The news publishes the other side -- finally!

[timmy]

I liked this article about gun ownership on the CNN website. There were a few little things I didn't agree with, but overall, the idea of reasonable people speaking reasonably about gun ownership came though loud and strong here.

I especially liked the idea of how the only input most folks get about guns is as a tool of criminals, misfits, and wierdos spreading random mayhem and destruction. Occasionally, yes, this does happen, just as it does with airplanes and automobiles.

Check it out:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/03/us/gun-cu ... hpt=hp_bn1

[Anand]

Notice the last part of the article, usually the part that is more likely to be remembered than the beginning. CNN is not a neutral reporter of facts, it is biased against guns and is controlled by anti-gun people. The reason is that although gun crime is being reported in the media, the rabid anti gun sentiment is not being shown overtly because it has proven to lose elections. Now with the elections coming up they are being more subtle.
Sometimes if the term "gun control" causes them a problem, they will call it " crime control" but they want that done by restricting guns .
Regards,
Anand
P.S :The above is my personal opinion from experience in the USA.

[xl_target]

Surprisingly balanced for CNN but Anand does have a valid point; they present the same invalid argument at the end.

"As someone who has some firearm and self-defense training, I find it laughable to think that the average Joe, in a dark theater filled with teargas, could take out a well armed and armored assailant with a five-round .38 special," he said. "Arming more people will only eventually end in an accidental death."
Cash said he rarely fires weapons now, except for at the shooting range, and believes there should be strict rules for firearm purchases.

So he's saying that someone with no training can shoot a bunch of people with a firearm but someone with a lot of training can't hit one lone shooter, backlit by a movie screen and the only source of muzzle flash in the whole place. The logic used there escapes me. Yes, I understand the limitations of the dark theater, confusion, etc.
Please keep in mind that most of the Mainstream Media assumes that the average Joe is stupid and treats him accordingly.

[timmy]

CNN is not a neutral reporter of facts, it is biased against guns and is controlled by anti-gun people.

This is certainly true, and that's why I was surprised they'd even give any credit at all to the other side of this issue.

The reason is that although gun crime is being reported in the media, the rabid anti gun sentiment is not being shown overtly because it has proven to lose elections. Now with the elections coming up they are being more subtle.

This is also true. The gun lobby has done an excellent job over the past years in protecting RKBA, and few politicians will touch this subject now.

Regarding CNN, they try to present themselves as "balanced," i.e., between Fox News on the right and MSNBC on the left. Their efforts in this regard are sometimes laughable, as I have seen them present one side of the argument that is so patently stupid it defies imagination, but they're obviously trying to position themselves "in the middle"without a whole lot of regard for the truth or plain common sense. Also, I would note that of these three networks, CNN has had the largest drop off of viewership of late.

I think your observations are spot-on, Anand.

...someone with no training can shoot a bunch of people with a firearm...

To be fair, XL, it should be noted that this goon had served in the Army, but as I understand it, they kicked him out after six years for drunken behavior. I'm not sure one could call him untrained in light of this. I would point out that the Mainstream media is probably pretty right when they consider the average Joe to be stupid, but then again, the Mainstream media is hardly any brighter. After the Aurora shootings, I saw a journalist being interviewed who claimed that the guns that shooter had would have been illegal under the so-called "assault weapons ban." This, of course, was false: Selling new weapons under the ban was illegal, but owning the weapons the shooter had was not. I think that the situation is, most of the listeners didn't know better and the journalist was not only stupid for not knowing, he was guilty of sloth or worse for not bothering to check the facts and present them correctly.

I don't think that the point is even whether the ordinary Joe has the training or experience. Rather, does he have the right to protect himself from violence when society isn't furnishing that protection. We all know it can't. In most cases, when these things happen, the police are like the rural volunteer fire department that gets there in time to save just the chimney. In light of this, it is intolerable that citizens are not to be afforded the means to protect themselves.

After all, we have 40,0000 killed on the highways every year, and we can hardly say that most of the public are exceptional or well-trained drivers, but yet they are issued driver's licenses. Every citizen has the right to free speech without training or license, and surely the mouth of a fool can be the source of great mayhem. So why is the focus on banning guns, and doing little about anything else? Clearly there is a prejudice, which is defined as holding an opinion without knowing or recognizing the facts, at work when it comes to gun ownership.

[xl_target]

.someone with no training can shoot a bunch of people with a firearm...

I apologize Tim, I should have been clearer. I was talking about the Aurora shooter. As far as I knew, he had no training at all.

[timmy]

For sure, you are right. I was the one who misunderstood -- I thought you referred to the Wisconsin incident. I suppose this Aurora fellow's training was the fantasy he was evidently trying to live out, and for sure, as you point out, the ordinary Joe would easily be his equal in handling a weapon.

Still, where my thinking leads me is that the skills the journalists you refer to is relatively immaterial. That kind of attitude says that only certain people have the right to protect their lives and the lives of their loved ones. It seems plain that all must have the ability to protect themselves, even if they are inept. After all, does the journalist have to pass some sort of proficiency test to blather on about who is worthy of possessing a gun?

[brihacharan]

[quote="timmy"]
Still, where my thinking leads me is that the skills the journalists you refer to is relatively immaterial. That kind of attitude says that only certain people have the right to protect their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
After all, does the journalist have to pass some sort of proficiency test to blather on about who is worthy of possessing a gun?

> It's well known fact that "Journalists depend on sensationalism" so that the news paper they write for should sell the maximum!
> Half of them do not know which end of the gun fires
> Sorry to say but - The only way to knock some sense into them is 'some of them should be the victims' of a bizzare shoot out
Briha

[goodboy_mentor]

Yes some journalists especially those writing against self defense and gun ownership depend on sensationalism and also plagarism. Since they do not use their logical part of mind, that is why we read all kinds of unethical content and rubbish being written by them these days. For example CNN and Time magazine have suspended Fareed Zakaria for plagiarism while writting on gun control. It can be read here http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-new ... 11798.aspx

Noted Indian-American journalist and author Fareed Zakaria has been suspended by his employers CNN and Time magazine after he admitted to plagiarism and apologised for the ethical lapse. Zakaria, was suspended by CNN and Time magazine after he admitted that he had plagiarised portions of an article he wrote on gun control for Time, from the New Yorker magazine.

He issued an apology saying he had made a "terrible mistake" and his lifting a paragraph from the article by Harvard University professor of American history Jill Lepore was an "ethical lapse".

Zakaria, 48, a Yale and Harvard graduate, had written the column on gun control that appeared in the August 20 issue of Time magazine.

Time said it was suspending Zakaria's column for a month, pending review.

"Time accepts Fareed's apology, but what he did violates our own standards for our columnists, which is that their work must not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well," Ali Zelenko, a spokeswoman for the magazine said.

"As a result, we are suspending Fareed's column for a month, pending further review," Time said.

CNN, on which Zakaria hosts a weekly foreign affairs show 'Fareed Zakaria GPS', said it would suspend the show for an indefinite period pending review.

"We have reviewed Fareed Zakaria's Time column, for which he has apologised. He wrote a shorter blog post on CNN.com on the same issue which included similar unattributed excerpts. That blog post has been removed and CNN has suspended Fareed Zakaria while this matter is under review," CNN said.

In a statement Zakaria said, "Media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my Time column on gun control, which was also a topic of conversation on this blog, bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore's essay in the April 23rd issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake."