"If I only had a gun": 20/20 on ABC Fri

[SenorBeef]

@elucidator

Right. Liberal media bias. OK, we’re done.

Classy. You choose to believe your own intuition about the number of defensive gun uses in this country and ignore 14 studies, some peer reviewed, and then implicitly declare that I’m the unreasonable and pack your bags and go home.

I didn’t say the media had a liberal bias. I think that whole aspect is overblown - the media has a much more worrisome pro-government bias than a bias towards any political party.

But on the issue of guns and portraying guns in a positive light, the media is undoubtedly biased.

For example:

But much more than a bias toward bad news and drama goes into the media’s selective reporting on gun usage. Why, for instance, does the torrential coverage of public shooting sprees fail to acknowledge when such attacks are aborted by citizens with guns? In January 2002, a shooting left three dead at the Appalachian Law School in Virginia. The event made international headlines and produced more calls for gun control. Yet one critical fact was missing from virtually all the news coverage: The attack was stopped by two students who had guns in their cars.

The fast responses of Mikael Gross and Tracy Bridges undoubtedly saved many lives. Mikael was outside the law school returning from lunch when Peter Odighizuwa started shooting. Tracy was in a classroom waiting for class to start. When the shots rang out, chaos erupted. Mikael and Tracy were prepared to do something more constructive: Both immediately ran to their cars and got their guns, then approached the shooter from different sides. Thus confronted, the attacker threw his gun down.

Isn’t it remarkable that out of 218 unique news stories (from a LexisNexis search) in the week after the event, just four mentioned that the students who stopped the shooter had guns? Here is a typical description of the event from the Washington Post: “Three students pounced on the gunman and held him until help arrived.” New York’s Newsday noted only that the attacker was “restrained by students.” Many stories mentioned the law-enforcement or military backgrounds of these student heroes, but virtually all of the media, in discussing how the killer was stopped, failed to mention the students’ guns.

So here we have a defensive gun use - a big one, one that stops a school shooting in progress. Big story, right? Except only four out of 218 news stories about the incident even mention that guns were used by the good guys.

If this story can’t make it into the media, what are the chances of more routine instances of people discouraging or stopping crimes against them with guns will be reported on?

So first you dismiss that 14 studies of defensive gun use have a better handle on the issue than your wild guess. Then you say that because I think the media has a deliberate bias against reporting that “we’re done”, as if I’d said something so absurd that I wasn’t even worth talking to, when it’s something that with a little bit of research is actually abundantly clear.

But this is consistent with your position here:

@elucidator

Forget it. Ain’t worth it. The entrenched fanaticism over gun ownership makes this fight not worth having. You see it here, one of the great bastions of sanity on the intertubes. Reasonable, rational folks (for the most part), until you talk about guns, then they have a sphincter seizure that constipates them for a week. Pick your battles.

You seem think that anyone who holds a view critical of gun control is inherently irrational. It’s ironic that you ascribe this position to other people when it is clear that you are completely inflexible on this issue - you dismiss facts and assume that anyone who disagrees with you on the issue must be irrational.

If “we’re done”, then it’s because you’re running away with your tail between your legs.