Compare and contrast, two gun articles

Reader, Bea (via Sam), suggested that I post a link to an article at the Des Moines Register of a reporter and his attendance at a permit to carry class offered by Hawkeye Firearms Instruction located in Oskaloosa, IA.

The article, Munson: Guns turning Iowa into wild West? Not so fast, gives the readers his experience at the class and how the permit process works in general.

Turns out that the key lesson in gun class is to keep your finger off the trigger.

The focus is on why not to fire your weapon.

I think part of his purpose was to play down the "blood in the streets" dire predictions by hoplophobes in Iowa and bring some common sense and maybe "old school" reporting back to the pages of the Register.

Which is making me wonder how this made it past his editors?

My regular readers can deduce from my writing (if you can call it that), my posts are generally negative. It seems like I'm against everything. I was even against this new permit law (I lobbied my representative and senator to try to pass the "Constitutional carry" law instead) and I'm still against parts of it.

Unfortunately, I can't just post something positive without throwing out a negative. I wanted to emphasize an even-handed article by comparing it to pile of gossa that is labeled "journalism" by today's standards.

Over at the Iowa State Daily (nice picture of a guy pointing a gun, trigger on finger, towards a young lady placing flowers in the barrel. Cutie, huh?) filled with inaccuracies, tired old rhetoric and typical comparisons to other countries. Hint, USA is bad.

That article, Opoien: Gun control is about safety first, the writer doesn't appear to make any effort to understand the issue beyond her narrow view.

Some points I'd like to make:

We ain't Canada.

Watching a Lethal Weapon movie to glean the evil "cop killer" bullets and plastic guns lies, is some fine journalistic investigation.

And the word "regulated" in the Second Amendment doesn't mean what you wrote.

Maybe the Iowa State journalism department should spend less time reading the opinion pages of the Des Moines Register and start reading actual articles from real reporters.

Thank you Bea and Sam for pointing out the Register article.

Kudos to Kyle Munson for writing it.