Posted on 08/21/2014 12:18:49 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Via our colleagues at Twitchy, here’s a demonstration of why the national media is so bad at covering Second Amendment issues. CNN’s Don Lemon is normally not a bad anchor, but he’s clearly out of his depth in this debate — and what’s worse, refuses to recognize that he’s out of his depth even when it’s being made painfully clear to him by Ben Ferguson. Lemon himself all but declares his ignorance of firearms while delivering an indictment of the US based on the supposed free availability of a commodity that’s actually so tightly controlled it’s impossible to acquire without government intervention.
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
FERGUSON: The law says that you and I can’t just randomly go out and buy an automatic weapon, so let’s deal with the facts here. A semiautomatic weapon is gun that you and I are allowed to own, and in different places they have different rules. But to imply that anyone can walk out and buy an automatic weapon is just not true, Don.
LEMON: What do you mean anyone can’t wa— Listen, during the theater shooting in Colorado, I was able to go and buy an automatic weapon, and I, you know, have maybe shot a gun, three, four times in my life. I don’t even live in Colorado. I think most people can go out and buy an automatic weapon. I don’t understand your argument there.
Lemon doesn’t understand the argument because Lemon hasn’t bothered to do even basic research into the classes of firearms before lecturing viewers and Ferguson on them. The point, to the extent that Lemon has one here, is that he thinks anyone can walk off the street and get military weapons at any time, which is preposterous — and a strange argument indeed for the story in Ferguson, Missouri, where most of the concern has been about the militarization of police, not the citizenry. The kind of weapons that Americans can buy today are the same kind of weapons they could buy thirty years ago and even sixty years ago. Access to semiautomatic weapons is neither novel or significant.
Ferguson tried to explain that, but Lemon felt the need to urgently communicate his complete ignorance on the topic, claiming that the difference is “semantics” (via The Blaze):
“Let me finish, Ben. But listen. I think you are getting into semantics. Regardless of what you want to call it, an automatic or a semi-automatic weapon.”
“It’s a big deal,” Ferguson interrupted. “It’s the difference between breaking the law and not breaking the law.”
The difference between automatic and semi-automatic weapons is hardly semantic. As Ben tried to explain, semi-automatic weapons and revolvers have one important commonality: only one shot gets fired for every trigger pull. In fact, one can shoot a double-action revolver at the same rate as a semi-automatic pistol, although the latter will have magazines with larger capacities. Even that can be mitigated with quick-loaders and some practice for owners of revolvers. Automatic weapons, on the other hand, can fire multiple rounds with just one trigger pull, which makes them so dangerous that it takes a special license from the federal government to own one, and those are rarely granted. They really are much more dangerous and have the potential to cause a lot more damage in a short period of time … which is why the law severely restricts access to them.
The third person in this conversation, Van Jones, knew enough to mostly keep his mouth shut. Lemon should have followed his lead. This problem of ignorance on firearms and weapons laws is not limited to Lemon, though, which is why defending gun rights takes so much effort. Lemon’s irresponsible and uninformed rhetoric does not belong on a news broadcast, but unfortunately all too commonly appears on them, and not just at CNN.
Well, he’s wrong.
And white police officers gun down black teenagers pretty much every day.
Does “I was able to go out and buy an automatic weapon” mean that he actually did so?
Im betting he doesnt have a Class III, and he claimed on air that he’d purchased an automatic weapon. Maybe a call to the ATF tip line is in order.
Funny, I remember pay an exorbitant price for an old Colt lower at a Class III dealer, going to an attorney and getting a gun trust, and waiting about 8 months for my tax stamp to process before I got my M-16.
But he is right about all the other topics he covers......./sarc
Sure you can.
All you have to do find an automatic weapon for sale - there are not a lot of them since they stopped allow the sale of new automatic weapons in 1968.
Then you pay a vastly inflated price for said weapon (remember no new automatic weapons after 1968).
Finally you have to get a tax stamp.
This is all assuming, of course, you pass your check.
Oh, and you have to have a safe to store the weapon, and the BATFE can descend on you at any time to see if you still have the weapon and that it is stored in the safe.
I buy full auto clip magaziness for my uzi glock assault rifles that shoot high capacity caliber cop killer dum dum bullets ALL the time.
But you’re not the famous and “handsome” gay, black news anchor Don Lemon or the influential communist Van Jones.
I’m sure there’s a good number of rioters down there that could demonstrate to Mr. Lemon the difference between a semi-automatic and an automatic weapon.
Timely story.
My co-worker just picked up his Mac 11....SEVENTEEN MONTHS after starting the process. Oh, and 5k+ later.
Welcome to The Peoples Republic of CT.
Hey - it’s CNN - only three people saw it and they were sleeping.
“Normally not a bad host”.. Uhhhhh
Duhhhhh.
The guy is a doofus.
(T,F) There is a huge cabal of white racist supremacist police officers gunning down innocent black males.
(T,F) There is a huge cabal of young male black thugs, murdering, robbing, beating and raping white victims every single day.
You know he’s ignorant of the difference between a “self-loading semi-automatic”, “select fire”, and “full auto”.
He probably thinks they’re all the same thing.
Question one: True
Question two: You’re a racist.
(/libspeak)
In ‘95 I was at an unmonitored public range in the forest shooting with a friend. Suddenly here comes three boom-box thumping 20’’ rimmed pimpmobiles. Two were late ‘70’s purple Capris’. One was a new Audi or BMW. The new-car homie brings out a suitcase and is trailed by a couple of hookers and some down-dressed surly guys from the cheaper pimpmobiles. Leader guy opens the case and it’s full of (loaded) full auto short machine guns, all banging together. He handed them out and the follower-guys pointed them downrange and pulled the trigger. The guns quickly climbed to directly overhead as they dumped their entire clips in something around 2 seconds. My buddy and I ran.
With all the gun shows I’ve attended and gun NUTS I’ve known, nobody has ever shown me a machine gun or offered to get one, sell one, or even talked about knowing somebody with one. The incident above is the only time I’ve ever (outside a museum) been confronted with a real machine gun in the wild. They simply are not generally available. Further, if they were I’d have heard about it.
It is too expensive and too much of a hassle for most to even try.
Why go through all that when you can obtain a semi auto version of that same rifle and buy a bump stock or some such device for a fraction of the cost. Yeah, I know that a bump fired ar-15 doesn’t perform as well as a full-auto m4, but it is a fairly close approximation for the cost.
This is just like the gal in colorado who wanted to ban clips and thjought they were used up after passing a few bullets through them...
Violent criminals buy illegal weapons illegally.
Normal, non-violent law-abiding citizens can’t.
Is that what he means? I think the a$$hole has confused criminals and normal people in his faulty liberal mind.
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