It shouldn't be too surprising that I wasn't too fond of the season premiere of "The West Wing". The writers created a situation and then did a bad job of politicizing it against gun ownership. This shouldn't be all that shocking, considering that the show is about a Democrat administration and stars well known left-leaning talent. Since their target was handguns, the writers set up an assassination attempt on the President from a sixth-story window with a pair of handguns. Not surprisingly, the two shooters completely failed to hit their targets. Despite the fact that rifles are easier to come by, more appropriate for long-distance shots like that, and undeniably more lethal, by scripting handguns into the story the writers were able to attack the common target of the day.

The press secretary, in a statement about the attack, goes on to list other crimes committed that day by handguns. "Lest anyone think that these people could have protected themselves with guns," she says (paraphrased), "let me remind you that the President was surrounded by an army of armed secret service agents." While that may be, it needs to be mentioned that none of those people she listed were shot from a sixth-story window. It's pretty hard to rob a convenience store from a sixth-story window and it's even harder to break into someone's house from a sixth-story window. What she didn't point out was that the secret service did shoot the assassins and, because of that, probably saved the lives of their actual target as well as the crowd of bystanders also in attendence.