Category: Media

The New York Times‘ Editorial Board takes to their typewriters once again to warn the American public about gangs of teenagers who have “super destructive” .50 caliber rifles;

Assault weapons were banned for 10 years until Congress, in bipartisan obeisance to the gun lobby, let the law lapse in 2004. As a result, gun manufacturers have been allowed to sell all manner of war weaponry to civilians, including the super destructive .50-caliber sniper rifle, which an 18-year-old can easily buy in many places even where he or she must be 21 to buy a simpler handgun. Why any civilian would need this weapon, designed to pierce concrete bunkers and armored personnel carriers, is a question that should be put to the gun makers who profit from them and the politicians who shamelessly do their bidding.

First of all, most .50 caliber sniper rifles are not semi-automatic action rifles, hence they can’t be classified as “assault rifles” – that phrase which is right up there with “ghost guns” and other descriptors of scary black guns which panic the gun grabbers. Most .50 caliber sniper rifles are bolt action – which means that each round (bullet) must be chambered manually.

Secondly, a .50 caliber sniper rifle goes for about 10 grand – the cost of a used car. I’m not aware of any teenagers who have a spare ten grand laying around to purchase a rifle. In addition, each round of ammunition for the rifle is 3-5 bucks a piece also outside the price range of most teens.

Thirdly, the beasts are hardly concealable, and not easily transported to the prospective scene of a crime. For example, the Barrett M82 is 57 inches long and weighs more than 30 pounds.

Congress has shamelessly become the last to admit what the public senses with each new shooting spree: The nation needs restoration of a federal assault weapons ban — this time minus the loopholes the gun industry exploited to boost sales.

The gun grabbers have been biding their time waiting for a mass shooting involving scary black rifles which have features that don’t enhance the weapons’ efficiency. How many bayonetings have happened, but bayonet studs are one feature that makes a rifle an “assault rifle”, just like a flash suppressor or a barrel shroud. Or “the thing in the back that goes up” – whatever that is. All those things do is frighten anti-gun nuts.

Last weekend, the media were exploiting the scary sounding “bullet button” which is actually a button that requires a tool to drop an empty magazine from a rifle before you can insert a fresh magazine. The use of the “bullet button” is designed to slow the process, but the media was using the term to scare people into thinking that by somehow pressing the “bullet button” increases the rate of fire. The two terrorists had actually disabled the “bullet buttons” on their guns so they could load faster – but not to hear the media tell it.

The Economist attempts to disarm Americans with their article “The Economist explains; Why America doesn’t have universal background checks for gun-buyers” which is riddled with errors of fact and misstatements as it explains the issue to a largely European audience;

The police bosses are on the president’s side. Their job would be much easier if fewer guns were in circulation and if all buyers of guns were to undergo checks of their background, especially their criminal and mental-health history. The proliferation of guns is one of the reasons for the substantial rise in violent crime in many American cities this year, they say. Current rules on background checks apply only to licensed gun dealers but up to 40% of gun sales take place at gun fairs or over the internet, which do not require such checks. The American public is overwhelmingly on the president’s side too. According to a poll published in August by the Pew Research Centre, 85% of those surveyed are in favour of expanded background checks for gun owners. Almost 80% support laws to prevent people with a mental illness from buying a gun and 70% back the creation of a federal database to track all gun sales. So why is there still no federal law on background checks?

The politically powerful National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups oppose universal background checks or indeed any law that could restrict gun sales. They invoke the Second Amendment of 1791, which protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”.

The Economist misses the fact that many police chiefs and sheriffs are urging law-abiding Americans to arm themselves because the police are no longer able to protect their constituencies, mostly because of criminals with guns who don’t obey the laws, who don’t bother with background checks at their own points of sale.

That “40% of gun sales take place at gun fairs or over the internet” is an old statistic – pre-Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993. The Brady Bill requires background checks and it forbids sales of firearms to people who are flagged on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. Section 922(g) of the Brady Bill prohibits sales of firearms to any person who has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year; is a fugitive from justice; is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance; has been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution; is an alien illegally or unlawfully in the United States; has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions; having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced U.S. citizenship;
is subject to a court order that restrains the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such intimate partner, or; has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.

The FBI asked folks who have been arrested and imprisoned for using a firearm in commission of their crimes and found that less than 1% got their firearms at gun shows or on the internet. Mostly they get their guns by trading between each other and stealing them from legal gun owners – including stealing weapons from legitimate gun dealers.

Tracking gun sales is a good idea, except when you realize that police almost never check gun registration records when they’re investigating a crime. The police in the District of Columbia don’t even check their records of less than a 100 registered gun owners when a gun crime in the District is committed to look for suspects. Law abiding gun owners aren’t committing crimes. Tracking legal gun sales isn’t a solution to the gun crime problem. Registering guns only does one thing for government – it tells the government who owns the guns and where to go when it’s illegal to own guns for confiscation. It’s not a crime fighting tool.

the National Rifle Association is powerful and they do oppose further restrictions to gun ownership, they also represent a large number (about 6 million) of little guys who wouldn’t be able to oppose the gun grabbers in government without the association. The fact is that there are sufficient laws on the books to prevent criminals from getting guns legally, but the government isn’t enforcing those laws, or they aren’t using the tools available to their full effect. it’s just easier to write more laws than it is to enforce the ones already written. That’s what legislators, in conjunction with a disingenuous media, do best – scare the public into believing there is a problem that they can solve by writing more laws.

The Economist doesn’t include the most important part of the Second Amendment when they quote it; the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed“.

The United States does have universal background checks, Economist, you should do your research.

Chief Tango sends us a link to the New York Times which catalogs the last 13 infamous mass shooters and “How they got their guns“. They include pictures of the murderers’ scary black guns, because how do you frighten your readership without pictures of inanimate objects.

Also, in each case, the Times mentions the military service of each, no matter how tangential that relationship might be – for example, Jared Loughner, the Tucson shooter, pissed hot on an initial urinalysis and couldn’t even get in the Army, but that gets a mention by these clowns at the Times.

In fact, none of the people profiled on this article had successful military careers. Even Nidal Hasan had problems with his supervisors who would have fired anyone else with Hasan’s level of performance if the supervisors hadn’t been subjected to the Army’s politically correct environment.

On the ATF Form 4473, that we all fill out every time we purchase a firearm, down there in question 12g, it asks if the applicant had a dishonorable military discharge;

None of the people listed had dishonorable discharges – except William Page, who simply lied on his ATF 4473. The conclusion that a rational person would arrive at after reading the New York Times piece is that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is broken, but rational people aren’t the target audience of the New York Times. Most of the murderers in the Times article had mental problems that didn’t appear when the FBI ran them through the NICS. If that’s the problem, that’s what legislators need to fix, but that is too difficult to expect prosecutors and legislators to work together on – it’s just much easier to demonize scary black guns and the law abiding owners of scary black guns. For some reason, the Left would prefer to take rights away from law abiding citizens than to restrict criminals. Isn’t that the exact opposite of the traditional meaning of “liberalism”?