By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
A Sunday story published by Gannett’s USA Today seems to defy the newspaper’s blatant and longstanding anti-gun editorial stance—at least at first.
“What the Supreme Court’s test for gun rules could mean for AR-15s this year,” was written by Maureen Groppe, a reporter who covers the U.S. Supreme Court.
Groppe did not include much of her employer’s usual anti-gun caterwauling, which is unusual. Don’t forget USA Today allows anti-gun activists from The Trace—the propaganda arm of Everytown for Gun Safety—to write, supply photos and even edit its newspaper stories.
Instead, Groppe changed tactics: Out are the kids from the Trace. In are two new, more refined anti-gun voices, both law professors, in fact, cofounders of the Duke Center for Firearms Law.
Now, a brief segue about the Duke Center for Firearms Law and their extreme positions on firearms and firearms law. All you really need to know is that last December, the group welcomed a new executive director, Hayley Lawrence.
A press release sums up Lawrence and her professional history:
“Her pro bono practice focused on representing individuals in criminal justice matters and working with groups like Brady, Giffords, and Everytown to promote gun safety policies as amici before the federal courts of appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court,” the press release states.
The NRA published a story last December shortly after Lawrence took over: “Gun Control Advocate to Lead Duke Center for Firearms Law.”
NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action promised it will be keeping its eye on Ms. Lawrence, which was a worthy decision.
Now, back to Groppe’s Sunday tome.
The reporter actually made room for one pro-gun voice, a member of Gun Owners of America, but he only got one quote. I’d bet every one of my ARs that was done only to satisfy the longstanding journalism rule about including “both sides” of a story. Both sides are certainly included, but the remainder of the story—the vast majority of the space—went to anti-gun sources.
Douglas Letter, whom Groppe described as the “chief legal officer for the Brady gun violence prevention advocacy group,” was quoted as saying: “Obviously, there are disagreements on where that line should be drawn. We think it absolutely should be drawn so that assault weapons bans are constitutional.”
Joseph Blocher is a law professor at Duke University School of Law and cofounder of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, whom Groppe referred to as a “Second Amendment expert.”
Blocher has a history of anti-gun writings. He’s especially anti-Bruen.
In 2022, while testifying before the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee, Blocher noted that the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision “introduced significant unpredictability into Second Amendment law going forward.”
In 2023, he and Professor Darrell A. H. Miller, a law professor at the University of Chicago School of Law who cofounded Duke Center for Firearms Law with Blocher, wrote that “guns can create fear, intimidation, and social trauma; deter civic participation and the exercise of constitutional rights; and further entrench racial inequality.”
Blocher was relatively mild in Groppe’s story, although he referred to legitimate gun ownership as a “debate” rather than a constitutional right.
“These weapons have become very, very wrapped up in identity on many sides of the debate,” Blocher said. “The stakes are high.”
Miller, too, emphasized this mythical debate over the Second Amendment.
“When they come down with decisions that ask questions like, `Is a modern jet airplane more like a horse, or is it more like a carriage, or is it more like a boat?’ I think people that are paying attention just feel a little bewildered,” Miller said. “It’s like, `What kind of odd, elite parlor game is happening up there?’”
The two professors are using that same tactic. Rather than admitting that Bruen is easy to decipher, far from complex and law, they describe it as bewildering and a debate. However, we shall see whether a majority of Supreme Court justices are able to somehow grasp the decision, in about a year.
Groppe concludes her story by claiming that ARs are sometimes called “the iPhone of guns because of their popularity and how easy they are to customize.”
I somehow missed that.
I’ve never heard anyone refer to their AR as an iPhone, but then I’ve only been writing about guns for more than a dozen years, and I’m certainly not as well versed on the gun “debate” as any reporter working for USA Today.
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