The unbelievable bias

As the Sandy Hook story evolves from the accounts of the shooting to the identities of its young (and not-so-young) victims and trying to determine why it happened, one lead in the story is focusing on the first victim, Nancy Lanza, and her “fascination with guns.” (Interestingly, I speculated on that myself in a comment to my first post on Sandy Hook.)

But in making the late Mrs. Lanza out to be a gun nut, the narrative is shifted from making her out to be a helpless victim to one who was obsessed with guns, an interest which led to her demise.

Another intriguing angle comes from a statement by Connecticut Governor Daniel Malloy (a Democrat) who claimed Adam Lanza was still alive when police arrived at the school and only killed himself at that point. Naturally, Malloy and several other fellow Democrats have taken this tragedy and made it into yet another call for more restrictions on gun ownership.

The report that Lanza took his own life when police arrived is important to the argument against arming teachers or other school personnel, since the situation was finally defused when authorities arrived. But what if someone had been carrying a weapon?

This is something my blogger friend Bob McCarty looked at in reference to an earlier shooting in Oregon. While this story was wiped away by the Sandy Hook shooting because many more lives were lost in Connecticut, the reason fewer people were killed is actually very similar to the ending at the Connecticut school: the shooter took his own life when confronted. The difference, though, was that a civilian who was legally carrying a concealed weapon brandished his – at that point, the Clickamas shooter, knowing the party was over, took his own life.

McCarty blames an “anti-gun media bias” for ignoring that part of the story, and that bias seems to be coming out in the media coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting as well, like describing the weapon as an “assault rifle” to conjure up an image of a military-style weapon. The actual Bushmaster .223 rifle is commonly used in shooting competitions, which makes sense given Nancy Lanza’s enjoyment of shooting sports.

In the end, though, it really doesn’t matter what guns were used because one person took it upon himself to commit this heinous act. But the narrative making America out to be a trigger-happy nation is driving this push to further violate our Second Amendment rights. Don’t let the pursuit of that agenda blind you to the fact that millions of Americans own and properly use guns.

10 thoughts on “The unbelievable bias”

  1. it is an assault rifle. read anything about it. look at pictures of it. check out the specification. see which armies use it. know almost anything about it. then rewrite your article.

  2. I’m not going to rewrite my article, for several reasons. One is that the weapon used in the Sandy Hook massacre is not much different than a handgun in terms of action – nearly all guns in circulation are semi-automatic, meaning you pull the trigger and it fires. In this case, whether it looks more like a military-style weapon or a hunting rifle is irrelevant.

    By your inept reasoning, it appears that we shouldn’t have access to guns just because the army has the same style of weapon. Does that extend to handguns as well, since police carry certain types and styles of handguns?

    I would ask you to please check out the specifications for our government as written in the Constitution, but since you probably can’t read much more than the standard left-wing arguments the phrase, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” probably flies right over your head. Let me spell it out for you: regardless of how scary it looks, it was well within Nancy Lanza’s right to own that weapon. 999 times out of a thousand it never sees action outside a shooting range, and the other time it’s a pretty imposing weapon for a would-be home invader to look at.

    Do you really want to know what we should get rid of? Gun-free zones.

  3. The difference is a large capacity magazine and yes, this applies to handguns too. I understand that target shooters like to fire thirty rounds or more at a target without pausing to reload. That doesn’t seem like much to give up if it will save lives. Limiting the availability of these guns is a common sense approach to the problem.

  4. That would make sense – if criminals listened to law. But since I know they don’t, I figure that someone who has a high capacity magazine isn’t going to be the one to say “damn, I think I have too much ammo on me.” On balance, I think cutting the capacity of magazines will cost more lives than it might save.

  5. neatly sidestepping the question. if you believe there is no such thing as an assault rifle, that puts you in a very small minority. that doesn’t necessarily mean you are wrong, but it should give you pause for thought. you disagree with the nra, the US army… just about everyone from liberals to tea partiers. I refer you to the internet for answers to your question.

  6. The Israelis arm a lot of teachers and don’t have a problem with mass murders in their school by small arms fire. There are other first-world countries where the rate of gun ownership is fairly high per capita (the Scandinavian countries, Cyprus, France, Canada, Germany…) and they also don’t have that problem. The Australians instituted strict gun control after a mass murder there and the results were predictable: a massive increase in home invasions, increases in murder by firearm, crimes of violence against a person…look it up, I’m just reporting facts. Fact is, an armed society is a polite society because it has to be. Everyone is on the same level. There are no elites allowed to have firearms and armed bodyguards, or a government that can oppress because its people cannot fight back.

    I agree with Michael. There really is no such thing as an “assault” weapons. The only difference between an “assault” weapon and a regular semi-automatic weapon is cosmetics: a bayonet mount, plastic encased barrel, fold-down rear stock, flash suppressor, etc…they just “look” scarier…in other words, they are still “one trigger pull, one bullet” guns.

    You need a special license to have a fully automatic machine gun in the US. There are almost 580K of those licenses that have been issued since the 50s. In all that time, there has been exactly one murder committed by a licensed owner of a fully automatic weapon. All gun control does is make criminals of legitimate gun owners and criminals are going to continue to ignore the law as they always have.

  7. I didn’t sidestep the question because I said there’s no such thing. I’d also like to have proof I’m in the small minority and “disagree with the nra, the US army.” The burden of proof is on you because I wrote the original piece.

  8. ok, apologies. I didn’t take you literally enough. Lanza couldn’t have used an assault rifle, because there is no such thing. there is nowhere to go from that. you win. I will keep that trick in my pocket for future use.

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