Category: The Media

Goes to Karen Araiza of NBC Philadelphia:

Her gun-toting problems started about a year ago when Meleanie picked an ominous day – September 11, 2008 – to show up at her little girl’s soccer game with the loaded gun holstered to her hip, very visible and very upsetting to other parents.

Gun toting problems? Speaking of it like it’s the same as heavy drinking? But that’s just bias, not tastelessness.  This is where it gets tasteless:

Back in December, Hain was runner-up for The Patriot-News “Person of the Year”. Despite all the controversy, she said her views on the right to bear arms hadn’t changed.

“I am happy being a gun owner.”

Autopsies were being performed Thursday. The Hain children were with relatives.

You can’t tell me those two sentences weren’t meant to play off each other. Congratulations Ms. Araiza, you officially suck.

It’s only an assault rifle when one of us neanderthals wants to have one. When the police want to carry them they are “patrol rifles” or “patrol carbines.”

The media is issuing reports that would seem to indicate that Bulls Eye Shooter Supply is losing its FFL.  Bulls Eye was the shop where John Allen Mohammad shoplifted his rifle from before going on a sniping rampage with it on the DC Beltway.

According to Dave Workman, that’s not the truth, or at least not the whole truth. The FFL of the previous owner of Bulls Eye Shooter Supply has been revoked, and upheld. The business was sold to a new owner, who has cleaned up its act, and has an FFL issued to him.  The new owners still have a valid FFL and are in business.

More evidence the media needs to spend more time trying to understand how the federal licensing system works, so they don’t inadvertently punish or smear someone who’s not even remotely culpable in the original malfeasance.

The Philadelphia Daily News couldn’t be more thrilled:

The civil disobedience followed weeks of discussions with Colosimo’s in which activists urging the store to accept a voluntary 10-point code of conduct that was created by a national coalition of mayors, including Mayor Nutter. The code was aimed at preventing gun traffickers from hiding their identities by using intermediaries — the kind of purchases Colosimo now is charged with allowing. (Demonstrators were acquitted of misdemeanor charges in May.)

They are speaking of this civil disobedience. Congratulations, Heeding God’s Call, you convinced the feds to take him down. Easy target. He was an old man who doesn’t want to fight anymore. But you can bet they will try this with other Philadelphia gun shops, in an attempt to get them closed down too. Any gun shop near a major city that does any volume of business is going to end up selling some guns that are used in crimes. That’s a given. Any gun shop that does any volume of business is going to have some record keeping anomalies. They know this. They will try again.

And gets a lot of facts wrong:

An M2 Browning model .50-caliber machine gun mounted on a white Ford F-150, a homemade turret welded to the frame. A .30-caliber rifle, a Barret .50-caliber rifle on a bipod, a modified AR-15, a 30-30 rifle, parts for a 37mm grenade launcher and a couple of AK-47s, along with about 9,000 rounds and a pound and a half of cocaine.

Because we all know you can buy grenades, grenade launchers, 50 caliber machine guns, and half a kilo a cocaine at any gun show in the US right?  But it gets better:

With its liberal gun laws, Arizona is at the heart of the storm. Unlike most states, the popular semiautomatic rifles, AK-47s, AR-15s, are easily purchased with little more than a driver’s license and some forms. The large caliber rifles, like those Beltrán stored, are also for sale.

Unlike most states? Only about six states have any restrictions on semi-automatic variants of these rifles, and five of them are in the Northeast.  Most states treat them like ordinary guns because they are ordinary guns.  And since when can you just walk into a gun store anywhere in the US and just buy a Browning M2 heavy machine gun?

But nobody can explain how a .50-caliber rifle can be driven down to the Mexico border and then crossed over.

That’s easy.  It’s not happening.  They are being stolen from the Mexican military, or purchased from the military and government through corrupt channels.  I know it’s hard to believe there’s corruption in Mexico, but there is.

Then there are the grenades. April 2008: Rafael Alcantar, a Mexican man, is sentenced in federal court, charged with trying to buy a 40mm grenade launcher, three fragmentation grenades and 26 full-auto machine guns from undercover agents in Tucson.

All of which are perfectly legal in the US, you know.  I can go down to Wal-Mart right now and pick up all the fragmentation grenades I can carry!   Look, no one denies that there are guns being trafficked from the United States into Mexico, just as I’m sure there are guns being trafficked from Mexico into the United States, and we know drugs are moving across borders freely.  But why do all of these stories conflate reality by trying to make it look like the United States is some third world arms bazar where you pick up your anti-tank missiles at the local flea market?  No doubt because the purpose of these articles is something else entirely.  Otherwise they never would mention the expired federal assault weapons ban, which didn’t make either AR-15s or semi-automatic variants of the AK-47 illegal, or unobtainable.