On Monday, I ripped apart a 60 Minutes report on Mexico’s lawsuit against gun companies. It wasn’t overly difficult. In fact, the word “report” should have been in quotes earlier because it wasn’t reporting. It was simply propaganda being pushed by the plaintiffs with absolutely no effort to look for the truth. They spoke with one gun store that declined to go on the record–and not without good reason, really–and didn’t seem to make any effort to speak to anyone on the other side beyond that.
To say that there was a lot to criticize is putting it mildly.
And I was far from alone in taking them on.
Over at our sister site, Townhall, Matt Vespa talked about what little of the “report” he could stomach.
First, the article on the subject: Mexico has strict gun laws, whereas America is the Wild West. We’ve seen this lazy narrative before (via CBS News):
During one of the deadliest chapters in its history, Mexico’s government devised a new strategy to curb gun violence; it filed two lawsuits.The first, in 2021, included U.S. gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson and one of their wholesalers. The second, filed a year later, against five U.S. gun stores, claimed they engaged in “reckless and unlawful business practices” that supply dangerous criminals.
[…]
Like the U.S., Mexico’s constitution grants its citizens the right to bear arms. But unlike the U.S., that right comes with a long list of restrictions.
There’s also a big difference in the number of gun dealers. In the U.S., there are more than 75,000 active gun dealers, twice as many as U.S. post offices. While in Mexico, there’s just one gun store. It’s located in the middle of a heavily guarded military base in Mexico City.
Stop. That’s where I couldn’t go any further. There are restrictions in the United States. You must undergo a background check to get a firearm from an FFL dealer. You can’t own firearms if convicted of domestic abuse or a violent crime. It’s not like going to Aldi’s. There is no such thing as a gun show loophole, and private sales are so small that their impact on the entire gun violence debate is either de minimis or irrelevant; most private sales are transfers among family members via inheritance.
He also points out that despite Mexico’s incredibly strict gun control laws, they have anything but a low homicide rate. Of course, the purpose of the “report” and Mexico’s lawsuit is to try and blame us for it, but it’s clear their gun control laws haven’t really had the desired effect.
They’ve done a great job of making sure no one can stand up to the cartels, though.
At The Blaze, their report mirrored my own in a lot of ways, though with a bit less snark. They highlighted a lot of other voices criticizing the story, though.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) tweeted, “Mexico must be the safest, least-violent country in the world. Oh wait …”
One user on X, citing the cities with the highest homicide rates in the world, responded, “This gun control policy is so successful only 9 of the top 10 most murderous cities are in Mexico.”
Sean Davis, CEO of the Federalist, wrote, “Mexico is definitely known for having no murder problems, so obviously that policy is working great.”
“You can tell this method is working by looking at Mexico’s extremely low crime rate,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary, Jeremy Redfern.
Blaze News’ Julio Rosas noted that the point of the “60 Minutes” piece was “to blame the U.S. and our Second Amendment for Mexico’s violence. As much as I love Mexico, I’m not going to advocate for restricting my rights because another country wants to shift blame.”
I’m right there with you, Julio. I’m right there with you.
After all, what Mexico is doing is not really any different than what Chicago does when it blames Indiana for their violent crime issue or when New York blames their gun issues on states like Georgia.
There are a lot of states out there that simply aren’t having the same violent crime issues and are just as accessible for gun traffickers. The reason guns flow into these anti-gun areas isn’t because of the pro-gun states but because people in the anti-gun regions are demanding guns from the traffickers in the first place.
Supply meets demand. It doesn’t create it.
Pointing out those gun control failures in Mexico, as Matt Vespa did at Townhall, is an easy dunk to make, and I’m glad people made it, because it’s also a perfectly valid criticism.
Yet through it all, you had to know that the Babylon Bee was going to have some fun with it, and they did.
The show’s episode featured a hard-hitting investigation into the positive results of the strict anti-gun initiatives enacted by Emperor Palpatine and his governing regime. According to the program’s journalists, it’s not unreasonable to push for similar policies in the United States.
“It’s truly impressive to see what they’ve accomplished,” said 60 Minutes reporter Leslie Stahl. “While the galaxy was once a violent no man’s land governed by chaos and everyone doing whatever they wished, Emperor Palpatine has put common sense measures in place to make things far more safe and secure. The incoming Trump administration here in the U.S. would be wise to take notes. This is how a government should operate.”
And let’s be real here, any would-be tyranny would have to regulate firearms, which is kind of the point.
The fact that 60 Minutes would push gun control as they always have, without a hint of humility, even after they were lambasted for trying to run cover for Kamala Harris’s inane rambling responses to questions, clearly illustrates that if the tyranny in question were pushing a narrative they favored, they’d be completely uncritical of it.
At no point should 60 Minutes get a pass for that horrific miscarriage of journalism.
I mean, at least pretend you’re trying to be neutral, for crying out loud.
I can’t imagine why trust in the media is so ridiculously low.
Read the full article here