The AR-15 and the Navy Yard shooting

If I had replied the same thing to you in the linked thread – admitting to being a scoundrel but asking you how you can say anything without supporting it, how would you have responded?

No, because – AGAIN – I don’t fault anyone for initial errors in reporting. What I fault is failing to correct an error after having been apprised of if. I made this point clearly in post 52:

You ignored that point, even when I made it again in post 101:

And now you’re trying to revive it again. Why is that?

Will your next post be a powerful rebuttal of my “conspiracy” theory?

No, my next post will be a reminder that I then posted more links showing AP and NYT correcting their reporting. But I guess they didn’t bold it enough for you, or something, kinda like Obama not saying ‘terrorist act’ in quite the correct verbage. Seems like the goalposts keep shifting, but maybe I’m just not reading you carefully enough. Sadly, I don’t think the distinctions you are trying to parse are worth the dogged determination you are expending upon them. Also, the fact that the Fox news was fresh, which you keep harping on, is immaterial to the point I was trying to make. but I think you know that.

Again, just a reminder, your OP thesis was:

“And I contend that the reason is, at least in part, the media’s desire to tie “assault rifles” to this shooting.”
After it was pointed out that Fox News did the same reporting, you moved the goalposts because their original position was untenable (it begs belief that Fox was demonstrating a desire to tie “assault rifles” to the shooting, not compatible with Fox News’s philospophy at all), so then the goalposts shifted, now the proof is 'how fast did ‘the media’ make their corrections? When I posted links demonstrating that your usual suspects corrected their reporting on pretty much the same timeline as everyone else, then the goalposts moved again, and now the proof is how **explicitly **(or “anemically”) did ‘the media’ make their corrections.

Post again, right here, the link that shows the NYT corrected their inaccurate reporting about Alexis trying to buy an AR-15 but being stopped by Virginia’s gun-control laws. So far as I can tell, they’re still trying to sell that. But you say you already posted more links showing that correction, eh?

So go ahead and repost it, because I must have missed it.

Your desperate desire to pigeonhole my OP into one meaning is right up the same alley as the desperate attempts to laugh off the conspiracy theory that I never posted.

The point has ALWAYS been the anemic corrections that arose from the media’s desire to keep the AR-15 as a part of the story. That’s precisely why, even after having been explicitly told otherwise, the NYT story still leaves the reader with the impression that Arias tried to buy an AR-15. This is not an accident. It’s a purposeful choice.

I will grant you that the NYT did not publish a robust correction for this bullet point. This is now the last, strongest of your bullet points? Steronz and Procrustus demolished this point as unambiguous support for your thesis, above. Didn’t you notice?

If the New York Times wants to make an argument for more gun control, there are ample facts to support such an argument, without trying to mislead people about whether or not one particular shooter tried to buy one particular weapon. You may have noticed a pretty bad shooting in DC last week, for example, as well as a long string of previous incidents where many people have died because someone shot them. We don’t need to make the problem sound any worse than it already is to advocate for more sane gun laws. This detail that you think is so important seems so insignificant to me, and I imagine others as well. To believe that the New York Times intentionally tried to create (or not quickly correct) a false impression on this point seems paranoid to the “tin foil hat” level.

I replied to Steronz’s point in post 125, and “unambiguously demolished” (sheesh! :rolleyes: ) it:

Perhaps you can mention the post number in which Procrustus “demolished” my point? Is this going to be anything like the link you supposedly already posted once, but couldn’t again when asked?

And as an aside, it amazes me, although it shouldn’t, given how common this is, that you never acknowledge the response or the loss of a claim; you simply move on to the next one, and, in the case of this thread, return to the first ones after a while, hoping perhaps that I, or the readers, will forget that it was settled already.

On any kind of a rational appraisal of the issue, how can you possibly say that the error is insignificant? To this day, the article tells the reader that Arias tried to buy an AR-15 but failed due to Virginia law. That’s a message that goes right to the heart of what gun control hopes to accomplish.

You see it as unimportant because you are already convinced that assault rifles are scary and evil, so really, what does it matter if there’s some "technical’ misinformation about what happened out there? The point, you feel, is that they’re bad, and since laws limiting their purchase make sense, anything in general service of that point is more or less correct, or an insignificant error at best.

But it’s not insignificant. It’s key, and it’s not tinfoil hat either. Tinfoil hat would be a reporter deliberately deciding to bury the correction out of a conscious effort to advance his agenda. That’s not what’s happening here, any more than there’s any explicit agreement between two or more reporters or editors. Instead, we start with a reporter who genuinely believes laws limiting purchases of AR-15s are great ideas, and we almost inevitably reach the conclusion that insisting on a further correction for this story is trivial.

Instead, it’s the conviction that guns are dangerous, and that details about dangerous guns don’t matter as much as the general message that they’re dangerous – a “wallow in our own ignorance” sort of approach to the matter.

Wow. Do you really think people care if an AR-15 was involved, or attempted to be involved. This guy did plenty of damage without one (apparently). Do most people even know what an AR-15 is? I don’t. I could look it up, but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It’s not important. Guy with gun kills lots of innocent people who should not have died. That’s the story. Over and over again. That’s the story.

Assuming you’re right about the NYT and their motives, it wouldn’t work. How can you argue that this proves gun control laws are working and we need more of them based on this incident? If the law existed and actually prevented him from buying an AR-15, and he killed 13 people anyway, that’s not an argument for more of this hypothetical Virginia-like legislation. It’s an argument for much more sweeping legislation. And that argument would still be there with equal force if no one had ever reported the whole AR-15 thing. That’s why it’s an insignificant detail. Who cares what he might have done, when what he actually did was so horrible.

The next time maybe an “assault weapon” will be used. Maybe a revolver. Maybe a shotgun. The point is, there will be a next time. What should we do about that? I suppose the best we can offer is “it’s really just so sad, but there’s just nothing we can do about it.”

:confused: Your opinion, as expressed above, does not match that, as explained by the politicians trying to pass more gun regulations.

Furthermore, Bricker is not debating your opinion, but the opinion or bias he perceives to be held by the NYT.

The difference in which guns were used may not seem important to you, but it runs counter to the expressed intentions of many supporters of new gun legislation. Some politicians have stated that they merely want “reasonable gun control laws”, with “reasonable” as defined by banning unecessarily dangerous guns or features, like “assault weapons” (also called “military style”), or high capacity magazines. Constantly the NRA is accused of being way too stubborn or extremist, and refusing to comprimise on “common sense” solutions and “reasonable” laws. (I don’t recall any new gun legislation that would have addressed shot guns, for example.)

I said:

And you just wrote an entire post confirming that viewpoint.

The narrative that you claim you don’t see writes itself: Dangerous shooter tries to buy assault rifle but gun control laws stop him. Then he buys shotgun and still does terrible damage. The lesson is clear: we can’t stop those laws now!

An argument based on deliberate ignorance is not likely to be particularly solid. Yours suffers from this, as you yourself concede: “Do most people even know what an AR-15 is? I don’t. I could look it up, but I don’t care.”

Yet one of the big pushes following Newton was to ban these types of guns. Now you concede you aren’t even sure what it is, but you’re hella in favor of a ban.

The details are highly significant, and only seem insignificant to someone with precisely your outlook in the first place: the NYT cadre of reporters, and most of the rest of the media.

Which was precisely the point upon which I rested the first post of this thread.

So, thanks.

I check in on this thread about every other day, and it’s fascinating to see how the goalposts shift over time.

It started off with an allegation that the media intentionally withheld information to clear the good name of the AR-15: “And I contend that the reason is, at least in part, the media’s desire to tie “assault rifles” to this shooting.”

Now the media is single-minded in declaring all guns just as dangerous as assault weapons, therefore the details of whether or not an AR-15 is used is “highly significant.”

I repeat my contention that this line of thinking is akin to the far-left obsession with the popular media clandestinely promoting a pro-corporate agenda by censoring important stories, like how there are occasional days when the health risks of fracking do not appear on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Coverup!!!

I find it interesting that you see the Navy Yard shooting as something other than an indictment of gun control. The Navy Yard is essentially a gun free zone (Navy Yard) inside of another gun free zone (DC). Those “more sane gun laws” you want: DC already has them. They failed.

No. You’re trying to graft a meaning into my sentence that was never there. I said: “And I contend that the reason is, at least in part, the media’s desire to tie “assault rifles” to this shooting.” I didn’t say the reason for this had something to do with the “good name” of the AR-15. You added that, and then declared that since I was no longer pursuing that goal that you invented for me, the goalposts had shifted.

But that was never my claim. My claim was that the media had a desire to tie “assault rifles” to this shooting – that the media’s narrative included the fact an AR-15s was involved. The involvement in this case was happily clear: it was the weapon being used! That needed no tweaking on anyone’s part, since it legitimately appeared to be true. But when it was corrected, the media still wanted it to be true, so they reported that, OK, ya got me, he didn’t use an AR-15, but he tried to use one, only to be thwarted by the wise and good operation of a gun-control law.

And when THAT was corrected, they use a deliberately vague and confusing “correction” in an effort to maintain the fiction. A reader perusing that article to this day will still believe that the psycho shooter tried to buy an AR-15 but was stopped by an identification requirement. Whew!

That’s always been the point I was making.

You’d fit right in with the gun-grabbers in Congress: “shoulder thing that goes up”

So, if a law can be broken, then the law has “failed”, and we shouldn’t have it? You can’t be serious.

I’m all for punishing people who do bad things, but the preferred angle of gun control supporters these days isn’t to punish people who do bad things. They want to do things like ban “assault weapons” or “high capacity magazines”, not to punish bad people, but to prevent shootings. That doesn’t work. DC tried it, and it FAILED. My cite for that is the Navy Yard shooting.

And after all that saga, the media’s goal is toughen laws on buying shotguns?

Look, if you’ve already come to a conclusion that the media is anti-gun, I’ll admit it’s easy to find anti-gun bias in every crime story there is. Similarly, if I’ve determined that George W. Bush is the antichrist, it’s easy for me to find evidence of the New World Order in every speech he made during his presidency.