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We talk a lot about media bias, but sometimes the mainstream media goes so far beyond what should be acceptable fair and balanced reporting as to call into question their integrity.
On Friday night, ABC's World News dedicated a segment to complaining about what they see as a lack of government interest in enacting more stringent gun control laws as a means of combating violence. Said substitute host Diane Sawyer, "we keep hearing there is a gun for every man, woman and child in this country, and now they have gone up by that much more. But what about Congress? Is there any move in Congress to try to take some kind of action?"
Exactly what kind of action would she like to see? Like every other gun banner, she apparently sees the solution to gun crimes as taking guns away from the people who didn't commit the crime in the first place.
ABC didn't stop there. Yesterday morning on "Good Morning America," reporter David Muir continued the agenda-based "reporting" by proffering Michael Wolkowitz, a board member of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, as an expert on firearms without bothering to mention that he was basing his whole argument on propaganda.
In neither segment did ABC present the opposing viewpoint, choosing instead to promote their own biased agenda, including promoting yet another anti-gun piece they are planning to air this Friday entitled, "If I Only Had a Gun," which Sawyer noted included a segment highlighting that "since there is an impulse to think if I had a gun I could protect myself and others, we have an experience we'll conduct based on a real incident in which we show you what happens." I'm sure that reenactment will be completely unbiased and realistic, right?
Meanwhile, today is the 5 year anniversary of Ohio's concealed handgun license law. Northern Ohio's The News Herald ran an article covering this milestone and noted that Ohio sheriffs consider the program a success.
"Statistics have shown that in Ohio and across the United States, CCW laws have resulted in a reduction of violent crimes. They've given law-abiding private citizens a tool for protecting themselves," said Ralph Spidalieri, a Geauga County deputy sheriff and owner of Great Lakes Outdoor Supply, a retail outlet for guns and ammunition with stores in Chester Township and Middlefield.
"Originally, I was not a proponent," Lake County Sheriff Daniel A. Dunlap said. "With more people carrying weapons, I worried there would be a greater possibility of bad outcomes in dealings between law-enforcement officers and private citizens. I've been wrong more than once in my 38-year career. We haven't experienced any difficulties with concealed-carry beyond it creating a lot more work for our office."
Toby Hoover, Executive Director of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence continues to oppose the law, and apparently has a selective memory.
"We never predicted bloodshed during all the years we fought against passage of this law."
Really? What about this 2001 article in the Cincinnati Enquirer that contained the following quotes from her organization?
John Shanks, Coalition: We believe immediate access and availability enhances chances for firearms violence. A case in point is two ladies in a recent road-rage incident. One of them reached in her glove box and pulled out a gun and shot the other one. When you introduce firearms, a situation that would not normally result in deadly violence can be tragic.
John Shanks, Coalition: Suppose some guy on a Sunday afternoon is consuming alcohol at the ballpark and it's 102 degrees. Tempers flare and that leads to tragic violence if he has a gun.
Toby Hoover, Coalition: We are looking to prevent accidents, homicides and suicides. When you increase access to something, you increase the things that can happen.
Hoover may not want to recall her organization's fear mongering since none of it came to pass, but that doesn't change the fact that it happened. Concealed Carry works in Ohio, it works across the nation, and it isn't the good guys who are committing these violent crimes. No amount of bias is going to change those facts.
Comments
They won't be happy until we sit quietly in the back of the room while they trample every right we have. Good thing I was never able to stay quiet.
Interesting.... thanks for letting us know, Daniel.
Daniel,
You forgot to mention that these shootings all happen in gun free zones. Even the case in Pittsburgh, the killer may not have been allowed to own weapons since he was less than honorably discharged from the Marines.
We need to drive home the point that to prevent these crimes from occurring, we need to eliminate all gun free zones. The 2nd Amendment is very clear on this. Shall not be infringed means the government can not dictate when and where we can carry.
People that support the anti-gun agenda can't and will never be able to see past thier noses. they are like the teacher that punishes the whole class for the one dumbass that causes trouble. Facts and staistics mean nothing to these people. But if it did, it wouldn't really matter because they would lose too much money.
I wonder how many people who Conceal Carry wear a T-shirt that goes down past their ass & that is 2 sizes to big ???
I also wonder how many people conceal carry with a level 3 retention holster that they only wore for an hour and were not familar with ??? Every guy that I know that has a CCW permit does not use a level 3 retention holster.
I also would like to know in these mass shootings in "Gun Free Zones" how many of the gunmem had 10-20 years of law enforcement experience and knew beforehand that there would be exactly 1 CCW holder in the room before they walked in not to mention that the 1 person with the gun would be front and center in the lower row where the trained law enforcement officer would be able to easily pick off the CCW holder. Also if you notice the clothes the LEO was wearing was not 2 sizes too big unlike the kids put in this test that had to wear white T-shirts that were way oversize. I guess these teenagers that were involved in this test all shop at big and tall stores even though it looked like not that many of them in that room were over 6' tall.
I would like to see if that LEO in that test who pretended to be a mass shooter if he would be able to get as easy of a kill if he had no prior knowledge of how many people would be carrying a gun in that school room, and if he went up against someone who was as proficient with a firearm as himself. I read one of the comments posted in the ABC.com website comments section for this special where a retired Marine (current CCW holder) who did two combat tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan said that the LEO in that test would not kill him as easy as he killed some teenage kids with one hour of training. It would be interesting to see how that test would turn out but then again when you stack the odds against the person who has to kill the shooter by giving that person a holster that they are not familar with, putting them in an area of the room where the LEO can easily pick that person off and where the LEO had prior knowledge of where that person was going to be, and putting the CCW holder in oversized clothes that hinder the ability of the person to draw quickly as with the T-shirts made for a guy that is 6' 5" then the "mass shooter" will win every time. But then again ABC failed to mention the lady that had a CCW permit that used a handgun in a church in Colorado to neutralize a guy who stormed the church with an AK-47 and enough ammo to kill a couple hundred people. That story was conviently left out of the ABC special. So much for fair and balanced reporting.
What torques me off is that we're preaching to the choir here with our complaints of the hit piece. How do we get our observations of bias out to the same audience that saw the show?
To be fair, there should have been one experienced CHL holder in the room vs. one inexperienced "badguy" dressed the same as the students had been. Put their experiment on a level playing field and the results would have vastly different.
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