We may have reached the pinnacle of bipartisan journalism with some coverage outside of Maryland, where Gov. Wes Moore signed a package of new gun control bills this week by restricting who can carry guns in public and where they can do so. Supreme Court conservatives created a constitutional right to carry guns outside the home last summer when they struck down a 110-year-old New York gun law, a decision that also functionally eliminated parts of Maryland’s legal regime on weapons Moore and his allies in the Legislature are trying to prevent their jurisdiction from becoming another gun anarchy state now that the number of residents allowed to carry a concealed firearm in public. has tripled.
Gun advocacy groups don’t like that (they’re also suing to throw out Maryland’s assault weapons ban), and apparently one resident in particular didn’t either. WBAL’s Tolly Taylor in Baltimore reported You said “a man with an AR-15 has been showing up to a school bus for elementary students for weeks.” He teased an article on the local news that night that viewers would know that “parents say kids are scared, man says he’s protesting @GovWesMoore’s new gun control law. You will hear from both sides at 5 + 6 in the afternoon.”
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Tonight @wbaltv11: A man with an AR-15 has been showing up on a school bus for elementary students for weeks.
Parents say their kids are scared, man says he’s protesting @GovWesMoorethe new gun control law. You will hear from both sides at 5+6 in the afternoon. pic.twitter.com/rpdJXAkVh4
— Tolly Taylor (@TollyTaylor) May 18, 2023
Taylor may just be trying to meet the coverage guidelines set by his bosses, but in the process, this really becomes the apotheosis of bipartisanship in the American press. There is no scenario where some misfit jerk who scares kids at an elementary school bus stop should be portrayed as a politically minded guy by the local news. This is anti-social behavior that should be ridiculed, even by normal people who own guns.
You wouldn’t ask a guy who threatened people on the subway with a knife about his thoughts on whether threatening with a knife is cool and good, and make no mistake: this guy is trying to threaten members of the public with a capable deadly weapon. of killing a lot more people in a lot less time. That this type of weapon is a favorite of school shooters, and they are school shooters, only adds to the sickening nature of the events here. Carrying a gun like this in the public square is a way to constantly communicate the threat of deadly force to those around you. A gun like this exists for two purposes: to maim and kill, and to communicate the threat thereof. This loser could argue that he has a right to carry a gun through the standard political discourse that normal people use on this and any other issue. Parade around a gun for a reason, the same reason courts upheld the prerogative of local jurisdictions to restrict who can carry guns in the public square for 700 years until Supreme Court conservatives got involved .
This is a particularly striking example of the wider phenomenon where, out of genuine belief in the principle of “objectivity” or fear of being called “biased”, members of the mainstream press create a false equivalence between arguments and political opinions. rooted in reality and those that are complete nonsense. Usually, the two-sides phenomenon involves journalists—often some of the most well-informed and presumably intelligent people around—pretending to believe that crap has merit in order to present it as one side of the argument, and who should say who is right? For some 20 years, political writers in Washington have presented the Republican view on climate change — no, uh, no, hoax — as the flip side of the . . . overwhelming scientific consensus on the issue.
These people could have easily demanded an end to pandemic lockdowns without guns. So why were they brought to the steps of the state? Communicate the threat of force if they don’t get their way.
JEFF KOWALSKY//Getty Images
Sometimes reporters will lobotomize themselves during the time period they are working on a story. Anyone who’s been paying attention over the past decade has seen Republicans raise the debt ceiling without incident when a Republican is president. (Most recently, they also added trillions to The National Debt to service a tax cut for wealthy individuals and corporations, part of a debt orgy under President Trump.) But when Republicans turn around and say the debt is a big problem and we can’t raise the debt ceiling, Beltway reporters pretend they don’t remember anything that happened before, or sometimes even that raising the debt ceiling does. not approve new expenses. (Applies to paying off debts already accrued.) This goldfish-brain approach has been necessary for the past few decades because, while the Democratic Party has its manifest failures, the Republican Party no longer resides in reality. To present what they say in the full context of reality would involve losing the mask of neutrality that is often mistaken for objectivity. The objective truth is that Republicans only care about the debt when they’re out of the White House, and now they don’t even care. If they did, they would consider raising revenue as part of a debt settlement. They have ruled it out.
What is so disturbing about this Maryland incident, however, is that taking a neutral stance legitimizes anti-social behavior and presents it as a righteous form of “protest.” This guy doesn’t have to point his gun at anyone to serve his purpose. This has been an ever-expanding problem across the country, com those on the right show up heavily armed in state palaces in an explicit communication of the threat of lethal force if they do not succeed in matters of public order. This is not normal political expression, just as breaking windows and vandalizing businesses is not a legitimate form of protest against police violence and racial injustice in our society. The fact is, certain things are off limits, and we’re really debating where the line should be. This guy’s behavior is on the other side of the line. It is leaving the realm of civil disagreement and discussion and entering a gray area where the potential for deadly violence is involved.
What we are really reluctant to face, however, is that there is a major faction in the United States that continually makes explicit threats to engage in violence if the government, elected by the people to make public policy, makes public policy that they and his faction. I do not like it. They brandish their guns during these discussions, physically or rhetorically, and are never more aggressive than when someone suggests that Thomas Jefferson didn’t envision an inalienable right to carry an AR-15 to Chipotle. It’s not hard to put all this together, especially if you’re a journalist, but it’s scary to face the fact that there is a segment of the American population devoted to the proliferation of deadly weapons — more guns, everywhere, all the time — and threatening to use the ones they already have if they don’t get their way. Easier, then, to stand aside and offer the view from nowhere, where each side has a case worth hearing.
Senior Staff Writer
Jack Holmes is a senior writer for Esquire, where he covers politics and sports. He also presents Unapocalypse, a show about solutions to the climate crisis.
