Gun Group Ad Challenges
Media, Liberal Commentators

A full-page advertisement scheduled to run in journalism magazines in late Spring challenges media professionals to reconsider their conventional approach to civil liberties by linking the right to bear arms with highly-prized privacy rights.

The provocative ad was created and placed by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), a national, tax-exempt educational, legal and publishing group celebrating its 25th anniversary in 1999.

“If government doesn’t belong in the bedroom” the SAF ad begins, over a picture of an open night table exposing both condoms and a revolver, “What’s it doing in the dresser drawer?”

The ad is running in the June 1999 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, in the May 1999 issue of Reason, and upcoming issues of The New Republic, National Review and Weekly Standard.

“We wanted people – especially people who haven’t given the issue a lot of thought – to see gun rights in more personal terms,” said Alan M. Gottlieb, founder of SAF.

“After all, it’s the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Needs. Those who feel most strongly about other civil rights, such as the First Amendment, would do well to remember the Second Amendment is the guarantor of all others,” he said.

“Many gunowners are unhappy when they see what they perceive as an anti-gun bias in the media,” said Joseph P. Tartaro, president of the Foundation, “but in many cases, it’s just a failure by hurried reporters and editors to think through the issue or find competent resources. Many journalists have fallen into their own “sound-bite trap.”

“When we see glaring errors like a newspaper referring to a handgun as a “semi-automatic revolver” or Time magazine using an illustration to explain how a bullet works and getting it technically wrong, we’re naturally upset. There are so many national and local resources that such errors are unforgivable for anyone who wants to call him or herself a professional journalist,” Tartaro said.

“But when it comes to public policy issues, the media owes its viewers, listeners and readers even more. Giving your opinion shouldn’t mean saying the first thing that comes into your head,” said Gottlieb. “A fair hearing of all sides is all gunowners want, especially since many of them think of their gun ownership as a precious civil right.”

The ad attempts to give its readers some background on the issue, including the fact that gun control laws are historically linked to 19th Century Jim Crow laws and anti-immigrant xenophobia of the early 20th Century. Law-abiding gunowners, the ad says, are not part of any “crime problem” in the US. In fact, independent research shows gunowners to be a factor in reduced crime rates nationwide. The ad also invites readers to learn more about the Second Amendment Foundation, which publishes books, monographs and periodicals, hosts symposia and other public events and involves itself in court cases, including recent attempts by some cities to sue gun manufacturers.

“We hope the ad’s readers will rethink their conventional wisdom, visit our website (www.saf.org) or contact us for more information,” said Tartaro.

The Second Amendment Foundation is a tax-exempt educational, legal action and publishing group founded in 1974 which has over 600,000 individual citizen supporters nationwide. It previously has funded successful firearms-related suits against the cities of Los Angeles, New Haven, CT, and San Francisco on behalf of American gunowners. The Foundation is headquartered in Bellevue, WA with additional publishing offices in Buffalo, NY.

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