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The Lying News Media, Part IX

The Miami Herald weighs in.

BSO and CNN stepped into the fray Thursday with footage of an on-air demonstration purportedly designed to show the difference between banned weapons and their legal counterparts.

When a BSO employee fired a banned weapon, the camera showed bullets ripping through a cinderblock target. When a legal semi-automatic weapon was fired, the camera showed another cinderblock seemingly unharmed.

In fact, the bullets from the legal gun never hit the cinderblock. CNN spokesman Matthew Furman said the camera operator didn’t realize the sheriff’s employee had switched targets and was firing into the ground.

”When we learned that the demonstration was less than clear, we told our viewers that,” Furman said.

Yeah? AFTER the piece aired and all the viewers who know nothing about guns thought a POST BAN rifle couldn’t damage a cinderblock.

NRA officials also protested the use of a fully automatic AK-47 in the piece and the reporter’s claim that it was among the targets of the 1994 ban. Fully automatic weapons have been regulated since 1934 and aren’t mentioned in the 1994 law.

Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Leljedal said Jenne favors extending the 1994 ban but never meant to misinform the CNN audience by participating in the Thursday segment.

”There was never any intent to mislead,” Leljedal said. “They wanted to talk about it, so we did, and on very short notice we got some guns out and we did some demonstrations for them.”

So, you’re saying Zarella was complicit in the mendacity? That it was his fault, not yours?

”The idea is that these weapons . . . will penetrate a bulletproof vest, they will go through a concrete block. And that’s what our homes are made of,” Leljedal said.

Yes, but so will any centerfire rifle cartridge REGARDLESS of the type of rifle it’s fired from.

CNN followed up the Thursday broadcast with a taped report that aired twice Monday in the same time period and explained the ban in its full complexity.

Like HELL it did. It left the impression that the weapons and magazines that were “banned” are illegal to possess. They are not. It left the impression that it is illegal to put a PRE-ban 30-round magazine in a POST-ban rifle. It is not. The only thing that report did was clear up the “firepower” question.

That, said Furman of CNN, was “a reflection of our desire to always be forthcoming, to always air all sides.”

Then how about talking to some ACTUAL EXPERTS when it comes to the topic of guns? What happened to Wolf Blitzer’s “check, recheck and triple-check”?

Or does that now mean “Ask the same person the same question three times?”

UPDATE: Professor Volokh asks:

So the question: If the sheriff’s office ‘never intend[ed] to mislead viewers,’ then why was ‘the sheriff’s employee . . . firing into the ground’?“

Mea Culpa

Oh sweet jebus.

In my previous post on the AJC’s screed, I said, in response to the AJC’s claim that “the gun industry has…spun the myth” that semi-automatic rifles are “the best guarantee of personal safety”: “Hardly, and anybody who knows guns knows better.”

Well, apparently not everybody.

This guy believes it.

“Probably the optimum gun for the defense of a home is the civilian version of the military M-l6 (e.g. Colt AR 15 Sporter, ArmaLite AR-10, others).”

(sigh)

He makes some reasoned arguments, but they hardly convince me.

(But then, he’s a lawyer.)

I vote for the handgun and the pump shotgun. I’m not at all enamored of the idea of firing a rifle indoors, and I have neighbors who might object to the result of a miss from one.

Score one for the AJC, though.

Now the Atlanta Urinal Constipation Journal Constitition weighs in on the “assault weapons ban”.

Let’s start with the AJC’s complete lack of foreign language skills:

“Adolf Hitler was so delighted with the lethal capability of the new gun presented to him by his ordnance designers during World War II that he dubbed it the “Sterm Kever” — or assault rifle.

Uh, guys, that’s sturmgewehr. Fifteen seconds on Google would have shown you that.

But of course the implication is “Assault weapons are NAZI! If you support the ownership of “assault weapons,” you “put on his hip-high black leather boots and strut around to Wagner arias”! You are “a runty sociopath who prongs a chubster over warby songs about leather-clad thundergods”! (Quotes by James Lileks. I’ve always wanted a place to use those lines!)

But wait! It gets better!

“Today, assault rifles still kill efficiently and quickly, as demonstrated by the Beltway snipers. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo allegedly wielded a .223-caliber Bushmaster XM15, an assault rifle adapted to evade the 1994 ban on assault weapons.”

Leaving aside the fact that Muhammed and Malvo fired ONE SHOT at each victim (and could, therefore, have used a single-shot target rifle to the same effect) and that the .223 round is considered not powerful enough for anything but small-game hunting in most states. Oh no! It was the somehow magical lethality of the evil black rifle that make Muhammed and Malvo vicious killers!

(I have often wondered what the press would have said if they had used, say, a 7mm Remington Magnum. You know, a DEER CARTRIDGE.)

“Assault rifles were created solely to kill people; today, those people are often law enforcement officers. Forty-one of the 211 U.S. police officers killed in the line of duty between 1998 and 2001 were murdered with assault rifles, according to a new analysis by the Violence Policy Center.”

Well! The Violence Policy Center! That bastion of unimpeachable agendaless fairness! They would be referring to this table. Let me see….

Four (4) with M1 Carbines, eight (8) with SKS rifles, two (2) with Mini-14’s, three (3) M-11’s, and two (2) TEC-9’s. First, the M1, SKS, and Mini-14’s are not and have not been classified as “assault weapons” – no lethal pistol grip on those guns. They look like “nice” semi-automatic rifles because they have the pretty non-lethal wood stocks, rather than the ugly, lethal plastic and metal ones. The M-11 and the TEC-9 are not rifles, they’re handguns. That’s NINETEEN (19) of the 41. And, if these guns were created “solely to kill people,” what of the other 170 officer deaths? They were killed with weapons designed to tickle people?

Now, according to this site between the years of 1998 and 2001 (inclusive) there were 229 officer deaths by firearm, not 211. And according to this table the number of police deaths, at least for the last couple of decades (and excluding the 72 killed in the Twin Towers in 2001) has been apparently unaffected by the relative explosion in the mid 1980’s of “assault weapons” (as defined by the law) into the general populace. They’re trying to make it sound like the presence of “assault weapons” has somehow added 41 deaths that otherwise would not have occurred. The evidence does not support this. But that’s the conclusion you’re supposed to draw. “Ban ’em, and these cops would have lived!“

“To justify assault rifles in home arsenals, the gun industry has created sporting competitions around them and spun the myth that the high-powered weapons are the best guarantee of personal safety.”

This is the thing that really chaps my ass.

Point One: The AR-15 is the most popular competition rifle for National Match and Service Rifle competitions. It was preceded by the M1A (another “assault weapon”), the M1 Garand, and the 1903 Springfield. It’s not like these sporting competitions were “created…around them.”

Point Two: The AR-15 and the AK-47 ARE NOT AS POWERFUL AS HUNTING RIFLES! Jebus!

Point Three: “best guarantee of personal safety?” Hardly, and anybody who knows guns knows better.

“The National Rifle Association wants the assault ban lifted. In its paranoid view, the banning of Uzis one day means your Colt will be confiscated tomorrow.”

It’s not paranoia when they really are out to get you. “England can do it! Australia can do it! So can we!” (Chanted at the somewhat-less-than Million Moms March.)

“The NRA leadership insists the right to own a gun accorded Americans in the Second Amendment extends to any and all guns, even those that fire off 30 rounds in less than two seconds and murder innocent children.”

WTF? I thought they murdered cops?

“That purported right is more important to the NRA than protecting police officers, disarming street gangs or safeguarding children.”

THERE we go: “That purported right…” Nah, the Second Amendment doesn’t mean anything. The Founding Fathers only meant to protect smoothbore muzzleloaders.

“The gun lobby doesn’t believe it has any moral or civic obligation to the community outside its membership and feels no responsibility for the victims of assault rifles.”

Sure we do. Honest gun owners have a civic obligation to protect the community against criminals. But we are not responsible for their abuse of the right to arms. Nor are we responsible for them robbing, raping, and murdering without weapons. Why the AJC (and others) seem to believe that the NRA and gun manufacturers should take responsibility for the illegal actions of others just because they use a firearm is beyond me. Do we hold the AAA, and car manufacturers responsible when someone commits murder with a car? (Apparently not, but you can, it seems, sue people for not being omniscient.)

“But our senators and representatives have an obligation to the larger community. That community — and that means all of us — has to tell Congress and DeLay that assault weapons do not belong on our streets.“

No, our senators and representatives have an obligation to live up to their promise to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” and not further gut the Second Amendment.

Let the “Assault Weapons Ban” die.