Author Michael Z. Williamson, who has a new book out from Baen, When Diplomacy Fails(excerpt at the link), is an unrepentant gun nut. He’s also pretty much an expert in all things weaponish (to the point he has consulted for studios and been an expert witness in trials) and has a great piece up over at the Baen Blog about how firearms are portrayed in the media. This is particularly important right now because the current administration is going all out to try and justify increased gun control.
Here’s a particularly telling paragraph:
When the anti-gun groups, who know as much about firearms as they do about heart surgery spout off crap about how a .50 BMG rifle can take down an airliner, 60 Minutes, a notable news show dutifully reports this “Fact.” For some reason, they never report my fact that a Mustang GT can reach 900 mph and rip a hole in the ozone layer. So either they know a bit more about cars than they do about guns, or they don’t care and like the “controversy” they generate. I would never accuse them of bias and malfeasance. That would imply they are unprofessional. Also, I might get sued. In the meantime, a bunch of gun-haters would call me a conspiracy nut or a right-winger. The fact is, however, that even a large plane is a very fast moving target, almost impossible to hit with a rifle, and at worst, you’d make a half inch hole in it, which is inconvenient but not disastrous, unless by some even greater miracle you hit an engine, and even then, it would likely still make landing. Nor is there any evidence any terrorist group anywhere to date has attempted this. Bombs are so much more effective, and boxcutters so much easier to acquire and transport.
Read the whole thing, linked above. Mike knows his stuff and there’s several useful arguments in there for the next time you’re confronted with some hoplophobic idiot. Then go pick up When Diplomacy Fails. It’s great fun and well worth your dime.
How many .50 cal machine guns (not single shot rifles, but machine guns) do you think were at Pearl Harbor? How well did they do it against smaller, slower planes than jets, flying closer to the Earth than airliners do? A bunch of sunk battleships days not very well at all.
If single-shot rifles were any kind of plane killer, armies wouldn’t waste money on things like Patriot missiles and ZSU-23s–and why in WWII the anti-aircraft weapons of our Navy were 5-inchers, 40 mm Bofors, and 20 mm Oerlkons.
What are these THINGS? Facts, you call them? Meh. MSM has no time for facts and all that sort of falderal.
They’re inconvenient items which get in the way of the narrative. Since the narrative is more important than things like truth, they are to be avoided.
Mike has some good stuff over on Baen Free Books. Good writer, give him a shot and you won’t be disappointed.
“I say we pull out and nuke ‘em from orbit. It’s the only way to make sure.”
- FO Ripley.
borrowing from Winston Churchill
The MSM may occasionally stumble on the truth but they will quickly pick themselves up, dust themselves off an move along as if nothing happened.
Mike forgot another big lie. When the media talks about the innocent children killed by guns each year they make it sound like all the fatalities were curious little tykes who stumbled upon the loaded guns of recklessly careless owners. In fact most of the “children” in the statistics the media loves to cite are teenage gang-bangers with prior criminal records.
This sort of thing has been going on for years. There are innumerable examples of the MSM obviously misidentifying weapons, (i.e. every rifle is “high-powered), or confusing semiautomatic weapons with full automatic, clips with magazines, revolvers with other types of pistol, and empty shell casings with intact rounds. Many of these would be funny, if not for these gaffes being part of a deliberate anti-gun narrative.