They Almost Got It Right

The New York Times I mean.

Kudos to Leslie Wayne for writing an otherwise noteworthy and mostly accurate (don't nitpick the minor details guys) article on the rebirth of Smith & Wesson in the Time's Business section. Its pretty much unassailable, except for the Time's inability to resist the ubiquitous gun banning bigot quote.

Specifically, rather than seek out comment from the NRA, NSSA, or any of the myriad of gun magazines and other gun owner organizations, they gave noted gun banner Joshua Horwitz an opportunity to spin some success for his organizations efforts (and also enabled the times to source a slightly inaccurate statement).

"The government is the only business that is expanding," said Joshua Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, based in Washington. "The civilian market is not, while the government is putting tens of billions of dollars into homeland security."

Yep, its mostly true - though not entirely - but still.

Quoting Horwitz though, is an embarrassment, especially since his quote didn't lend much to the story. Its mere presence is certainly more prejudicial than probative, its mere presence calling into question the article's underlying truthfulness (which, in fact, turns out to be rather accurate and truthful).

Even worse, in my opinion, is the quote from Judas on behalf of the latest bigoted gun banning fraud released on the American Public, the so called American Hunters and Shooters Association.

"Repealing the assault weapon bans opened a new market for military-style and exotic weapons for consumers," said Robert A. Ricker, executive director of the American Hunters and Shooters Association, a membership group. "A lot of guys delight in having the biggest and most nasty-looking guns. That's one of the industry trends."

Anyway, those two quotes aside, the article is mostly positive and exceedingly accurate considering the average treatment of this matter in the press. Of course, outside the Times op-ed page, I've found their coverage of firearms matters to be mostly better than the average MSM publication.