Killing Police Officers

AP Reporter Colleen Long , our reporter of the Times Square Maching Pistol, has another gun-related story on the national wires. After a colorful and apparently accurate lead recalling several fatal shootings of police officers she writes: " Across the nation, 2009 was a particularly perilous year for officers involved in gun disputes."

Her basis for the headline grabbing claim is a "24 per cent increase" in police slayings through early December 2009 compared to the same 2008 period -- 47 officers killed this year against 38 last.

The numbers are apparently correct, but she slips into that muddy junction linking small-number statistics to general conclusions. For instance, one way to have written the same thing would say the marginal number of officers (9) killed in 2009 versus 2008 amounted to (decimal) .000001 for the 900,000 officers in the nation, far less dramatic, of course, than a 24 per cent increase.

There should be a slightly warmer corner of Hell reserved for thugs who shoot honest and decent cops, but officers dying in the line of duty is not an argument for general gun grabbing. To be fair, Coleen doesn't make that argument, although she does write: "The availability of guns compounds the problem, criminologists say," failing, however, quote any actual criminologists on the matter.

An impulse to balance takes hold, however. Colleen immediately goes on to note that Pennsylvania, with laws Sarah Brady loves, has more police killings than the redneck places Sarah hates.

One paragraph approaches the meat of the argument: "Contributing to this year's spike are cases in which several officers were shot and killed in groups — the four officers last month outside Seattle; the four officers in Oakland, Calif., in March; three officers in Pittsburgh in April; and two officers in Okaloosa County, Fla., in April."

Yes indeedy. To wit:

--The four Lakewood officers were killed by a professional criminal turned loose from a 108-year prison sentence by a fellow named Mike Huckabee, R-Ark.

--The four Oakdale officers were gunned down by another parolee.

--The Pittsburgh killer of three cops had domestic abuse related non-contact order against him and was booted from the Marine Corps after just three weeks for, his friends say, assaulting a sergeant. The Marines won't specify the kind, but the friends say it was a dishonorable discharge.

Keeping track? That accounts for 11 of the 2009 deaths, two more than were required for Coleen's "24 per cent increase." And at least eight of those, possibly all 11, were killed by men clearly barred from firearms use by the laws of every state in the union and by the the federal government.

I offer this lengthy set of observations for your convenience, useful the first time you hear the AP story quoted as justification for some new weapons ban.

Urban Shooter

A Facebook friend joined this guy's group. Judging from the web site, Pastor Kenn might be a useful and interesting counterweight to those - metrocons - who are accused of being insufficiently zealous on gun rights. I have no opinion on him, just passing along word of a possible ally.

I still can't type "metrocon" without giggling.

The Times Square Machine Pistol

Reporter Colleen Long probably got at least two things wrong, and at least one editor let her get away with it.

1. The Mac 10 may or may not have been the "machine pistol" she called it, but the odds are extremely high that it was just the semiautomatic version of the gun. Coleen, "machine pistol" is a term reserved for fully automatic weapons, and they are not available to anyone who walks into a gun store in Virginia. If this one happened to be a true machine pistol, it was sold to the woman only after a special background check, registration, and a hefty excise tax.

2. Coleen tells us New York crooks go to southern gun shows "where there are no required background checks for people buying secondhand weapons."

This is, of course, flatly wrong. A licensed dealer requires the legal paper work and background checks for all firearms, new or used. Colleen is confused because transfers among private citizens do not require the federal records and background checks, and this is true whether the transactions happen in a gun show, a living room, or a a target range. The lesson here, and I am going to shout, is:

"THERE IS NO GUN SHOW LOOPHOLE!"

I know I'm preaching to the armed choir here, mostly in hope that these journalisticly inconvenient truths might catch the eye of a stray news person here and there.

And Coleen, a small hint from a veteran ink-stained wretch: When you're unsure about things -- like whether a firearm is or is not a "machine pistol" -- and the deadline pressure doesn't give you time to check, quote a cop or other "authority" on the matter. He may be just as wrong as you are, but the embarrassment for error is on his shoulders, not yours, and our once-honorable profession looks the better.

An idle aside: I wonder if j-schools have decided it's no longer necessary to mention the concept of attribution.

EDIT: It was the semi-auto version. Ain't no machine pistols 'round here, Boss.

Editor and Publisher

We used it to fish for jobs. It told us who got promoted. A dab hand at reading between the lines could use it to figure out who was about to be fired. It kept us up to date on which media baron was foraging for a fresh Goss. But most of all it demanded that we think about what we were doing as we went about the mundane business of telling the world what it was like.

Dirk Smilly of Forbes writes part of the obit:

With a stodgy layout and, until recently, retro typeface, the monthly journal was one of the most respected sources of news about the newspaper business. Over the years it covered the triumphs of Pulitzer Prize winners, the trials of kidnapped journalists in the Middle East, efforts to crack down on checkbook journalism and the ethical problems posed by tabloid values seeping into news.

The world will be a poorer place when the last E&P rolls off the presses. It may be even more saddening that so few understand exactly what was lost.