barnbwt
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That's the name of the propaganda product that filled a full half-hour of broadcast on my local NPR affiliate this evening;
http://www.humanmedia.org/catalog/program.php?products_id=394
There's no transcript for it that I can find, but anyone in the DFW area was exposed to it for a full thirty minutes around dinner time. I can't recommend anyone pay for a listen
As you'd expect, biased, emotional, uninformative, blah blah blah -- same stuff you'd expect to see. What I found interesting was the various rhetorical and persuasive devices employed to create the one-sided depiction of the topic, with its inevitable gun control solution. Maybe because the narrator talks more slowly and monotone than Diane Rehm (i.e. stroke victim), maybe because there were some rather gaping holes in their arguments/solutions left more unattended than usual, but these methods you see elsewhere stood out a lot more than usual.
The whole premise of the tale is naturally that gun violence is a disease (even using terms like 'contagion load' and the like to describe how poor minorities are disproportionately likely to be involved). The disease angle is brilliant in that it simultaneously absolves everyone involved (the victims, the perpetrators, the police, the doctors, and the viewer) from any moral scrutiny, and forces the audience to accept the premise of gun violence exactly as presented (as an occurrence that just 'happens' because of the presence of certain factors, much like a bread mold). These two aspects make it very easy for the narrator to present only one side of the data, and only their solution, without even having to pay lip service to opposing viewpoints not founded in medical-sounding theory. No need to discuss civil liberty and self defense when all that's being discussed is how gun violence magically appears whenever guns are present
A large portion of the story centered around how an urban trauma center deals with gun shot injuries. Not only was there not even a hint of discussion about how these injuries are incurred (obviously by either committing or responding to crime in nearly *all* urban gunshot cases) they made a point of insisting that these clearly pertinent facts do not matter. Ostensibly because all sufferers of gunshots are morally equal in the eyes of a doctor (which makes professional sense), but the program clearly seeks for the viewer to find empathy with this (again, professionally necessary but obviously short-sighted and naiive from a policy solution standpoint). The purpose is to separate everyone actually involved with 'gun violence,' from the causes/solutions of 'gun violence.' Laughable on its face, except you are hearing this in a matter-of-fact manner from a bonafide trauma doctor, who an ignorant or pro-gun-leaning listener will naturally see as an authority on the subject (even though a surgeon is about as far removed from actual crime-control as anyone else). Perhaps unintentionally ironic, they say all this immediately after stressing the importance of ending the 'cycle of violence' (another device for artificially limiting discussion to a course of causes & events of the propagandists' choosing alone). Even more ironic, considering the whole point of background checks is to place myopic focus on one's past acts (to the exclusion of all other pertinent facts)
Another stand-out tactic was a sequence where they informatively walk through the process of induction & treatment for gunshot wounds...from the perspective of the viewer as a gunshot sufferer! As in, "Next, you would be seen by nurses and prepped for emergency surgery..." type of narration. The goal here is of course to put as much sympathetic fear & angst into the viewer as possible without outright offending them so they will be receptive to the inevitable "sell" by the propagandists during the conclusion, and too emotional to apply proper scrutiny. I'm no doctor, but while it's mildly interesting to hear how emergency triage procedures work for a bad trauma case like a serious gunshot or how nurses whisper sweet nothings to gang bangers awaking from surgery, it really has nothing at all to do with 'gun violence,' or really even any supposed 'contagious epidemic' aspect founded in distorted disease theory.* It's just naked pathos to make the listener vulnerable.
Toward the end of the program, they finally start talking about the policy angle of 'solutions.' Naturally, they once again carefully avoid any discussion of causes for the problem, instead focusing on promised solutions. As we all know, this is an intentionally dishonest scheme for limiting discussion to only the solutions being 'sold' as opposed to any kind of earnest attempt at resolution. Here is where I thought the program began to turn a bit surreal. Perhaps as a way to make the listener more receptive to their solution, most of the 'experts' interviewed (medical folks, not law enforcement, naturally) seemed to have a somewhat helpless/fatalistic attitude. Odd, since they were selected specifically to bolster the arguments for AWBs and background checks, you'd think you would want people who sound convinced; instead, they hemmed, hawed, and hedged, then finished by 'supposing' that these gun control measures would help. It really sounded like they actually had no personal idea how to address these issues, but circled around at the end to the same tired old cue-cards of assault weapons, gun proliferation, background checks, and etc.
At one point, they address the mental health angle**, and have two conclusions; that nutjobs we associate with the big headline-grabbing shootings constitute a tiny fraction of gun violence and are actually quite unlikely to shoot others on the whole (which is a fact; the mentally ill are just about as unlikely as anyone else in their demographic to harm others), and that mental health policy is an impossible way to solve gun violence since it is generally committed by 'normies' or nutjobs previously indistinguishable from 'normies.' Almost the next sentence, assault weapon bans are suggested as a better alternative (yup, the very same assault weapons used in but a fraction of that tiny fraction of violence committed by the mentally ill), and nonsensically keep bringing up the major mass shootings they'd just hand-waived away as insignificant.
Facts & figures do not feature as prominently as you'd expect for the 'scientific' discussion they are going for, and when they did appear they seemed counterproductive (but perhaps that's just because I'm so familiar with the unspoken context behind the most common gun control stats); I can see why they stuck to emotional arguments for the most part. By accident, they do mention that suicides are the lion's share of the 30,000/year statistical chestnut and disproportionately fall on whites outside the minority demographics largely impacted by/responsible for all other violent crime involving guns. They do not mention (at all) how many gun charges are bargained away or never pursued by prosecutors. In fact, law enforcement was not mentioned once that I can recall. Also presumably by accident, the narrator asks what makes a doctor qualified to ask whether gun are in the home or to give advice on their storage; a very unconvincing answer about how doctors also promote automobile safety to patients is the response (I've never had a doc ask if I owned a car & warn me about CO poisoning, nor has anyone else, I'd think)
At the very end, they close with a lengthy monologue (I believe by one Dr James Feldman who did most of the interviews) where the MD rather emotionally (i.e. unprofessionally) opines that keeping a gun around cannot be used for anything but bad outcomes. That it will be inaccessible in the case of an attacker, but recklessly accessible to children. That it will inevitably be the chosen course of action in the event of even minor misfortune. He states he does not understand how others can see firearms as a means of defense against violent attack. A quick search suggests he's a cardiologist from Houston, whose high crime rate and location inside 'shall-issue' Texas results in a large number of documented firearm defense stories, and an even larger share of undocumented ones.
So, TL/DR/DL; the bullet-points of this episode are the same stuff you see in every other anti-gun hit piece following this 'public health' kick, but used some rather interesting emotional tactics in its persuasion that stand out more than usual. That's really bad for the propagandists since when a viewer becomes aware of such dishonest manipulation they stubbornly turn against the speaker, but good for someone trying to examine exactly how they go about sculpting the "feels" of their audience. I still imagine that for ignorant or sympathetic listeners without context for the assertions of the piece, that it is quite compelling in favor of gun control.
TCB
*The fundamental basis of contagious disease theory is that there is something tangible causing the disease, that is transmissible; guns are neither transmissible in any logical sense, nor is there any mechanism by which they can cause the violence of their wielders (any levels of violence due to accident or negligence are minuscule and obviously not the topic of discussion)
**Oddly enough, an actual disease and health problem accepted and studied by the legitimate medical community, quite frequently with actual documented solutions to help those afflicted.
***I didn't catch the opening credits of the program, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say Plowshares, Bill & Melinda Gates, Annenberg Foundation, John Hopkins (Bloomberg School of Health), and the Joyce Foundation paid for everything, same as every other anti-gun puff piece pimped. And of course the CPB supported by no small measure of state/federal tax money.
http://www.humanmedia.org/catalog/program.php?products_id=394
There's no transcript for it that I can find, but anyone in the DFW area was exposed to it for a full thirty minutes around dinner time. I can't recommend anyone pay for a listen
As you'd expect, biased, emotional, uninformative, blah blah blah -- same stuff you'd expect to see. What I found interesting was the various rhetorical and persuasive devices employed to create the one-sided depiction of the topic, with its inevitable gun control solution. Maybe because the narrator talks more slowly and monotone than Diane Rehm (i.e. stroke victim), maybe because there were some rather gaping holes in their arguments/solutions left more unattended than usual, but these methods you see elsewhere stood out a lot more than usual.
The whole premise of the tale is naturally that gun violence is a disease (even using terms like 'contagion load' and the like to describe how poor minorities are disproportionately likely to be involved). The disease angle is brilliant in that it simultaneously absolves everyone involved (the victims, the perpetrators, the police, the doctors, and the viewer) from any moral scrutiny, and forces the audience to accept the premise of gun violence exactly as presented (as an occurrence that just 'happens' because of the presence of certain factors, much like a bread mold). These two aspects make it very easy for the narrator to present only one side of the data, and only their solution, without even having to pay lip service to opposing viewpoints not founded in medical-sounding theory. No need to discuss civil liberty and self defense when all that's being discussed is how gun violence magically appears whenever guns are present
A large portion of the story centered around how an urban trauma center deals with gun shot injuries. Not only was there not even a hint of discussion about how these injuries are incurred (obviously by either committing or responding to crime in nearly *all* urban gunshot cases) they made a point of insisting that these clearly pertinent facts do not matter. Ostensibly because all sufferers of gunshots are morally equal in the eyes of a doctor (which makes professional sense), but the program clearly seeks for the viewer to find empathy with this (again, professionally necessary but obviously short-sighted and naiive from a policy solution standpoint). The purpose is to separate everyone actually involved with 'gun violence,' from the causes/solutions of 'gun violence.' Laughable on its face, except you are hearing this in a matter-of-fact manner from a bonafide trauma doctor, who an ignorant or pro-gun-leaning listener will naturally see as an authority on the subject (even though a surgeon is about as far removed from actual crime-control as anyone else). Perhaps unintentionally ironic, they say all this immediately after stressing the importance of ending the 'cycle of violence' (another device for artificially limiting discussion to a course of causes & events of the propagandists' choosing alone). Even more ironic, considering the whole point of background checks is to place myopic focus on one's past acts (to the exclusion of all other pertinent facts)
Another stand-out tactic was a sequence where they informatively walk through the process of induction & treatment for gunshot wounds...from the perspective of the viewer as a gunshot sufferer! As in, "Next, you would be seen by nurses and prepped for emergency surgery..." type of narration. The goal here is of course to put as much sympathetic fear & angst into the viewer as possible without outright offending them so they will be receptive to the inevitable "sell" by the propagandists during the conclusion, and too emotional to apply proper scrutiny. I'm no doctor, but while it's mildly interesting to hear how emergency triage procedures work for a bad trauma case like a serious gunshot or how nurses whisper sweet nothings to gang bangers awaking from surgery, it really has nothing at all to do with 'gun violence,' or really even any supposed 'contagious epidemic' aspect founded in distorted disease theory.* It's just naked pathos to make the listener vulnerable.
Toward the end of the program, they finally start talking about the policy angle of 'solutions.' Naturally, they once again carefully avoid any discussion of causes for the problem, instead focusing on promised solutions. As we all know, this is an intentionally dishonest scheme for limiting discussion to only the solutions being 'sold' as opposed to any kind of earnest attempt at resolution. Here is where I thought the program began to turn a bit surreal. Perhaps as a way to make the listener more receptive to their solution, most of the 'experts' interviewed (medical folks, not law enforcement, naturally) seemed to have a somewhat helpless/fatalistic attitude. Odd, since they were selected specifically to bolster the arguments for AWBs and background checks, you'd think you would want people who sound convinced; instead, they hemmed, hawed, and hedged, then finished by 'supposing' that these gun control measures would help. It really sounded like they actually had no personal idea how to address these issues, but circled around at the end to the same tired old cue-cards of assault weapons, gun proliferation, background checks, and etc.
At one point, they address the mental health angle**, and have two conclusions; that nutjobs we associate with the big headline-grabbing shootings constitute a tiny fraction of gun violence and are actually quite unlikely to shoot others on the whole (which is a fact; the mentally ill are just about as unlikely as anyone else in their demographic to harm others), and that mental health policy is an impossible way to solve gun violence since it is generally committed by 'normies' or nutjobs previously indistinguishable from 'normies.' Almost the next sentence, assault weapon bans are suggested as a better alternative (yup, the very same assault weapons used in but a fraction of that tiny fraction of violence committed by the mentally ill), and nonsensically keep bringing up the major mass shootings they'd just hand-waived away as insignificant.
Facts & figures do not feature as prominently as you'd expect for the 'scientific' discussion they are going for, and when they did appear they seemed counterproductive (but perhaps that's just because I'm so familiar with the unspoken context behind the most common gun control stats); I can see why they stuck to emotional arguments for the most part. By accident, they do mention that suicides are the lion's share of the 30,000/year statistical chestnut and disproportionately fall on whites outside the minority demographics largely impacted by/responsible for all other violent crime involving guns. They do not mention (at all) how many gun charges are bargained away or never pursued by prosecutors. In fact, law enforcement was not mentioned once that I can recall. Also presumably by accident, the narrator asks what makes a doctor qualified to ask whether gun are in the home or to give advice on their storage; a very unconvincing answer about how doctors also promote automobile safety to patients is the response (I've never had a doc ask if I owned a car & warn me about CO poisoning, nor has anyone else, I'd think)
At the very end, they close with a lengthy monologue (I believe by one Dr James Feldman who did most of the interviews) where the MD rather emotionally (i.e. unprofessionally) opines that keeping a gun around cannot be used for anything but bad outcomes. That it will be inaccessible in the case of an attacker, but recklessly accessible to children. That it will inevitably be the chosen course of action in the event of even minor misfortune. He states he does not understand how others can see firearms as a means of defense against violent attack. A quick search suggests he's a cardiologist from Houston, whose high crime rate and location inside 'shall-issue' Texas results in a large number of documented firearm defense stories, and an even larger share of undocumented ones.
So, TL/DR/DL; the bullet-points of this episode are the same stuff you see in every other anti-gun hit piece following this 'public health' kick, but used some rather interesting emotional tactics in its persuasion that stand out more than usual. That's really bad for the propagandists since when a viewer becomes aware of such dishonest manipulation they stubbornly turn against the speaker, but good for someone trying to examine exactly how they go about sculpting the "feels" of their audience. I still imagine that for ignorant or sympathetic listeners without context for the assertions of the piece, that it is quite compelling in favor of gun control.
TCB
*The fundamental basis of contagious disease theory is that there is something tangible causing the disease, that is transmissible; guns are neither transmissible in any logical sense, nor is there any mechanism by which they can cause the violence of their wielders (any levels of violence due to accident or negligence are minuscule and obviously not the topic of discussion)
**Oddly enough, an actual disease and health problem accepted and studied by the legitimate medical community, quite frequently with actual documented solutions to help those afflicted.
***I didn't catch the opening credits of the program, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say Plowshares, Bill & Melinda Gates, Annenberg Foundation, John Hopkins (Bloomberg School of Health), and the Joyce Foundation paid for everything, same as every other anti-gun puff piece pimped. And of course the CPB supported by no small measure of state/federal tax money.