State of gun rights in America:

How goes the battle for gun rights since Sept. 11?

Wall Street Journal columnist and former Delaware Gov. Pete DuPont, writing for the Journal's Web site, OpinionJournal.com, supplies the answer:

"Liberal Delaware (Gore by 13 percent), awoke the other morning to the news that gun sales are up 32 percent since Sept. 11, range use is up 25 percent, and advanced gun classes are booked through February.

"The Diamond State is not alone. The FBI reports that in the month after the attacks, requests for gun-related background checks through its national check system rose 20 percent. Concealed-weapons applications tripled in Texas, and, according to the Florida Department of Law enforcement, filings for gun-purchase background checks rose 50 percent in the weeks following Sept. 11. Florida news articles report a dramatic increase in gun and ammunition purchases, particularly among women, senior citizens and first-time gun owners.

"In other words, the people who feel most vulnerable are taking action to protect themselves."

DuPont also notes that citizens of 33 states, including populous Texas and Florida, now have what Missourians don't: The right to apply to authorities for a right-to-carry permit.

---

Bias documented from the inside:

One of the enduring mysteries of life is how much audience the formerly dominant three major television networks will have to forfeit before they wake up to what many of us have known for decades.

The dominant TV networks are biased to the left consistently and in ways both subtle (what they choose to cover, what they don't, who they choose to interview, who they don't, who they use the label "right-wing" while never labeling anyone "left-wing") and outrageous (as when ABC's Peter Jennings compared the voters, in producing the 1994 GOP landslide, to a 3-year-old throwing a temper tantrum).

All this worked much better for the networks when I was growing up and the Big Three networks had 90-plus percent of the audience. Such certainly isn't the case now. As an avid watcher of Fox News Channel, MSNBC and other cable fare, I can't remember the last time I watched ABC, CBS or NBC through an entire, 30-minute newscast. Rather, Brokaw and Jennings seem a fading memory.

Now comes longtime CBS newsman Bernie Goldberg, a seven-time Emmy winner, to document in painstaking detail the devastating facts of left-leaning media slant from his long career inside CBS.

In his blockbuster new book "Bias," Goldberg blows the lid off the pretenses of the arrogant national media elite.

More power to him.

Peter Kinder is assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.