Reporting on Nevada Gun Measure Lawsuit Perpetuates Key Misrepresentations

It’s fair to wonder if there’s an unstated political motive for a Bloomberg-backing “Second Amendment supporter” and a “gun safety advocate” to go after Adam Laxalt at the same time he’s announced his bid for governor. (Adam Laxalt/Facebook)

“Three Nevada residents are suing Gov. Brian Sandoval and Attorney General Adam Laxalt in Clark County District Court over what they allege is the state’s failure to implement a new law requiring federal background checks on private gun sales,” a Friday report by Andrew Craft of Fox News states. “The lawsuit claims the governor is stonewalling efforts to enforce it.”

So good so far. Fair and balanced as advertised. They report, we decide.

He even does a good job explaining why Nevada has not enforced the law. Nevada Firearms Coalition explained it at the time:

“[T]he recent passage of the Nevada legislation regarding background checks for private sales cannot dictate how federal resources are applied,” Kimberly Del Greco of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division informed the Nevada Department of Public Safety in a Dec. 14 letter, meaning the FBI would not allow intermediaries to run background checks as required by the Act. Based on a resulting department clarification request to Laxalt on how to proceed, the attorney general concluded “citizens may not be prosecuted for their inability to comply with the Act unless and until the FBI changes its public position and agrees to conduct the background checks consistent with the Act.” (See correspondence here, posted by the Reno Gazette Journal.)

OK, so he’s got the fact and the timing right. What’s the problem?

Two that I see right off the bat, and they’re not inconsequential. The go to the heart of how the gun-grabbers identify themselves and how a supposedly objective media helps them perpetuate it:

“Dale Zusi, Vicki Delatorre, and Sydney Gordon are the three plaintiffs in the case and were instrumental in getting the issue on the ballot,” Craft writes. “Delatorre herself is a gun owner and supporter of the Second Amendment.”

No, Delatorre claims she’s a supporter of the Second Amendment, the one that ends in “shall not be infringed.”  She’s actually one of those big “but” pseudo-supporters, as in “I believe in the Second Amendment but...”

And she’s advocating for prior restraints that can’t work without another huge and dangerous infringement. Per Greg Ridgeway, Deputy Director, National Institute of Justice, in his “Summary of Select Firearm Violence Prevention Strategies”:

“Effectiveness depends on the ability to reduce straw purchasing, requiring gun registration…”

Craft’s next bit of narrative parroting: Designating Elizabeth Becker “a local gun safety advocate.”

Some of us would argue the edicts she demands makes things a lot more dangerous, and just ceding to Delatorre or Becker their own characterizations without at least addng qualifiers like “self-professed” gives credence to their side. Because what they’re claiming to be is debatable.

If  “progressive” Bloomberg citizen disarmament apparatchik Becker has any credentials in actual gun safety training, it’s a remarkably well-kept secret. Instead she’s a flack for Moms Demand Action, seeking a way to save face for gun-grabbers who incompetently (and sneakily) crafted their Question 1 ballot initiative,  effectively blowing $20M in Astroturf funding.

It’s fair to wonder if the timing of this is meant as another sneaky way to publicly attack Laxalt’s just-annouced bid for governor.

And despite all the blathering about their citizen disarmament efforts being a “grassroots effort,” my analysis from a few years back showed “Nevadans for Background Checks” to be an Astroturf front group for Bloomberg’s Everytown.

Fox News has an unfair reputation for being “conservative,” presumably because most there (with a few notable exceptions) don’t wear “progressive” sympathies on their sleeves. When its reporters unquestioningly adopt the language of the left they cease being objective chroniclers and make it fair to wonder if it’s really unintentional because they just don’t kow any better.

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David Codrea’s opinions are his own. See “Who speaks for Oath Keepers?”

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