Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns From: [r--s] at [cbnewsc.cb.att.com] (Morris the Cat) Subject: Media fakery to promote gun control Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 14:37:09 GMT Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 01:12:11 EDT Organization: Blue Moon BBS ((614) 868-998[0245]) Release Date: March 5, 1993 MEDIA FAKERY IN THE SERVICE OF GUN CONTROLS By William R. Tonso So NBC rigged the explosion of a GM truck. Then it faked a story about fish supposedly killed by loggers. What's new? Doubters of the gun-control panacea know from experience that journalistic fakery is anything but rare. Not long ago USA Today, by way of emphasizing the "gun problem," carried a front page photograph of gang members loaded down with menacing guns. A few days later USA Today had to ac- knowledge that the young men depicted were actually taking their guns to the authorities as part of a gun-turn-in program, and had scavenged extra guns for the photo at the insistence of the USA Today photographer. For once the fake was caught and the media outlet quickly ac- knowledged it. But most media fakery in support of gun controls is never acknowledged. Consider these examples: After the 1989 Stockton, California schoolyard shooting, news- paper and TV stations showed watermelons being exploded by shots from a gun like the one used in that tragic shooting -- a Soviet AK-47 assault rifle. Not! An AK-47, at least if it is firing fully-jacketed, military- style bullets of the kind used in Stockton, will not explode a watermelon. It will simply put a hole in the melon. The "exploding" melon in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner's photo (which apparently inspired KABC and other channels to air their own melon-explosions) was actually exploded by a hollow point slug from an LA County deputy sheriff's 9mm pistol. The newspaper falsely claimed that the melon had been exploded by the AK-47. Whether the melons exploded on TV were also shot with hollow point 9mms is not clear. What is certain, however, is that they weren't exploded by jacketed bullets fired from AK-47s. This media melon scam, which helped the gun controllers dupe much of the public into believing that AK-47s are extraordinarily powerful rifles, was exposed by Martin Fackler, M.D., who was then the colonel in charge of the Army's Wound Ballistics Laboratory in San Francisco. Suspicious of what he had seen on TV, Fackler con- tacted the LA County Sheriff's Office. The deputies who had as- sisted the newspaper reporter readily acknowledged that the paper had credited the exploding melon to the wrong gun. The reporter had been told that the AK-47 would only put a hole in the melon, and that's all it did do. Last month, the ABC-owned KABC-TV got caught faking on another gun-issue. This time they were doing a special on the supposed horrors of 9mm handguns. They showed a film of a police officer firing 9mm rounds at a rapid clip, as bullets knocked down metal targets. Viewers were never informed -- but the police officer later admitted -- that the film of the gun being fired was made at a different time from the film of the bullets hitting the targets. To be able to hit anything, the officer had to fire much slower than he did when he was firing as fast as he could squeeze the trigger. By juxtaposing the films shot on different occasions, KABC created the false impression that a person firing a 9mm handgun rapidly can hit a lot of targets just as rapidly. Any regular watcher of TV news -- local, network, or cable -- has surely seen the following scenario played out at least once: a man armed with a full-automatic true assault rifle is shown spraying a target, while a gun-control advocate explains that semiautomatic "assault weapons" have no sporting uses. The announcer then scoffs at the opponents of "assault weapon" controls, who supposedly want to hunt deer with machine guns. Yet while the film clips depict automatic machine guns, the announcer discusses bans on semi-automatic rifles, which can fire only one bullet each time the trigger is pulled. A 1989 CBS "48 Hours" "assault weapon" story faked a demon- stration that semiautomatics could be converted to full automatic in just nine minutes. Only a few seconds of the alleged conversion were actually aired; the gun shown which fired full automatic after the alleged conversion was not even the same kind of gun that was supposedly converted. Ed Owens, the chief of the Firearms Technology Branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said he "was not aware that a conversion could be done in the manner shown." Another fraud aimed at convincing the public of the potential danger posed by "assault weapons?" Oh, by the way, if CBS didn't fake the conversion, the company committed federal felony by carrying it out. Yes, media fakery in the service of the gun control movement is anything but rare. And such fakery is likely to continue unabated, since the National Rifle Association doesn't pack the financial clout of a General Motors. William Tonso is a professor in sociology at the University of Evansville and a researcher for the Independence Institute in Denver. The piece was written as part of the Independence Institute's Firearms Research Project. The project also publishes longer research papers, including: * Why Gun Waiting Periods Threaten Public Safety (62pp, stabled). $8.00 * Do Federal Gun Traces Accurately Reflect Street Crime? (11pp). $6.00 * Children and Guns: Sensible Solutions (90pp, GBC bound). $12.00 * The "Assault Weapon" Panic: Political Correctness Takes Aim at the Constitution (94 pp, GBC bound). $12.00. * The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? $28.95 + $4.00 ship Membership in the Independence Institute starts at $25.00 per year. Members who join at the one hundred dollar level receive all of the above publications, plus all Independence Issue Papers published in the next twelve months. Membership at the 25 or 100 dollar level entitles the member to a year- long subscription to the monthly Independence Bulletin. The Independence Institute is a free-market think-tank, dedicated to the principles of individual liberty expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Independence Institute, 14142 Denver West Parkway, Suite 101, Golden, CO 80401-3134. (303) 279-6536. fax 279-4176. Visa/MC accepted. Quantity discounts available.