pay the newspaper to run them – in a box labeled “Advertisement.”
Certainly headlines about rampaging gunmen and multiple victims draw more attention than headlines about murder sprees that were cut short. And interviews with grieving parents are more heart-rending than conversations with people who didn’t die thanks to someone with a gun being close by in a crisis. But isn’t there an obligation for the media to tell all of the stories? As we continue to debate the constitutionality and efficacy of gun laws, doesn’t the news media owe their audience some balanced, unbiased reporting about the benefits of guns in America?
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