Yet Another Sad Panda

The Saturday New York Times presents us with another bleating of a sad, sad panda. This time it's from the editorial board itself. It's about the recent death of the District of Columbia Congressional representation bill. The dreaded "gun lobby" added an amendment that would erase the District's onerous gun laws. Finally, gun-control people in Congress (here's looking at you Eleanor Holmes Norton) killed the bill.

The editorial writers were outraged and pull out every emotional stop. Here's the first paragraph. I took the liberty of illustrating how they try to manipulate the reader. The words in red/bold are emotional triggers used to feed your outrage against the "gun lobby." Green/bold highlights words they use to win sympathy for gun control people.

Congress has shamefully caved in, yet again, to the gun lobby and abandoned the effort to grant the long-suffering District of Columbia a voting representative in the House. Hopes for passage were high this year, until the historic measure was poisoned in the Senate with an amendment to strip the district’s government of its power to enact responsible gun control laws.

It goes on from there including the dubious point that the shooting at the Holocaust Museum illustrates the need for these laws. Hell, the murder illustrates the failure of the laws to prevent such an occurrence.

The editorial contains an out-right lie, "The gun lobby galvanized anti-gun control Republicans and timorous Democrats in both houses to stop the representation bill in its tracks. " Actually, it was pro-gun control supporters who stopped the bill. If it were up to the gun lobby, the bill, including the gun amendment, would have passed--for better or worse, given that District representation is probably unConstitutional.

The editorialists threw some blame at Obama for not standing up to the "gun lobby" and signing "a credit card reform law that included another senseless gun lobby diktat...." allowing licensed people to carry loaded guns in National Parks (there's those emotional heart-tugs again).

There's many more sad panda bleats, but finally they admit that the "gun lobby" is winning. Warms my heart it does.