This guy is news editor of the Grand View University newspaper in Des Moines. He is presumably unarmed, but terrifying. In a piece bemoaning the recent Iowa shall-issue law he writes:
So, Devlin, you don't agree officers should shoot when, for instance, they desire to inhibit a crack-rattled 250-pound thug coming at you fast with a Louisville Slugger?
Of, if a cop makes a mistake, that the unnecessarily dead should be comforted because the bullet in his brain was not fired by an untrained amateur?
I suppose it's possible to believe that I cherry-picked the item, looking for the worst possible paragraph. (We've all written some stinkers, haven't we?)
No, down a little further:
The exception to carry guns should rely solely in law enforcement and military because I have never heard of a purely positive outcome after one has been fired.
What's been fired? A lawman? A National Guard PFC? (See Wagner's advice to high school freshmen on making referents clear.) And, setting aside the tortured syntax, do you intend to spend your journalism career making universal pronouncements based on things you personally have or haven't heard?
Or what you hope, without actual thought?
I hope the clean background checks are enough to categorize people as sane enough not to incite a shootout with other gun carriers.
I see. You hope shootouts are limited to folks with guns shooting it out with folks who have no guns.
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Ladies and gentlemen, we all have bad days, and maybe Dev was suffering through one, manifested in marginal literacy and more than marginal incoherence throughout the piece.
On the other hand, we might be dealing with the error President Obama committed Tuesday night when he told congress and the world that every youngster "should have access to higher education."
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H/T to Between Two Rivers where, by the way, there is yeoman work in keeping track of local efforts to gut the shall-issue law.
2 comments:
Thanks for the compliment, Jim.
I've been posting the county gun map for a week and I'm hoping it makes a difference. Maybe it will open some eyes up at the statehouse.
Every time I lament my lack of formal training in the craft of writing, along comes someone like young Devlin and cheers me right the heck up. ;)
(WV: "Icalocce". Known as "Itchy". Made his bones with the Genovese family in '66. Knows where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.)
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