If you reduce every topic and news story to Red vs. Blue, Left vs. Right, then anything can be related to anything else, right? Sometimes the results of this mindset are so mind-numbingly ludicrous that I just have to keep searching and searching, fruitlessly, for that "satire" disclaimer.
Well, as you all know, lots and lots of kids --oh, just everywhere!-- are going on and on and on about Newsweek's current shame. And whenever there's a big news story, well, it's fun to hitch your wagon to that shooting star, isn't it?
Enter Alan Gottleib and his fun-luvin' pack of gun nuts, the Second Amendment Foundation, with a press release that really puts relevance and credibility to the test. Gottleib misleadingly reports that Newsweek "acknowledged the report... was bogus", and then builds on his smear-job by adding that "This irresponsible exercise of the First Amendment freedom of the press has killed and injured more people than Charles Whitman or the Beltway Snipers." Then he reminds us that "A Newsweek story just killed or injured more than 115 people." Um... what? Were massive paper cuts involved?
Gosh... Mr. Gottleib sure seems to have an axe to grind with Newsweek and its publisher, The Washington Post Company. Why is he making such a fuss about this seemingly non-2nd-Amendment issue?
Ah, there's the rub: Gottleib suggests, apparently with a straight face, that a "waiting period" should be applied to the 1st Amendment! Because, after all, "How many times," Gottlieb wondered, "have Newsweek and The Washington Post advocated waiting periods for law-abiding citizens [law-abiding citizens like Charles Whitman and the Beltway Snipers?], who have hurt nobody, before they can buy a firearm?" And blah, blah, blah, it goes on.
Hey, baby, this story's got coattails! Hop on!
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