I really shouldn’t watch the news

Last night after a lot of the hubbub about the new bill before the House (HR2640) which has passed in a voice vote, I made the mistake of settling in and watching the CBS evening news. In case you’ve been living in a cave in Botswana (is Botswana still a country? I can’t keep up with those African republics – ed.) the CBS news is hosted by none other than Katie Couric. Although I’ve never expressed here, I really can’t stand Katie Couric; not only is she extremely anti-gun, but she’s also just smug.

Newsbusters has a great summary of her piece on HR 2640. In a startling display of fair and balanced reporting, Wayne LaPierre from the NRA got exactly once sentence of airtime; Paul Helmke from the Brady Campaign To Take Your Stuff got an entire on camera interview.

Honestly, it was probably the most self-congratulatory thing I’d ever seen. While in a recent blog post the Campaign gives a little credit to the NRA, you wouldn’t have known it from watching CBS last night. The best part was this quote from Helmke:

There’s still a lot more that needs to be done and I hope that Wayne LaPierre and the NRA will follow through on the statements they’ve made today and let’s strengthen the background checks. Background checks work and if we can get them applicable to all sales of guns, then we can make all of our communities safer.

It’s a great quote, because it says volumes about how the Brady Bunch really feels. It starts with a subtle smear of the NRA, implying that they (the NRA) doesn’t actually want to strengthen background checks. Then he nicely segues into the Brady’s favorite whipping horse, gun shows. Although he never says “gun shows”, the “all sales of guns” means “private transfers at those evil gun shows”.

I’m still supporting this new bill, despite the media spin. Like a lot of people, I think that we gain from it; and we don’t actually lose anything that isn’t already a law. I’d just like to point out that while the Brady’s, McCarthy, and everyone else is playing nice right now, their goals haven’t changed.