Media Goes After C&R? Really?

Yellow Journalism Ahead

CBS News reports, or rather misreports, because they don’t know what they are talking about:

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives calls the SKS rifle Micah Johnson used to kill five Dallas police officers on July 7 a “Curio or Relic.”

Due to this status, which the SKS shares with many other models of Berettas, Colts, Remingtons, Rugers and other firearms that are at least 50 years old, gun dealers said that in some states and jurisdictions the Soviet-era rifle can be purchased online and delivered to your door without securing a permit.

Um, you can only have one of these “delivered to your door” if you apply for a Federal Firearms License. So you do indeed need to secure a “permit,” whatever the fuck they think that means.

Yes, old technology can still be pretty effective in the hands of a well-trained shooter. Yes, having a ten round fixed magazine is not really much of an impediment to a well-trained shooter either. This is why we keep saying that assault weapons bans are stupid. The SKS is legal even in California, with it’s very severe Assault Weapons Ban. Even the new ban allows the SKS.

I also love how in these articles, they always talk about how quickly you can apply for a license. How long should it take? There’s only so much information they need to know to run a background check. You half expect if they aren’t asking you the name of your pet hamster when you were a kid, then it cannot, of course, be very thorough.

It sure would be nice if they actually took the time to understand how all this stuff works before writing about it.

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15 thoughts on “Media Goes After C&R? Really?”

  1. Also I thought it wasn’t an SKS.
    Weren’t there pictures of it being some AK variant?

    Then again why expect the media to bother getting the broad type of gun right.

    1. The dailymail.co.uk has photos of a body accompanied by a Saiga 5.45.

      Using google image search, the only places google can find it turning up are recent sources claiming it to be the attacker.

      So take all that for what you will.

    2. Yea, the pictures which are likely more correct than CBS’s firearm identification was of a Saiga / AKM-74.

      There is ZERO CHANCE the Saiga was a C&R tho.

      So…. Either is WAS an SKS, a C&R SKS, or a not-C&R Saiga.

  2. Yep, “no permit” other than a Type 03 FFL, which requires a background check, local LE notification, and maintaining an acquisition and disposition book. Lots of criminals are doing it, obviously!

  3. How quickly you can apply for a license? Last time I renewed my 03 it took 60 days to get it back and that was a damn renewal….

    1. I’ve had both a new application and a renewal take about 40ish days. I’d guess that’s their standard turnaround, though sometimes you’ll get lucky and it’ll be sooner.

    2. You could apply for a license immediately! You don’t have to fill out any paperwork, nor have a background check to apply for a license! In fact, even criminals and former dictators can apply for a license!

      Now, waiting for that application to be processed…that’s another story altogether…

      But as it stands–horrors upon horrors!–you can even apply for a license without a license! How crazy is that?!?

  4. The whole piece is cringe worthy. Especially the whole accuracy shtick….

    “accurate at a 100 yards!” woo, we got a bad ass over here. [face-palm]

    1. Sssshh! Don’t tell them that a decently-made long rifle — any decently-made long rifle — is both accurate (enough) AND effective to well past 100 yards.

      It’d blow their short-sighted (heh!) little minds.

  5. It sure would be nice if they actually took the time to understand how all this stuff works before writing about it.

    If they understood how gun laws really work and wrote based on that, it’d make for an incredibly dull article that nobody would read.

    It’s much more exciting to claim gun laws don’t work or don’t go far enough, throw in some scare words and anti-gun rhetoric, and dance in blood call for “something” to be done to “end the carnage”. Even if the end result is complete fiction.

    Gotta sell those papers, right?

    1. It’s especially funny when they completely misstate the law, and then call for laws that have already been passed.

      At least, it would be funny, if our rights weren’t being clobbered in the process…

  6. That’s an amazingly bald-faced lie, about the “no permit required.” Especially in that in states that require a purchaser’s permit, you have to get the state’s purchaser’s permit as well.

  8. Queuing media bullshit about “poison bullets” in 3…2…1…

  9. Wait until the media discovers that guns made before 1898 do not need a permit, license or background check to buy.
    ATF does not consider them a firearm.

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