Pressure on Roanoke Times Advertisers

Charlotte, NC (TLS). Those of you who value your Second Amendment rights as I do are always seeking ways to let our voices be heard in the public arena, particularly when all too many are ready to paint us as dangerous, fringe-element kooks who have no business driving an automobile much less owning a firearm.

Perhaps we would all do well to remember what the murders of abortion doctors did to the pro-life movement for several years. Such extreme actions on the part of dangerous individuals did the pro-life movement no favors and probably set the movement back by a decade or so. Only as science came to prove our contention that unborn babies have definite feelings, plus the images in the womb we have all come to view with awe, has the pro-life movement regained the momentum it lost when anti-abortion crusaders went on killing sprees.

It's hard to successfully make a point about 'pro-life' when you are killing doctors.

In like manner, it's hard to convince skeptics in law schools and politics that responsible gun ownership and use is the norm when a few terribly misguided souls make threats or damage our cause by 'bull-in-a-china-shop' reactions.

Thus, the question becomes, how do we best go about making our point in a responsible manner? How can we most effectively make our point?

The practice of calling to task newspaper publishers, editors, and reporters by publishing their personal information is a reasonable approach when gun-owners are treated like common criminals and even compared to child molesters in some publications, such as the Roanoke Times. If they publish our names and addresses, they can expect us to publish theirs. It's that simple. And it is fair.

Another reasonable approach is to call the newspaper to complain about the nature of their coverage of gun ownership. If the publishers are aware that enough of their readers are offended by the tone of their coverage, it can make a difference. So can subscription cancellation.


However, the most effective means, perhaps, of getting our message across is to contact the advertisers in the offending publications and complain to them. If advertisers get the slightest hint that having their names associated with extremist editors and reporters is having a negative impact on a significant number of their patrons, you can bet your last quarter they will pressure the newspaper to stop with the crap, or else.

And that 'or else' means pulling their advertising out of that newspaper.

Newspapers cannot survive without advertising dollars. In today's society, with newspaper readership and subscriptions reaching all-time lows, the only way most papers survive is through the advertising...the businesses that purchase ads in those papers.

If a paper loses a half-dozen or so major business accounts, it is often enough to put their operating budget in the red.

Thus, advertisers can send a strong message to publications--shape up or we can shut you down.

Most of us around the country who are keenly aware of Second Amendment issues have already done most of the things I have mentioned to express our displeasure with the manner in which we were treated in the Roanoke Times. The one thing that's left is something that only local subscribers can do--contact the advertisers. Tell them what you think about the action of the Roanoke Times in publishing the names of carriers of concealed firearms, many of whom are single women and single moms who are in grave danger when such information about them is made public.

And then let the businesses do the rest. If you suggest that you may not be able to do business with them if they advertise in the Roanoke Times, I think they will get the message.

And believe me, these businesses will be sure that the Roanoke Times gets the message.