How the Media
Misleads the Public
The phenomenon of the media misleading the public is as old
as the media itself. Although it is
quite prevalent on stories regarding mass homicides it certainly appears in
their reporting of other stories. The
reasons are many:
- The media wants to run with a story and the first reports are almost always filled with conclusions or assumptions that are later shown to be false.
- The reporter, news writer, news caster, etc. is talking about something they just to not have the knowledge to discuss.
- The news organization is biased.
To a certain extent it is difficult to remove all bias from
a news report. News reporters are human
beings and human beings have perspectives on issues that are just difficult to
completely contain. The natural bias inflamed
with inaccurate initial reports, coupled with a topic that the reporter is not
qualified to discuss, and escalated with an added dash of hysteria because of
the senseless nature of the crime being reported on lays the ground work for
those inaccurate statements being accepted by the public as fact.
Immediately after the Aurora shooting and for several days
thereafter the news reports stated that the shooter wore head to toe body
armor. I immediately knew that was high
improbably as no such product exits commercially or within the Military. The media then backed off and referred to it as
a bullet proof vest. It was not that
either. They were basing their reports
on rumor and the plain fact of the matter is most people cannot tell the
difference between body armor and a load bearing vest, which is what he was
wearing. It would be best to wait for the official police report and I have noted that the Connecticut State Police have tried to keep the information very tightly controlled after the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.
The most common misstatements heard in the Newtown and
Aurora shootings were:
- He used a machine gun or automatic military rifle which are openly sold in sporting goods stores
- These rifles use high-powered cartridges that have no sporting purpose
- The rifles used in both situations were not machine guns; they were not automatic military rifles.
- Machine guns and automatic weapons are not openly sold in sporting goods stores.
- The rifles expend one round for every pull of the trigger, not the 800 rounds per minute of an automatic military rifle.
- The cartridge fired by these rifles is not high powered.
There are hunters who use these rifles but they use them on
small game. Let me explain the history
of military rifles. From the inception
of the army in 1776 up through the Korean War the U.S. Military used rifles
made of wood and steel. These rifles
where heavy and high-powered. In World
War II and Korea soldiers were armed with rifles that weighed about 10 pounds
and fired .30 caliber bullets weighing about 170 grains. These cartridges would easily take the
largest game in North America. While
these weapons worked well in the fighting that had been done in the wide open
spaces of Europe during the first two World Wars they were problematic for a
modern armed forces fighting in the Jungle of Vietnam.
The first thing that the Military wanted to address was
weight. The wood and steel rifles were
heavy and so was their ammunition.
Additionally the military realized that in the jungle our troops were
not shooting at an enemy that was 1,000 yards away so they did not need the
long range capabilities that were present in their current rifles.
So the Army accepted the design of the M16 rifle and the
current version, the M4 Carbine, weighs in at about 6.5 pounds and fires a 62 grain
bullet which is 2 ¾ times lighter than its predecessor. Therefore it is 2.75 times less powerful than
the round used in WWI, WWII, and Korea.
No Civilian Purpose
for this Rifle
Let’s discuss this contention. First of all, as I found when I lived in
Boise, there are ground vermin that travel in packs, infect farm animals and
live stock with disease, and destroy farm land and sometimes their
structures. People in those areas find
the civilian version of the M4 perfect for the eradication of those varmints.
Secondly, for the competitive shooter the rifle is extremely
accurate.
Thirdly, for the recreational shooter the rifle is extremely
fun to shoot. I know this statement is
abhorrent to many people but there are 4 million NRA shooters as well as
millions of others who aren’t members of the NRA who enjoy shooting and we are
not trying to restrict what non-shooters do for fun.
Now, as pertinent as the last three reasons are for owning
the civilian semi-automatic version of the M4 the most common reason people buy
it is for their own personal defense and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what
the second amendment is all about.
Amendment #2 to the U.S. Constitution has nothing to do with hunting as
some people try to infer. It is about
defending yourself, your family, and your home from both criminals and tyrannical
governments. That is what was going on
at the time the 2nd Amendment was added. And if you don’t think that cause rings true today
ask the Citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. Now I know there are those who don’t believe
that this could ever happen in the U.S. and I hope it doesn’t but the world is
changing and not always for the good.
For those who don’t believe this may happen you cannot deny that there
are events that can occur in this country such as riots and natural disasters
where you will be on your own. We saw
this after Hurricane Katrina and after the L.A. riots in the mid 1990’s (I
refer to call it by the media given moniker, “Rodney King Riots” because that
is an injustice to Rodney King. He did
not riot and was not happy that people were doing so in his name). During the L.A. riots friends of mine who
were shooters were besieged by friends who were not. The non-shooting folks were not asking for
just any old gun, they were looking for rifles and shotguns to defend their
families. My shooting friends turned
them down, not due to spite, but because the folks asking were untrained and
that was a liability to their family and other innocent people.
There are also those out there who feel that the 2nd
Amendment only refers to muzzle loading muskets because that the extent of
technology at the time. Really? That was not only the state of the technology
at the time it was also the “state of the art” of technology at the time. It put the civilian gun owner on par with the
military, and again, the ability to protect oneself against a tyrannical government
was a large part of the 2nd Amendment. In fact the civilian gun owner was on par
with the military for almost 200 years because fully automatic arms were not
exclusively carried by soldiers until Vietnam.
In fact, during the settling of the West the civilian shooter was
actually better armed than the military as the civilians had the ability to own
a Winchester lever action repeater whereas the military continued to issue
single shot rifles until 1892.
There are those who scoff at the need to protect oneself against a tyrannical government by pointing out that we don’t have a tyrannical government and I will point out that the 2nd Amendment guarantees that we won’t.
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