Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
On Monday, the ATF rolled out a couple of things. In particular, their new direction on pistol stabilizer braces, something that will turn millions of law-abiding, gun-owning citizens into criminals. Cam talked about the specific policies already.
Also on Monday, I talked about how CNN was seemingly taking the mask off regarding their supposed neutrality.
It seems CNN was far from alone.
Reuters, one of the largest wire services in the world, covered the new policies with a headline titled, “U.S. takes two steps toward limiting gun violence: model legislation and rifle restrictions.”
It’s not difficult to construct a headline that tells you what the story is about without accepting certain claims at face value, namely that any of these measures would actually accomplish their stated goal. The headline presents these accomplishments as if they’re a foregone conclusion when it’s nothing of the sort.
So far, we’ve seen little evidence that AR-style pistols are used in criminal activity to any appreciable degree. All we’ve seen is a single mass shooting that could have been carried out with or without the brace. There’s been little to no evidence that such a ban will impact the criminal underclass to any degree either. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to look at any AR pistols they have with braces and think, “Well, crap. We can’t have these, they’re illegal.”
Then there’s the model red flag law. We’ve seen numerous cases of red flag laws failing and, to be frank, very little evidence they’ve stopped any mass shootings. They might have stopped a few suicides by gun, but I’m not entirely sure they really stop suicide, which is a mental health problem and not a gun problem.
And yet, Reuters had no issue simply backing that these two steps will limit gun violence.
The supposed neutrality of the press has been something of a joke among gun-rights advocates for years. We’ve known the media was our enemy for quite some time. It was clear in how every story about guns was reported. Yet the media at least tried to pretend it was neutral. Even if reporters weren’t interested in neutrality, the editors would and that would keep a lot of it in check.
Clearly, those days are over.
Today, we get stories like this, framing these moves as if they’re unmitigated good and the impact will definitely be what proponents say they’ll be and nothing else.
When the media stops being critical, the people stop getting the information they need to be informed well enough to make decisions on their own. This isn’t news, it’s propaganda. Especially since, in the days of social media, most people won’t even bother looking at the body of the story. By framing the story just this way, they know that no matter what they write, the message will be sent loud and clear.
Reuters is generally one of the better mainstream news sources, yet this is a stark reminder that the rot that has taken hold of so much of American journalism isn’t confined to CNN. It’s everywhere, unfortunately.
Frankly, I wouldn’t mind so much if they would at least just admit their biases and let people determine the truth for themselves. Instead, they pretend to be unbiased and then churn out crap like this, muddying the waters and tricking people to think headlines like this one are accurate. Folks think they’re getting the truth when, in fact, they’re getting something just as biased as they’d get from MSNBC or OANN.
And if you can’t figure out why that’s a huge problem, then you clearly haven’t been paying attention.
https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2021/06/08/media-neutrality-gun-n46215