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?
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