MSM Gun Reporting: Always Wrong, Always Excused
If your newspaper published an automotive story in which the writer couldn’t tell a tire from a steering wheel, or a story about computers where the writer couldn’t tell the difference between a keyboard and a mouse, you likely wouldn’t trust them to get the rest of the details of the story correct. You’d wonder why a reporter who is so clearly unfamiliar with the topic was asked to write about it, and further, you’d probably question the competence of the editors and publishers that let such an article make it to print.
Sadly, this level of blistering incompetence is rampant and accepted at major news organizations, especially when the subject is firearms.
One needs to look no further than Reid J. Epstein’s recent article in Politico titled “Norway shooter: Ammo clips were from U.S.” The July 28 article was one of many in response to Anders Behring Breivik’s killing of dozens of Norwegian teens at a political camp on a small island north of Oslo, and took the angle of trying to blame U.S. gun laws for the foreign massacre. Epstein was particularly focused on trying to blame laws that allowed Breivik’s purchase of ten 30-round magazines for his rifle via mail order.
Unfortunately for Epstein and Politico, the article is rife with errors in seven of the first ten paragraphs.
In firearms parlance, a clip is nothing more or less than a metal or plastic strip that holds cartridges together for loading. A magazine is a carefully engineered enclosed box or tube that holds a number of cartridges for a firearm, and feeds them into the chamber of a weapon via pressure exerted by a powerful spring located in the base of the magazine. Ammunition or “ammo” describes the cartridges themselves. The author routinely misuses the terms “clip,” “magazine,” and “ammo” or “ammunition” in almost every instance, and the Politico editorial staff did not catch a single one of these blatant errors.
But the blatant errors were not nearly as disturbing as the blatant ignorance of the very laws he seems to champion. Epstein claims:
The sale or transfer of high-capacity gun clips containing more than 10 bullets were illegal in the United States under the 1994 assault weapons ban, but the legislation expired in 2004. After Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was critically shot and six others killed during the January shootings outside a Tucson supermarket, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) introduced legislation to restrict magazines to their pre-2004 level.
This is not remotely true.
The politicians and media who forced through the “assault weapons ban” in 1994 did not outlaw the sale or manufacture of standard capacity magazines of any size, at all. Magazines of any size were freely and legally available for wholesale, retail, mail-order, and Internet sales throughout the life of the laughable “ban,” and were equally as legal to own and use. The law only banned the manufacture of new magazines of more than ten rounds (except for military and law enforcement use), and did not affect the tens of millions already in the marketplace, including new, unused magazines stockpiled in warehouses.
Epstein was dead wrong, and his multiple layers of editors and fact-checkers failed to do something as simple as read the law he cites as evidence.
There is copious anecdotal evidence to suggest that most “professional” journalists are blisteringly ignorant of firearms and the laws regulating them. Perhaps even more disconcerting is that they are willing to fabricate an alternate reality, where the ownership of machine guns is simultaneously illegal under U.S. law and pervasive in crime. Like so much of what the mainstream media “knows,” both of these repeated claims are provably false.
Lack of knowledge and intentionally misstating facts have never been obstacles for liberals writing on subjects about which they know little or nothing. For liberals, getting the facts straight is not the goal: exterminating the 2nd Amendment is. In fact, the truth is irrelevant to liberals – it’s what kryptonite is to Superman. Liberals will not be satisfied until America is reduced to a third-rate power, and we are all wallowing in misery with no means to restore ourselves to greatness.
And they just about got us there, dont they?
They aint as stupid as they seem.
Well said!
A journalist is quite simply an individual who knows nothing about every field of human knowledge. Anyone who relies on the media for anything beyond basic facts is being manipulated.
“After Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was critically shot and six others killed during the January shootings outside a Tucson supermarket, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) introduced legislation to restrict magazines to their pre-2004 level.”
I’ll bet she did. every time a pol gets shot, Dems (and sometimes even Republicans) get real interested in arming themselves (well, arming their bodyguards), and disarming everyone else.
Happens every time a precious pol gets shot.
If some kid gets shot in a drive-by in South Central, they don’t usually gets quite so worked up.
There is also the contrast between a reporter who is killed or injured, with the volume of hand-wringing & eulogising, & the soldier (Marine, sailor, cop, &c) who is killed in the line of duty, when the press might mention little more than their name. Both are tragic, but the treatment by the press is transparent & vile.
Actually, Mrs. McCarthy proffers such a bill in every session she has been a member of to this date. Her husband was shot and killed and she has taken it upon herself to use that as her battle cry. So, expect to see it come up again until she either quits/retires or she gets beaten in an election. Maybe her district will wake up to the nonsense and get a reasonable person to represent them but I seriously doubt it.
I’ve seen such bills pushed after knifings, as well. Also one instance of an anti gun bill after someone was hit over the head with a blunt instrument.
“The sale or transfer of high-capacity gun clips containing more than 10 bullets….”
What hi-capacity gun clips? no such thing, clips and magazines are 2 different things, And if think I’m talking about “Vanity Fair” or “Time” you definitely don’t deserve the rights you try to take from others.
The beginning of this post reminded me instantly of the late, great Michael Crichton & his comments about what he dubbed as the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect:
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
I later discovered that Crichton named the effect after his buddy, when the two of them where commenting about it over a cup of coffee. It turns out that Murray Gell-Mann is one of the most distinguished astro-physicists of the day (Nobel Prize in Physics 1969 – I believe that prize still holds some credence, as opposed to the Peace Prize).
Yes, after some years of our adult life, we become experts in something or several topics. I frequently marvel at the incandescent ignorance (Crichton used the term to label Hollywood, in many ways indistinguishable from the MSM) of the stories I read about the military or foreign events, but I keep the Gell-Mann Effect firmly in mind about the other stories that the Mutual Admiration Society prints or blathers.
Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect: Excellent. As both an attorney and a former Navy man I cringe at the typical “reportage” of those areas.
Reporters only get something right if they have training and experience in the subject. Sometimes.
Otherwise? It is to laugh.
And, yes, people know this, and fail to apply the knowledge to other subjects in the paper or on the news.
Very silly.
Keep in mind that progressives consider their ignorance of things they consider “evil”, like firearms, a mark of distinction, and proof of their enlightenment. If they had any actual knowledge of such things, their higher moral nature would be fatally besmirched by same.
This is why the AP Stylebook will never, ever, have a chapter on firearms- or at least, not an accurate one. Anymore than it will ever have ones on nuclear power, global warming, or the relationship between tax rates and economic growth.
No matter what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, progressives in general, and “journalists” in particular, really do believe that they are entitled to their own set of facts. Like the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To the Galaxy, “where it is inaccurate, it is at least definitively inaccurate; in case of major discrepancy, it’s always reality that’s got it wrong.” (Douglas Adams)
And if you disagree, that proves to them that you are just… evil. And oh yes, they are the Forces of Good.
I leave you to guess what they think that justifies them doing to you.
clear ether
eon
It’s not just firearms. Legacy Media can’t seem to publish anything technically correct unless they have an expert looking over their shoulder, telling them the facts. They aren’t even good a Journalism 101. Often “background” becomes quoted reporting. I’m sad to say this, but I don’t trust anyone who calls himself or herself a mainstream media journalist.
This is the result of generation of idiot reporters who got in to the field as a result of Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate reporting. Ever since then, that feat of Journalism has been the standard. Reporters today don’t care how they get the story, or even if it is particularly accurate. W&B weren’t. But they ran the story anyway and look what happened.
Some fourth estate they have held up. Thank goodness for the Internet and bloggers.
Not “blatant error” but “disinformation” — The New Left’s second-favorite propaganda tool (second favorite because it is rather dangerous to wield). Their most favorite tool being “selective deletion” of essential facts and explanatory context.
If the media organizations themselves won’t deal with this maybe people who do know about guns, and gun laws, should do something about it. Maybe the NRA should create a book that could be given to news organizations across the country clearly and simply explaining the gun laws in this country and giving pictures and descriptions of various gun related accessories; such as clips, magazines, ammo, ammunition, safeties and trigger locks as well as explaining what an Assault weapon is and how it is different, literally and legally, from a machine gun, sub-machine gun or sniper rifle.
“Maybe the NRA should create a book…”
The NRA created THE perfect coloring book for gun safety and kids…
The Eddie Eagle Program.
A smple, effective, and entirely aploitical message for kids:
If you SEE a gun,
DONT touch it.
LEAVE the area.
TELL and adult.
Can any rational person disagree with this?
Yet this book has been lambasted as condemned by every media outlet and liberal talking head I’ve ever seen comment on it.
All of my offers to share it with local reporters (who never saw it yet felt compelled to comment on it) and local school administrators (who were advocating more silly “arrest and handcuff” zero tolerance rules for “war toys” on school property, have always been rejected…and often quite rudely.
You see, any ideas you have to “share” with them, means you believe they dont already KNOW EVERYTHING.
And how DARE you.
Well, to be fair, even in the firearms-wise community, “clip” and “magazine” are sometimes used interchangeably, even if it not entirely correct; much as a “rifle” may sometimes be called a “gun,” even though “gun,” strictly speaking, refers to a weapon with a smooth bore, as a shotgun.
I recall a WW2-vintage Bugs Bunny cartoon, where Elmer Fudd is explaining, “I was just hunting a scwewy wabbit with my gun -” and Bugs, as an Army drill sergeant, demands, “Why does every other soldier in this man’s army have a >riflegun<??!?"
As far as the rest, yeah, they're idiots.
Oops, where did it go? Bugs’ comment should have been:
“Why does every other soldier in this man’s army have a =rifle= and
YOU have a =gun= ?!?”
A second to PsychoDad. I’ve been around firearms all my life and shoot regularly at one of the largest ranges in the world, and in my experience, clip is often used as shorthand for magazine, probably because it obeys the linguistic law that commonly used items will end up with short names.
Let’s not be like the French in demanding precision in language when it isn’t present in common usage.
Other than that nit, yes, the article is right and the MSM is both ignorant and dishonest about firearms.
Thanks, SC, for the liberty. Can I call a “clip” a “magazine” too? Can I call a future planned reduction in spending a “cut in spending” as well?
Oops, I should have written: “Can I call a future planed reduction of an increase in spending a cut in spending as well.”
no
In the Navy, I shot a 3 inch gun. Not, however, the easily concealed kind.
FOX Tops Opps
Ok, I freely admit I can’t compete with Variety in rhyming or alliterating headlines but nevertheless the stats are in and one mo’ time the conservative-leaning Fox News Network, FNC, trounced the leftist-leaning MSNBC, CNN, and other liberal, cable networks in viewership.
That’s no surprise since first, “liberal” and “cable” are largely redundant and, second, FOX dominance has been the prevailing trend for years. Nevertheless, the new numbers published on Drudge.com are startling:
FOXNEWS O’REILLY 3,178,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 2,196,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 2,127,000
FOXNEWS SMITH 2,085,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 1,817,000
MSNBC O’DONNELL 1,138,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 1,026,000
CNN MORGAN 859,000
CNN COOPER 851,000
MSNBC MADDOW 832,000
MSNBC SHARPTON 699,000
CNNHN GRACE 663,000
Some ballpark math: About 11 million people regularly watch Bill, Sean, Scott, Shep and Greta versus 6 million who catch Lawrence, Chris, Piers, Anderson, Rachel, Al, and Nancy.
And few libs thought those dolts, those Neanderthal throwbacks that Obama called in 2008 bitter, frustrated, gun-loving, Bible-thumping, immigrant-hating dummies, even had cable!
It seems the mass of semi-literate, ignoramuses affiliated with the Tea Party and other radical conservative movements, those terrorists, as Joe Biden calls them, actually do have cable connections rather than aluminum, antennaed hats and choose to watch the fair and balanced reporting on FOX with its liberal representation in the persons of Juan Williams, Bob Beckle, Kirsten Powers and others.
They somehow seem turned off by the twisted perspectives of the tingler Matthews and the sacrosanct O’Donnell, the phony Brit Morgan, the gaiety of Cooper and Maddow, the race-baiting of Sharpton, and the vapidness of Grace. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5169)
Conservatives and the MSM agree that modern firearms in the wrong hads can be quite deadly. The difference is in who is seen as being wrong hands. We see the criminal and the terrorist, they see US! There lies the difference.
Dr. Shalit
One day the progressives and libs will turn on their allies in the MSM when they aren’t useful anymore. Communist types have always been prone to violence, purges and re-education for former allies as well as long-time perceived enemies. Politicians, of any ilk, will sell you down the river if it suits them and if they can get enough votes out of it. Carolyn McCarthy needs to come to terms with her husband’s death at the hands of a CRIMINAL. Though personally tragic as it was for her, most Americans have moved on from that shooting and don’t need to be constantly reminded of it. Perhaps McCarthy should sue New York City, New York state and the LIRR for making her husband an unarmed sitting duck and not an armed citizen capable of defending himself.
It took police 90 minutes to respond — he could have killed all his victims with a single shot weapon. He could have killed nearly that many with a muzzle loader. The magazine capacity had nothing to do with his body count. The isolated location and unimpeded murderous determination were enough.