Another horrible piece of journalism from the New York Times, full of conjecture and a outright falsehood regarding the Assault Weapons Ban. Had an 18-year old blogger posted this, I wouldn’t have cared in the least bit. But so many people look to the media as a source of fact, and the New York Times clearly blew it by publishing the below article. Does this news outlet not have an editor?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10collins.html?_r=2
Her whole article is a disaster. I’ll pick it apart piece by piece (remembering of course that this is her opinion and the article is advertised as such). I’ll start off by saying her lack of knowledge and conjecture explains her agenda; at no time does she blame the shooter, but rather the Glock. It’s all Glock’s fault, hence the title of her article.
Back then, the amazing thing about the incident in the supermarket parking lot was that the guy with a handgun in his armpit was not arrested.
Why would he have been arrested? It’s legal to own a firearm. It’s even legal to conceal it. There might be a law that makes it illegal for one to fall out of its holster, but I’m not sure. Anyhow, maybe she wanted him arrested because she didn’t like him carrying a gun. Hmmmm, sounds about right.
But you do not hear much about the fact that Jared Loughner came to Giffords’s sweet gathering with a semiautomatic weapon that he was able to buy legally because the law restricting their sale expired in 2004.
THIS IS FALSE. The law that expired in 2004 was the assault weapons ban (AWB) and pertained to weapons such as the TEK9, Uzi, AR15, AK47, etc. The handgun provision in the AWB law prohibited a threaded barrel for silencers, flash suppressors, and a barrel extender. The Glock this lunatic used had none of the things. The fact she got this wrong degrades her article to a D-, at best.
If Loughner had gone to the Safeway carrying a regular pistol, the kind most Americans think of when they think of the right to bear arms …
What the …??? He had a pistol. Now, I’m not sure if it was a ‘regular’ pistol because I have no idea what that even means. And how does SHE know what type of gun MOST American’s think of when THEY think about the right to bear arms? Is she a mind reader? Maybe she took a poll? Or perhaps she went and asked all 300+ million Americans and took good notes? I think she’s making up facts, but I suppose I can’t prove that she in fact didn’t go door to door asking all 300 million people.
Giffords would probably still have been shot and we would still be having that conversation about whether it was a sane idea to put her Congressional district in the cross hairs of a rifle on the Internet.
Oh, does she mean this chart? You know, the one Democrat leadership put out in 2004 that talks about being behind enemy lines, targeting strategy, with gun targets on it directed towards Republican districts Bush won? It’s amazing how little research people do these days. They get so wrapped up in their own made-up facts, that they actually start believing them. The chart she was referring to is the Sarah Palin graphic that looks very similar to the Democratic chart seen here. In fact, Sarah Palin has taken way more flack than the democratic party.
Loughner’s gun, a 9-millimeter Glock, is extremely easy to fire over and over, and it can carry a 30-bullet clip.
Yep, that’s why they call it a semiautomatic. They do that. One press of the trigger and one munition is fired while in the same motion another round is chambered. Pretty hard to find a gun that doesn’t do this, even a revolver. And it’s not a clip. It’s called a magazine. You’d think they would know definitions and facts before debating publicly.
What it’s good for is killing and injuring a lot of people quickly.
Why they single out Glock is a big mystery (as is evident by the title), but I’m pretty sure that’s what all guns do regardless of who makes them. Even the ‘regular’ ones are meant to kill or injure people. Not just Glock.
America has a long, terrible history of political assassinations and attempts at political assassination.
As do most countries. This statement in no way relates to the shootings in Arizona or to gun control. What’s her point to this? There is no factual evidence to suggest this lunatic targeted the people in Arizona because of their political views, whatsoever. To suggest otherwise only implies she is looking to ratchet up the rhetoric.
If this was the modern equivalent of what Sirhan Sirhan used to shoot Robert Kennedy or Arthur Bremer used to shoot George Wallace, you’d be talking about one or two victims.
This is an odd statement, because she in some ways undercuts her own argument by saying she wished he had used a more modern gun. Sirhan had a .22 caliber revolver that held 8 shots and Bremer had a snub-nose .38 caliber revolver (I had to Google this info, perhaps she should have done some Googling before writing her article). All it takes is one bullet to kill someone. So if Sirhan’s gun held 8 rounds, how does that equate to 2 or 3 dead people? Sounds like 8 to me, and that’s before a reload. And what does she mean “modern equivalent”? The revolver hasn’t changed in 100 years and is as simple as a gun gets, mechanically speaking. So is she saying this lunatic should have used a more advanced revolver in the hopes it would have killed less people?
It sounds like she’s saying a Glock 9 mm semiautomatic pistol is more dangerous than the ‘modern equivalent’ of the ‘regular pistol’, the one most American’s think about when interpreting the right to bear arms, because the 2004 assault weapons law that expired allows criminals to purchase semiautomatic hand guns and commit mass killings. What the … that just sounds ridiculous, but that’s what she said!
What she fails to understand is that laws don’t deter criminals (even if they understand them). It’s against the law for felons to own weapons, but that doesn’t stop them. Do laws prevent people from using, making or possessing methamphetamine? No. There used to be a law that prevented people from drinking alcohol, but we repealed that when we discovered it took organized crime to a whole new level. Criminals break the law. Lunatics have no way of rationalizing the law because they don’t know right from wrong, so by default the law doesn’t matter to them either.
Had this lunatic plowed into the crowd of people with his raised 42″ super-swamper tire 4×4 heavy duty turbo diesel truck, would she be just as critical of the situation? Would she be complaining that the guy had dangerous tires on his truck? Tires that are more dangerous than the modern day equivalent, the ones most people think about when they drive down the road?
I got an idea, Gail Collins. How about you blame the shooter? Not the gun maker. Perhaps if someone at that gathering had a hand gun they could have shot this lunatic dead before he killed so many people.
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