Hysteria surrounding guns continued to grow in 2017 and we got some spectacularly stupid news stories during the year.
Gun control is a long way off and we seem to be winning the war, as the current president of the United States is a take no shit type of leader who we’ve been waiting for.
New gun laws came in to force this year, but we have still got random craziness from the mainstream media to contend with.
Here were some of their best fake news stories of 2017.
1. USA Today
It used to be the bible, the publication everybody could trust. Now? Well you be the judge.
In pure anti-gun propaganda, an unnamed editor published a list of accessories that can be added to an AR-15 to make it an even more lethal weapon. One of these was the iconic chainsaw bayonet that belongs in a sci-fi or zombie B-movie.
They even made a video of how you can turn your Modern Sporting Rifle into a weapon of mass destruction.
Enjoy, we guess…
A look at the gun used in the Texas church shooting. https://t.co/xdxIf5fR77 pic.twitter.com/sUY1mCCLZC
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) 8 November 2017
USA Today got trolled hard for this video, with people Photoshopping together other ridiculous combinations, like an AR-15 and a nuclear missile, or an F16.
They deserved it. This whole story sucked.
2. CNN
CNN waded into the gun control debate with a one-sided diatribe after Republican members of Congress were gunned down on the softball field.
It was a painfully lopsided story that was really an ode to an anti-gun violence campaign. The Second Amendment was held up as the enemy, a relic that needs to be retired.
The whole article that went with the news report was full of wild inaccuracies, claiming there had been 1,552 mass shootings since Sandy Hook, with more than 6000 casualties.
That’s just not true. The government’s own definition of a mass shooting is four or more killed, outside of the home. According to those stats, the number of people killed annually in mass shootings has been an average of 23 over the last 30 years.
This piece was emotional, it was torrid and it was largely wrong. It was SJW campaigning at its worst.
3. NBC News
NBC took to the mound for campaign for gun laws, arguing that their haven’t been any more restrictions in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.
The news channel makes a case that the anti-gun campaigners simply cannot get organized in the face of the all-powerful NRA.
But this simply isn’t the case. Gun control is not welcome and it will not work, is the simple message coming loud and clear from the American people.
4. The Economist
The Economist is pretty solid when it comes to business stories, but it took a rare political stance against gun ownership in the wake of the Texas church shoooting.
It linked the reintroduction of assault weapons in 2004 to the massacre, in a November story about the tragic church shooting in Texas.
The Economist cites “mass shooting” data from Mother Jones, a far-left outlet, rather than government agencies.
The Economist does not even include data from the FBI, which would illuminate readers about the issue of gun violence. The most recent statistics available are from 2016. The FBI data show that there were 11,004 homicides by firearm. Of those, only 374 were by rifles of any kind.
5. The Associated Press
Almost every media outlet in the country — TV, print, and online — pays the Associated Press (AP) to use its wire service to supplement or replace its own reporting. This means the AP has an outsized impact on news reports because its work appears in everything from local newspapers to network news.
Eagle-eyed Cargar Dolor recently tweeted to me: “This AP story from today claims that authorities recovered a ’40mm pistol.'”
This was a.40 caliber pistol, which it eventually did. Meanwhile, the more educated public tweeted to me that “40mm” is the size of a cannon or a grenade launcher.
Many of these mistakes would be funny if they weren’t rooted in ideological narrowness. They show how the mainstream media deliberately attempts to confuse the public in order to build support for more gun-control laws.
At a higher level, the repeated bad reporting in just this one area of public debate shows that the top editors and managers in mainstream media assign reporters to cover gun crime, without any expertise on the subject, research into data, or fact checking.
If it weren’t for conservative media and informed social media users, the average American might walk the streets in fear of being attacked by someone wielding a rifle with a chainsaw attached to the bottom.
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