The Caffeinated Penguin

Posted By matt on May 14, 2007

Since the article I posted earlier was an editorial, I just wrote them a response.

To the Editorial Staff of the New York Times:

When I read the Editorial entitled "Silence On Guns" as was published
May 10, 2007, I could not help but be insulted. The writer of the
editorial capitalized on the Virginia Tech massacre to criticize the
current administration on two gun-related issues. The first was the
passage of the much-maligned Tiahrt amendment, which prohibits the
release of firearms trace data except as part of a bona-fide criminal
investigation. The second is regarding the bill S 1237, which is
currently before the Senate and seeks to allow the Attorney General to
prohibit gun sales to suspected terrorists.

The argument put forth in the editorial is fundamentally flawed, since
neither of these bills would have stopped the Virginia Tech massacre.
The Tiahrt amendment has nothing to do with prohibiting the sale of
firearms and therefore does not apply here. Furthermore, S 1237 would
only have applied if the shooter was on a terrorist watch list and the
Attorney General chose to block the sale. Since no one has mentioned
that he was a suspected terrorist, I presume that this would not apply
either.

Now, had you really wanted to be clever, you would have used the
massacre to argue for the passage of HR 297, which aims to improve the
NICS background check system to include more information to prohibit gun
sales to more individuals. However, not only did you fail to construct a
cogent argument for the points you were trying to make, but you missed
the completely obvious one right before you.

In conclusion, I would appreciate if, in the future, you didn't insult
your readership with obviously fallacious arguments, as we are smarter
than that.

Category: LJ Import
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