Letter to the Editor -- Tribune

Status
Not open for further replies.

charon

Member
Joined
Jul 13, 2007
Messages
85
Location
Chicagoland
The Chicago Brady Director has an interesting letter to the editor that I responded to (below). What's interesting is the lament over the challenges the antis are facing and their call to action :)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/chi-1115ledeletternov15,0,3297830.story

Here's my response:
I sympathize with the loss gun control lobbyist Thomas C. Vanden Berk suffered from a criminal using a firearm. Fortunately, the likelihood of being a victim of a homicide involving a firearm is fairly small (about 5 per 100,000 people) and even smaller than that (perhaps by 50 percent) if the victim is not involved in criminal activity as well. Notably less risk than that posed by alcohol or a variety of fairly common facets of daily life -- intense media coverage aside.
Vanden Berk states: "We also need to get the message out that sensible gun laws work for all citizens, including those who own guns for hunting or self-protection." Well, not according to The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, which found that such regulation is ineffective. The reason is simple: Criminals don't obey the law so such restrictions only impact the law abiding. Last time I checked we had a full ban on crack cocaine throughout the U.S. and all the countries on our borders. You can't even produce cocaine domestically. So how again is a firearm ban supposed to be more effective that the cocaine ban where criminal intent is concerned?
Vanden Berk also does the common song and dance against the "evil" NRA gun lobby. I can understand his frustrations. The NRA is well funded by its millions of members. People like me. We look around and don't see a firearm violence problem in our neighborhoods, the vast majority of neighborhoods in the state, country or even in cities like Chicago. There is no gun problem in many areas where gun ownership is far higher. No drive bys, no "disrespect" feuding, no killing someone for their athletic shoes. We support the NRA to keep emotional, knee jerk reactions to serious cultural and social problems from impacting our rights.
The anti 2nd Amendment forces, on the other hand, tend to lack the same grass roots power. Take away the Joyce Foundation money and George Soros' money, remove the cameras from Jesse Jackson's and Michael Phleger's soapboxes, ignore the big city mayors looking for a scapegoat for failed social policy and there isn't much of a gun control movement at all. The success the NRA enjoys involves both votes and the money its members raise to safeguard their rights. Most people just can't get that worked up over what is broadly a non issue in a country of 300 million people.
Anyone reading this who has lived in Chicago can tell you specifically which handful of neighborhoods have a violence problem. If guns were broadly the problem, not gangland culture, then that would not be the case. It's politically safer for Daley, Blagojevich and Jackson to blame the tool and not the culture, but it won't solve the problem.

A bit long and low on emotion and with too many facts for a pro 2nd piece, but we'll see what the Trib does.
 
I agree with your self-assessment about being too long, etc., etc.--but you have cogently presented VERY appropriate responses to these typical gun-control arguments.

Jim H.
 
I like it. My vote is leave it as is. I don't think we can win with sound bites.

I think the other side started out strong with mostly meaningless sound bites, and once we started putting out the truth it seriously blunted their progress and eventually may even have reversed it. Sound bites and distortion are all they have, and I think people outside the 2a community are starting to figure that out.
 
I like charon's response.

My own response was as follows:

"But community vigils are not going to change the illegal manufacturing, marketing and distribution of guns that are intended to kill people. This will be accomplished only through a comprehensive political strategy, one that can outmaneuver, outspend and outwork the gun lobby."

Thus Thomas C. Vanden Berk, Board member, Brady Campaign & Brady Chicago Committee equates law abiding, gun owning citizens, honest businessmen, and respectable manufacturers -- "the gun lobby" -- with the illegal manufacturing, marketing and distribution of guns!

Talk about gratuitous insults! Such dishonesty by the Brady Campaign leads me to have no respect for them.
 
That letter has zero chance of making it to the opinion side of the letters to the editor page.

Too long. The poor intern tasked with editing it down is going to throw it into the circular crackpot file.

Doesn't start with a good lead or hook. The poor intern tasked with editing it down is going to throw it into the circular crackpot file.

Make your paragraphs one sentence, maybe two at the most. Make the whole mess no more than 3-4 paragraphs long.
 
That letter has zero chance of making it to the opinion side of the letters to the editor page.

Too long. The poor intern tasked with editing it down is going to throw it into the circular crackpot file.

Doesn't start with a good lead or hook. The poor intern tasked with editing it down is going to throw it into the circular crackpot file.

Make your paragraphs one sentence, maybe two at the most. Make the whole mess no more than 3-4 paragraphs long.

I'm pretty much aware of that. I worked in PR for 5 years and have been a trade Journalist for 10 in an industry where I encounter the MSM frequently. I have actually had generating such letters as a job responsibility :)

The real issue is that I (and the rest of us lay people) lack "authority" on this issue. If I were the head of some organization (regardless of its legitimacy) or had an academic title the length is less of an issue. Unfortunately, the head of our state rifle association is not particularly skilled in dealing with the biased urban media. Similarly, the Trib seldom publishes op-eds by guys like Lott as a counter. I'm sure there will be one or two "Guns don't kill people, people kill people..." 1-2 sentence rebuttals published, probably the least coherent and most extreme they can find.

That's the way it works at the Trib. Give a huge soapbox to the antis and allow a handful of 1-2 sentence rebuttals (you're too generous in suggesting they would print a pro second rebuttal that had paragraphs). FWIW I have also seen private citizen anti posts that were as long, or longer. The editorial bias is as clear as the last AWB editorial that was (literally) a copy and paste from Brady.org

This was an afterthought anyway :) More to release a little frustration. I posted a reply much longer reply in the online feedback. A side goal was to drive more online responses (over 70, mostly pro 2nd last time I checked) and let them know we are paying attention.
 
Last edited:
I would like to address every salient point made by Mr.Thomas C.Vanden Berk,
in his diatribe about the epidemic of Gun Violence.
and in closing I wish to ask Mr. Berk if he might in future rely more on facts than emotion?
i dunno but i did Intend to be HiRoad!
robert
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top