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Another Sign:
Fox News Spikes Pro-Gun Column After Newtown -- Daily Intelligencer

FoxNews.com contributor John Lott, the author of More Guns, Less Crime, was racing between television appearances on the afternoon of December 19. "Today has been nuts," the gun-rights activist told me by phone. "The last five days have been nuts. I have been on CNN four times, and I’m going to be on them tonight, on Piers Morgan. He gets to yell at me again."

Since the Newtown massacre, Lott, one of the country's most vocal Second Amendment absolutists, has been donating his time to CNN while Fox News, the network that pays him and employs his son as a producer, has held him at bay. Lott told me that he submitted a column for Fox's website on Monday about assault weapons but was informed yesterday afternoon by a Fox News staffer that the article would not run. "They didn't send me an e-mail. I got a call," he explained. "They said, 'This is just too sensitive.'"

In the unpublished column, Lott described the differences between the Bushmaster rifle used by Adam Lanza and weapons actually used by the military. "No self-respecting military in the world would use the civilian version of these guns," he wrote. Lott argued that lawmakers were using the Newtown tragedy to scare citizens. "Some politicians want to truly frighten the public by painting a false image of machine guns on America’s streets to push regulations on semi-automatic guns," he wrote. "Despite the rhetoric used by many such as President Obama, not a single multiple victim public shooting has involved a machine gun." Lott concluded his column writing that new gun laws will make Americans less safe. "The Bushmaster, like any gun, is indeed very dangerous, but it is not a military weapon," he wrote. "If you want to ban semi-automatic guns, ban all of them, not just guns based on how they look. Yet, despite the immediate emotional appeal, banning semi-automatic guns will jeopardize safety." A Fox News spokesperson told me in an e-mail that Lott's column was rejected because it was "too technical for that period of time." He added that "Lott accepted the reason and moved on. As an aside, we have published ten of his columns since September."

Fox's decision to kill his column surprised Lott. "It's very unusual for them not to run one of my pieces. It's probably one out of a hundred they won't run," he said. "I don't even know the last time they didn't." (In 2012, Lott has published 37 columns for the Fox News website, according to his FoxNews.com archive. Lott's last column, titled "Bob Costas can't shoot straight when it comes to guns," was published on December 6. In it, he criticized anti-gun remarks by the sportscaster.)

Lott also told me that he's wanted to go on Fox News this week to debate guns on-air but has not heard from any producers about booking. "I'm a FoxNews.com contributor. They know I'm happy to do it," he told me. After being in the firing line at CNN this week, he would like to get airtime at Fox, which he says is a friendlier outlet for his point of view. "I prefer to do Fox. The conversation is more civilized," he said. "It's just not that Piers is as dogmatic as he is. His audience tends to agree with him most of the time. I don't think I've gotten so much hate e-mail as after I appeared on his show." Lott told me that after he appeared on Morgan last night, he was escorted out by CNN security.

Lott's absence from Fox programming was reported by Washington Post writer Erik Wemple.