Tabloid Journalism At Its Finest?

As posted on Facebook by the Daily News.

To paraphrase one of the Daily News' most famous headlines -  NRA to NY Daily News: Drop Dead.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that this sort of drivel comes from the New York Daily News. Until 1991, their tagline was "New York's Picture Newspaper." In other words, they were the paper meant for functional illiterates who needed the story told in pictures rather than words.

The gist of the article is that pro-gun Republicans are standing in the way of legislation that would add those people on the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database to the NICS denied list. They quote from a GAO report showing how many people on this list were allowed to purchase firearms. Given the error rate and vague criteria for being added to the list, this should not be surprising. What I do find surprising is that the GAO was even given this data given the secretive nature of that list.

The article quotes major proponents of the list (and enemies of civil liberties) such as Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY). Both have been longtime proponents of using the Terrorist Screening Database as another means of denying firearms purchases.

The timing of the article days after the terrorist attacks in Paris is not coincidental. It is an overt effort on the part of the Daily News to cast the NRA - Hillary Clinton's favorite punching bag - as enablers of Islamic terrorism because they oppose efforts to tie the FBI's vague and inaccurate terrorist list to the NICS System. It is yellow journalism at its worst.

UPDATE: Colion Noir makes an excellent point on Facebook regarding those on the FBI terrorist list who (legally) obtained firearms. He said, " If there are 2000 suspects on a terror watch list and each of them "legally" bought firearms that means they underwent a FBI background check, which means the FBI knew about each attempted purchase and approved them."

I agree with him that this is "dishonest manipulative garbage".