Saturday, December 30, 2017

The 5 Worst Fake Gun Stories of 2017


Because the Trump administration and our Republican-controlled Congress is pro-Second Amendment, we’ve seen plenty of scare tactics in the news this year regarding guns.

It seems the mainstream media does whatever it can to make Americans frightened at the very mention of gun rights.

Much of the reporting this year has been completely fake. As the year comes to a close, let’s take a look back at five of the worst fake stories on guns from 2017.

1 USA Today

Unnamed editors at USA Today compiled a list of accessories that can by added to an AR-15. Their list includes a trigger crank, 100-round drum magazine, multiple magazine holders, under-barrel shotgun, night-vision and thermal-vision scopes, and a chain-saw bayonet.

USA Today even tweeted out a video of an AR-15 with an actual chainsaw somehow mounted to the bottom of the gun.

Obviously, a chainsaw would seriously weigh down the rifle. Does this “accessory” require an extension cord?

Twitter users immediately mocked this ridiculous story.

2 CNN

Following the shooting of Republican congressmen at a softball game, CNN produced an article that gave absolutely bogus statistics on mass shootings.

Another report by Vox uses more fake news to support CNN’s claims.

The Daily Signal reports:

The entire article is an interview—conducted by email—with the president of the (mostly irrelevant) Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The reporter did not “email interview” any pro-Second Amendment group or activist for any balance. CNN didn’t even include that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., who almost died in the politically motivated shooting, had not changed his views on protecting the Second Amendment from any further infringement.

Also, there seems to be no one employed by CNN who has any knowledge of firearms statistics. Jim Acosta, the senior White House correspondent, tweeted: “Since Sandy Hook there have been at least 1,552 mass shootings, with at least 1,767 people killed and 6,227 wounded.”

Acosta, who has almost a half-million followers on Twitter, was not actually citing CNN, but an article in the left-wing outlet Vox.

Click through the article and you’ll see the data it contains is riddled with errors. It takes statistics from a group called “Gun Violence Archive,” which makes up out of whole cloth the definition of “mass shooting” to include people who are shot, but not killed. The group includes “news reports” for media sources instead of citing law enforcement agencies.

Nowhere in the article does Vox mention that there is an official government definition of “mass shooting,” which is four or more people killed outside the home in one incident.

In fact, the number of people killed annually in mass shootings has been an average of 23 over the last 30 years […]

That statistic is from leading gun control voice in Congress Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who gets her data from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

3. NBC News

NBC published a story five years after Sandy Hook claiming that no new gun control laws have been passed since the shooting. Of course, NBC sees that as a bad thing, and blames the NRA. According to NBC, gun control groups just can’t compete with the NRA’s resources.

But The Daily Signal points out that gun control groups “receive tens of millions of dollars from billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, while the NRA is funded by its grassroots members.”

The article is shamelessly one-sided. It had to be, though. If NBC had allowed 2nd Amendment supporters the chance to defend themselves, they would have pointed out that real reason Congress hasn’t passed more gun control laws since Sandy Hook is because there isn’t any evidence that new laws would prevent any crimes. Of course, they would manage to create plenty.

4. The Economist

The Economist published a story this November that ignored government agency statistics in favor of the scarier, misleading statistics from the far-left Mother Jones.

The story claims that the AR-15 “was prohibited in 1994, but legalized in 2004 when America’s assault-weapons ban expired.”

The Economist fails to mention, however, that the reason why the rifle was legalized again in 2004 was because Congress noted that the ban didn’t decrease the number of homicides by rifle.

Including that important detail, however, would have ruined the terrifying tone the Economist was going for.

5. The Associated Press

The Associated Press published a story this month claiming that authorities recovered a 40mm pistol.

A 40mm pistol would be rather odd.

The pistol was more likely a .40 caliber.

The Daily Signal reports:

Many of these mistakes would be funny if they weren’t rooted in ideological narrowness. They show how the mainstream media deliberately attempts to confuse the public in order to build support for more gun control laws.

At a higher level, the repeated bad reporting in just one area of public debate that shows the top editors and managers in mainstream media assign reporters to cover gun crime, without any expertise on the subject, research into data, or fact-checking.

If it weren’t for conservative media and informed social media users, the average American might walk the streets in fear of being attacked by someone wielding a rifle with a chainsaw attached to the bottom.

Should we get used to this nonsense? Are we in for another round of bogus reporting in 2018?

Tell us what you think, and sound off in the comments below.

H/T: The Daily Signal



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