Category: The Media

Uncle is speechless.  I’m surprised you can’t find at least one person in a newsroom that knows the bullet gets fired out of the cartridge when it’s shot.  To me, this ought to be common knowledge.  I think it is common knowledge.  I’m having to seriously consider the possibility that reporters are just not very well educated people.

Davethea, guest blogging for Uncle, points out that Steve Bailey has written an a column attacking the SAF. I’ll be honest, Bitter and I looked at SAF’s tax returns long before Steve Bailey did, and concluded there was a lot of questionable activity going on there, including the things Bailey is looking at. It’s questionable in the sense that I’m concerned about how my donations are being spent, but not questionable in the sense that it’s unlawful, which is what I think Bailey is trying to imply. I think Alan does a lot of good things with the organization, but I don’t give nearly as much as I used to.

But that’s really not here, nor there. This wasn’t ever about Alan Gottlieb, and we really don’t want to get into a pissing match where we just dig up dirt on each other. This is about whether or not Steve Bailey was a party to a straw man purchase at a New Hampshire gun show. As I stated previously, after looking at the facts we have available to us, I think the answer is no, he didn’t. But Bailey, rather than getting to know the law, and defending himself with facts, has chosen to fling poo. That’s all I need to know about this guy, and his integrity.

I think SayUncle has offically launched the term “Pants Shitting Hysterics” into the gun blogging vernacular, such that we now call it PSH for short.   Well, Ahab has the latest example from a media type who apparently thinks that he can’t be trusted with firearms, and, possibly none of us should be either.

Philadelphia Weekly has a front page news item on the photo book Armed America, which I talked about here a few weeks ago.   To have a major Philadelphia media outlet giving the front page treatment to something like this is the kind of public relations coup you couldn’t have come up with if you tried.

Michael Bane has more.

Rob links to a great media piece on a reporter making a range trip, and has some good commentary.

Well, one dumb question deserves another. The rest of the article is behind a subscription wall, but here’s the public part:

The guns used by the three Rockaway men who shot two police officers nearly two weeks ago came from Virginia, as the majority of guns used on local streets do. You would think that it would be relatively easy for local police agencies such as the NYPD to track weapons used to commit a crime, but it is not.

Wouldn’t the fact that they know the guns are from Virginia indicate that the NYPD was able to trace them easily? I don’t know what the rest of the article is, but if this is any indication, it’s no doubt filled with misleading statements about the nature of the Tiahrt amendment, which is supported by both BATFE and the Fraternal Order of Police.

Yesterday I posted that I agreed with David Codrea that calling for the ATF to investigate Steve Bailey was taking things a bit too far. I will stand by the assertion that he should not actually be brought up on federal charges, but I will most definitely relish in the sweet, sweet, poetic justice.

Hey, Mr. Bailey, the ATF doesn’t care that you’re not a criminal. They have no problem wasting our tax dollars and their time harassing ordinary law abiding people and businessmen. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you should go to jail, because I don’t think what you did ought to be against the law. But instead of insulting us, maybe you can wake up and smell the coffee, and admit that perhaps we have a point in our opposition to these laws?

UPDATE: I’m retracting my retractions about whether he took the gun with him or not. This guy is a liar, one way or another, so I feel no need to worry about whether I’m getting my story right. He didn’t, why should I bother?

Uncle updates on the NBC video:

And let’s get this out of they way: they’re not known in the trade as black rifles. They’re known as AR-15s. On some gun boards, they started referring to AR-15s as Evil Black Rifles to poke fun of the assault weapons ban, which seemed to target rifles that were black.

Man, if you had told me back in the early 90s that we’d be upset with the press because they are calling them “black rifles” rather than “killing machines” or “assault weapons”, I would have said you were nuts. Back then they said the only reason for a civilian to own one would be to mow down a kindergarten, which you could do, pretty easily, since 2 minutes with a nail file would convert it into a fully automatic machine gun, according to the news media.

I’m not sure I’d object to the term “military style” from anything other than a public relations point of view. The rifles are made from a military pattern. This you can’t really argue with. While they are not true military assault rifles, they are patterned after them. So I’m not sure “military style” isn’t fitting from a technical point of view.

To me the important message that seems to be getting out there is that these firearms do have a sporting use, and people do use them for legitimate other purposes, like home defense. This has always been the case, but I’m glad to see the media is moving beyond regurgitating whatever the Brady Campaign or Violence Policy Center tells them.