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Bullet Points
Slate ^ | June 16 2016 | Rachael Larimore

Posted on 06/20/2016 4:05:22 PM PDT by TroutStalker

It’s like clockwork. Sick, twisted clockwork. A mass shooting happens. There is a flurry of confusing reports. A death toll is announced, a shooter identified. And then, even before the crime scene is cleaned up, come the pleas for gun control.

But you already know how this will play out. Gun-control advocates and their allies in the media will attack the gun-rights crowd as cold-hearted, stubborn, and out of touch. They will complain that no new legislation will result from the tragedy, and they will be right.

There are many reasons that this cycle repeats as it does. We live in a divided society where people cocoon with like-minded allies, and we’ve stopped listening to the other side. The NRA is powerful. We get distracted and move on to the next shiny thing. But one important point: The mainstream media lobbies hard for gun control, but it is very, very bad at gun journalism. It might be impossible ever to bridge the divide between the gun-control and gun-rights movements. But it’s impossible to start a dialogue when you don’t know what the hell you are talking about.

Media stories in the wake of mass shootings typically feature a laundry list of mistakes that reflect their writers’ inexperience with guns and gun culture. Some of them are small but telling: conflating automatic and semi-automatic weapons, assault rifle and assault weapon, caliber and gauge—all demonstrating a general lack of familiarity with firearms. Some of them are bigger. Like calling for “common-sense gun control” and “universal background checks” after instances in which a shooter purchased a gun legally and passed background checks. Or focusing on mass shootings involving assault weapons—and thereby ignoring statistics that show that far more people die from handguns.

(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: banglist
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"...we can argue all day about what the Framers—all now dead for 200 years or so—intended with the Second Amendment. But it seems disingenuous to argue that, in crafting a document that has largely served us well for more than 220 years, they couldn’t imagine improvements in gun technology."

Freedom of the press should be restricted to hand set type on manually cranked presses, because the founders couldn't have forseen high speed presses or the internet.

1 posted on 06/20/2016 4:05:22 PM PDT by TroutStalker
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To: TroutStalker
The mainstream media lobbies hard for gun control, but it is very, very bad at gun journalism.

Fixed it.
2 posted on 06/20/2016 4:07:40 PM PDT by Zarro (JAIL CONGRESS!)
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To: TroutStalker

The gun control freaks are like ghouls.

Not before the bodies are even buried do they try to push thier sick agenda of disarming American citizens for the actions of muslim terrorists...


3 posted on 06/20/2016 4:08:49 PM PDT by 2banana (My common ground with terrorists - they want to die for islam and we want to kill them)
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To: TroutStalker
Quill and berry juice for the press. Require them to stand on a stump in the town square and speak with only the volume of their own voices. Transmittal of data only in written form with pony express and sailing ships. Carrier pigeons for select cases.
4 posted on 06/20/2016 4:11:24 PM PDT by Myrddin
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To: TroutStalker
"Gun-control advocates and their allies in the media will attack the gun-rights crowd as cold-hearted, stubborn, and out of touch."

They should be on low incomes in isolated areas near deadly predators of various kinds. That would change their perspective.


5 posted on 06/20/2016 4:13:05 PM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." --Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: TroutStalker

Cannons were around at the time of the founding of this nation.....pretty powerful weapons. Yet the Founding Fathers did not ban them.

So this articles argument is a fail from the word go.


6 posted on 06/20/2016 4:14:15 PM PDT by Red in Blue PA (war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, obama loves America)
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To: TroutStalker

The new, semi-literate fascists in journalism are like zombies. They need “brains...brains!”


7 posted on 06/20/2016 4:15:16 PM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." --Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: TroutStalker

They should be on low incomes in isolated areas near deadly predators of various kinds. That would change their perspective.

Come to realize it, that wouldn’t stop them. They’re the more equal animals. They would still want their less stylish, more technically inclined neighbors to be disarmed.


8 posted on 06/20/2016 4:18:09 PM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." --Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: TroutStalker

“...and thereby ignoring statistics that show that far more people die from handguns.”

Grammar alert...

Which show that...


9 posted on 06/20/2016 4:19:18 PM PDT by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway - "Enjoy Yourself" ala Louis Prima)
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To: TroutStalker

Good point


10 posted on 06/20/2016 4:19:55 PM PDT by piasa
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To: Red in Blue PA

I was going to say that letters of marque and reprisal were issued to persons owning fully armed sailing ships. That is, people with the best of the best for the time period.


11 posted on 06/20/2016 4:23:11 PM PDT by piasa
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To: piasa

Yup. The Founders had *no* problem with people running around with the battleship-equivalent of the day - the kind of thing that could and did lay waste to coastal towns that annoyed their owners sufficiently.


12 posted on 06/20/2016 4:26:36 PM PDT by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: familyop

It’s like calling for curtailment of freedom of speech every time a defamation suit is filed. It’s getting tired and weaker every time they do it.


13 posted on 06/20/2016 4:27:25 PM PDT by tumblindice (America's founding fathers: all armed conservatives.)
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To: TroutStalker

This attack lasted THREE! SOLID! HOURS! And claimed about 50 victims.

A blunderbuss would have sufficed.


14 posted on 06/20/2016 4:35:58 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: Vendome

equivalent in the context


15 posted on 06/20/2016 4:36:36 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: TroutStalker

Bttt.


16 posted on 06/20/2016 4:56:11 PM PDT by Inyo-Mono
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To: TroutStalker

This is actually a pretty good article.


17 posted on 06/20/2016 4:58:58 PM PDT by Toliph
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To: Red in Blue PA

Cannons were around,
We’re Not Mentioned!


18 posted on 06/20/2016 5:18:53 PM PDT by Big Red Badger (UNSCANABLE in an IDIOCRACY!)
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To: Toliph

It was a pretty good article.

Beat them enough times, hard enough, and they learn some reality.


19 posted on 06/20/2016 5:55:35 PM PDT by marktwain
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To: TroutStalker
The author gets the divide and does a creditable job of filling it with fact. More of this, please.

One difficulty is that this has become a form of class warfare at this point - "gun people" are characterized as ignorant, malevolent, and jealous of their prerogatives. The last, the only true point, is presented as a bad thing by people equally jealous of theirs on other issues.

Yes, firearms owners are suspicious, and we have very good reason to be. One would never place the keeping of legislation regarding automobiles in the hands of people who hate them and wish to make it so that no one owns one. That sort of legislation mirrors the stuff we're seeing from the gun prohibitionist side: proudly ignorant, thoroughly useless, totally malicious, and eventually counterproductive. It is legislation that will be overwhelmingly ignored by its targets, for targets we are, and we have no intention whatever of becoming defenseless targets.

20 posted on 06/20/2016 6:16:54 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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