There’s No Excuse for Paper to Host Demonstrable Falsehood on ‘Automatic Rifles’

Despite having a responsibility to get things right, journalists get basics on guns wrong so often they’ve become the well-deserved objects of ridicule. But do they do it because they really don’t know, or do they do it because demonizing guns helps advance an agenda? (Uncredited graphic retrieved from Reddit)

“I own guns, but I also have a conscience,” guest columnist Dave Waldrop asserts in The Asheville Citizen-Times. “Does the NRA?”

What kind of obnoxious question is that? Especially since right out of the starting gate Waldrop showed everyone his big “but,” being the have-it-both-ways type who claims he believes in owning guns but…

“The National Rifle Association (NRA) along with thousands of its members insist that the Second Amendment to our Constitution guarantees the right of Americans to own firearms,” Waldrop declares. “To many it appears the NRA is willing to ignore the harsh reality that too many people have been killed by people wielding assault rifles.

“These are automatic rifles that fire dozens of rounds before requiring reloading,” Waldrop asserts, just like he knows what he’s talking about. “How long will the NRA shirk its responsibility to support legislation that sets reasonable limits on (A) who can legally own firearms and (B) which firearms pose too great a risk of harming or killing Americans and, therefore, must be controlled or banned for the safety of all?”

“I have personally chosen not to join the NRA because of their rigid stance that perpetuates this needless killing,” Waldrop declares. “I will continue, like many of my friends, neighbors and relatives to own simple non-assault firearms for personal safety.”

There’s so much loopy with this guy’s “reasoning” it’s clear he has no clue as to the purpose behind the Second Amendment and what the citizen militia it deems “necessary to the security of a free State” would need in order to carry out that mandate. Either that or he knows full well and he’s being disingenuous instead of just ignorant. Regardless, one point he makes is such an obvious and blatant falsehood there is no excuse for The Citizen-Times editors to have allowed it to see its way into their pages.

Waldrop is conflating “automatic rifles” with semiautomatic firearms, and that’s been a move straight out of the gun-grabber playbook since the Violence Policy Center’s Josh Sugarmann explained the tactical deception back in 1988:

“The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons.”

The reason the paper allowing this deception to continue is inexcusable is because many of us have been loudly objecting to it for decades every time some ambitious, oath-breaking politician or police chief tries to use it to advance citizen disarmament. A journalist influencing the public on a prominent issue lacking at least minimal subject matter knowledge is guilty of malpractice. An editor allowing it is guilty of worse. And it’s tough to write this off to mere editorial incompetence or ignorance from inside a “progressive” bubble, especially since many astute readers have been pointing out the lie for days now, and there’s still been no correction issued by the editors who authorized this guest column.

That’s especially egregious in light of the paper’s ethics policy, which claims to place paramount importance on truth, integrity, public interest and fair play. Then again, the Citizen-Times is “part of the USA TODAY NETWORK,” which itself is owned by Gannett. And when it comes to Gannett, guns and ethics, let’s just say past experience has shown little evidence of them having much of a conscience.

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If you believe in the mission of Oath Keepers, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, please make a donation to support our work.  You can donate HERE.

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David Codrea’s opinions are his own. See “Who speaks for Oath Keepers?”

The post There’s No Excuse for Paper to Host Demonstrable Falsehood on ‘Automatic Rifles’ appeared first on Oath Keepers.

Media Spreads Fake News with VPC Silencer Disinformation

That’s a big claim VPC is making. So why doesn’t the media even try to determine if it’s true before expecting the public to swallow it whole?

“Study Shows Firearm Silencers Threaten Public Safety, “ NJToday “reported” Monday in what could better be described as a press release for the virulently anti-gun Violence Policy Center.  Calling a handful of isolated anecdotes woven into an attack piece a “study” is the first bit of deception. Presenting those anecdotes and VPC’s conclusion without even attempting to consult someone who might actually know what he’s talking about is a good indication that the “staff reporters” are flacks fraudulently promulgating agenda politics rather than investigating and reporting in a manner consistent with any semblance of ethics or respect for canons of journalism.

That makes them disrespectful of their readers. They’re also lazy. The anecdotal bullet points NJToday lists are lifted word-for-word from the VPC presser.

The “study” itself consists of summaries of a handful of cherry-picked media accounts presented with the obligatory VPC charged term hyperbole, that is, terms designed to gin up the hysteria like “white supremacist … serial killer,” and the surefire button-pusher, “anti-government militia.” It’s the same lazy M.O. they use when spooking the herd over “concealed carry killers,” right down to substituting a patchwork of media accounts for data, all the while failing to establish causation or even relevance.

But they do include some footnotes, not that this adds any validity, considering the references are to “news” stories that may or may not have been written with the same standards “upheld” by NJToday, and to further VPC “studies.” They also include some pictures to look at of old silencer ads, a graph of “legal” suppressor ownership (just to make things look scientific), and another curious list of bullet points taken from manufacturer promotional material, and from which VPC somehow draws the conclusion that the safest firearms are the ones that are least accurate!

No doubt a real study of suppressor ownership would produce similar results as a deconstruction of VPC’s  concealed carry hysteria, that “[T]he percentage of concealed-carry permit holders who have killed someone with a firearm comes to two one-thousandths of 1 percent.”

And that in turn built on the group’s longstanding tradition of deception, as exemplified by VPC head Josh Sugarmann exploiting fabricated public confusion over semi-autos and machine guns in order to help ban what are fraudulently referred to as “assault weapons”:

“The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons.”

It’s not just that Sugarmann & Co. don’t want you to have suppressors – they don’t want you to have anything. And they’re content to go after that goal one piece at a time as long as the donations keep coming in and keep their doors open. That appears to be a struggle, as they compete for relevance with a Bloomberg machine that has managed to turn the once-dominant Brady Campaign (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.) into an also-ran, and with noisemakers like the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (formerly the National Coalition to Ban Handguns).

“Simple enough to say this organization has a website filled with distorted facts,” a Great Nonprofits review notes. “Less than 10% of the donations are utilized, the rest is expenses. Requesting their 990 they asked for money and postage. Three red flags for a person who is claiming to help stop violence but attacks the Bill of Rights and is vague about how his organization is going to do that on $50,000 a year with a $700,000 overhead. This one stinks.” (And per 2015 tax form filings hosted by the Guidestar nonprofit reporting service, $300K of that gets split evenly between Sugarmann and fellow traveler Kristen Rand.)

The thing is, in spite of the obvious deception, when garbage “studies” get promoted in the mainstream media, only a niche readership of activists will ever get to see them called out for what they really are. The average person will have no reason or incentive to question what they’re being told, and so will not realize they’re being swindled out of their rights and to be galvanized to oppose infringements. That’s why it’s up to those of us who are gun owner rights advocates to act as force multipliers and do what we can to share the truth where we think it will do some good.

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Tangentially related: Speaking of a silencer threat, remember when ATF threatened suppressor owners with unregistered NFA firearm violations for owning an unspecified  quantity (a “stockpile”!) of Chore Boy pot scrubber pads?

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If you believe in the mission of Oath Keepers, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, please consider making a donation to support our work.  You can donate HERE.

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David Codrea’s opinions are his own. See “Who speaks for Oath Keepers?“