WaPo and the San Diego City Attorney are extremely ignorant of firearms

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/03/08/heres-a-gun-control-measure-both-sides-can-get-behind-and-it-works/?utm_term=.95c2dbaa4171 originally described a .28mm pistol. How that got published at WaPo, I’ll leave to your imagination, but it gets better:

After people pointed out that there’s no such thing as a .28mm pistol, they corrected it. In theory somewhere in here there should have been such basic fact-checking, but the correction (yes, the correction) said instead that it was a 28mm pistol :eek: . They’ve since corrected it again and have apparently thrown in the towel because the last iteration just says “An earlier version of this post incorrectly described the type of pistol involved in a GVRO case.” That’s an impressive understatement.

Oh, and these same idiots want to make gun policy.

2

Too bad this isn’t in the pit.

3

The NRA goes around saying guns don’t kill people. Who do you think looks more ignorant about how guns work?

4

Trump claimed he sold F-52s to Norway. This is the same idiot that makes national policy.

5

When reporting about the woman killed in the 2017 North Carolina Nazi rally, the first description of the car was, IIRC, a Dodge Challenger. It was later corrected to Dodge Charger. Having seen the early reports and images on TV, I spotted the error in reporting, as did many others. Any “idiot” who knows about cars and count to 4 would know Dodge never made a four door Challenger.

That said, I question the moral character (indeed, mental state) of anyone who would care enough to complain about such an irrelevant error in the greater context of the commission of an egregious crime.

6

Let us remember this thirst for technical accuracy the next time a conservative wants to restrict access to abortion and ask them to explain female anatomy.

7

Correction: Irony notwithstanding, an earlier version of this post incorrectly identified North Carolina as the location of the Nazi (Unite the Right) rally. The correct location was Charlottesville, VA. Also, Dodge Challenger.

Nevertheless… my memory fails but my point remains. :smack:

8

Yes. WaPo are a bunch of idiots for finding and correcting a mistake! What a bunch of idiots! Trump Rules!

Question for Ditka. In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a… (sniggering) magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

9

Ah, the old “a dozen kids may have been killed, but what is really important is getting the specification of the weapon right” argument.
We see it all the time here.

10

THEY didn’t find it, it was pointed out to them by readers, and when they tried to correct it, they screwed that up too. That’s what makes this a bit more interesting than your normal media screw-up. It’s one thing to make a mistake, but when told they were wrong, their “correction” was also a mistake. Does WaPo not fact-check their corrections at least?

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That’s because there doesn’t seem to be any subject on which many Dopers are more comfortable with (perhaps even proud of) their ignorance.

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Lord knows we don’t want the weapon that just slaughtered dozens to be misidentified.

13

The weapon in question didn’t slaughter anyone.

14

Nice dodge.

15

It wasn’t a dodge. It was a fact.

16

It got corrected, did it not?

But what makes it in no way interesting at all is how irrelevant that nit pick was to the point of the article.

17

Sort of. It got removed after it got mis-corrected.

The point of the article was to espouse some new gun control scheme. Avoiding embarrassingly-ignorant mistakes (and mistaken corrections) would go a good ways towards establishing a smidgeon of credibility for the author / source.

18

Which shows how unimportant that fact was to the main story.

Would the media have lost credibility in your eyes if after 168 people were murdered in a horrible blast it was misreported, miscorrected, then removed McVeigh’s shoe size?

19

a .28mm pistol is winging it because that gun isn’t in the Journalist’s Guide to Firearms Identification.

20

HurricaneDitka, I think you’re off base here. Picking up one small technical error isn’t a basis to discount an entire article.

Let me give a personal example. I’m a lawyer. I’ve argued criminal cases at trial and on appeal. That means that in any discussion about the criminal law system in Canada in a group of friends or acquaintances, I’m likely the best informed in the group about how the criminal system works here. But if there’s a discussion about a current issue about how the criminal law system is working or not, say, whether the jury system is working fairly, it’s just not appropriate for me to pick up on a technical error that someone makes in the discussion and use that to discount everything that person has to say, as a generally well-informed citizen, about whether they think the jury system is working well (“Gotcha! you just said the Crown has 10 preemptory challenges to jurors! The Crown really has 12! Obviously, you’re not qualified to have any input into whether the laws about the jury systems should be changed! What a maroon!”) Small technical errors should be corrected in the discussion, sure, but that’s not a basis to discount everything that a person says on the topic in general. Ultimately, that appeal to technical authority is anti-democratic.

So here. The article is about how one prosecutor’s office, working with the police, is taking steps to reduce gun violence, not by distrusting people generally, not by trying to grab guns from law abiding gun owners, but by focusing on those gun owners who pose a clear and present danger to public safety, whether because of serious mental health issues, a drug or alcohol issue, a proven track record of domestic violence, or similar provable risks. It’s also based on due process: the prosecutor has to go to court to get the restraining order, and the court decides if it’s needed, based on the evidence presented, and how long it should be for. The individual also has the ability to come back to court to have the order lifted if they get cleaned up from the drugs and alcohol, or deal with their mental health issues, and so on.

That’s a highly individualised and focussed approach, designed to respect gun owners’ rights, respect due process, and also protect the public from individuals who pose an objective risk to public safety. What do you think of that approach? Is it workable? Does it fit with what people are saying, post-Florida, about the need for better measures to keep guns out of the hands of people with serious mental health/drug/alcohol issues? Can supporters of the Second Amendment live with it, because it’s tied to clear and present dangers, provable in court, and respects due process?

Really, one error about the specifications of one of the guns referred to in the article is completely irrelevant to any of those questions. Focussing on that one small technical error in no way discounts the major points of the article.