By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

Targeting the Globe

Visit the Web site of the Second Amendment Foundation — a pro-gun lobbying group — and here’s what you’ll find:

  • “SAF Files Ohio Lawsuit …”
  • “SAF Sues Library System …”
  • “SAF Files Texas Lawsuit …”
  • “SAF Files Amici Curiae Brief …”
  • “SAF Sues To Overturn …”

Keep that in mind as you read this Herald story about the foundation’s efforts to have Globe columnist Steve Bailey fired over an allegedly illegal 2005 gun purchase he was involved in while researching a piece on lax gun laws. (Why now? Bailey talked about it on Tom Finneran’s WRKO program recently.)

As former prosecutor Randy Chapman, who heads the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, tells the Herald, “I don’t see a criminal intent there. I just see someone facilitating a news story.” The Herald also notes that the SAF has gone after Sam Donaldson, too.

Here is the SAF press release on Bailey, in which the Globe is helpfully identified as being “owned by the anti-gun New York Times.” And here is Bailey’s 2005 column.

I hope the lawyers don’t tell Bailey he can’t write about this. It’s ridiculous, and the Globe ought to stand up to the Second Amendment Foundation, which makes the National Rifle Association look reasonable by comparison.

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Bailey shoots back

8 Comments

  1. Edward Prisby

    I’ll never understand the gun-nuts. I get that there is a second amendment, and I get that it can be read (with some dispute) that gun ownership is a right.But you have to be just past sanity to think you “need” guns to protect yourself from the government, and you have to have an overdeveloped sense of fear/paranoia to think you absolutely “need” a gun to protect yourself from crime in this day and age. I mean, what are the odds that: 1.You’ll be robbed, 2. you’ll have your gun on your person at the time of the robbery, and 3. the whole shoot-out thing will turn out okay for you?So, really, gun ownership is more a hobby than anything else. Have you ever seen people take their hobby so seriously as the gun crowd? They put the Star Wars crowd to shame…

  2. Peter Porcupine

    I almost swerved off the road listening to that segment. The whole thing would have floated by if Todd Fineberg hadn’t been knowledgeable about gun laws and straw man purchases. And Bailey idiotocally saying it was OK, because he expensed it to the Glob!Tell me – when will the Glob be registering this weapon?All Baily proved is that people who are willing to break the law can get guns. Oooohhhh.I hope the snob DOES get a little punishment for his condescension to legal gun owners, those poor, low-foreheaded sorts – legla gun registration in the Commonwealth has decreased by 2/3, and gun deaths are up 70%. Wanna explain THAT to us, Mr. Glob Smarty?

  3. Don (no longer) Fluffy

    I have never owned a gun. I’ve never been so hungry that I had to hunt. But I am thinking of buying one, because I am an “infidel,” and if the appeasers have their way, I may have to fight my way to the grocery store.

  4. Anonymous

    Peter, next time, go ahead and swerve.

  5. Rick in Duxbury

    I’m sure Bailey is a nice guy but where else in America could you have the marquee business writer for the paper of record be a socialist? (Those shaky receipts may come back to haunt Steve in the next buyout. You can’t spend the same dollar twice.) Guess “the end justifies the means” is an equal-opportunity trait on both sides of the aisle.

  6. Anonymous

    bailey is no socialist – what a schmuck thing to say. he invests his money like everyone else and hopes to die rich. he just won’t abide ponzi scheme based industries and corporate welfare, etc. — you know, the vast ugly sphincter of capitalism. pls keep your snark grounded in fact, dux. on t’other hand, globe lawyers must be sweating that expense account sheet. porky’s right about one thing — bailey or the globe technically owns that gun and is techincally liable for it, it it technically still exists, which i doubt will ever be proven, since neither the NH AG nor the feds will give a hoot about this matter. stiil, dan, there is a major cautionary issue here for globe and steve, and ihe story points up the ill-wisdom of his well-intentioned sting.O and peter, really, the growth in gun homicides in mass. is attributable to the explosion in the ilegal gun trade – especially transshipments from places like NH, georgia and texas — over the last decade. not to mention population growth since your stats must predate eisenhower. the state’s gun registration figure could fall to 0 and the amount of shootings wouldn’t change much because of exactly the phenomenon bailey was pointing out in his column. but you knew that all along, mr. rightist smarty.

  7. Amusedbutinformedobserver

    Is Bailey a member of a well-organized militia?

  8. Rick in Duxbury

    11:42,Let’s just say that Bailey likes businessmen as much as his curly haired colleague in Sports likes athletes. That “vast ugly sphincter” you refer to, (where did THAT allusion come from?), is what has differentiated Boston from Detroit, when we aren’t in a big circular firing squad. If the Globe spent half the time “afflicting the comfortable” judges that put these gunslingers back on the street that they do on promoting social agendas, we would have safer streets and an intact Constitution. Isn’t that what we all want? Then again, Herald has proven that it’s dangerous to take on the Beautiful People around here, good intentions notwithstanding.

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