Without providing any evidence, the paper says “loosened restrictions on firearms” contributed to gun violence in Columbus. “Journalism” like this is why we need common sense media control.
Like many other cities across the country, Columbus, Ohio, saw a spike in homicides during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though that was a nationwide phenomenon, The New York Times, in a story that purports to explain “How Gun Violence Spread Across One American City,” blames “loosened restrictions on firearms” in Ohio.
The implausibility of that explanation is immediately apparent because the story opens and closes with the June 2021 death of 43-year-old Jason Keys, who was killed during a bizarre dispute in Walnut Hill Park, “a leafy neighborhood” of Columbus. Although Times reporters Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff present that incident as emblematic of how weak gun control has helped make formerly safe Columbus neighborhoods newly dangerous, the details of this homicide plainly do not fit that theory.
Keys and his wife had just visited her grandparents’ house when they were confronted by 72-year-old Robert Thomas, who was carrying a rifle. Prosecutors later said Thomas “believed that the couple had let the air out of his tires and poured herbicide on his lawn.” But it was not Thomas who killed Keys. Another neighbor, a 24-year-old ex-Marine named Elias Smith, responded to the altercation by firing seven shots at Keys from his front porch.
By Jacob Sullum
