TexasVet
Member
Our weekly paper came out today and the Editor printed my letter in it's entirety! This is the version they printed....
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September 5, 2003
To the Editor:
As a former weapons history researcher (and continuing student of firearms history), I was disappointed to see such an elementary error in the headline of the September 4th issue of the Standard. Seeing it repeated in the text of the story raised my ire.
First, a Tec-9 (note: not a Tech-9) pistol is NOT an "automatic weapon", it is a SEMI-automatic pistol, just like the pistols carried by most police and citizens with Texas Concealed Handgun Licenses.
"Fully automatic machine pistols" are extremely expensive and rare due to the stringent requirements of the 1934 National Firearms Act and are never found in possesion of street punks.
The chances of this pistol being "fully automatic" are very slim. The owner MAY have illegally converted it to full automatic, a difficult thing to do properly and usually unsafe at both ends, but then I would have expected our police to have charged him with the Federal felony that this act commands. Since no mention of this violation was included in your story, I must assume that your writer has succumbed to the ill-informed journalists first axiom, "Any gun mentioned in a newspaper story must be either a 'fully automatic machine pistol' or an 'evil assault weapon' "
when, in fact, these types of weapons are virtually never used in crimes in this country.
The Tec-9 may look scary to the non-gun person, but it is in fact an awkward, inaccurate piece of junk, beloved by gang-bangers for it's looks alone.
Those of us in Texas who love and use firearms with care and respect dislike the inflated and scaremongering tactics of using the "automatic" boogeyman to spice up news stories when it is almost always a factual error and usually an indication of anti-gun bias on the part of the writer.
I hope that this exaggeration will not appear in my local paper again. It's bad enough seeing it in the liberal east and west coast media every time you turn around, and with as little justification.
I depend on the Standard to bring me the ACCURATE local news.
Sincerely,
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They even took the time to answer it.....
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(EDITOR'S NOTE: A check with Police Chief Gentry confirmed that the Tec-9 is a semi-automatic weapon. The error in last week's story was the result of a misunderstanding in the description given of the weapon by police to the newspaper. The Standard regrets any inconvenience this error may have caused.)
edited 'cause I don't type good when I'm giggling, either!
-------------------------------------------------------
September 5, 2003
To the Editor:
As a former weapons history researcher (and continuing student of firearms history), I was disappointed to see such an elementary error in the headline of the September 4th issue of the Standard. Seeing it repeated in the text of the story raised my ire.
First, a Tec-9 (note: not a Tech-9) pistol is NOT an "automatic weapon", it is a SEMI-automatic pistol, just like the pistols carried by most police and citizens with Texas Concealed Handgun Licenses.
"Fully automatic machine pistols" are extremely expensive and rare due to the stringent requirements of the 1934 National Firearms Act and are never found in possesion of street punks.
The chances of this pistol being "fully automatic" are very slim. The owner MAY have illegally converted it to full automatic, a difficult thing to do properly and usually unsafe at both ends, but then I would have expected our police to have charged him with the Federal felony that this act commands. Since no mention of this violation was included in your story, I must assume that your writer has succumbed to the ill-informed journalists first axiom, "Any gun mentioned in a newspaper story must be either a 'fully automatic machine pistol' or an 'evil assault weapon' "
when, in fact, these types of weapons are virtually never used in crimes in this country.
The Tec-9 may look scary to the non-gun person, but it is in fact an awkward, inaccurate piece of junk, beloved by gang-bangers for it's looks alone.
Those of us in Texas who love and use firearms with care and respect dislike the inflated and scaremongering tactics of using the "automatic" boogeyman to spice up news stories when it is almost always a factual error and usually an indication of anti-gun bias on the part of the writer.
I hope that this exaggeration will not appear in my local paper again. It's bad enough seeing it in the liberal east and west coast media every time you turn around, and with as little justification.
I depend on the Standard to bring me the ACCURATE local news.
Sincerely,
---------------------------------------------------
They even took the time to answer it.....
----------------------------------------------------
(EDITOR'S NOTE: A check with Police Chief Gentry confirmed that the Tec-9 is a semi-automatic weapon. The error in last week's story was the result of a misunderstanding in the description given of the weapon by police to the newspaper. The Standard regrets any inconvenience this error may have caused.)
edited 'cause I don't type good when I'm giggling, either!
