Caught Anderson Cooper's report on 60-minutes the other day, about the drug wars going on in Mexico. A classic example of confusion, bait and switch, and misdirection about "assault weapons" on the part of the media.

Cooper is interviewing the Mexican Attorney General. The General says 55% of the guns they recover from the drug dealers are "assault rifles" (an assault rifle is fully automatic, a machine gun). And while he is saying this they are showing footage of obviously fully automatic guns (they are belt fed). So clearly they are not talking about so called assault weapons, which by definition are only semi-automatic.

Cooper then goes on to talk about rocket launchers and grenades, showing pictures of them on tables along with the machine guns. He sums up by saying "90% of the guns are bought in the US". Implying that machine guns, grenades, and rocket launchers are legal to sell in the US.

Then it happens… without batting an eye he goes on to ask the US Sec for Homeland Security if the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 should be reinstated? Excuse me… we were talking about assault rifles, not assault weapons. You are changing the topic. What do assault weapons have to do with assault rifles? Nothing. How would an assault weapons ban prevent the sale of assault rifles? It wouldn't. The assault weapons ban of 1994 did not outlaw a single assault rifle.

Cooper also says the Mexican police are "outgunned" by the criminals. Yet every bit of video of the Mexican police shown during the piece shows them carrying what I'm sure are fully automatic assault rifles, not the semi automatic rifles that Cooper was asking if we should ban, and that the drug lords are presumably able to acquire illegally through (originally legal) purchases in the US. So how exactly does a semi-automatic weapon "out gun" a fully automatic weapon? It doesn't Their logic fails.

This kind of thing goes on constantly. The media is congenitally unable to understand (or intentionally confuses) the difference between an assault rifle, and a so called 'assault weapon'. Which, by the way, is a made up term, who's purpose is to facilitate just this kind of misdirection.

Do the Mexican drug traffickers get guns from the US? I'm sure they do, but an assault weapons ban in the US does exactly nothing to limit their access to machine guns. And with the oceans of money they get from US junkies they could buy whatever weapons they want from other countries in Central and South America, or the any where else in the world for that matter.

I saw it and agree it was just more of the same B.S.

Anderson Cooper is a hack!

WRite them about it, clearly and unemotionally lay it out, that they are selling falsehoods again, just like Dan Blather and the GWB story. Hang them out to dry. Call Channel 4, complain to them about shows with horrible accuracy. Take them to task, I have sent four emails today about bad reporting, do it do it again, it does pay off.

I'll second that. Keep some general templates, concise too, that you can tweak to the given fudge up.

One thing that ends up on the higher-ups' desks is just a folio of numbers, complaints, praise, comments, whatever. Keep writing.

The media is congenitally unable to understand (or intentionally confuses) the difference between an assault rifle


Yes, intentionally confuses as they are much more enlightened than the sheeple populace.

An article I had read about a writer that was on a bus that was robbed going through Mexico (it was not a cross border bus route, it started in Mexico). When the bus, after being robbed by men with 16 gauge shotguns and a couple of .38 cal. revolvers, reached a police station. The 4-6 police officers that responded armed themselves with 2 AR15s or M16s when going out to the site of the robbery.

I hate the way the media outright lies and confuses this issue.

I remember having a discussion with my sister back when the first AWB was about to sunset. She said that she thought that they should reinstate it. When I enquired as to why, she replied that she didn't think the average person should have machine guns anyway. I counted to 10 and then calmly explained the difference between a machine gun and what was actually included in the ban. I explained all about the evil features that were not allowed even though they played no real role in how the gun functioned, etc.

Some time after the ban expired, I had purchased a DPMS AR-15 M4gery with 6 position stock, vertical foregrip, bayonet lug, all the evil 'features' no longer banned. Around the same time, my nephew purchased a Oly Arms AR-15 A2 style I believe. His didn't have any of the evil 'features'. It was the perfct comparison. I told my sister all about the 2 guns and the features that were previously banned, etc. How, if the ban were reinstated my AR-15 would be banned, but my nephew's AR-15 which fires the same round and takes the same magazines, would not. She came away understanding the differnces and how stupid the ban really was. She also understood it had NOTHING to do with machine guns.

I pointed out how when the media would talk about the AWB on the tv news, you would always see video clips in the background of full auto M16s or AK's being used. They wanted to keep associating the AWB with machine guns in people's minds.