Category: Media

ANALYSIS: The Real Problem with ‘Gun Violence’ is Media Bias

Reporting on the revival of a “controversial unit within the New York Police Department” to tackle increased violent crime by going after firearms, CNN headlined its story using an all-too-familiar term that has become firmly entrenched in the media’s lexicon: “gun violence.”

CNN’s headline was as subtle as a heart attack: “NYPD deploys Neighborhood Safety Teams to battle gun violence.”

A quick perusal of one day’s headlines from around the country found nearly a dozen stories all talking about “gun violence,” leaving one to conclude the problem with crime is guns, rather than criminals.

But at this point, what can one expect when the New York Times is finally acknowledging a probe of Hunter Biden, and that it had obtained emails “from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation?”

The New York Times is now the subject of a scathing critique by Michael Goodwin at the rival New York Post, which is all about media bias during the 2020 presidential election campaign. The content of those emails could have swung the election for Donald Trump, Goodwin suggests, but they were withheld from the American public by a “Big Government, Big Tech and Big Media cabal” determined to keep Trump from being re-elected.

Ammoland looked at Hunter Biden’s hard drive last November, focusing on excerpts from Joe Biden’s daily newsletter titled “Office of Vice President Joe Biden News Briefing,” published when the Delaware Democrat was no longer serving as vice president, and before he entered the 2020 campaign.

Then, as he is now, Joe Biden was no friend to the Second Amendment. He gets cover from the same media which has adopted the gun prohibition lobby’s vocabulary.

As noted recently at Liberty Park Press, “’Gun violence’ is a term created by the gun prohibition lobby (often incorrectly identified by the establishment media as ‘gun safety’ or ‘gun reform’ groups). The term, say Second Amendment activists, demonizes guns while essentially relegating other types of violence involving other weapons as somehow less significant.”

To combat this “gun violence,” anti-gunners want to ban so-called “assault rifles.” These are semi-auto sport-utility rifles, but they look “menacing” and they evidently frighten gun haters who have taken to calling them “weapons of war.”

But a look at the FBI Uniform Crime Report for any given year reveals more people are fatally beaten, bludgeoned or stabbed than people shot with rifles of any kind, or shotguns. While certainly true that firearms are used the most in homicides, one never reads about “knife violence” or “baseball bat violence,” while the victims are just as dead. News agencies don’t seem to get this. Long guns are used in a fraction of all homicides.

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DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE. SMART GUN TECH STILL NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME

By Larry Keane

There is a media blitz afoot, pitched by developers of authorized user recognition technology equipped firearms; what the media refers to as so-called, “smart guns.” Several of these companies herald that this is the year when they will finally bring their product to market. It might be a little premature to start popping corks, though.

Despite reports praising companies preparing to launch options for consumers, and polling showing Americans may be open to considering this concept, one critical question remains: Are buyers willing to risk their life on authorized user recognition technology?

So long as the answer from firearm purchasers remains “No,” retailers will not sacrifice shelf space for an unreliable product consumers don’t want to buy.
Prove It
Morning Consult released polling of Americans’ relative “acceptance” of “smart guns” and pitches a rather optimistic outlook.

“After decades of delays and controversy over smart guns, 2022 could be the year that the new weaponry is brought to market.”

The article reports Americans are “interested” in “smart” gun technology and “support the development” of the firearms. Less than half, 43 percent, of those surveyed say they are “very interested” or “somewhat interested” in personalized guns equipped with authorized-user technology, while more than half, 54 percent, aren’t. NSSF’s polling in 2019 showed that just five percent said they were inclined to purchase a so-called “smart gun” with 70 percent saying they still had concerns about reliability.

Firearms equipped with authorized-user technology involves adding electronics that in theory only allows a gun to be fired by a verified, authorized user after unlocked by using either a fingerprint, a pin code or through embedded field communication (RFID) connected to a smartphone or other Bluetooth device. Firearm owners know that guns must work as designed each and every time. There’s no room for failure. Adding in electronics to guns adds points of failure and could have horrific consequences for those who rely on them for self-defense.

LodeStar Works Inc., is one developer working to hit the market this year. President and CEO Gareth Glaser is hopeful. Glaser said, “It’s been around a long time now. Everybody uses one form or another of authentication technology on their smartphone.”

The problem for developers lies in the fact that support for “technology development” does not equate to, “I will buy a smart gun.” Not to mention a firearm is incomparable to an iPhone or Bluetooth speaker. Phones and guns are completely different products and equivocating them is beyond tone-deaf to the firearm market that has seen elevated sales largely driven by concerns for personal safety. If the facial or fingerprint recognition on your iPhone doesn’t recognize you, you’re inconvenienced. If your firearm doesn’t unlock in a time of need, you could be dead.

Failing Track Record

The hype for “The Year of the Smart Gun” began early. Leading up to SHOT Show® 2022 in Las Vegas, these new companies were pitching their products as the “hot” new thing.

“Exclusive: Smart guns finally arriving in U.S., seeking to shake up firearms market,” read a Reuters headline. “‘Smart Gun’ Companies Aim For 2022 Commercial Release,” said another. “Are ‘smart guns’ finally arriving in the U.S.? Here is what we know,” was the headline from The Deseret News. The article began, stating as fact, that “Smart guns…will finally become available to American consumers after decades of questions regarding reliability.”

The Reload was the most measured and accurate. “‘Smart Guns’ Come to the Industry’s Trade Show Amid Hype and Skepticism.”

The history of this technology is not one of success, including hacked and failing test runs. A demonstration by LodeStar prior to SHOT Show® 2022 failed too. A demonstration to show off the technology to shareholders shows an individual loading, chambering and clicking the fingerprint keypad on the side of the 9 mm handgun equipped with the authorized-user technology.

“Alright, ready? Everybody got ears? Alright. Two rounds coming,” he says before firing. Only one round successfully fired while the demonstrator is visibly seen and heard pulling the trigger multiple times for the remaining round before the video abruptly ends. That’s during a controlled test under ideal conditions and in front of the media.

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Yes, they know. They’ve always known. They just approve.

Project Veritas Torches the New York Times and Explodes the January 6 Narrative
Serious journalists know that our oligarchs used Jan. 6 as a Reichstag fire, to target political dissidents.

A Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporter has been caught in a video by the conservative group Project Veritas admitting his colleagues vastly exaggerated the danger of the election integrity protest on Jan. 6.

The reporter, Matthew Rosenberg, also called his colleagues names that questioned their courage and manliness.

January 6 Was in Fact “No Big Deal”

Rosenberg, the national security correspondent for the New York Times, said the media’s coverage of the Capitol riot was “overblown” and that the events of Jan. 6, 2021 were “no big deal,” according to undercover video released Tuesday by Project Veritas.

In print, Rosenberg and his colleagues have described the claim that there were FBI plants instigating the protestors outside of the U.S. Capitol a year earlier as a “reimagining” of the “attack.” But in the Project Veritas video, which appears to have been recorded without his knowledge, Rosenberg paints a different picture. Here he admits that “there were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capitol.”

warning, some foul language

WaPo columnist says “fans of Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill have a new favorite word: ‘grooming'” … and I think someone hit a nerve.

You can always tell how insular a person has become in their politics when a term that has been used regularly regarding a topic that has been in the news for years strikes them as something “new.”
Of course, people who don’t share columnist Monica Hesse’s Bryn Mawr value system have actually been using the word for some time.
Okay, I shouldn’t be so hard on Bryn Mawr. After all, it has a politically diverse student body with only around 42% identifying as “liberal” and the rest identifying as Marxists.
Not only that, but, you know, grooming happens.
A lot.
Do a quick search and you find stories like these.
So, you’ll excuse us if we’re a tad sensitive about the teacher grooming issue.
I’m sorry, did I say “sensitive?” According to Hesse, it’s an obsession.
Anti-gay activists are obsessed with talking about “grooming.”
People wouldn’t be obsessed with talking about grooming if leftists weren’t obsessed with talking about sex with five-year-olds.
Elite NYC school is using the creepiest video of all time to teach first graders about masturbation and I have questions.

Of course, the most obvious question is, will there be an AP Program for the advanced students?

And note the term she uses to defame proponents of the Florida bill: “anti-gay activists.”
As is well known outside MSNBC newsrooms and the confines of blue-city newspapers, the word “gay” does not appear anywhere in the bill. Nor does “LGBTetc.”
Were Hesse truly interested in knowing what was in the bill, she would have bothered to read it. It’s very short and easily found. (pdf)
Of course, had she done that you know what would have happened.
Not only does the bill not have the word gay in it, but search for the words “gender” and “sex” (and its variations) and you’ll find they appear only twice each.

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The Times, simply displaying their standard hypocrisy.

What you see from the Ukrainians is real heroism. Little to no training. Little to no logistical support. Yet they arm up and march off to fight an invader. That takes real guts.

The New York Times’ Strange New Respect for Citizens Owning and Carrying ‘Assault Weapons.’

Yes, this is the New York Times writing approvingly of average Ukrainian citizens taking up arms to defend themselves, their families, and their country. They’re being thousands of what the Times refers to as “assault rifles” for which most of them will have had little to no training at all.

Not that it matters. When your country is being attacked by a foreign army, you use the weapons at hand.

An estimated 18,000 assault rifles, variants of the Kalashnikov, have been distributed in Kyiv since Thursday. For many in line, the decision to pick up arms and fight a street battle against one of the world’s largest armies was driven by patriotism.
“I don’t really have any choice,” said Hlib Bondarenko, a 21-year-old computer programmer. “This is my home. I have nowhere to go, and I’m not going to give it up.”

Olena Sokolan, a business manager, stood proudly in a line made up mostly of men. “I am a woman, but I am strong,” Ms. Sokolan said. “I don’t have any fear. I’m ready.”

See Russian, point rifle, pull trigger.

This is the same New York Times that writes so approvingly of “assault weapons” bans here in the US of A. Never mind that the muddled old Gray Lady has written that Clinton’s AWB both failed miserably and worked as intended. Because as Americans are seeing hourly on their televisions and news feeds, who really needs an “assault rifle” anyway?

News networks ignore Ukraine’s gun rights push

Ukraine is dealing with a lot right now, but one of the smarter things they did was recognize that an armed populace is an asset. They expanded gun rights in the Eastern European nation leading up to the invasion, though, in fairness, guns weren’t completely forbidden there, either.

However, the major news networks seemed to have completely ignored this during their coverage of the buildup.

On Wednesday, hours before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukrainian, the Rada (parliament) advanced legislation that would allow more Ukrainian civilians to own firearms as they stared down the bear that was eager to wage war on and conquer them. It’s another obvious example of why civilian firearm ownership is important and vital for a free people, yet it wasn’t worth any airtime on the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) that night or Thursday.

Citing local Ukrainian reporting, The Reload’s Stephan Gutowski reported: “274 of the country’s 450 elected representatives voted for the bill, according to local media outlet Ukrinform. The bill would formalize the country’s gun laws, allow more civilians to own and carry guns, and allow them to be used for self-defense in more places.”

The Canada-based CTV noted the move came on the eve of, “[o]ne of Europe’s worst security crises in decades” after “Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized two areas of eastern Ukraine as independent and ordered troops to be deployed to eastern Ukraine.”

NBC Nightly News did note this distribution of weapons but not the expansion of gun rights on Thursday. Yet reporter Erin McLaughlin spoke with a member of the Ukrainian parliament who’s never shot a weapon before but was among those ready to take up arms:

And most of the media failed to note the legal moves prior to the invasion. Why?

Well, the answer is pretty simple. These are the same networks that play host to people who tell us our AR-15s are useless against tanks and attack helicopters. They don’t want us to see that, on the eve of the invasion, a sovereign nation turned to armed citizens to help defend their homes.

They don’t want people seeing the kind of scenarios the Second Amendment was meant for play out on their television screens.

In truth, they’d much rather keep us ignorant of how Ukraine recognized that they needed those armed citizens if they were going to have any hope of fending off the invasion of a more powerful neighbor.

If we recognize that fact, many would be far less hesitant to back things like assault weapon bans or magazine restrictions.

They’d see one of the scenarios the Founding Fathers feared and recognized the role armed citizens can play. They’re doing so in Ukraine, but they could just as easily have to do so here.

Our right to keep and bear arms is something that any invader has to fear.

The networks, however, would rather you not think about that because they want people to view guns only as something to fear, not something that can be used to protect.

Having crap-for-brains is why and that appears to be a life long affliction

Bad arguments in favor of gun control persist

For proponents of gun control, there are tried and true arguments they trot out whenever they need them, and by “tried and true” I mean “tired and wrong.”

Over and over again, we see these arguments used, with almost no pushback from the mainstream media. After all, they’re the ones making these arguments.

Take this op-ed from the Star Tribune:

Gun regulation long has been the third rail of American politics. But the increase in murders, accidental shootings, suicides, armed carjackings and robberies, as well as the ongoing tragedy of mass shootings, shows the urgency of changing course. A responsible gun safety regulatory system would reduce crime and save lives.

Consider how we regulate cars. There are lawful uses for both guns and cars, but both are deadly when misused.

With cars, we require operators to be trained and licensed. We register every vehicle, and re-register each when it’s transferred to a new owner. We require liability insurance. We also require safety modifications and regulate how and where cars are driven.

Except that’s an inaccurate comparison. You only have to do any of that if you drive the vehicle on a public road. If you keep it confined to your farm, you’re not required to do any of that.

Further, the right to keep and bear arms is a constitutionally protected right. Cars, not so much. The courts have ruled that driving is a privilege, not a right, so comparing regulations surrounding a privilege to the lack of regulations for a right isn’t asinine, it’s idiotic.

But it’s bound to get better, right?

Don’t hold your breath.

For guns, there is no licensing, no training requirement, no registration, no insurance, no safety equipment required. This enables criminals to obtain guns with no background check, no waiting period — no means of enforcement at all.

Except that every FFL holder conducts criminal background checks on every firearm they sell.

“Oh, but private sales-”

Sure, in theory, but do you know how criminals tend to get guns? Via the black market, which is never going to conduct a criminal background check. Remarkably few buy from law-abiding gun owners looking to lawfully sell a firearm, so it’s a non-issue.

Yet the hits don’t stop there. Oh no, we get this classic gem:

The U.S. Constitution explicitly says “well-regulated” when referring to gun rights, yet the gun lobby opposes any form of gun regulation. The courts have said that reasonable restrictions may be placed on the possession of firearms. The National Firearms Act of 1934 effectively banned machine guns from most private ownership. Since that time, the “Tommy guns” of the Al Capone era and other fully automatic machine guns have not been used in mass killings or other crimes.

Oh, goodie, the “well-regulated” argument.

Talk about nonsense.

Look here, Sport. The phrase “well-regulated” meant nothing more than “properly functioning,” such as a well-regulated clock. The term didn’t mean then what it means now and there’s been a lot of actual scholarship supporting that fact.

Plus, more importantly, the right explicitly says “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That’s a contradictory clause unless “well-regulated” meant something differently at the time. It’s unlikely such a contradictory amendment would have been added by our Founding Fathers who desperately were trying to build a nation of laws.

But the author doesn’t care about that. He just wants to see new gun control passed, claiming it saves lives. Except, a look at the UK’s homicide rate before and after they passed gun control shows that it doesn’t really.

So not only are his arguments bad, even the facts work against him.

Climate activists spend millions for friendly Associated Press ‘news.’

When climate activists called for more coverage, the Associated Press went green.

No, it didn’t dive into environmental activism. The news agency had already done that. It dove into a pile of cash — more than $8 million.

AP just announced it sold its gold-standard journalism for 20 bright, shiny new reporters under the benign headline “Climate grant illustrates growth in philanthropy-funded news.” The announcement was adorned with a photo of a polar bear (of course) because journalists do love their cute, man-eating predators.

That $8 million over three years works out to about $133,000 per staffer — in case you’re interested in buying (or renting) a journalist or two.

AP noted it’s “the news organization’s largest single expansion paid for through philanthropic grants.” But the groups ponying up millions aren’t value-neutral benefactors.

The five climate partners include left-wing groups such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and Quadrivium. Walton and Quadrivium both fund the radical, eco-leftist Environmental Defense Fund. The pressure group pushes everything from massive pollution regulations to Biden’s Build Back Better plan, which it calls “a long-overdue step to address environmental injustice.”

Just like AP, only more honest.

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The mask drops

NYT executive editor Dean Baquet sums up ‘the job of the New York Times’ — and accidentally gives away the MSM’s game.

“The truth has one version. Everything other flavor is a lie.”--Caliexile

Gun crimes grab most media attention, while gun use in self-defense gets merely a fraction: experts
People using guns in self-defense overwhelmingly don’t even lead to a criminal being killed or wounded, one crime watcher says

Americans across the country have used legal guns to defend themselves and thwart crimes, but the reports often fly under the radar and most people are unaware how often guns are used in self-defense cases.

“Having a gun is by far the safest course of action when people are facing a criminal by themselves,” Dr. John Lott, an economist and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital. He pointed to women in particular, who “behave passively” and are “about 2.4 times more likely to end up being seriously injured than a woman who has a gun to protect herself.”

As crimes skyrocketed in major cities since 2020, instances of women using guns to protect themselves and stop crimes have repeatedly played out.

“Thank God I had my gun, or I’d probably be dead right now,” a Chicago woman with a concealed carry permit said in October after two would-be carjackers approached her outside a bank.

“Thank God I had my gun, or I’d probably be dead right now.”

— Chicago crime victim

In New Orleans just last week, a mom and Air Force veteran pulled a gun on a man who tried to get into her car while she was sitting in gridlocked traffic with her 2-year-old son. She wasn’t forced to fire the weapon and the suspect took off.

‘Dramatic undercount’

Lott said that, in a typical year, the media reports about 2,000 defensive gun use stories, but he added “that is a dramatic undercount, because the vast majority of successful self-defense cases don’t make the news.”

STUDY SHOWS CONCEALED HANDGUN PERMITS SOARED DURING PANDEMIC, RECORD YEAR-OVER-YEAR INCREASE

Lott said there are about 2 million defensive gun uses per year, according to the average of 18 national surveys.

The Heritage Foundation, which launched a database tracking how often guns are used in self-defense cases, cites the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which looked at various studies and found “that Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year.”

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The Constitution may impede them, to an extent, but they still are trying.
It takes what Patrick Henry advised:
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”

WaPo Writer Actually Declares Individual Freedom ‘a Key Component of White Supremacy’

George Orwell’s “1984” or “Animal Farm”? Nope. Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”? Uh-huh. Some other dystopian novel about life in a future totalitarian America? No way. Straight from the pages of the Washington Post. You know, the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” guys?

More like “Individual Freedom and Liberty Dies in the Darkness of the Radical Left.”

In a WaPo “Made by History” op-ed titled The Ottawa Trucker Convoy Is Rooted in Canada’s Settler Colonial History, Taylor Dysart, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania, awkwardly argues that “one’s entitlement to freedom is a key component of White supremacy.” After carefully dissecting the garble, I was able to get to the root cause.

Before we begin, unlike the 187,594,632 (and counting) articles about the Freedom Convoy, totalitarian Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or anything else to do with Ottawa, my focus will be on “none of above.” Instead, it will be about the crux of the lunacy of Ms. Dysart and other lunatics who believe as she does, and the unfortunate publishing of said lunacy by a once-proud American institution.

You’re welcome. Now, on with the show.

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BLUF:
You want to talk about disgusting, immoral, extremist rhetoric that helps fuel violence? Look no further than the Sun’s editorial itself. The individuals responsible for this garbage should be ashamed of themselves, and frankly, they should be looking for new employment. The fact that the editorial is still posted without correction (or better yet, a complete retraction) on the Las Vegas Sun website speaks volumes about the contempt the paper’s publisher has not just for conservatives, but its readers as well.

Paper blames “right wing rhetoric” for blue-on-blue political violence

What’s behind the attempted assassination of Louisville, Kentucky mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg earlier this week? Authorities in the city haven’t announced a potential motive, but the editors of the Las Vegas Sun newspaper think they’ve cracked the case: far-left activist Quintez Brown shot at Greenberg because of the “the talk coming from the right about civil war and political violence.”

No, seriously. Despite the fact that the political preferences of the alleged shooter were already well-known by the time the Sun published its editorial on Tuesday morning, the Sun really decided to pin the blame for the shooting on “right-wing rhetoric“.

The alleged shooter, a 21-year-old political activist, was arrested near the scene and later charged with attempted murder along with four counts of wanton endangerment.

While there’s been no indication yet that the activist had ties to any right-wing organizations, the shooting comes amid a rise in threats against politicians fueled by increasingly violent rhetoric coming from extremist Republicans.

The New York Times documented this trend in a story last week based on a review of more than 75 indictments related to threats against lawmakers since 2016.

“In recent years, and particularly since the beginning of (Donald) Trump’s presidency, a growing number of Americans have taken ideological grievance and political outrage to a new level, lodging concrete threats of violence against members of Congress,” the newspaper wrote, adding that the threats “surged during Trump’s time in office and in its aftermath, as the former president’s own violent language fueled a mainstreaming of menacing political speech, and lawmakers used charged words and imagery to describe the stakes of the political moment.”

What breathtaking dishonesty on the part of the Sun’s editors here. If they knew that the suspect was a “political activist,” then they damn sure knew the politics of his activism, yet they apparently chose to completely ignore the facts in order to insinuate to their readers that this was a case of some angry right-wing nut job taking a shot at a Democrat.

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The author makes a small mistake:
“There are no NEWLY MANUFACTURED ‘assault rifles’ [machineguns] being sold to private individuals in the United States.” is wrong.
All the ones that were transferable before May 1986 are still transferable and – at increasingly higher prices due to the market principle of ‘supply and demand’- are still being bought and sold. Other than that, he’s written well.

After 30 Years Of Lies, NY Times Admits “Assault Weapons Are A Myth”

In a stunning op-ed released Friday, the NY Times finally admitted that “assault weapons” are a made-up political term fabricated by anti-gun Democrats.

Op-ed writer Lois Beckett also admitted that once the term was manufactured and used to outlaw a class of weapons that dishonest anti-gun Democrats had used to con an entire nation, nothing happened.

It was much the same in the early 1990s when Democrats created and then banned a category of guns they called “assault weapons.” America was then suffering from a spike in gun crime and it seemed like a problem threatening everyone. Gun murders each year had been climbing: 11,000, then 13,000, then 17,000.

Democrats decided to push for a ban of what seemed like the most dangerous guns in America: assault weapons, which were presented by the media as the gun of choice for drug dealers and criminals, and which many in law enforcement wanted to get off the streets.

This politically defined category of guns — a selection of rifles, shotguns and handguns with “military-style” features — only figured in about 2 percent of gun crimes nationwide before the ban.

Handguns were used in more than 80 percent of murders each year, but gun control advocates had failed to interest enough of the public in a handgun ban. Handguns were the weapons most likely to kill you, but they were associated by the public with self-defense. (In 2008, the Supreme Court said there was a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense.)

Banning sales of military-style weapons resonated with both legislators and the public: Civilians did not need to own guns designed for use in war zones.

On Sept. 13, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban into law. It barred the manufacture and sale of new guns with military features and magazines holding more than 10 rounds. But the law allowed those who already owned these guns — an estimated 1.5 million of them — to keep their weapons.

The policy proved costly. Mr. Clinton blamed the ban for Democratic losses in 1994. Crime fell, but when the ban expired, a detailed study found no proof that it had contributed to the decline.

They created and then banned a class of weapons.

“Assault weapons” is a made-up term, used to scare citizens into thinking that military weapons were commonly being sold and used on the streets of the United States. Thanks to a dishonest and incompetent media, millions of Americans thought (and still think) that machine guns could simply be purchased at the local gun store. The reality that the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act outlawed the manufacture of automatic weapons for the civilian market in 1986, was always hushed up.

Yes, it has been 28 years since a single machine gun was manufactured for the American public. There are no assault rifles being sold in the United States. There are only firearms that look like weapons of war, but which lack their ability to fire multiple shots with a single pull of the trigger.

These firearms—AR-15s, AKMs and similar rifles—while incredibly popular with America’s law-abiding gun culture, simply aren’t used in many crimes. This should be surprising, since they are now among the most popular firearms sold in the United States in the past decade. The AR-15, in particular, is the most popular rifle sold in the United States year after year, and there are ten times as many in civilian hands as there are visually similar M4/M16 assault rifles in the entire U.S military.

But career criminals don’t want long guns. They want firearms that are compact and easy to conceal.

The op-ed concludes that violent homicides are primarily a poverty issue disproportionately concentrated among small groups of particularly violent young men, a stunning and rare admission that poverty and the drug trade are the primary problem driving murder, not access to firearms.

Don’t expect this sort of stunning admission of the facts to mark a change in cover from the Times, however. The brief bout of lucidity will quickly fade behind the veil of Alzheimer’s liberalism, and we’ll hear the rest of the deranged gaggle of op-ed writers to quickly fall back into the mantra of “Guns are bad, the NRA is evil, we need more taxes, government, citizen control, etc.”

Still… it’s nice to see that every once in a while a real and honest thought can escape from the morass of Manhattan, however fleeting that honest thought may be.

NBC flops in primetime to open Winter Games.

If the first night of coverage is any indication, NBC will have a tough time in the ratings with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Thursday’s primetime coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics averaged 7.25 million viewers on NBC, marking the smallest primetime Olympic audience ever on the network. The previous low was 8.5 million for the final night of competition at last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics.

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ESPN Guy Says China’s Genocide is No Worse Than Red States Requiring Voter ID.

The U.S. declared last year that the actions against Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region of China as genocide. But according to ESPN’s J. A. Adande, committing genocide against Uyghurs is no worse than red states requiring voter ID.

This moron actually said this on Friday’s Around the Horn. Adande said Americans should not question what these modern-day Nazis are doing to Uyghurs:

This creep is comparing voter ID to genocide, slave labor, concentration camps, forced abortions and forced sterilizations.

ESPN should fire this guy not for his incendiary comments, but for being this dumb on national television. Keep in mind, the city in which Adande lives, Chicago, has required ID to enter restaurants, bars and gyms.

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A woman from a communist country explains liberty to a Canadian reporter

Something from last year, recently discovered

58% Of Voters Agree: Media Are ‘Enemy of the People’

Voters overwhelmingly believe “fake news” is a problem, and a majority agree with former President Donald Trump that the media have become “the enemy of the people.”

A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports finds that 58% of Likely U.S. Voters at least somewhat agree that the media are “truly the enemy of the people,” including 34% who Strongly Agree. Thirty-six percent (36%) don’t agree, including 23% who Strongly Disagree. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The survey of 1,000 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on July 7-8, 2021 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

The ‘gentry class’ has gotten too full of itself

One More Time: It’s Not ‘Gun Violence’ It’s Gang Violence.

Every time you hear a politician or a media personality mention “gun violence,” you should mentally translate that phrase to “gang violence.” Not only that, but ask yourself if that politician or media outlet has an agenda by mislabeling gang violence as something entirely different.

Obviously politicians who have enabled the “criminal justice reforms” that have directly resulted in the out-of-control increases in violent crime across America don’t want to talk about criminals and gangs. In fact, California’s Gov. Newsom even went so far as to actuall apologize for using the word “gang” when describing the organized groups of criminals who commit crimes (otherwise known as ‘gangs’).

Rather than correctly identify those who commit the majority of violent crimes in this country, countless failed and inept politicians like the Land of Lincoln’s Governor J.B. Pritzker and Murder City, USA’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot instead blame law-abiding gun owners.

They continue to promote more gun control laws and more government spending to redirect peoples’ attention away from the failures of their feckless policies and misplaced spending priorities.

As for the media, there’s a reason the great majority of Americans don’t trust them any more. Nine percent of Americans now have “a great deal” of trust in what they hear in the media. To put that into perspective, roughly four percent of the population think lizard people “control our societies by gaining political power.”

Too many of today’s media members are nothing more than Democrat party operatives with bylines who dutifully spout leftist talking points. They willfully ignore stories that are bad for their political allies and their agenda. Or they cover them…with a pillow. Until they stop moving.

At the same time, they’re quick to castigate law-abiding gun owners for the actions of actual criminals, terrorists, and lunatics who commit crimes with firearms.

The next time you see some politician or candidate talking about the problem of so-called “gun violence,” call them out on it. Pols usually squirm if you make them address the real issue that drives the majority violent crime in cities: gangs.

In centers of corruption like Chicago, they may aggressively deflect the discussion away from gangs because a lot of gangs in places like Chi-town have some very cozy relationships with local elected officials to provide votes in exchange for the politicians avoiding discussions about gang-related crimes.

As for the media, do the math. If they’re trumpeting talking points like “gun violence,” they’re probably gaslighting you about other topics too. Look deeper to see what else they’re lying to you about.