You can lie with Time Magazine articles.

[Phil Lee]

You can lie with Time Magazine articles. That is, you can create more lies than the magazine does.

Say you wanted to mislead people to invest in airlines (a pretty bad idea for the last dozen years or so). You might point to the Time article "He's Hungry to Buy an Airline" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,152450,00.html dated June 24, 2001 and say the billionaire Marvin Davis discussed in the article is really a smart investor and they should invest in airlines too. But, in 2001-2002 Davis was trying to buy Vivendi Universal, including Universal Studios, for $15 billion not some airline. So, what gives?

It turns out that the article linked above is also linked by http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,958396,00.html
where it is dated Aug. 21, 1989. This last date is the actual publication date.

At this moment, you are no doubt wondering what this has to do with RKBA and activism. Bear with me a moment. I've just shown you how to lie about the date of an article to mislead. The misleading happens in this case because conditions have changed for airlines between the actual publication in 1989 and the misleading 2001 article date.

Now imagine you were a person from the Brady Bunch and wanted to mislead us about the work performed by a respected analyst. Well, Time is a fairly biased source and you might find some critical comments in that publication. Even better, with this neat trick you might be able to fool people to think critical comments made in 1989 might still be true in 2001 despite addition years of work performed.

So, I offer you the article
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,152446,00.html

Do Guns Save Lives?
Sunday, Jun. 24, 2001 By ED MAGNUSON
After cabdriver Iran Bolton picked up an early morning fare at a Phoenix Ariz., night spot, the customer held a broken bottle to her throat and forced her to pull into a deserted area. Robbing her of $70, the thug pushed the woman out of her cab and threw her to the ground. When her assailant ordered her to crawl in the dirt, Bolton responded by emptying her pocket semi-auto into him. He died later in a hospital."
Each month American Rifleman, the journal of the National Rifle Association, features about a dozen such accounts of armed citizens defending themselves against criminals. Based on newspaper clippings submitted by N.R.A. members, the stories dramatically show how a gun can sometimes prevent a crime and perhaps even save a victim's life.
The gun lobby lands on mushier ground, however, when it leaps from such / examples into a far broader argument: that more lives are saved than lost by the firearms Americans acquire to protect themselves and their property. The N.R.A. emphasized that claim in a two-page newspaper advertisement attacking TIME for its report ((July 17)) on 464 gun deaths that occurred in the U.S. in a single week, chosen at random. "Legally-owned firearms saved the lives of far more Americans than those lost during ((TIME's)) 'seven deadly days,' " the advertisement stated. "According to noted criminologist Dr. Gary Kleck of Florida State University, every year some 650,000 Americans use firearms to thwart criminal assault. That's 12,500 a week."
Even Paul Blackman, research coordinator for the N.R.A., concedes that the advertisement "stretches the data." He adds, "I don't know of any criminological study that has tried to quantify the number of lives saved based on the number of guns that were successfully used for protection."
Kleck says his study did not consider the question of lives saved. Nor did he conclude, as the N.R.A. claims, that a crime or an assault had been "thwarted" in each of his estimated 645,000 (the ad upped it to 650,000) annual instances of a protective use of a gun. Kleck notes that his study may have included incidents in which a homeowner merely heard noisy youths outside his house, then shouted, "Hey, I've got a gun!" and never saw any possible attacker.
Still, Kleck estimates that an assailant or the defender actually fired a handgun in nearly half the cases. If so, 322,000 incidents each year involved great danger, and the potential victims credited their guns with protecting them. That is about ten times the number who die from guns annually in the U.S. "It is possible that guns save more lives than they cost," Kleck says.
His numbers are based on a 1981 poll conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates. It asked 1,228 U.S. voters whether in the previous five years any member of their household had "used a handgun, even if it was not fired, for self-protection or for the protection of property." Roughly 4% (about 50 people) said they had done so. Projecting that percentage onto the number of U.S. households in the five years covered by the poll (1976-81), Kleck came up with the estimate that handguns had been used protectively 3,224,880 times, or 645,000 a year. Comparing that with surveys that included rifles and shotguns, he estimated that all types of guns are used defensively about a million times a year.
Is his analysis valid? "I certainly don't feel very comfortable with the way he's used the data," says Hart Research president Geoffrey Garin. While Kleck based his findings on the Hart survey, his analysis of the circumstances under which guns were used came from other studies. Protests Garin: "We don't know anything about the nature of the instances people were reporting." Says William Eastman, president of the California Chiefs of Police Association, about the Kleck conclusions: "It annoys the hell out of me. There's no basis for that data."
There is far more research on the question of who is most likely to get killed when someone keeps a gun at home. In a 1986 study called "Protection or Peril?," Dr. Arthur Kellermann, a University of Tennessee professor of medicine, and Dr. Donald Reay, chief medical examiner of King County in Washington, concluded that for each defensive, justifiable homicide there were 43 murders, suicides or accidental deaths. Out of 398 gunshot fatalities in homes in King County between 1978 and 1983, only nine were motivated by self- defense.
The one-week survey by TIME found a similar ratio on a national basis: only 14 of the 464 gun deaths resulted from defensive firing. An alarming 216 were suicides, 22 were accidental, and many of the rest involved homicides among people who knew each other well rather than citizens gunned down by strangers.
Such statistics do not refute the argument that a gun, even if not fired, can save a life by discouraging a murderous attacker. Still, Tulane sociologist James Wright points out that guns have limited usefulness in preventing crimes. About 90% of crimes in homes occur when the resident is away, he notes, while violent crimes often take place on the streets. Says Wright: "Unless you make a habit of walking around with your gun at all times, you're not going to stop that either."
A relatively balanced view of the gun question comes, surprisingly, from Kleck. "The vast majority of the population lives in low-crime neighborhoods and has virtually no need for a gun for defensive reasons," he says. "A tiny fraction has a great deal of reason to get anything it can get that might help reduce its victimization."
Even the American Rifleman accounts of how helpful a gun can be in saving a life may not always tell the full story. In the case of cabdriver Bolton, the N.R.A. magazine failed to report how chance, rather than her pistol, saved her life. Bolton told the Arizona Republic that after she wounded her assailant, he grabbed her gun, pushed the barrel against her neck and pulled the trigger several times. What really saved Bolton was that she had emptied the chamber. Said she: "I kept thinking that maybe there was a bullet still in it and it would go off at any minute." If that had happened, the incident undoubtedly would not have appeared in the Rifleman.
With reporting by Reported by Jay Peterzell/Washington and Richard Woodbury/Houston

A version of this article dated Aug. 21, 1989, the actual publication date, can be found at the link: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,958392,00.html
The only difference between the two articles is the acknowledgement at the end of the article about other reporting.

A careful and knowledgeable reader seeing the 2001 dated article would wonder about this article since it quotes William Eastman as president of the California Chiefs of Police Association, but he was the organization's president in 1989 and it would be more appropriate to quote Robert Blankenship, the president in 2001.

A careful and knowledgeable reader would wonder about the 2001 date since Time says Gary Kleck's estimate of crimes thwarted annually by gun bearing individuals was 645,000 (and cites an NRA ad claiming 650,000). That ad was run so long ago that it doesn't seem reasonable to bring it up in 2001. Also, more recent estimates place the number at 2.5 million crimes thwarted annually.

A careful and knowledgeable reader would wonder why the article cites Kleck's as basing his results on a 1981 survey since he has performed surveys more recently than 1981 (1993 for example) that would be known in 2001.

But, if you were a grabber who wished to sew a little confusion, you might try the link leading to the Jun. 24, 2001 date for the article and try to pass off the negative comments about Kleck in that article as being relatively recent.

If you search in Time using their search tool for the article's title, you are led to the version with the original date of 1989. I really have no idea how a person might have found the article link which produces the 2001 version. Whoever found this clever way of changing the dates of Time articles must have been lucky or clever.

All of us should be on notice to check dates of articles linked to Time.

So, RKBA activists should be alert to those who would deceive us -- they are are everywhere. Some are "useful idiots" used by the Brady Bunch and some are proponents of gun control who want to confuse us.

 

[armoredman]

Thanks, I would never have noticed...dagnabbit.

 

[Vegaslaith]

Huh, always trusted time magazine. I guess now I'll have to take their articles with a grain of salt.

 

[Dravur]

always trusted time magazine

Really?

 

[230RN]

Philip Wylie once said that he used to read Time magazine to keep up with the news. "Now," he continued, "I read it to keep up with the Biases."

Capitalization his.

I read that remark in one of his books* in the mid-1950s.

And they're still in business.

-----
*
Either "Generation of Vipers" or "Opus 21," I forget which.

 

[Snapping Twig]

I have ALWAYS mistrusted TIME and regarded the red border color as an outward manifestation of their inner political stance - communist.

I realize that's not high road, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

[General Geoff]

Never trust any single news source. Always cross check the important facts.

 

[22-rimfire]

Good point Phil Lee. Folks that routinely research subjects, especially controversial ones, can prepare a referenced paper to present their facts and discredit "facts" that suggest a different interpretation.

I used to subsribe to Time Magazine for years until they ran some anti-gun articles that seemed baseless at the time. I no longer subscribe or read Time magazine. I don't even open the pages let alone read something. I carry a book.

 

[wideym]

I don't trust any news media, be it TV, newspapers, or magazines, to tell the full unbiased truth.

As for US News and Wold Report, after a paticularly visious day of fighting in Baghdad followed by nearly a week of running firefights and ambushes, the only thing US N&WR wanted know was "how many civilians did you kill?". No matter how many times we told them civilans don't shoot AKs and RPGs you, insurgents do, they kept persisting on ask "how many civilans did you kill?". If our leadership would not have sent them away, they would have been the first civilan we killed.

 

[Phil DeGraves]

"The vast majority of the population lives in low-crime neighborhoods and has virtually no need for a gun for defensive reasons,"

Why do you think it is a low crime area? Because they all own guns!!!

 

[LKB3rd]

Philip Wylie once said that he used to read Time magazine to keep up with the news. "Now," he continued, "I read it to keep up with the Biases."

I look at pretty much all mainstream news watching/reading as "monitoring the enemy's communications."

 

[fletcher]

, concluded that for each defensive, justifiable homicide there were 43 murders, suicides or accidental deaths.

I ALWAYS hate when that is said. It means nothing, as it only accounts for a defensive kill; not injuries, not scaring the perp away, not holding the individual until police arrive, etc.

 

[Happiness Is A Warm Gun]

while violent crimes often take place on the streets. Says Wright: "Unless you make a habit of walking around with your gun at all times, you're not going to stop that either."

Funny thing is despite this guys opinion that carrying all the time is foolish the way I read it is an endorsement so carry (CC or OC) all the time.

He is right although his conclusion is wrong.
Just like you may only need to wear a seatbelt once the problem is you don't know when it is so you wear it all the time, you may only need a firearm once but since you don't know when you should carry it all the time.

 

[romma]

Wait a minute, some so-called experts say guns are not needed in "low crime" areas, and those same so-called experts claim that guns are dangerous in high crime areas because guns only escalate the violence and puts more guns on the street.

Side-note: Time magazine is as Anti-American as you can get IMO..

 

[Smokey Joe]

What do you want it to mean?

concluded that for each defensive, justifiable homicide there were 43 murders, suicides or accidental deaths.

I believe it was Mark Twain who said that there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics. (Can't find a source for this, though.)

Then there's the old cachet about the HR person and the accountant candidate. The HR man says, "How much is two plus two?" The prospective accountant replies, "How much do you need it to be, sir?"

 

[JohnL2]

Well, one should try and be cognizant about how any particular piece of reporting is presented. Especially the 'angle' that may or may not fit into an agenda.
For example, a very popular local public gun range has gotten into some legal trouble. It seems some 'errant' rounds have been hitting some homes over the mountain from where the range is. Granted it is not a big mountain but for around here it qualifies.
From what I have seen and read the news reports the story about homeowners angry about the bullets hitting their homes. Also the fact that the range owner has taken dramatic - and expensive - steps to improve safety at the range.
All this time I was waiting for it. And it was never reported. Not once was it mentioned that there are a few much smaller private ranges near where the public range is. At those ranges I would think that anything goes.

 

[MAKster]

I doubt it's a coincidence that both articles appeared with the same exact dates from 1989 and 2001. In 2001, Time probably added old pre-web articles to their site and they were mistakenly posted with the current date.

 

[STW]

I believe it was Mark Twain who said that there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics. (Can't find a source for this, though.)

Mark Twain wrote it in a biography of the British politician Disraeli with the claim that Disraeli said it. Citations appeared to be evenly split between the two when I tried to nail down the source. I suspect Americans tend to favor Twain while the British will go with Disraeli.

 

[OOOXOOO]

Like my father told me: Figures don't lie but most liars can figure.