A periodical gets it right!?!?

Mostly good.

Second, we can argue all day about what the Framers—all now dead for 200 years or so—intended with the Second Amendment.

Click to expand...

If only they had written letters or published editorials on their thoughts at the time!

hso said:

Slate has a piece critical of sloppy reporting on shootings!

Click to expand...

Sloppy? Nope. Fuzzy, emotion-based reporting carefully tailored for a fuzzy, emotion-based audience. Why would media dilute their agenda-based message with intellectually honest, fact- and logic-based reporting? To the extent that the gun-control debate is approached in a rational, informed manner, it goes our way hands-down.

It is an interesting article, but it ignores the fact that the anti-gun agenda benefits from actively and intentionally muddying the waters.

It's nice to see that some small segment of the media;
A) Notices the consistent inaccuracy of reporting on this issue
B) Still has some small threshold of standards that they think should be maintained

Still, they have conveyed gun topics in such a misleading manner (full autos being conflated with semi's from 1934 to today; this is 100 year old tech, people), there isn't anyone paying attention who doesn't see it as a case of calling a deer a horse. (Chinese history sure is fascinating, and terrifying; they were doing Orwellian Newspeak over 2000 years ago)

The semi/auto thing always gets me, since I've never seen them so perpetually confused regarding such a simple point of definition in any other field; no confusion on rape and 'legitimate rape,' no confusion on abortion vs. miscarriage, confusing global warming with global cooling, very rarely Sunni with Shia --these are the talking heads routinely explaining Byzantine congressional maneuvers and justifying climate science for crying out loud, and we're supposed to think they can't remember the difference between "bang!" and "brrrrap!?"

TCB

The semi/auto thing always gets me, since I've never seen them so perpetually confused regarding such a simple point of definition in any other field; no confusion on rape and 'legitimate rape,' no confusion on abortion vs. miscarriage, confusing global warming with global cooling, very rarely Sunni with Shia --these are the talking heads routinely explaining Byzantine congressional maneuvers and justifying climate science for crying out loud, and we're supposed to think they can't remember the difference between "bang!" and "brrrrap!

Click to expand...

Lenin taught them that way over 100 years ago. Useful Idiots are not for nothing.

NPR had a segment the other afternoon entirely devoted to sorting out terminology, and they did an ok job, except for their expert defining "high capacity" magazines as anything over 10 rounds. Though I suppose that's a rather arbitrary quibble to have. He did go on to point out that over half of all handguns come with magazines that hold more than 10 rounds so these aren't unusual or especially military in nature.

They prefaced the entire segment with a brief apology to their listeners who "may already be familiar with firearms" and for whom this would all be basic and pointless. Nice to have them at least nod in our direction and acknowledge that not everyone listening is either anti-gun nor ignorant about them.

Another unexpected source that has a columnist that gets it. The Washington Post.

On the front page of Thursday’s Boston Globe is a massive photo of an AR-15. The headline: MAKE IT STOP.

The New York Daily News takes a similar approach, with a picture of a Marine holding an assault rifle. The headline: “Hey, NRA: this Marine served in Iraq & he says assault rifles should be banned Does that make him a gun-grabbing commie, too?”

Click to expand...

Sam1911 said:

NPR had a segment the other afternoon entirely devoted to sorting out terminology, and they did an ok job, except for their expert defining "high capacity" magazines as anything over 10 rounds. Though I suppose that's a rather arbitrary quibble to have. He did go on to point out that over half of all handguns come with magazines that hold more than 10 rounds so these aren't unusual or especially military in nature.

They prefaced the entire segment with a brief apology to their listeners who "may already be familiar with firearms" and for whom this would all be basic and pointless. Nice to have them at least nod in our direction and acknowledge that not everyone listening is either anti-gun nor ignorant about them.

Click to expand...

Saw this too and was pleasantly surprised. NPR isn't nearly as leftist as it is reputed to be.

If you keep scrolling down the Slate page, you can also learn how gun owners are comparable to slave owners in the 1850s and

How the NRA and conservatives have perverted the meaning of the right to bear arms.

Click to expand...

To their credit, at least there is a reporter there that realizes how bad an idea of the terror-watch/no fly list is.

except for their expert defining "high capacity" magazines as anything over 10 rounds

Click to expand...

Yeah, I reflexively said "or seven in New York, or five in Canada, or whatever" when I heard that one

If you keep scrolling down the Slate page, you can also learn how gun owners are comparable to slave owners in the 1850s

Click to expand...

We're not claiming they're "getting it right" (at least, I'm not), but rather that they realize they sound like the loathsome, gullible idiots imaginable to an increasingly informed portion of the population. Even if they think we're evil --and they do-- they don't like their talking heads getting humiliated with shocking regularity when up against even mildly practiced opponents any more than we would

I recall seeing a blurb that even Piers Morgan now thinks he might have over-done it a bit on the assault weapons schtick ("I never thought they were actually listening to me! Please don't take my schtick away, it's all I got!")

TCB

DeadMoneyDrew said:

Saw this too and was pleasantly surprised. NPR isn't nearly as leftist as it is reputed to be.

Click to expand...

That is by design. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting which provides some funding to NPR and PBS is managed by 9 board members appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Federal law does not allow for more than 5 of the 9 members to be from one political party.

This is probably my favorite paragraph the 1st article referenced by hso. (it appears as a 'wall of text" when I pasted here so I put some spacing into it)

In the Washington Post this week, Eugene Robinson wrote, “When the framers wrote of ‘arms,’ they were thinking about muskets and single-shot pistols. They could not have foreseen modern rifles or high-capacity magazines.”

A few problems with this. First, gun enthusiasts will be only too happy to educate you on the existence of the Girandoni air rifle, which dates back to 1779, 12 years before the Second Amendment was ratified. It used compressed air, not gunpowder, and could hold 20 bullets at once. Lewis and Clark had one with them when Thomas Jefferson sent them out to explore the West.

Second, we can argue all day about what the Framers—all now dead for 200 years or so—intended with the Second Amendment. But it seems disingenuous to argue that, in crafting a document that has largely served us well for more than 220 years, they couldn’t imagine improvements in gun technology.

Click to expand...

I often... too often... forget about the 20 round capacity of Girandoni rifle and that it was around 12 yrs before the 2A.

Just the fact that there was different types of rifles shows that improvements of weapon was already going on before the 2A was even thought of.

And one could say, with little chance of rebuttal, that the framers were VERY well acquainted with private ownership of unquestionably military weapons since some of them owned cannons.

DeadMoneyDrew said:

Saw this too and was pleasantly surprised. NPR isn't nearly as leftist as it is reputed to be.

Click to expand...

Hm. I listened to this piece carrying water in support of a new national "assault weapons" ban and I haven't tuned the local NPR station in since. Let's count how many anti-gun talking points Kelly McEvers hit in the intoduction:

Weapon of choice for mass shootings? Check.
Designed for battle, "weapon of war"? Check.
Designed to maximize death/destruction (aka "the only purpose is to kill as many people in the shortest time possible")? Check.

And this is the host's introduction, her guest hasn't even started yet. The entire piece is designed to address the criticisms of the failed '94 ban, I presume to lay the groundwork for Assault Weapons Ban 2.0*.

NPR has been my go-to news source for most of my adult life, because generally the reporting is balanced and in-depth. But when it comes to gun issues, I think they are every bit as bad as their reputation suggests.

*As specious as the media reporting has historically been on guns, you can bet AWB 2.0 will carefully address all the criticisms of the beta version that we have helpfully provided.

"Funding provided by Plowshares, the Joyce Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation" --check (assuming, fairly confidently)

The AWB 1.0 wasn't a mistake if they learned something from it, right? Well, they've clearly learned that to get what they want (scary-looking guns of modern design & effectiveness forbidden) they have to ban all semi-autos. It's an inevitable realization, if you think about it, so we shouldn't be surprised.

More shocking is the belief they could somehow pull this off today, when the feature-ban of the 94 bill w/ ten year sunset was all they could pass previously (and they still paid a heavy electoral price for even that)

TCB

And it passed the Democratic controlled House ,with shenanigans, by only one vote in 1994!

The chance today of AWB 2 are nil.

Eh, so did Ocare (the Senate as well as SCOTUS, twice), and the Hughes Amendment passed despite not even attaining a majority --stay frosty.

316's NPR Article said:

One of the weapons used by the shooter in Orlando was an assault-style rifle. This style of gun was also used in San Bernardino, Sandy Hook, Aurora. The assault-style rifle is designed to maximize death and injury at short- and medium-range. It was developed for the battlefield. Later, it was adapted for the civilian market. The last time Congress moved to regulate civilian use of assault rifles was 1994 with the passage of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Tom Diaz was a part of that effort as a House committee lawyer focused on guns. He is now a gun-control advocate, and he's with us here in the studio. Thanks for being here.

Click to expand...

Woof. What's funny, is that reading some of the rest of the transcript, the host's tone softens immediately. It is transparently obvious, that her opening statements were basically ad-copy supplied by Mr. Tom Diaz, intended for him to spring-board off of. Very common in the interview game for all manner of topics, so we shouldn't be surprised, and I honestly don't totally hold it against the host (her bosses probably control the entirety of that intro paragraph for these segments). Rather vitriolic, though, since the whole goal of that game is to try to make your host appear neutral, then 'win' them over in the course of your spiel. This script reads like the host becomes increasingly skeptical for the first few back-and-forths, initially sharing the rapid anti-gun views, then questioning this person about them

Oh, and the history of the AR in that intro reads like the history of the world in the Idiocracy "time masheen" amusement park ride

TCB

You are an a roll since Never Trump! Try to remain calm. Still 4.5 months til Election Day.

Can you make It? Time will tell. Not to worry and keep Texas powder dry!