NRA gets its fact checking on
Where Guns Are Concerned, It’s Not Worth The Paper It Is Written On:
We are now more than 20 years into the “assault weapon” debate, so you would think enough time has passed, and enough information is available on the internet and elsewhere, that even the laziest and least competent newspaper reporter could get at least a handful of the most basic facts straight on the issue.
You would think that, unless you read the Miami Herald.
Recently, the Miami Herald has come out with both barrels blazing on the “assault weapon” issue, making false claims about the functionality of guns defined as such under the now-expired Clinton Gun Ban and advocating the ban’s restoration.
In September, the paper ran an editorial claiming that a Glock 19 is an “assault weapon,” presumably because it is designed to use a detachable ammunition magazine. It also ran an article that claimed that a person can actually fire 600 rounds in 60 seconds with a semi-automatic AK-47.
My experience has been that even when you point out errors in reporting on the assault weapon issue, reporters insist they’re still correct. I cannot tell if the ignorance is willful or not.
November 12th, 2007 at 10:50 am
“…claimed that a person can actually fire 600 rounds in 60 seconds with a semi-automatic AK-47.”
If someone could actually pull that off, I’m sure the BATF would just classify that person’s finger as an NFA device.
November 12th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
When they want government’s hired guns to take our guns…any excuse will do…plain ignorance or the willful variety.
November 12th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Wow! Has someone finally invented an AK magazine that feeds from a silo? What do six-hundred 7.62x39mm cartridges weigh? (Plus the gun, plus the silo-mag…)
Wasn’t it Blazing Saddles that had the line: “So many shots without reloading…”?
Seeing what they want to see or saying what they think will sell papers doesn’t really make much difference when so many people are under the misapprehension that “they couldn’t print it if it weren’t true…”
November 12th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
“My experience has been that even when you point out errors in reporting on the assault weapon issue, reporters insist they’re still correct. I cannot tell if the ignorance is willful or not.”
My recent encounter with an Anti I felt the same way. In some parts of the world tripe like this a “proven fact” when you’ve been eating lies for long enugh the truth doesn’t tast good to you not matter what we say.
Easier to call us “Closed Minded” or “People of the Gun”
November 12th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
They are right cause it’s “Wrong but Accurate”!
November 12th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
“I cannot tell if the ignorance is willful or not.”
It’s willful. The media has as many, if not more, information sources as we do. If they truly wanted to be “factual” they would be.
One thing though. In the internet age, where Joe average has fast access to information, the media aint as successful at decieving as they were 30 years ago. A lot more people know this than the media lets on and all it does is make the media look like the biased fools that they are though there are a lot of people who take the media’s word as gospel because it’s what they want to hear, reality be damned.
BTW, I’d LOVE to see a video of someone putting 600 rounds in one minute downrange with a semi-auto AK. Do y’all think the Miami Herold can oblige?
November 12th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Clarification: I should have said:
Whether it’s seeing what they want to see or saying what they think will sell papers doesn’t really make much difference as the result is the same since so many people are under the misapprehension that “they couldn’t print it if it weren’t true.”
There. That more fully conveys the thought.
I’m with Cactus Jack! I’d like to see that video too!
November 12th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Fact is, even if you could build a 600 round magazine (weighing what, 40 pounds loaded?) the little AK barrel will overheat, lose its tensile strength (hear that, Rosy?) and explode in your face long before you got through 600 rounds.
Then again, how does any of this either strengthen or weaken your Second Amendment rights? My office printer could spit out some huge number of pages full of dangerous lies per minute (until the hopper runs out of paper) but does that have the slightest bearing on either the letter or the spirit of the First Amendment?
Hmmm? Let’s ask the anti freedom movement that question.
November 12th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
The point is; the Founders knew full well that freedom of speech, religion, personal arms, and property rights would be under constant attack.
And they were exactly right, weren’t they? Now what do we do about it? That’s the question.
November 13th, 2007 at 1:04 am
Google “cyclic rate” AK47, and every summary reads “600 rounds per minute.” Obviously the reporter cued up Google, took 4.5 seconds to read the cyclic rate on the first 20 summaries, and pasted that into his so-called article.
Obviously, those indicate automatic (rather than semi-automatic) models, a distinction that escapes our famed reporter. Even if you could pick up an automatic AK, a cyclic rate means a sustained rate of fire if there were an uninterrupted flow of ammunition and zero mechanical failures. It’s about like saying a car will travel 80mph, so the salesman says it will travel 1,920 miles per day, without considerting stopping for gas, food, or sleep – or even to switch drivers!
I’ve stopped hoping for accuracy in reporting, and instead hope against all reason for reporting that isn’t openly hostile to America and our rights.
November 13th, 2007 at 2:36 am
“I’m with Cactus Jack! I’d like to see that video too!”
I wanna see a shooter who can squeeze a trigger ten times in one second, which is what he’d have to do to crank off 600 rounds in one minute. Acually, it’d have to be faster than that when you take the time needed to change mags into account.
C’mon, Miami Herold, I wanna see it!
November 13th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Isn’t that (600 rds per minute) more like the rate at which the FULL-AUTO weapons operate which used are by the SS to protect OUR EMPLOYEE, the President, who said he would sign the AWB which applies to SEMI-AUTO weaponms like Ak’s that we can buy???