7 October—The good news is that, following the long-awaited U.S. Supreme Court decision on NYSRPA v. Bruen this summer, which New York authorities have predictably tried to do an end-run around with ludicrous licensing requirements and carrying restrictions, a federal district judge yesterday blocked key parts of that draconian New York State law as likely being unconstitutional. Hopefully, lots of Connecticut’s unreasonable and useless anti-gun legislation will be similarly thrown out in the very near future.

But don’t count on the generally anti-gun Second Circuit sustaining the pro-gun ruling, even though every once in a while a majority of its judges can surprise us. If the circuit lets the ruling stand, it’s doubtful that New York would even try to get the case to the current Supremes; but if the trial court’s ruling is reversed, vacated, or fiddled with in any substantive way, count on SCOTUS certifying the case for review.

The other news, not good by any means, but not bad nor unexpected, is that Wednesday night left-wing television—PBS—aired a one-hour program called “Ricochet: An American Trauma, Examining U.S. Gun Violence.” Showing on PBS, which I can’t recall ever having broadcast anything even approaching objectivity on firearms, I knew what to expect from this “PBS NewsHour Special Report.” And the ridiculous title gave it away in all events.

But I was disappointed anyway. Not because of the case the program was supposed to have made against firearms, but because the program was so poorly conceived, produced, and presented. It simply wasn’t up to PBS’s usual standard.

First off, it didn’t really examine gun violence—or, if you haven’t noticed yet, gun trauma. It seems that gun violence—a blanket expression thrown around by busybodies who want to deprive the people of the right to keep and bear arms—is in the process of mutating to gun trauma. Is trauma is more traumatic than violence is violent? Or is it simply that the anti-gun lobby has worn out the term “gun violence”?

So, unless I dozed off during various segments and missed the good stuff, the program consisted entirely of reporter William Brangham’s interviews of survivors of people who had died by homicide or suicide. Touching? Certainly. So what? Of course I felt sorry for the survivors as well as the decedents, though rather less so for the ones who offed themselves in their prime. But, contrary to the implication of the subtitle, U.S. gun violence simply wasn’t examined.

What binds Brangham’s interviews together, however tenuously, and is supposed to prove the case against guns is that firearms were the mechanism of all the homicides and suicides being rehashed and regretted. (And, incidentally, in no way should people who take their own lives be considered victims of gun violence or trauma.) But if survivors of deaths accomplished by, say, overdose in the case of suicide or being pushed off a cliff in the case of homicide, had been interviewed—there went the anti-gun thesis. And that wouldn’t have been politically correct . . .