top things the media gets wrong

Every concealable handgun is a Saturday night special and every firearm with a scope is a sniper weapon.

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, if Congress declares a horse's tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have? Of course, it only has four. Calling a horse's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. Similarly, calling a semi-automatic rifle an "assault weapon" doesn't make it an "assault weapon" no matter what the horse's @$$es in Congress say.

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I'm in agreement with the other guy (jfh). An assault weapon, furthermore, is different from an assault rifle, as a matter of terminology.

The gun-grabbers created the term "assault weapon,"

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That's what I've heard too. They knew they couldn't use Assault Rifle because that's a REAL definition and they'd get called on it so they made up something very close to it to invoke images of rambo mowing down innocents with an M60 fired from the hip (of course).
It's a weapon and it's made for assaulting people OMG!!!11oneone!1!
The job of the mainstream media is no longer to offer straight facts. It's to induce emotion and outrage, because that will keep people glued to the TV begging for more info and updates. The media isn't there to deliver unbiased information, it's there to make money.

Don't forget the obligatory hysterical, blubbering "EAR witness" who heard the shooting (duh....guns are LOUD), and saw everyone running away from the area (duh again....bullets HURT).

Actually, what have we learned? Uh. Someone was nearby, heard shooting, saw running, and is now an emotional wreck.

This is considered "newsworthy"? How is this informative to the viewing public?

Aww, come on guys, I jump through the rhetorical hoops to call Congress a bunch of equine posteriors and no one agrees with me?

You've got to understand what motivates liberals. They don't think. They feel. Color and appearance influence emotions. They make things looks "scary", which evokes an emotional response. Caliber and ballistics are dispassionate facts, and thus have no part in a liberal's mind. All gun legislation is a emotional reaction to an emotional event. Gun control has no basis in fact or logic.

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Do you have facts to prove that or is it just a feeling you have?

I have no problem with your statements about gun control, but why do you have to turn it into an issue of Liberals vs. Conservatives? As a gun owner do you really want to ostracize all people who consider themselves liberal? You are alienating a pretty large portion of the population. Not all liberals are in favor of gun control. Maybe if gun culture was more welcoming, even more would join our side.

Your question is flawed. They're not getting anything wrong. They're just doing the job their audience demands. Hint: reporting the news isn't it.

Nooz. I'm going to start using that word to describe the product popular media outlets have recently come to dispense. In another age "nooz" was commonly known as "news", and everybody understood what "news" was: a collection of timely and relevant facts that needed to be gathered, summarized, and cogently presented with the intent of informing people. Over some recent period of time, popular news media has degenerated to the point that it no longer serves this former purpose, so I don't consider their product worthy of its former name.

When a food manufacturer wants to sell a product that has been subjected to an industrial process altering the original food to the point it no longer can be legally described by its original name, they can no longer call it that. Once you smash chicken parts into bits and combine it with salt, fat, cellulose and God knows what else you can no longer call it chicken, right? Same with apples or beef or eggs and a lot of other stuff. Therefore they substitute the word "cheez" or "kreme" for the real foods they're intended to resemble, and as a bonus create a trademark for some processed cheese-like food substitute no one else can claim. Hence I submit for THR consideration the neologism "nooz" in an effort to more accurately describe what most of the once-great news organizations now provide.

Why has this come to pass? Perhaps people simply don't want to be informed any more, and the news media has adapted. Becoming informed is an active process, one that requires thought and at least some limited knowledge of the subject as a prerequisite. One cannot understand a Presidential election, for instance, without first knowing what a President does and how one is elected. Since so few people understand how their own government functions, it's sufficient for the television news to capture a few seconds of a pleasant face uttering some feel-good-isms ("change") and promote the candidate who will provide them with a predictable stream of similar bite-sized entertainment. Isn't it human nature to want to feel good and gravitate toward pleasant-looking faces? That explains the popular candidates' utter silence on presentation or discussion of substantive issues that have the potential to affect your life, and the willingness of the news media to accept that.

Small though it may be, thought requires some degree of effort. News requires it; entertainment requires none. The popular media audience demands entertainment, so former "news" vendors have adapted to deliver it: nooz, not news. News enlightens, while nooz merely seeks to entertain. You don't have to convey meaning to entertain, you just have to evoke emotion. The words and images used are superfluous. In fact, the more vague the meaning the better. Understanding crime, its causes and prevention requires thought and effort. Wanting to ban guns requires evoking emotion; no intelligence required. In fact, only though concerted effort, combined with a knowledge of history and a little bit of law, can one appreciate the need for the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Therefore nooz uses words like "gunman" and "lockdown" and "assault weapon" and "high capacity clips" because to their audience, facts don't matter. Emotion sells. Thought only gets in the way, and facts distract from their mission.

Nooz. I may have to trademark it.

taurusowner said:

You've got to understand what motivates liberals. They don't think. They feel.

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Taurusowner: good analysis, bad label. Substitute "collectivist" or "gun-grabber" or "blissninny" or whatever your favorite term is for someone who wants to subvert the Constitution but "liberal" is inexact at best. I'll welcome any liberal who supports my RKBA over any conservative who seeks to restrict it. Evil is cloaked in many threads.

Oh come on now... a RUGER is a RARE gun????? A Transfer bar is a RARE feature????


I swear this crap makes my head want to fly off and start hitting people in the room!

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The average idiot who watches CSI wouldn't know what a Ruger is, or especially a transfer bar...heck I didn't even know what the transfer bar was when I got into shooting Rugers...but after I looked it up, I felt like an idiot, because it does exactly what it sounds like...it's a bar that transfers the hammer's blow to the firing pin...and when the trigger isn't fully to the rear, the transfer bar is down and the hammer won't hit the firing pin...duh!

*Yes I like watching CSI...but I'm not your average idiot

Speaking as someone who has spent most of his last 30 years working in a newsroom I have to disagree with the speculation the motivation is political. The basis is embedded in a political view, but that is because most reporters come from affluent families, spend four years being indoctrinated by liberal college professors and then go straight to a job in a building full of people with similar backgrounds.

When I was starting out as a reporter I worked in a newsroom with 180 reporters and editors. Out of that 180 people there were two of us who owned guns. The other 178 could not properly specify the nomenclature of any caliber or gun that popped up in the news.

Whenever a story came up that involved specific information about a gun the news people would trot over to the sports department (we both worked in sports) and ask how you should write 12 ga. or .38 Special. If we weren't there they went with whatever the cops told them. The police always had an angle when they addressed reporters and they never missed an opportunity to insert their viewpoints.

Newsrooms are bastions of liberalism. The bigger the newsroom the higher the percentage of liberals. You have to match political views with management to move up in the trade. The minute the bosses find out you are pro-gun you are put somewhere that your view will never be expressed. (As I said, both of us gun owners were in sports.)

I did find that a concerted effort to educate the editors in charge of news did make a difference, until that editor moved to another position. Then they went right back to their ignorant ways.

The upside, for me at least, is I found that by going to small publications in rural areas you found a lot more gun owners at newspapers and very little bias in their reporting. OTOH, a paper that goes out to 10,000 people doesn't have near the impact of 30 seconds of CNN.

I'm now the editor of a small publication in a relatively small town and shoot IDPA matches with the editor of the daily paper in the nearest town on a regular basis. I think though, that most journalists who are conservative tend to look for small towns where they fit in a little better. Our 11-person staff has far more conservatives working for it than did that newsroom with 180 people.

As for TV and movies, nothing but liberals. They don't care if it's accurate - it's entertainment.

am in no way apologising for shoddy reporting. But, say YOU were the reporter... how on earth could you divorce yourself from your own personal biases and write an article that was completely void of personal predjudice?

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By understanding when I took the job that it was an ethical obligation for me to do so?

Seems obvious to me.

Other than the following, I think the media does OK WRT firearms:

Gun in general
Ammunition
The Second Amendment

I really don't find the news media to be all that liberal. The US has a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, but we never hear about that from the mainstream news. No stories about US corruption or destructive action overseas.

That having been said, it IS true that the media is liberal when it comes to firearms. The mistakes that sally forth from news rooms when guns are the topic "under fire," so to speak, would be hysterical if they weren't so supportive of the liberalist propaganda of "guns are evil."

Guess what -- I am a liberal! Not all liberals swallow this BS I think it's time for a nice slice of chocolate cake. Easier on the insides.

Hence I submit for THR consideration the neologism "nooz" in an effort to more accurately describe what most of the once-great news organizations now provide.

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i second that

That AR-15 type rifles, civilian AK's, etc. were illegal to manufacture, market, sell, or transfer 1994-2004 (actually, more were sold 1994-2004 than in all the previous years combined).

Semi-Auto rifle = Assault Weapon

Weapon that can be fired rapidly = Machine Gun

Not all liberals are in favor of gun control. Maybe if gun culture was more welcoming, even more would join our side.

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I believe that the Gun culture is very welcoming. I have never, and I mean never been scoffed at for asking a question at a gun range. When I first started shooting handguns I would usually go to the local gun range and just watch. I wanted to learn by watching and asking questions. Most guys would ask me if I would like to shoot their firearms.

I think the problem is not that the gun community is not welcoming, I think the problem is that the non firearm owning public believes that we are a bunch of redneck, racist conspiracy theorists. Sure, some news outlets sorta push this view but the brady bunch and movies have done more to tarnish the right of owning a firearm than any pro-gun person yet.

Ske1etor, I think you're partly right, but when people go off on a rant about how terrible "the liberals" are, it can be pretty off putting.

Ske1etor, I think you're partly right, but when people go off on a rant about how terrible "the liberals" are, it can be pretty off putting.

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I understand that but when you are dumped on from the time you decide to take part in your constitutional right to keep and bear firearms you tend to get a little annoyed by the people most set on taking that right away. We are treated like criminals by the oblivious public of this country for wanting to protect ourselves and I for one am pretty fed up with it. There is no reason to fear the person that wants to protect themselves regardless of how they accomplish that goal.

I am in no way apologising for shoddy reporting. But, say YOU were the reporter... how on earth could you divorce yourself from your own personal biases and write an article that was completely void of personal predjudice? Then factor in some stupid### with a liberal axe to grind. It's a wonder that every news article dosen't begin and end with "The sky is falling the sky is falling!!!" For example... I live in Northern Wisconsin. It's Winter. It often snows in Winter. But every time we're forecast to get an inch or three of the white stuff, for 2 days in advance, the TV near-constantly has a "crawler" running above or below the program I'm watching, saying "WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY.....". Of course you dipsticks, it's Winter. In Wisconsin.
Sorry about the rant.

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I am not apologizing for the media either, but I have to laugh at us who laugh as the media when it comes to ignorance and an agenda. I am hugely surprised and dismayed by the large number of experienced gun owners here who think guns have knockdown power such as the mightly 5.56 or .45 acp, that if the hole in the end of the buttstock of an M16 gets plugged or covered that it will cause the gun the malfunction, who are convinced that negligental discharges are accidental discharges because they didn't mean to pull the trigger (but they weren't negligent, no siree Bob), and who call cartridges "bullets." Many of us call magazines "clips" and then get defensive and claim they mean the same thing when challenged on proper useage. As noted in posts above, it is wrong when the media calls magazine clips, but as a community, we are not uniform in getting it right ourselves.

Then we have the folks who rant about how others don't follow the 4 rules of gun safety, but we see them in pictures with their fingers on the trigger and pointing their guns at things they don't intend to destroy (the camera, bedroom wall, etc.) and obviously not making sure of their target, backstop, beyond. Then we have the hunters every year that shoot their buddies or strangers out in the brush, confusing a human for a deer or quail.

We may hate the media for their ignorance, but we have some issues of our own to address as well.

This gem from the local media outlet recently:

"The police confiscated semi-automatic machine guns from the residence."

Then we have the folks who rant about how others don't follow the 4 rules of gun safety, but we see them in pictures with their fingers on the trigger and pointing their guns at things they don't intend to destroy (the camera, bedroom wall, etc.) and obviously not making sure of their target, backstop, beyond.

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Actually, just viewing a picture cannot tell us that the 'obviously" did not make sure of their target, backstop, and beyond. It's impossible to know from just one photo. Maybe the person took the firing pin out of the weapon before the photo. Maybe the camera is on a tripod and there is not a person behind it in danger. Maybe they really did check behind the wall and beyond and determined that there are no people in the line of fire. And maybe, just maybe, once you know(by visually inspecting) that the gun in your hand is unloaded, it's safe to say it's unloaded. Looking at a photo cannot tell someone on the interweb that the person did or did not do any of these things.

I don't think liberalism is the cause at all. I agree with others who say it is really just laziness. They don't want to take the time to learn about what they are reporting on so they just put out whatever they can justify.

Rush and others have talked about this when it comes to politics and such as well.

Or course, Rush did read a memo from CNN to its reporters instructing them on how to report the Castro story. What to talk about and not talk about.

The one I heard recently that set me over the top about bulls@@t media bias was "The Northern Illinois killer was supplied from the same dealer as the Virginia Tech killer"

Now last time I checked that when a dealer sells you something you are purchasing it.

If the dealer was supplying them he would have been giving them the crap for free.

This to me was a fruedian slip made to make the gun dealer look bad.

Do you guys remember that church shooting a while ago in Missouri, a CNN reporter called a tec-9 a "Semi-Automatic Machine Pistol" I have not watched CNN since. Whenever i go to Biscuitville they have their tvs on CNN, i change the channel...it really pisses the 90 year old men off.

NovaDAK said,

The average idiot who watches CSI wouldn't know what a Ruger is, or especially a transfer bar.

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I wonder how Carolyn McCarthy would define it.

Any offerings?

(No, no really, no... let's not get off topic. Just let your creativity run rampant.)