Rolling Stone to the rescue!!!

[morcey2]

They've identified the 5 most dangerous guns in america!

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/pictures/the-5-most-dangerous-guns-in-america-20140714

It's a slideshow, so I'm going to have to paraphrase:

1. Pistols
2. Revolvers
3. Rifles
4. Shotguns
5. Derringers :banghead:

The rating was based on "a combination of availability, portability and criminal usage." I thought 80% receivers would be ahead of derringers, but that's just me.

I was expecting something like:
1. Modified Glock 19 to full-auto specs
2. Any Glock, because they explode. They're made out of plastic anyway.
3. 1911, especially with that shoulder-thing-that-goes-up.
4. Derringer (at least that one was close)
5. Everything else, which we classify as AK-47 for our own convenience.

To keep with the times, here's my list of most dangerous THR users:

1. New Users.
2. Old Users.
3. Lurkers.
4. So-called experts.
5. So-called novices. They can be sneaky.

Matt

 

[Bob2222]

If you do click on the link -- the comments on this fine example of Rolling Stone "journalism" are hilarious!

 

[Midwest]

Surprised they didn't mention

"Ghost Guns"
"Nuclear Musket"
"The Shoulder Thing that Goes Up"
"Heat Seeking Bullets (That Cook Animals)"
"Antler Selection Radar"
"Magazines that can only be used once"
"Automatic Machine Guns with "more thrusts per squeeze" that can be bought from stores without a background check".

.

 

[Panzerschwein]

Popular among handgun-owners, pistols are defined by their built-in barrel and short stock

Wow... I'll second that the article is garbage but that is some pretty good insight right there. I'd never guess that pistols were popular among handgun owners, I'll have to do some research on that tonight.

Gosh, I'm so glad I stopped subscribing to Rolling Stone years ago. I find most of the magazines content laughable these days, but this takes the cake!

 

[Nanook]

At one time, in the now distant past, I was a reader of Rolling Stone. I mostly liked the music reviews and stories about bands I enjoyed. Hey, I was young! LOL

Now it seems like it's only suitable for the bottom of a bird cage. Hard to believe I ever found any value in it.

 

[Sam Cade]

The comments are hilarious.

Top shapes for tires:

1. Round
2. Icosahedral
3. truncated icosidodecahedron
4. Chamfered cube
5. Goodyear

There, I just made a hard hitting journalism piece just like Rolling Stone!

 

[dmancornell]

On the other hand, their plan to implement total civilian gun control confirms everything we've believed

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-to-beat-the-nra-in-7-not-so-easy-steps-20140714

Specifically: 3. Politicize Disaster, Unabashedly

and

When catastrophic events like Newtown unfold, there's an impulse from many elected officials to slow down, to gather facts, to ensure that cooler heads prevail. Politically, this is why gun-control dies.

 

[Derek Zeanah]

OK, those comments made me laugh out loud. Well worth the $0.001 they made because I clicked the link.

 

[Jorg Nysgerrig]

Woah:

 

[barnbwt]

Wow. Makes the Washington Post click-bait gun "stories" look like...something much better than they are. Coincidence that Bloomberg recently paid them for an interview (cuz he's obviously not cool enough to warrant one)? Hopefully RD suckered up a goodly chunk of his 50 mill war chest on this idiocy. RS workers, here's your chance to get some fame as a whistle blower on this pay for play farce.

And we think gun rags are in bed with advertisers

TCB

 

[Jorg Nysgerrig]

 

[wojownik]

Ah, another journalistic feat from Kristen Gwynne, also author of the seminal article "Greek yogurt, toxic waste hazard?"

She does note that "the rifle" killed 300+ people in 2012.

But it would have been inconvenient to include the data point that 500+ people were killed by a hammer that same year. Or the 33,561 killed by "the automobile" in 2012. Or the 37,000+ emergency room cases from "the nail gun."

The musket appears to be safe, since its not included in the article (except for the portion of some 800,000 killed from 1776-1865 with muskets and rifled-muskets).

 

[dusty14u]

I laughed till I cried in the comments section. You would think an editor would have stopped this "article" before it hit print. It makes anti gunners look like .. well, less than intelligent.

 

[Gtscotty]

+1
The comments on that "article" made my day.

 

[19-3Ben]

I laughed till I cried in the comments section.

Me too. Priceless.
I hope the negative feedback and mockery sends a very clear message. Unfortunately, something tells me it'll be lost on them.

 

[Doc7]

I like this comment:

The 5 most dangerous animals:
1. Mammals
2. Primates
3. Reptiles
4. Fish
5. Cats

 

[SuperNaut]

 

[barnbwt]

Intercepted by NSA cellphone wiretap under FISA, names redacted...
Editor 1: "Geez, can you believe the pair on that Bloomberg guy? Ordering us around like that? That's not what I signed on for."
Editor 2: "Well, he was waving wads of cash at us and putting sacks with dollar signs on top of the table...you gotta take the bad with the crooked, and you know how much our bosses were counting on this extra scratch"
Editor 1: "Yeah, but still...Here's an idea; why don't we take his money, and stick it to the man at the same time?"
Editor 2: "How do we do that?"
Editor 1: "We use his 'donation' to fund an embarrassingly bad column on gun violence --we'll need Gwynn for this-- and dare him to complain about us doing a bad job with his money --not that it's his money, in case someone's listening"
Editor 2: "Hmm, I think you may be on to something, there. If we do it right, no one but us will be able to tell it apart from our normal columns, and if it's bad enough, all the gun-crazies will flock to the site to laugh at the article, boosting its ranking...Brilliant!"
End record

TCB

 

[lxd55]

the second paragraph of the derringer page says it all. 2 words misspelled and the sentence was written wrong. just damn!

 

[hso]

Kristen Gwynne

 

[Njal Thorgeirsson]

Darn, beat me to it- I headed straight for THR after seeing this unbelievable article.

Honestly, I love articles like this. Its amazingly terrible. Its like satire... that isn't satire. I can't believe there's actually an anti-gun person out there that could write an "article" like this. It makes their side look more uneducated and ignorant than us pro-gun folk could ever hope to demonstrate [in a piece that's the same length].

I like it; keep 'em comin'.

 

[Old Dog]

We should be worried, very worried ... about the fact that RS does have millions of readers who will actually believe every word of this tripe.

(Disclaimer: I read RS when I was in high school and had the hots for Linda Ronstadt)

 

[9mmforMe]

Linda was gorgeous!

RS is crap and most contemporary music is just as noisome as this article.

Bah!! says I

 

[AlexanderA]

The article was over-the-top satire, and, I think, deliberately so. There are some pro-gun moles on the staff of Rolling Stone. Seen in this light, the piece was brilliant. It absolutely devastates the antigun side. (Some of them are too dumb to realize that.)

 

[wojownik]

Alexander - I really don't think that is the case with this article. It's just a poorly conceptualized and even more poorly executed repackaging of a few data points - the top 5 types of weapons ATF was asked to trace by LE (but "5 most dangerous" is a sexier lead, right?)..

What the article in reality is saying is that ATF stats reveal (unsurprisingly) that the most common firearms recovered by LE after a crime scene were "pistols" (the author meant semi-auto), followed by revolvers, rifles, shotguns, and then derringers. The author sees to forget that context pretty quickly though.

Reading the actual ATF statistics (http://www.atf.gov/statistics/trace-data/2012-trace-data.html), the list continues to include - in declining order - machine guns, receiver/frames, combination gun, unknown types, silencers, any other weapons (AOW), destructive devices, flare guns, and tear gas launchers.

Importantly, these are only those weapons that fall under ATF's "scope" (such as it is), which by definition excludes other weapons recovered at crime scenes, which may include knives, machetes, stiletto heels, baseball bats, rocks, point-ed sticks and bananas.

One last really important point - these trace figures only reflect that a weapon was recovered during a crime scene - not that it actually used in a homicide or assault. Might have been recovered during a drug bust, DWI, shoplifiting, heck even a check fraud bust.

Sorry for getting serious about an article that's very hard to take serious. Bad writing and bad analysis extracted from raw gov't data. But the articles comments are priceless.