Media Bias Against Guns

[JohnRich 4]

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I paid attention to your original post in this thread... You might wanna scroll back and have a look at it, because it is in complete disagreement with what you've just stated.

Your focus is highly selective. Your original criticism was about the general nature of all of my thread-starter messages. And now you turn around and point to just one.

This specific one is not necessarily representative of the general nature of the majority of my messages.

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And for a moderator to do this, when you're supposed to be upholding rules against personal attacks, is shameless.

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Why does it seem as if this the only response you can ever think up to anyone that disagrees with something you've posted? People disagreeing with the crap you post isn't a personal attack. Get over it.

See above about "highly selective".

It seems to me that you are the one attacking the person, rather than trying to refute the message. Your fellow moderators are the ones that always say; "play the ball, not the person". And you are violating that very rule, which you are pledged to enforce.

Apparently you can't refute the allegations about media anti-gun bias, since you haven't spoken nary a word about that. All you're interested in doing is bashing John Rich.

[DrewEckhardt 0]

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I never said anyone needed a gun to survive. I merely like having one so I can defend myself if need be. If you don't like guns that is all good. just let me keep mine in peace.

You may keep them in peace, of course. It's just the uncomfortable feeling I'd have beeing your neighbour knowing you are fully armed. In a normal environment. Such like my house, my garden, where I never need a weapon. And folks running around me carrying weapons are more than just a bit suspicious to me.

I worry a lot more about my neighbor's car (40,000 deaths a year) and alchohol (which contributed to 20,000 of those) than his firearms (15,000 homicides, under 1000 accidents)

Especially since I have a zero chance of being black (half of all murder victims in America), in a street gang, love triangle, or the other major risk factors.

As a white guy in Seattle, USA I'm less likely to be killed by a gun than if I were across the border in Vancouver, Canada(of similar size and financial demographics but with a different minority population) where they're stricter about such things.

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That's just too dangerous.

Statistically speaking guns are safer than swimming pools and cleaning supplies, especially for young children even when you have an average chance of leaving loaded ones lying arround outside a safe.

[quade 3]

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It seems to me that you are the one attacking the person, rather than trying to refute the message.

Huh? John, you're simply amazing . . . if you can quote me a single line in this thread where I attacked YOU rather than the message, I'll join the NRA.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[juanesky 0]

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Facts should come from places without agendas.

Unfortunately, even the DOJ, FBI and ATF have an agenda when it comes to "proving" that crime has risen or fallen for various reasons.

My gripe with the media isn't that they're biased, it's that, for the most part, their bosses have pushed them to present material too quickly. With the pressures they have, it's all too easy to fall into the rip-n-read of crap assed propaganda newsletters and "think tanks."

If it was MY news service, the first policy I'd put into place is that absolutely NO story can have a single word in it that comes from prnewswire or the likes. If you do a search, I'm almost certain you can find where I've written about that numerous times before.

Believe it or not, this IS actually my main complaint about what JR does day after day here in this forum. He just copies and pastes stuff he reads. There is no actual enlightenment possible. There is no actual coversation possible, because it's NOT actually his thoughts. He's just parroting what others say.

There you go, one of each, 1 for not playing the ball, 1 for insisting he is just parroting, and not debating his point of the Media bias against guns.

"According to some of the conservatives here, it sounds like it's fine to beat your wide - as long as she had it coming." -Billvon

[quade 3]

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There you go, one of each, 1 for not playing the ball, 1 for insisting he is just parroting, and not debating his point of the Media bias against guns.

So . . . in your opinion . . . disagreeing with somebody equals a personal attack?

That's just silly.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[kelpdiver 2]

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It seems to me that you are the one attacking the person, rather than trying to refute the message.

Huh? John, you're simply amazing . . . if you can quote me a single line in this thread where I attacked YOU rather than the message, I'll join the NRA.

You started out fine, but...

Believe it or not, this IS actually my main complaint about what JR does day after day here in this forum. He just copies and pastes stuff he reads. There is no actual enlightenment possible. There is no actual coversation possible, because it's NOT actually his thoughts. He's just parroting what others say.

How is calling him a parrot not attacking him rather than the message?

Of course, I have no expectation that you'll live up to this pledge.

[juanesky 0]

Calling someone a parrot or parroting is.

"According to some of the conservatives here, it sounds like it's fine to beat your wide - as long as she had it coming." -Billvon

[juanesky 0]

And make sure you let me know when you start getting your NRA magazine ok?

"According to some of the conservatives here, it sounds like it's fine to beat your wide - as long as she had it coming." -Billvon

[quade 3]

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Calling someone a parrot or parroting is.

It's an accurate statement of his behavior. If you don't think so, please revisit his original post in this thread as well as numerous others on his favorite subject.

Again, if you consider that to be a personal attack, that's just silly.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[juanesky 0]

You were right.

"According to some of the conservatives here, it sounds like it's fine to beat your wide - as long as she had it coming." -Billvon

[rushmc 18]

Ah, NRA membership for you


Welcome

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[crwtom 0]

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News:

The Media Assault on the Second Amendment

you forgot an obvious choice in your poll ...


* The news media is biased against guns.
* The news media treats the gun issue fairly.
* The news media is biased pro guns.

... sorry, couldn't vote.

Cheers, T

*******************************************************************
Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

[rhys 0]

Guns are a funny (peculiar) subject, For instance I hate hand guns, the stupid things were created for one purpose and that is to kill humans (at short distances).

Rifles are more of a tool as they can actually shoot something that is more than a few metres away.

I will be purchasing a rifle over the next couple of years for hunting, but anything with 4 legs in New Zaland is an exotic pest and quite often good eating as well, here in tanzania many ancient species are on the brink of extinxition so there is a balance to be met.

You hear all too often in here that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" which is a true enough comment.

So i guess in the end, as far as I am aware, it is the mindset around what a gun is for that creates any problem but with all the shooting and violence in the media, I would think that the Media loves guns very much indeed. They are also a great contributer to the problem of the desire to own a gun for inappropriate purposes.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will see peace." - 'Jimi' Hendrix

[jgoose71 0]

to quote the constitution:

[Amendment II]

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

I'm not an english major, but I do understand english. A lot of anti-gun guys out there will spill out all kinds of stuff about relevence, but it doesn't change what the constitution says in plain english that even I can understand. I still think this argument is the product of a bunch of bored lawyers.

"There is an art, it says, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
Life, the Universe, and Everything

[JohnRich 4]

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you forgot an obvious choice in your poll ...

* The news media is biased against guns.
* The news media treats the gun issue fairly.
* The news media is biased pro guns.

Yeah, it would have been fun to throw that in there. But everyone knows that your last suggested option is not true.

Besides, I'm just a parrot that repeats things from the news, without inserting any thought process of my own into my messages. So you're lucky I was able to come up with even two poll options.

[JohnRich 4]

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I hate hand guns, the stupid things were created for one purpose and that is to kill humans (at short distances).

Actually, there are a lot of different handgun shooting sports, that have nothing to do with killing.

But even in your example, if the killing of humans is done for legitimate self defense, like in this case, then what's wrong with that?

[mnealtx 0]

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I hate hand guns, the stupid things were created for one purpose and that is to kill humans (at short distances).

Actually, there are a lot of different handgun shooting sports, that have nothing to do with killing.

But even in your example, if the killing of humans is done for legitimate self defense, like in this case, then what's wrong with that?

Yeah, I guess mine must be malfunctioning... they've only shot paper.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[JohnRich 4]

Oh, the power of the search feature.

In the last three months, quade, you've posted several hundred messages, including starting only four threads yourself. Mostly you just jump-in to other conversations, rather than begin them yourself.

I'm glad that we don't have to depend upon you to start topics of conversation, or this would be a very dry forum.

But an interesting thing is revealed by those four thread-starter messages of yours. Guess what? In every one of them, you made reference to a news story, just like I do. Isn't that ironic!

See for yourself, here:

US Passport Denial Program
the inadequacy of the metric system!
Hilarity from The White House
Seriously, THIS is hilarious.

So, I guess that you're just another "parrot", like me.

Along with your new NRA membership, you can select to receive from one of three monthly magazines. Which one would you prefer?

[nerdgirl 0]

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News:

The Media Assault on the Second Amendment

you forgot an obvious choice in your poll ...


* The news media is biased against guns.
* The news media treats the gun issue fairly.
* The news media is biased pro guns.

... sorry, couldn't vote.

Cheers, T

I was looking for that option as well.

What's your reasoning?

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[JohnRich 4]

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you forgot an obvious choice in your poll ...

* The news media is biased against guns.
* The news media treats the gun issue fairly.
* The news media is biased pro guns.

I was looking for that option as well.
What's your reasoning?

Why don't you just explain why you think the media is biased in favor of guns.

This should be good...

Could it be all positive upbeat stories about the shooting sports on CNN? Maybe it's all the great armed self-defense stories on ABC? Or perhaps the CBS investigative news stories about how the gun industry goes out of their way to make their products safe and sell them to only law-abiding citizens? How about the free gun-lock give-aways done by the shooting sports association? Or maybe the MS-NBC coverage of how the NRA provides gun safety training to millions of people every year?

Oh wait, the media doesn't do any of those stories.

Um, okay, so upon what do you base your "the media is pro-gun" vote?

[nerdgirl 0]

John,

For the commercial media: "if it bleeds, it leads," and if it's controversial, that is also a bonus.

Generating a whole list of "positive upbeat stories" that the commercial media doesn't do is easy; we can all do that, e.g, skydivers are safe, smart, upstanding citizens. That's a straw man argument. (Illustrative thought experiment: Name the last 4 winners of the Nobel Prize in physics or chemistry versus name 4 young, scantily-clad Hollywood women who have been arrested or jailed recently - you get the idea.)

Nonetheless, specific pro-gun stories from the US commercial media (ABC): http://newsbusters.org/node/12556, and the related subsequent story: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Story?id=3083618
Another story: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3518019', 'popup', 800, 635

At the heart of the dialogue, there seems to be an implied casualty:

Guns --> less violence

*or*

Guns --> more violence

Lotts’ data (whether perfectly valid or purely fiction) implies the former without having shown which (guns or violence level) is the dependent and which is the independent variable. Much of the gun-control argument is centered on implying the latter relation.

What if guns & violence are independent variables?

The 2007 Small Arms Survey (“an independent research project located at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland”) noted that the US is the most armed country in the world (# guns per civilian) yet it is neither the most nor the least dangerous country in the world. The next three highest per capita are Switzerland, Finland, and Yemen.

Popular press/commercial media accounts:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/28/europe/EU-GEN-Switzerland-Small-Arms.php
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL2834893820070828

Primary data: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/files/sas/publications/year_b_pdf/2007/CH2%20Stockpiles.pdf

The variables that reflect gun ownership were found to be (1) wealthy countries or (2) countries with recent, intense violent conflicts. The former is the case for US & western Europe; the latter reflects the situations in places like Angola and Columbia. See page 21 of the pdf file for a graph showing the range of GDPs and correlation with per capita civilian gun ownership. The authors discuss where that model breaks down.

Follow the $: “The Small Arms Survey project is supported by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, and by contributions from the Governments of Canada, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.”

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[quade 3]

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Oh, the power of the search feature.

Perhaps you'd like to compare that with your own statistics? Ya know, just to be "fair and balanced"?

BTW, you seem to have cherry picked the results and left out one;

Why I don't like people just copying and pasting other people's work.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[ltdiver 3]

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See for yourself, here:

US Passport Denial Program
the inadequacy of the metric system!
Hilarity from The White House
Seriously, THIS is hilarious.

So, I guess that you're just another "parrot", like me.

You might like to revisit those threads you've quoted. Unless I miss my mark, in 3 of those threads quade gave his opinion in the original post. In one he was just "speechless"...Except it kind of spoke for itself, anyway...

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[kelpdiver 2]

nice artwork, John.

Does the source have a weasel too?

[JohnRich 4]

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nice artwork, John.
Does the source have a weasel too?

I'm glad that you like my parrot. Braaack! Polly wants a cracker! After all, I'm just a mindless parrot that is only capable of posting news stories, and not independently discussing anything with my own logic.

Someone called me "slimey" recently too, but I couldn't think of a good thumbnail image to represent that. I certainly don't want a big booger for my picture...

Weasel images