The media doesn't understand guns -- and doesn't want to
The American political left and mainstream media pundits at large do not understand guns. They are not educated about them and they refuse to learn about them. They could not tell you the difference between an automatic or semi-automatic firearm. They don’t understand what a suppressor does or does not do. It’s safe to say most of them have not heard the term “bump stock” until this week.
If anyone out there on that side of the aisle is wondering why your pleas to “do something” are falling on mostly deaf ears,that would be why.
It’s a largely one-sided debate happening on cable networks, and it is why those on the right – including everyday Americans and lawful gun owners not responsible for mass shootings or breaking gun laws – largely ignore what is blaring out at them from their televisions and social media.
Column after column is fired off about how much the National Rifle Association donates to congressional candidates (spoiler: it’s not much, about 200K a year ). For every breathless declaration that the NRA has blood on their hands, it’s worth noting more journalists have committed mass shootings in this country than NRA members.
Firearm experts in media such as Washington Free Beacon’s Stephen Gutowski (also an NRA-certified instructor), National Review Online Editor Charles Cooke and Federalist co-founder Sean Davis are sidelined from national cable news and Sunday show appearances in favor of guests who suggest suppressors are used by hunters to prevent deer from hearing a fired shot . Gutowski, Cooke and Davis will never be invited on Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert’s shows to clear up the falsehoods being spread to mass audiences or to defend the second amendment of the United States Constitution.
Within hours of the Las Vegas shooting, Senator Chuck Schumer was pushing the narrative that the GOP was ramming through legislation to de-regulate silencers. This was also a fabrication . Reporters began shouting questions at Paul Ryan about “Silencer” legislation. The 64-year-old shooter in Las Vegas did not use a suppressor but Democrats have found their shiny object to fixate on – much like the no-fly list post-Orlando – which had nothing to do with the actual tragedy at hand.
Democrats would be better off offering up legislation banning high-rise hotels in attempting to make a connection to the Las Vegas shooting than they would suppressors or background checks.
America’s foremost health care expert, Jimmy Kimmel, once again repeated long-debunked Democrat talking points in another tearful monologue (Las Vegas is his hometown so it’s hard to berate him for showing emotion). Kimmel chastised Paul Ryan and the GOP Congress (again) for not enforcing laws about guns that literally do not exist. These include the so called “gunshow loophole,” an online background check loophole and allowing mentally ill individuals (a move supported by the ACLU) from purchasing firearms. All of these claims have been debunked and yet are ignored by fact-checkers at mainstream outlets and cable news pundits. Stephen Paddock did not have a criminal background, prior record and no evaluations of suspect mental health. So what then?
New York Times Magazine’s Ana Marie Cox tweeted “Man, imagine if the right believed in unfettered access to the ballot box as much as they believed in the right to own guns.” Her sudden support of background checks and voter ID laws (two things needed to purchase a firearm in America) are a welcome surprise.
Politico reporter Dan Diamond tweeted out an email announcement from The American College of Physicians calling for a ban on all automatic and semiautomatic weapons. What Diamond did not reveal is a ban on semiautomatic weapons would include most handguns. I’m not sure members of media know this fact, and more importantly, have demonstrated zero willingness to learn. But sure, let’s put them in charge of the health care debate .
And this is where the credibility chasm exists in media as they continue to parrot Democrat narratives on guns. As the sun rose on Vegas the morning after, and before Americans could grasp the facts of what had happened, Democrat leaders including Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer and their celebrity Hollywood base were already pointing fingers and placing blame without facts and without knowledge.
Law-abiding, gun-owning Americans will not be lectured to about a national tragedy they had nothing to do with, and they certainly won’t be lectured by elitists in media who refuse to understand even a basic grasp or terminology about a sacred constitutional right.
And until they do, we will refuse to have that “conversation” the left and the media keep telling themselves needs to happen
Stephen L. Miller has written for Heat Street and National Review Online. Follow him on Twitter at @redsteeze .
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/10/04/media-doesnt-understand-guns-and-doesnt-want-to.html
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I would hazard to say, if you don't understand what you're lobbying against, you have no business lobbying against it.
Just another "Liberal Outrage", "Liberal Fear" to fixate on?
But...the mass anti-gun hysteria lobby will suck on this issue for weeks! It gets their faces on the TV and news radio and so it goes along with the click-bait on news vines. They can scream and shout all they like but the fact remains that gun owners are not going to give them up. If they did, what would remain would be the thugs and gang-bangers as the only ones running around shooting people.
Heard on the radio today: "A fork doesn't make you fat." Guns don't make you kill people, people kill people. Paddock would have gotten his guns anywhere. It was his sick choice, not the gun's choice.
Great post Bruce. I doubt many on the left will ever make a cogent argument about this. They still labor under the brainwashed propaganda of leftist professors and pundits that our rights are statutory rather than inalienable. We know that difference is what makes all the difference on our fundamental rights
Even JFK they now smear for daring to repeat the obvious
John F Kennedy put it exactly right in his inaugural address
"And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God."
Keep up the good fight
Jack was one of the greatest presidents why cause he was a libertarian. He innately understood what it was to be an American. It's why I supported him and became a democrat.
Jack Kennedy today would be a republican..... And I would rejoin the republican party and vote for him....
I wonder if New York Times Magazine’s Ana Marie Cox knows that in Las Vegas there are no background checks to purchase a gun.
And she said: "imagine if the right believed in unfettered access to the ballot box". Well, Ana Maria, the right did have "unfettered access" in 2016 and they used it!
I did like that part of the article!
Spot on with the post there.
Great article. When pundits don't understand what they are talking about, why would anyone listen to them?
Hah! Because it's the flavor of the day! Gun control?...it gets easy press.
I don't understand all manner of weapons but I don't think that banning all of them is a good nor easy manner of protecting our own lives, our families. Automatic weapons? Not sure anyone needs them. But, my neighbor has an open-carry permit and color me crazy, but I feel safer because he's there. And when I have to travel into a city with one of the highest crime rates in the nation, I am scared.
What's the problem are you afraid you will be shot ? ..... Me too, evidently I need more guns... lol
Crazies are randomly shooting at vehicles on the major roads into the city. Take the train while traveling through some of the most dangerous stops where thugs board and walk through robbing people? Nope, not interested in that either. And yes, I am afraid. Silly me, huh?
I find it laughable that a Fox News contributor would decry Kimmel and Colbert not inviting the 'gun experts' he sited. Were are the links to their upcoming appearances on Hannity or Carlson. At least those shows pretend to be news.
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