My nominee for the dumbest article of the year ...

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I teach in the Politics and Government Department at Illinois State University, in Normal, IL, And yes: it's pretty normal here. Thanks for asking.

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December 23, 2012

My nominee for the dumbest article of the year …

It’s a no brainer: Jeffrey Goldberg’s piece in the Atlantic: “The Case for More Guns (and More Gun Control.”)

It’s epically bad. Mind numbingly bad. Even in the context of the 2012 presidential election, it stands out as quite remarkably astonishingly bad.

It’s filled with “feelings” but no analysis. It relies on the thoughts of advocates for one position or another while dismissing the actual research both on guns and violence and the decline in crime in the US over the last 20 years. And, most strikingly, it doesn’t even touch on the obvious point: what happens when armed civilians miss their “bad guy” targets and kill or wound innocent bystanders? Are we going to give them a pass for their acts of manslaughter? Or send them to jail?

Not a word on that one.

Some Atlantic editor had to buy into this. Shame on them.

11:44am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZPUuPyZ_-hGU

(Notes: 41)