An interesting call

I recently wrote a letter to the editor to protest this column's misrepresentation of sources. To wit, the author used a Brady Center report, but described it as data from the BATF. Pretty big difference, I dare say. Unfortunately, my town's police chief may be the one who is misrepresenting this to the columnist. I might need to write a note to him and the city council about this. He's entitled to his views, but he's not entitled to represent political action groups as if they were reports from a governmental agency.

At any rate, one of my points was that gun traces rarely reveal any evidence because only 12% of crime guns are obtained through a gun or pawn shop, and that even most of those are obtained legally.

So I got a call from the editorial assistant asking whether I meant to write "legally" or "Illegally". Apparently the editor could not bring himself to believe that a portion of criminals actually obtained their firearms through legal channels--that is, as citizens not yet convicted of a crime.

It shows brilliantly how far we need to go to get sane dialogue on the subject of guns, I dare say.