CNN “Assault Weapons” Article Full of Distortion

• November 7, 2007

This is almost as bad as the time they faked a news cast showing how 223 bullets fired in full auto were more powerful than the same bullets fired in semi-automatic.

Across the country, at least 62 police officers have been gunned down this year — a record pace, said Robert Tessaro, the associate director for law enforcement relations for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
As a result, the Brady organization supports police officers arming themselves with high-powered weapons “to protect themselves and their communities,” he said.
“We’re having more than one officer shot and killed a week. It’s just outrageous that officers are being targeted,” he said. “It’s something I think all Americans should be outraged about.”
He lays the blame squarely on lawmakers who allowed the assault weapons ban to expire in 2004.
Designed to be fired from the hip, assault rifles such as the AK-47 can spray at a rate of up to 600 rounds a minute in full automatic mode. It is the weapon of choice for guerillas and gangsters.

Notice how CNN and the anti-gun Brady gun banning organization are trying to confuse the public about the “assault weapons ban.” That 1994 law had nothing to do with automatic weapons. Those weapons were heavily controlled by the 1934 National Firearms Act. The 1994 “assault weapons” ban (that was not renewed in 2004) had nothing to do with “machine guns.”
So the fact that the 1994 “assault weapons ban” has nothing to do with the “AK-47 [which can] can spray at a rate of up to 600 rounds a minute in full automatic mode. It is the weapon of choice for guerillas and gangsters.” If they 1994 act had been renewed in 2004 those same automatic weapons would be on the streets as they were smuggled here presumably while the government was ignoring our borders.
There more distortion to come:

Chief Timoney says he started noticing an increase since the federal assault weapon ban lapsed in 2004. Since then, he says homicides in the city of Miami involving assault weapons have been up — 18 percent last year and 20 percent this year.
The Miami Police Department said 15 of its 79 homicides last year involved assault weapons, up from the year before. So far this year, 12 of 60 killings have involved the high-powered arms.

Ok how about a reality check. Last year 18.9% of homicides were supposedly committed with “assault weapons”. Right now that percentage is at 20%. Meanwhile the homicide rate would project out to 72 a net decrease in homicides and a decrease in homicides committed with an “assault weapons.” (14.4). [Clarification: The so called increase is far less than one homicide committed with an "assault weapon". Hardly a statistically significant event.]
Finally I fail to see any reason to limit my rights because of what the drug dealers and gang members are doing. The article says that the police are investing in heavier weapons (not that the old shotguns were bad weapons). And they’re doing it with the Brady gun ban organization’s support. Well I say that if the police need to defend themselves than I do too.
CNN has no credibility on 2nd Amendment issues.

Tags: Guns, Media

http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

Assault is a behavior, not a weapon.
2Hotel9

Where is the proof in that article that police officers were killed with ANY PARTICULAR type weapon. I did not find that. According to the FBI the preferred weapons of criminals are still 9mm handguns. And automobiles. Lots of cops being hit with cars. Going forward and backward.

And for the record, I am biased. I just purchased a Romanian made Kalashnikov RPK. And ain’t shot a single cop with it.
http://proof-proofpositive.blogspot.com/ proof_positive

This is like saying that if we banned producing red cars, then there would be less red cars involved in accidents.

Or if we surveyed the types of vehicles involved in drive-by shootings and banned those cars with those characteristics (speakers in the wheel wells, spinners, fuzzy dice, etc.)then we would eliminate drive-by shootings!
http://www.valleydeals.com/cgi-bin/board2/YaBB.pl Kevin

Aren’t our second amendment rights the same ones we are told we lost after 9/11?
http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

CNN’s done this kind of stuff before. I linked to one other story.

I will say that the weapons banned under the 1994 law were redesigned and available in no time.
robert108

Proof: Actually, that would work. Of course, well-founded profiling works every time.
The old profiling of weapons based on what they looked like(the previous “assault weapons” ban) wasn’t well-founded, which is why it didn’t work.
robert108

It is the weapon of choice for guerillas and gangsters.

They still can’t bring themselves to call the terrorists “terrorists”; and as Two points out, the vast majority of weapons owned by US citizens aren’t used for any criminal purposes. Gun legislation is an extreme example of the tail wagging the dog.
http://www.bikebubba.blogspot.com/ Bike Bubba

Notice that the article takes what goes on in Miami, probably one of the two or three biggest places for the drug trade, and assumes that it applies nationwide. Talk about a hasty generalization!

Even more, the article doesn’t really clue in to the fact that most of those fully automatic weapons used in Miami are probably not purchased there, but ultimately come from Latin America and, transitively, most likely Cuba and the former Soviet Union. Banning “assault weapons” here does NOTHING to reduce the problems seen around Miami for that simple reason.

If you’re interested in horribly misused statistics, take a gander at the Brady Campaign’s website. Over the years, I’ve seen them claim that a high proportion of police murders were assault weapons based on the bullets (guns were never recovered in about 1/3 of the cases), that gun traces are equivalent to gun uses in crime, and that a lower rate of usage of guns in crime, and not the overall crime rate, is equivalent to a safer society.

Finally, it’s just plain sad to see that too many policemen apparently think that their job consists of matching whatever the criminals have in terms of firepower. While certainly there are cases when exactly this is needed, going forward with this assumption is going to make the police/citizen relationship needlessly adversarial and cripple good police work.
http://www.sayanythingblog.com/ electnixon

I will say that the weapons banned under the 1994 law were redesigned and available in no time.

Thus the fact that this article relies entirely on semantics (the definition of “assault weapons”. If no “assault weapons” were produced between 1994-2004, then the amount of “assault weapons” used in crime could potentially be reduced, but they would be replaced by nearly identical non-assault weapons.

This is like saying that if we banned producing red cars, then there would be less red cars involved in accidents. Does that mean that banning red cars made driving safer?
2Hotel9

Been doing google sweeps on police officer deaths, just a quick, informal read through. Out of 163 seperate news reports 136 were killed with handguns, 21 with shotguns/rifles, 7 in car crashes.

Carbines and small caliber rifles have seen an upswing in driveby shootings, and in incidents in homes/apartments, though 12ga shotguns are still the preferred weapon in these instances.

The actual point of this article is the growing militarization of municipal police personnel. A trend that people should be worried about.
Steve L.

I have to wonder how much of this is caused by willful ignorance on the part of reporters. There is no way of knowing if this twit actually knows anything about weapons at all. He could merely be parroting a press release that the police have published. it wouldn’t be the first time a news agency ran a story without fully vetting the information.

SayAnythingBlog.com

CNN “Assault Weapons” Article Full of Distortion

Create a SAB Readerblog

Recent Comments