This is a pic of the 9mm semi-auto Beretta pistol that the German press is referring to as an “automatic” weapon, and describing its use in the following terms:
The teachers died trying to shield the children from his bullets as he kept his finger on the trigger of his automatic weapon, shooting all his victims in the head.
Now, if you were the average dumbass who knows nothing about firearms, you’d assume this young maniac was using a full-auto submachine gun or military assault rifle, wouldn’t you?
That’s what you’re supposed to think - instead of realizing that this firearm only fired once each time the trigger was pulled, and probably held no more than ten rounds - after the use of which, the pistol would have to be reloaded.
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LOL Bill. Taken together, “German press” and “truth” do not have a good pedigree.
Ditto “journalism” (of any nationality) and “gun facts”.
Over the years, I have come to expect this sort of hysterical ignorance (whether actual or simply feigned) on the part of nearly all journaljism, particularly in the MSM - and to be pleasantly shocked when, occasionally, a smidgeon of actual firearms reality sneaks through. The truly jaw-grinding agony of it, though, is the agonizingly high percentage of the general populace that accepts this sort of thing as being factual. Such ignorance and simple-minded, blithe acceptance of this crap is, of course, why anti-firearms legislation of all sorts gets even minimal consideration…
Why is this such an important point for the gun haters. It’s kind of a strange and specific error that I don’t think it can be the product of natural mistake. Guns kill people. Why isn’t that actual real fact enough for them. Does it really matter how many times a trigger is pulled?
Is there any RKBA group out there who’s mission is to just inform people on some basic facts about firearms. Just a few simple ads on tv or in print who’s only purpose is to rebutt stupid crap like this?
Simple reason why is because any really heavy-duty “gun-hater” wants everyone to believe that all guns are inherently evil; that firearms are “the spawn of the devil,” innately endowed with the mystic ability to kill all on their own. They will therefore take any opportunity to describe any gun in the worst possible terms - and prominent among those terms is any gun that, at a single touch of the trigger (or possibly even without anyone touching the trigger at all), will instantly spew an unending spray of unerringly mangling and death-dealing bullets, lethal in every instance and at any distance.
Obviously, there can then be no possible adequate defense against the destruction wrought by guns other than to do away with them all. Further, anyone who shows any interest in guns must be considered suspect as to motivation, and anyone who admits to actual liking for them has to be regarded as outright deranged.
It’s an unwarranted, extremist and entirely irrational viewpoint - but real anti-firearms people have never been noted for rationality, reason or justification in their views on the subject anyway. Their near-hysterical, irrational views on guns are shared by many journaljismists (many of whom are highly pacifistic, hidden or openly); constant repetition of these views, over time, has produced similar views in most of the rest of the MSM and their lower-level cohorts.
Have you ever personally known anyone who said, “When the newspaper wrote that story about me, they quoted me accurately?”
I’ve noticed that many people are more-or-less willing to trust news services on just about any subject — except ones they have personal knowledge about. The reason they don’t trust news services on these subjects? The news services get things wrong, or at best give unhelpful generalizations/oversimplifications about these subjects.
It reminds me of my veterinarian’s reaction to Consumer Reports. She feels that they generally do a good job exposing the crooked practices of businesses, although their article about veterinary services was unhelpfully adversarial — said article made it appear as if all veterinarians would gladly sacrifice quality care and the interests of the client for greedy profits!
People don’t make sense a lot of the time. We’ve remarked here before on the phenomenon of the media and stuff you actually know about. Most people know the media doesn’t get stuff they actually know about right, but they are unable - or unwilling, is my guess (rational ignorance again) to extrapolate that to all media reporting. On the other hand, they think congress is awful - except for their own representative, who they are willing to keep in office forever - again, unwilling to extrapolate that to the larger issue of congress as a whole.
This is a special case of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. If voters in all districts acted rationally, the bums would be thrown out and we collectively would benefit from a less entrenched, more representative government. But voters in each district lack confidence that other districts will throw their bum out.
That assumes, of course, that voters are rational, honest, and prefer liberty.
It’s called the Narrative - and in modern journalism the Narrative always outweighs the facts.
I became an unbeliever with respect to the media in the late 1970s/early 1980s. The issue was nuclear power and the wildly inaccurate reporting surrounding Three Mile Island accident. The environmentalists were pushing the nuclear-power-is-a-tool-of-the-evil-capitalists meme, and in the journalists desire to help the greeniacs it seemed no scientific fraud went unreported. We are still paying the price for that with dependency on Middle East oil.
After touring the TMI nuclear plant, one smug reporter said, “It may be easy to leave science to the scientists, but it probably isn’t all that wise.” But why should we trust journalists whose knowledge of science never seems to advance beyond hokey science fiction stories and environmentalist drivel?
And the sad thing is that all the sheep stood around waiting to be sheared. Throw things - books, desks, back-packs, teachers; ANYTHING is better then standing around wailing and waiting to be shot.
They were standing around waiting for the government to protect them.
As seems quite usual in cases like these, the perp blew out his own brains. (So did the jerkoff in Alabama). By definition, the cops won’t be there when you need them.
They were standing around waiting for the government to protect them.
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.