Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier made a lot of waves regarding his stance on gun rights for non-violent felons. Sure, he might be positioning himself for a future campaign as more of a pro-gun supporter than he really is, which is why he switched stances. It’s also possible that he really did change his thinking on the subject. For the people who will be impacted by the results of the case that prompted this change, it doesn’t matter. They just like what they’re hearing.
But it sure looks like the media in the Sunshine State are less than pleased.
It starts with a headline: “Gun lobby praises Florida AG over push for ‘nondangerous’ felon gun ownership.”
The “gun lobby” is a tell. Anti-gun groups are never framed as the “gun control lobby.” They’re just “gun safety groups” or the like. No, it’s only pro-gun groups that get the sinister-sounding description.
Then, in the piece itself, we get a longish breakdown of the case that prompted Uthmeier to present his change in position, followed at the end by this:
Uthmeier’s opinion that only dangerous felons should lose their rights to possess a firearm has been cheered by Second Amendment supporters.
Now, I agree with GOA’s remarks here, because they’re perfectly valid.
But when you offer a headline about the “gun lobby” and their praise, you should probably include more than two sentences, don’t you think? Especially when you’ve spent the rest of the time describing the case and presenting thinly-veiled commentary about how state law presents a pathway towards rights being restored, even if federal law doesn’t, only to drop this at the butt-ends of the piece.
See, what happened in this one is that they primed the audience by presenting the case and why it shouldn’t matter, at least in the writer’s mind, only to drop a single quote that supports the headline, all as a way to steer the audience to react a certain way. Plus, while a lot of groups have made a lot of comments about this, the only one highlighted is more of a fist-pump rather than one explaining why Uthmeier was right.
In other words, assuming that someone sticks around to the very end of the article, which is never guaranteed, they don’t present any defense of Uthmeier’s current stance from a pro-gun group.
These are the games the media plays.
Of course, this piece originally appeared at the Florida Phoenix, which is part of States Newsroom, which is a left-leaning “newsroom” not unlike The Trace, only more general in their coverage topics. It’s not unbiased in the least, but while The Trace is a bit more likely to admit their biases, States Newsroom entities pretend they’re just good old media outlets.
Then again, these days, there’s not much of a difference, is there?
Uthmeier made the right call here, but if you stick to the mainstream media, you really wouldn’t get a good idea of just why it was the right call, nor about how others in the gun rights community agree with it and why. Not really.
There’s a reason people hate the news media these days.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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