If you want to have an incident involving a firearm,,,,

[Onmilo]

All you have to do is get the news media to report that the firearm in question is the choice of criminals or the firearm is on a to be banned list.

Sure seems like every time the news media reports on banning a firearm or a gun control measures involving a specified firearm, it is soon to follow that the type of weapon in question is used in a criminal shooting incident.

Now, of course, I am not suggesting that the news media goes out of its way to find a shooting incident involving the weapon type in question, no, not at all.

It must be that some neferious individual has implanted microchips in certain less than social individuals brains and activates them whenever the need arises to make a 'nationwide incident of terror'.,,,,,

 

[Nitram68]

:banghead:

 

[SMLE]

Can you say; "Reichstag fire"?

I'm tellin ya, the timing of some of these high profile shootings is starting to seem just a little too handy for the antis. :banghead:

I'm about ready to start wearing a tinfoil hat.

 

[Bear Gulch]

Sorta like how they jumble a story about a good guy using a firearm (that is if they report it at all.

 

[possenti]

Yep. Some people will argue that the media will widely publicize a particular shooting in order to demonize a certain type of gun. That's too simplistic for me to believe. Of course those same people will argue that there's no such thing as a "conspiracy". History teaches us otherwise.

"Once is Happenstance. Twice is Coincidence.The third time it's Enemy action."

 

[peacefuljeffrey]

Do you have any idea how many times I have read in my local paper that a cop fired his "9mm Glock service revolver"?

I have had email discourses (polite ones) with reporters for the paper, trying to (politely, and offered as a means of making them "better reporters," which they want to be) instruct them on the proper use of gun terminology. I got appreciative responses back, kind of "oh, I didn't know that -- thanks."

I don't believe that reporters are out there writing stories and not caring whether they fill them with nonsense. They care. They want to get it right. But they are also under deadline pressure, plus there's the fact that they are often forced to write about subjects they have not had the opportunity in their lives to become experts in. They have to do the best they can -- which obviously sometimes falls short. They don't necessarily know that they're even wrong to call a Glock a "semi-automatic revolver." Yes, it is easy for us to say, "Well, then, they shouldn't be writing about something that they don't feel confident that they know about." But they don't have the luxury of picking their assignments. A person who is an expert about figure skating may find herself writing a story about a plane crash, and she has no idea what flaps do or what a directional gyro is.

If a writer is doing a feature story, the kind that they have softer deadlines about, which enables them to do some research, then there is less and less excuse for getting factual stuff wrong. If a guy spent weeks working on a story about a series of murders, and said something like, "Police believe the killer may be using a semi-automatic Glock revolver," I would not be inclined to forgive that at all. No excuse, when you could have contacted "gun experts" who would have told you, "No no, don't describe it this way."

-Jeffrey

 

[Trebor]

I've seen press releases from Police Departments or city officials that refer to an officer discharging his "department issued Glock service revolver." It's not always the reporter's fault.

 

[peacefuljeffrey]

Well, technically, an informed reporter should not just regurgitate the text of the police press release. If an NTSB press release said, "One of the two engines on the 747 had a malfunction," an alert reporter would say, "Wait a minute -- either it was 'one of the FOUR engines,' or it wasn't a 747!"

So if I were a reporter and got such a police press release, I'd ASK whoever I had to ask, "Was it a revolver, or was it a Glock semiauto pistol? I want to get this right in the story."

As far as I'm concerned, it's inexcusable for police, who are supposed to be expertly trained (haw haw) with all the equipment they have to use, to get the terms right. How good can their understanding and expertise with the equipment actually be if they don't even know the terms for it? Would you have faith in a nuclear reactor tech person if he said, "When the whoosits gets up into the red, turn that dial-thingie"?!

We should expect better, and get it.

-Jeffrey