David Codrea:Courant could be shown costs of calling for arrests of ‘undocumented gun owners’

With its call to the state of Connecticut to identify, arrest and prosecute gun owners who have not complied with “assault weapon” registration edicts, The Hartford Courant has removed all pretenses of “common sense gun safety” advocacy, and placed itself squarely in the confiscation and persecution camp. That has not been lost on defiant activists who correctly think of themselves as “undocumented” rather than "illegal."

By demanding the state enforce the unenforceable and deal with both predictable and unintended risks and consequences, the paper’s hard line "leadership"approach is a departure from its earlier panting follower role in its relationship with government, that is, as a publicist for citizen disarmament legislators and a trusted chronicler for the enforcement apparatus. As this column documented about the December, 2012 joint law enforcement agency raid on the Riverview Gun Shop in East Windsor, evidence and timing point to their being given insider information about an ongoing criminal investigation, something generally withheld from the media as a matter of policy so as not to endanger lives and jeopardize prosecutions.

“It’s fair to ask how The Courant was able to produce such a detailed report practically simultaneously to the events without advance information of the ongoing raid,” a September, 2013 Gun Rights Examiner report observed. “It would appear to be especially relevant as the situation was deemed by professional federal law enforcement to be dangerous enough to send dozens of armed agents and police officers ostensibly into harm’s way, not to mention posing real risks to store employees and any customers who may have been on premises.”

 Rather than being a government watchdog concerned with protecting rights against infringements, the publisher and editors have instead assumed the role of cheerleaders and inciters. And that has gun owners understandably angry over the betrayal of everything journalism is ideally supposed to stand for.

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A way to discourage that is to cut off the enemy’s -- and that’s what they are -- supply lines. Major advertisers like automobile dealerships and realtors provide “aid and comfort” to that enemy via advertising revenues. A group of committed and organized gun rights activists could discourage that by approaching one or more with a phone, email and letter campaign, and even weekend sidewalk demonstrations, asking them if they agree with The Courant that the state should lock up their gun-owning customers. It would be especially effective if gun owners who have done business with such firms in the past contact the reps who made the commissions and who send them new business card refrigerator magnets every year.

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