There are just too many damn guns

Newspaper subscription has started to trend upward.

By Ken Tingley

Our community can take great satisfaction in knowing we are safer than Chesapeake, Va. In our Walmart shooting, only one person was wounded. In Chesapeake, Va., five were killed by a store manager who later killed himself.

I suspect some will take solace in that.

The shooting at the Queensbury Walmart on Route 9 comes a week after a shootout in Caroline Street in Saratoga Springs wounded two people.

Why should we be immune?

It comes on the heels of the nightclub shooting in Colorado Springs where five were killed. In fact, 24 people and 37 people were injured in gun rampages in the last week alone. I was thankful this year that no one was shot in my house.

You are not aware of all these mass shootings because they are no longer news. It is a norm of American life because the American people have been brainwashed into thinking they are in danger and the only way to feel safer is to own your own gun and wear it while shopping.

Gun advocates gleefully point out how the good guys with guns sometimes stop the bad guys with guns. But if nobody had any guns, wouldn’t that put a half to it all?

Two-hundred and 50 years ago the Founding Fathers decided that a well-armed militia should be allowed. If only we could convince gun-owners to only use flint-lock rifles instead of AR-15s.

Data was released in October that more than 47,000 Americans died from firearms in 2021. That’s two-third of Warren County being killed in one year.

Gun-related homicides and suicides rose 8 percent last year. Not because there are more bad guys, but because guns are prevalent in just about every American home. Dealing with depression? There’s is a gun in the nightstand. Sometimes, it is that simple.

There is a good chance we will have more gun-related deaths this year than ever before.

Sell more guns and you will have more deaths.

Bring it to Walmart. Or the local diner. And definitely to the supermarket in case someone cuts you off in the produce aisle.

Some of you will blame this on government policies that have made our communities crime-ridden and unsafe. If you scrutinized those claims, you’d find crime is up only a fraction since the pandemic and is still far lower than it was 20 years ago. Voters in suburban counties voted Republican this year after being brain-washed with a constant stream of attack ads about the dangers lurking around every corner in our cities.

I think what is making our communities less safe is gun ownership.

Yes, I said that out loud.

Over the course of 21 years, the gun issue repeatedly came up when I was editor. I am sorry to report I failed to address the issue adequately.

In “The Last American Newspaper” there are three chapters where I address the gun issue. It never went away. It just got worse.

After Columbine, I asked a young sportswriter on our staff who had attended Columbine High to write about the school and the community.

“I sat down to write and I didn’t know what to put down on paper,” Ridgell wrote that day. “I didn’t know what I should say. Sportswriters can’t really know how to describe a situation of such weight. To give it some - any - perspective. I wonder who can?”

It is a pronouncement that holds up two decades later for the hundreds of mass shootings across the United States. It was also a sentiment that would permeate our newsroom, and to a greater extent our community over the next two decades as there was increasingly less horror and shock, replaced by yawning acceptance.

You can’t advocate for a gun safety course without a slew of gun advocates attacking their right to bear arms. It’s true. You can buy a long rifle at the local Dick’s and walk out of the store without even being shown how to load the bullets.

So here we are 10 years after Sandy Hook, more than 20 years since Columbine and we accept it all.

We don’t care about gun violence.

We’re OK with people carrying guns in supermarkets.

There is no need to argue.

There is really nothing to worry about, people are just getting wounded in our communities.

So far.

Good news for newspapers

According to recent statistics from the Medil Subscriber Engagement Index,  there was an uptick in newspaper readership during the pandemic and it has continued to rise.

Surveys show that many readers say they are willing to pay for their online news as well, so there is an opportunity for further growth.

Let’s hope that is the case and that it is not too late.

Attacks on journalists

The American Press Institute reported last week that a student journalist at the University of Arizona published an article critical of the TikTok videos of a fellow student. The writer received an onslaught of harassment from the student’s fans. The journalist’s phone number was posted and the writer began receiving hundreds of phone calls and texts.

This is a world that is becoming more and more common. When people do not agree with a point of view, they attack the source personally.

What is wrong with people like that?

Local events

I will be back in town to speak at the Queensbury Senior Center on Monday at 2 p.m. and the Prestwick Chase at Saratoga retirement community in Saratoga Springs next Wednesday.

After that, WAMC host Joe Donahue will be joining me for a discussion on newspapers and journalism at the Greenwich Lions Club dinner on Thursday, Dec. 15.

Photo of the Day

I found this building on the campus of Tulane University this weekend. It made me chuckle.