# The AR-15 and the Navy Yard shooting **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 22, 2013, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443 "2013-09-22T14:03:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2013, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/221 "2013-09-26T17:44:03Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > I guess I’ll end it where we began. How do you know it’s completely false? The reports have been all over the map. It just might be that those “two senior law enforcement officials” were right after all. You’ve been hoping for a moment like this ever since I demolished your earlier hopeful crusade by point out the error in reporting was obvious because of Virginia law, not another media source correcting it. Here, sadly, I must disappoint you again. Apart from [this well-researched piece](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2013/09/18/inside-sharpshooters-the-newington-gun-store-where-aaron-alexis-bought-his-shotgun/) in the Washington Post, with information gathered by the simple expedient of visiting the store and speaking personally with the store’s employees and attorney… I have what historians call a primary source. I also visited the store and spoke with folks there. Not unusual for me: that’s the range I belong to, and I shoot there twice a month. > [@Washington Post](#): > > lexis rented a rifle and purchased ammunition, J. Michael Slocum, the store’s lawyer, said. A shooting session costs $25 without a membership. Though there was some chatter that Alexis tried to buy an AR-15, the rifle used in other mass shootings, Slocum said he had “no information that he tried to buy an AR-15.” > UPDATE, Wednesday, 1 p.m.: Slocum said that Alexis rented an AR-15 and used that on the Sharpshooters’ firing range. But when he was done, he did not ask about buying it. Instead, he asked about buying a handgun. [del]Virginia[/del] Federal laws do not allow dealers to sell handguns directly to out-of-state customers, and Alexis was told a handgun would have to be shipped to a licensed dealer in his home state. However, out-of-state customers can purchase rifles and shotguns in Virginia, at which point Alexis chose the Remington shotgun. Notice the beauty of the piece? Every single fact is correct. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2013, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/222 "2013-09-26T17:49:18Z")
And if you apply the strict standards of accuracy that you demand of everyone else, all it says is that this fellow, Slocum, did not know of any effort to buy an AR-15. > [@](#): > > …Slocum said he had “no information that he tried to buy an AR-15.”… And you were doing so well, too. A pity. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2013, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/223 "2013-09-26T17:54:00Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > And if you apply the strict standards of accuracy that you demand of everyone else, all it says is that this fellow, Slocum, did not know of any effort to buy an AR-15. > > And you were doing so well, too. A pity. Ahem: > [@Washington Post](#): > > Slocum said that Alexis rented an AR-15 and used that on the Sharpshooters’ firing range. But when he was done, **he did not ask about buying it**. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2013, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/224 "2013-09-26T17:58:00Z")
Who did he not ask about it? Slocum? OK, that’s one person he did not ask. How then are we assured that he did not ask anyone else, save for your fevered imagination. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2013, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/225 "2013-09-26T17:59:21Z")
And, by the way, aren’t you relying on the accuracy and truthiness of reporters that you have already declared are biased and unreliable? ---
**Author:** ![Truman\_Burbank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@Truman\_Burbank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truman_Burbank)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2013, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/226 "2013-09-26T18:00:02Z")
**Bricker** , I know it is at least partly my fault, usually I at least put " marks to set off the quotation. I failed to do that, and also did not anticipate so many entries from when I started composing my response to **Doorhinge** to when I posted it. Call it even? ---
**Author:** ![Truman\_Burbank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@Truman\_Burbank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truman_Burbank)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2013, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/227 "2013-09-26T18:02:54Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > And, by the way, aren’t you relying on the accuracy and truthiness of reporters that you have already declared are biased and unreliable? Or, The Post isn’t part of “the media”. “This not the media you are looking for” ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2013, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/228 "2013-09-26T18:59:07Z")
> [@Truman\_Burbank](#): > > **Bricker** , I know it is at least partly my fault, usually I at least put " marks to set off the quotation. I failed to do that, and also did not anticipate so many entries from when I started composing my response to **Doorhinge** to when I posted it. > Call it even? Done. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2013, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/229 "2013-09-26T19:39:44Z")
Doesn’t it make you even the least bit queasy to be bragging on the _Washington Times_? Or have you forgotten who they are? ---
**Author:** ![Truman\_Burbank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@Truman\_Burbank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truman_Burbank)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2013, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/230 "2013-09-26T20:29:41Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Done. Spoken like a gentleman, Sir! ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/231 "2013-09-29T05:08:59Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > You’re putting the blame on the wrong party. Your beef is with the cops. I can’t imagine a reporter not mentioning the AR15 when they hear this from “two senior law enforcement officials:” > > Quote: > The suspect in the killing of 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday test-fired an AR-15 assault rifle at a Virginia gun store last week but was stopped from buying one because state law there prohibits the sale of such weapons to out-of-state buyers, according to two senior law enforcement officials. > Even \*\*Bricker \*\*seems not to fault the NYT for publishing the story, but simply for not correcting it fast enough. As I pointed out earlier, it’s not clear how fast they actually knew the true facts. A story in the Washington Times certainly wouldn’t be enough to publish a correction. > > And, now that I dig into these articles a bit deeper, it seems that perhaps Virginia law is the reason this shooter didn’t get to buy the AR15. No, my beef is with the media outlets. We let them get away with pssst poor journalism. First, it’s been pointed out that out-of-state buyers can purchase an AR15. 2nd, the UNNAMED two senior law enforcement officials don’t seem to know their own state law or, possibly, don’t exist except in the mind of the writer, or the writer resorted to cut-and-paste journalism. If the article has one proven error, how am I to trust that there aren’t several more errors? I suspect that “being FIRST, rather than CORRECT” applies here. In such cases, I chose to wait 48 hours before believing what the media outlets are in such a hurry to publish/broadcast/push. Then there’s the “choice” of mentioning the firing of an AR15. What other firearms were tested or had been tried on that day or even on previous days? A Rossi Squire, Colt Anaconda, S&W model 13, a Ruger Bearcat? Those names just don’t seem to draw as much attention to a general article as the mention of an AR15 does. _AR15? AR15! Oh lawdy, lawdy, lawdy, what’s to become of us??? He had an AR 15!!!_ (Except that he did not.) ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/232 "2013-09-29T06:01:45Z")
Wait, what? Because no other firearms were mentioned as being tested, that proves others were tested? And that proves that the reason they weren’t mentioned is because of trying to make the AR-15 look bad? Seriously? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/233 "2013-09-29T16:49:32Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I’m sure almost anything “happens,” at least once or twice. I asked how typical it was. I have no statistical data to offer. I have only my experience, which is that if errors are perceived as tangential to an ongoing big story then there is an impulse to forget about them rather than explicitly correct them, even if the errors were in a headline. I’ll also add that it is quite common in daily journalism for there to be disputes regarding accuracy and precision when any technical information is involved. It’s quite common for an expert in a field to find what he or she considers errors and for journalists to resist making corrections to technical information if those nuances aren’t relevant to the general point of the story. I myself got into a dispute with a technical guy who was incensed that I had used the phrase “changing the system” when describing a change of what turned out to be only software and not hardware. From my perspective, “system” is a perfectly good synonym for “way of doing something,” and in an article meant for general audiences it was irrelevant that in the IT world, “system” means only hardware. And I deliberately left out any details regarding what the phone company was actually doing. We refused to run a correction when the only real point of the two-paragraph story was that the phone company was doing something that might result in temporary service problems to a small number of customers. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/234 "2013-09-29T17:00:40Z")
It would be easier to study this question if we had some idea how many people a) know what an AR-15 is and b) give a rat’s. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/235 "2013-09-29T23:48:55Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Wait, what? Because no other firearms were mentioned as being tested, that proves others were tested? And that proves that the reason they weren’t mentioned is because of trying to make the AR-15 look bad? > > Seriously? “Proves”? Is that really the word you wanted to use? I didn’t say that. I question why the media outlets chose to mention an AR15 in the first place. I question why other firearms that weren’t present were excluded from the media articles? Was an AR15 used by the monster at the Navy Yard? No. So why mention AR15’s at all? Can I assume that the original “reporter” and their cut-and-paste colleagues had a reason for mentioning the non-existent AR15? Why didn’t they mention the other firearms that weren’t used by the monster at the Navy Yard? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2013, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/236 "2013-09-30T00:21:36Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > So why mention AR15’s at all? Because a police source mentioned it. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2013, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/237 "2013-09-30T01:07:58Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Because a police source mentioned it. Because an “un-named” police source mentioned it. Or so we’re being lead to believe. Considering all of the information that the media outlets have gotten wrong about this story, why would anyone believe the “reporter” actually recieved that information from an un-named police source? There is a difference between - _Police spokesperson, Detective Barney Fife, has just informed the media that the 3 suspects involved in the Navy Yard shooting are armed with an AR15, an AK74, and a Remington Rolling Block carbine_. and _Two senior law enforcement officials" have just informed the media that the 3 suspects involved in the Navy Yard shooting are armed with an AR15, an AK74, and a Remington Rolling Block carbine_. It’s easy to verify that a Det Fife exists and just as easy to question him about his obviously incorrect statement. It’s impossible to verify or question two un-named senior law enforcement officials. But mentioning them certainly add weight to the phoney story. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2013, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/238 "2013-09-30T01:16:48Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > It’s impossible to verify or question two un-named senior law enforcement officials. But mentioning them certainly add weight to the phoney story. Might be phony. Might not. I don’t know. Neither do you. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2013, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/239 "2013-09-30T03:09:17Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Might be phony. Might not. I don’t know. Neither do you. But I do know that no Virginia law prevented the sale of an AR-15. That’s the beauty of this particular falsehood: there’s no hiding behind the shield you just used. Sure, the other stuff might all have completely innocent explanations. But no explanation can trump the actual lack of any Virginia law that says what the story claimed. So, yes, “maybe” and “who knows,” works just fine…until you get to that inconvenient fact. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2013, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443/240 "2013-09-30T03:44:22Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > But I do know that no Virginia law prevented the sale of an AR-15. That’s the beauty of this particular falsehood: there’s no hiding behind the shield you just used. Sure, the other stuff might all have completely innocent explanations. But no explanation can trump the actual lack of any Virginia law that says what the story claimed. > > So, yes, “maybe” and “who knows,” works just fine…until you get to that inconvenient fact. I’m just glad he couldn’t get his hands on the AR-15, this thing could have been even worse. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ar-15-and-the-navy-yard-shooting/669443.md?page=13)