After a week of subtly baiting the NRA to enter into a shouting match over the Democrats’ efforts to expand background checks to include the no-fly list, the New York Daily News is taking the not-so-subtle approach of setting up the NRA to be the scapegoat for any future firearm-related terror attack.
The NY Daily News is going about this in the classic leftist sense by vilifying NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre–criticizing him for refusing to take the Democrats’ bait and come out swinging in the wake of the heinous Paris terror attacks. And having vilified him, they then continue their attack without ever feeling the need to explain why a no-fly list that includes a 4-year old going to visit his grandmother is supposed to be part of the database through which background checks are run.
Moreover, they do not explain how a no-fly list so imprecise that it once barred Senator Ted Kennedy from commercial flights is now the key to keeping American safe.
Instead, the NY Daily News overlooks the imprecision of the no-fly list and quotes Senator Church Schumer (D-NY) saying, “The same nefarious individual we monitor and bar from our planes, we turn the other way when it comes to allowing them to get guns and explosives. The NRA has fought tooth and nail to prevent these individuals from the terror watchlist from being added over the past several years.”
After quoting Schumer the NY Daily News points out that LaPierre has not bothered refuting him yet, as if LaPierre is obligated to speak every time a Democrat Senator makes an argument in favor of gun control.
The most telling paragraph in the NY Daily News column is the opening one, which says:
Under the gun, with its leader nowhere to be found, the NRA faced a fusillade of new criticism Sunday for prioritizing gun rights over prevention of a Paris-style massacre in the U.S.
That single sentence removes any doubt that the overarching goal of the column is simply to set the NRA up to take the fall for a future firearm-related terror attack in the US.
This is going to be a hard sell for the simple reason that the no-fly list is flawed and the NRA’s opposition to it is part of their larger effort to prevent the passage of ill-designed rules that endanger law-abiding citizens’ ability to keep and bear arms. If you can end up on the no-fly list by simply being “unlucky”–which is the Huffington Post’s contention–then including that list as part of a check that decides whether you can or can’t own a gun is out of the question.
It is interesting to note that Democrats are pushing to expand gun control on law-abiding citizens ubiquitously to keep would-be terrorists from acquiring guns. Yet the reasonable action is to secure borders to keep would-be terrorists from entering the country in the first place and to take serious steps to apprehend and imprison any who are already here.
On November 22 Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump explained that arresting enemies of the state takes away the impetus for gun control.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.