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 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.
Notice the beauty of the piece? Every single fact is correct.
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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?
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.
“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?
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.
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.