Educating The Press
NSSF has launched a campaign to educate the press on AR-15s:
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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September 22nd, 2009 at 10:15 pm
It’s honorable what NSSF is trying to do, however I think they are going about it the wrong way. What they really need to do is to get the AP Stylebook to change their idea of what words mean.
Most reporters are bound to the Stylebook (or their media’s version of the Stylebook) and whatever NSSF thinks doesn’t matter. NSSF doesn’t sign their paychecks.
Also, reporters can write any darn thing they want and then the copy editor can change it to whatever they want so perhaps NSSF should focus solely on copy editors and leave reporters alone?
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:20 pm
One other thing I particularly dislike about gunnies and the press: When a reporter writes “machine gun” or “submachine gun” or “fully automatic” and the gunnies disagree (particularly if no mention is made of the make/model of the gun).
Just because fully automatic guns aren’t common doesn’t mean they don’t exist. To insist that everything is a semi-automatic weapon is just dumb. It would be like calling a zebra a horse because “zebras are rare and horses are more common. Lots of people have horses but you have to be a zoo to have a zebra.”
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:03 am
Wanda, I don’t think that the implication is “Machine Guns Don’t Exist”, but rather that the press thinks everything scary looking is a machine gun, and the general public becomes easier to persuade that machine guns are as common as any other gun.
“Gunnies” just want the press to call a Zebra a Zebra and a Horse a Horse, is that too much to ask? You say it’s foolish to call all Zebras horses (to continue your metaphor) and I agree. But if you read the headline “Man dies at rodeo trampled by Zebra” with no mention of the animal in question having stripes (the immediately defining characteristic of a zebra) wouldn’t you be a little skeptical?
Wouldn’t you want more information?
Where’d the Zebra come from?
Who owned the Zebra? After all, you can’t just go to a Zebra breeder and BUY a Zebra…they’re difficult and expensive to obtain.
What was a Zebra (a fairly rare animal) doing at a rodeo?
Zebras are *so* rare, that wouldn’t you want to know what the deal was?
“Gunnies” are the same way with machine guns.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:36 am
The stylebook is only part of the problem. the ignorance (or willingness to lie) is a bigger part.
we only insist when they are semi-automatic.