Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell has found this new anti-gun hit hit piece by the AP on one of my favorite subjects: The alleged “arms race” between the cops and bad guys blamed on the expiration of the AWB. And like the propaganda covered here before, this piece of “news” reads more like a press release from the VPC.
To set up the article, they start with four short paragraphs about a shooting that took place at a birthday party outside some low-income apartments. With the emotional think-of-the-children card played, they move on to the deception.
The Sept. 15 killing was remarkable in that it took place in the most innocent of settings — the fifth birthday of twin boys. But it was unremarkable in that one of the guns brandished was an AK-47-type rifle — a powerful, rapid-fire weapon that has long been used in Third World conflicts but is increasingly being used in American street fights.
Ah yes, ye olde powerful, rapid-fire weapons of war card. Make people think of a machine gun..
Figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, obtained by The Associated Press through public records requests, show a marked increase in the number of AK-type weapons traced and entered into the agency’s computer database because they had been seized or connected to a crime.
And, umm, where are these figures? The rest of the article is rubbish, but they expect us to believe these figures without seeing them? And, erm, haven’t they all been shrieking that they’re not allowed to see such figures anymore since the ATF trace data was closed to journalists? Make up your mind people..
The number of such tracings rose even while the federal assault weapons ban was in effect and has continued to climb since its expiration.
So, in other words, the ban didn’t do anything?
Since 1993, the year before the ban took affect, ATF has recorded a more than sevenfold increase in 7.62x39mm guns — which includes the original Russian-made AK-47 and a variety of copycats from around the world. The number of AK-type guns rose from 1,140 in 1993 to 8,547 last year.
It’s been illegal to import an original Russian-made AK-47 since 1968. It’s been illegal to register any new automatic weapons (which is what the real, original AK-47 is) since 1986. The 1994 ban did not effect real AK-47s, or any other “rapid-fire” weapons. But they’re telling me despite these all these laws (plus the 1934 NFA which requires the registration of all automatic weapons), the number still increased? Why, it’s almost like criminals don’t obey the law. Imagine that.
Since 2005, the first full year after the ban’s expiration, ATF has recorded an 11 percent increase in such tracings.
If we’re still talking about original Russian-made AKs, or rapid-fire weapons in general, they’re lying. The import and full-auto ban did not expire in 2004. If they’re talking about semiautomatic clones, those weren’t actually illegal. More on that in a bit though.
From here, they go into some anecdotal evidence about how “assault weapons are terrorizing their communities” and such. In the midst of this appeal to emotion, something interesting pops up:
On Thursday, Sept. 13, Jose Somohano, a 37-year-old officer with the Miami-Dade Police, was cut down during a traffic stop in suburban Miami by a man with an AK-type weapon. Three other officers — armed, like Somohano, with just handguns…
…
Days before the ambush, Miami Police Chief John Timoney agreed to let patrol officers carry assault rifles to help counter the use of such weapons by criminals.
Wait a second. Timoney now says he authorized the carbines days before Officer Somohano was killed? But, umm, he’s said in the past that he authorized the carbines in response to that incident. Which is it? Though I suppose that explains the picture from that ABC story of an officer holding what appears to be a shorty AR-15 with an EOTech and a low-profile gas block which Timoney said didn’t exist at the time. Either way, I find it rather hard to believe he authorized the carbines “days before” and started handing them out on such short notice. Don’t large police departments have like training procedures and stuff?
Next up, the Authorized Journalist drones on for a bit about machine guns and grenades in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Australia (wait, I thought they were banned there?!1). After using the classic Sugarman Method of confusing the reader about what kind of guns we’re talking about comes this nice piece of disinformation:
Bullets fired by AK-47s travel at a higher velocity than those from many other weapons, and can do grievous damage to the body. Often they have enough energy to pass clear through.
Higher velocity than what? Handguns? Sling shots? Crossbows? As far as rifles go, the 7.62x39mm is on the low end of the velocity scale. Most “traditional” hunting rifles travel much faster and can “pass clear through” a body. They kind of have to in order to take down large animals.
Knockoffs of the AK can be bought from legitimate gun dealers for as little as $300, and are also available on the street. Original Russian-made models are more expensive. Normal ammo clips hold 30 rounds, but higher-capacity ones are also available.
Nice touch throwing legitimate dealers and “available on the street” right next to each other. As if both are somehow to blame for the PSH above. However, it is nice to see the MSM refer to 30 round capacity as being normal, even if they called them clips.
Oh, look, after spending two-thirds of the article painting a picture of machine guns, they finally try to clear things up. No doubt hoping that most readers wouldn’t have made it this far in.
Most of the AKs on American streets are semiautomatic, meaning they fire as fast as the gunman can squeeze the trigger. Fully automatic ones, common on the battlefield, require just one pull of the trigger to release a burst of fire.
Yet, even then, they avoid mentioning that semiautos only fire one round at a time. Instead, they give a vague description more fitting for a squirt bottle; as if bullets spray out if you quickly jerk the trigger once. And of course, they just had to thrown in another battlefield reference.
Did I say the article read like a VPC press release? Oops. Maybe it was written by the Brady Bunch.
A 2004 study by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence concluded the U.S. ban on AKs and other guns was successful, saying in the five years before its passage, assault weapons made up 4.82 percent of ATF crime gun traces, compared with 1.61 percent between 1995 and 2003.
Hmm.. Is it just me, or does this totally contradict what was said above about the “sevenfold increase” during the ban? Oh. Right. The Brady moonbats are talking about things that look like “assault weapons.” Pretty much every rifle banned in 1994 remained perfectly legal to make if you removed a few odd cosmetic features like bayonet lugs. Remove said cosmetic features, and, bam, instant reduction in the number of imaginary “assault weapons.”
Many politicians, police chiefs and gun control advocates point to the expiration of the assault weapons ban as a reason for the spread of the guns. But many others argue the law was so riddled with loopholes that it had little effect.
They can’t even agree amongst themselves whether the law did a damn thing. First they say there was a “sevenfold increase” despite the ban, then that it worked and the ban’s expiration is spreading the guns. Finally they claim there were “loopholes.” By which I assume they mean the aforementioned fact that the law only banned trivial cosmetic bits, and people *gasp* followed the law by removing them.
Now with all that PSH out of the way, they finally let in an opposing view point get in a couple of words a few paragraphs before the end.
The National Rifle Association says the focus must be getting criminals off the streets, not more legislation.
“The basic reason why gun control laws fail is that they require the cooperation of a very unlikely source, and that is criminals,” said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. “Each time you pass a gun control law, the only people that are going to be affected by that law, the only people that are going to follow that law are law-abiding Americans.”
They probably expected an article this long to be continued on another print page where most people wouldn’t bother to read the tiny space they allowed for a rebuttal. But then, I suppose they couldn’t take that chance, as they finish the article with more appeals to emotion by talking about birthday ballons and bullet-riddled bodies.
Nope. No media bias there..