Yet another debunking
Yep, I think i'm on a roll today with debunking the crap from people. First i slammed on the dishonesty of Senator Biden and now I'm gonna shoot down another by MSNBC. Listed below (aka the bottom of this article) is a piece on the .50 cal rifle. "When U.S. soldiers need to penetrate a tank's armor from a mile away, they count on a weapon that evolved from the garage tinkering of a former wedding photographer." Now if you know anything about the .50 cal, or rifles in general, you know that this is total, unadulterated crap. A .50 cal to take out a tank?!?!?! Holy crap i don't wanna be the one to have to do that. It would in theory be possible to do that, to the weakened sections of an old T-72 but you can't do it with one round as it would take a huge number of round to work in a fatigue method to make even a tiny hole. In fact, this this the method that the US Army uses with the mounted .50 cal machine guns on the HMMWVs but to do this it takes lots of rounds, something not possible, or even close, with the civilan version. So from the first sentence we should all know that this is a hit piece. (Get it...hit piece...talking about killing with a gun...hehehehe). Now we get down past the first ad, btw keep commenting so i can get some ads on here, we can see the terrorist claim. Now i know that some news slips past me but I don't recall ever seeing any terrorist attacks being perpetrated by guys with .50 rifles. I mean but of course we need to be concerned. After all, those big band guns were responsible for 9/11 right? Oh they weren't? Damn, oh well, moving on. Bringing down an airplane. I guarentee you that with nothing bigger than a 30.06, i would have just as good a shot at bringing down a plane. Perhaps even a .223. I might have some more range with a .50 but the skin of a commercial plane is so thin that i could puncture right through it no matter what I shot. And the range is kinda in consequential given how close we can get to planes landing and taking off (BWI or Reagan is a good example). Then of course we have expert testimonials. The independent expert we have is from the Violence Policy Center. First what the hell do we have a policy center for violence for. I bet ya they don't make policy on violence, but just say its bad. But is there any real chance that this guy is gonna be for this rifle, or how about we find out his views on other rifles or handguns. Is MSNBC so lazy that they cannot find a firearm or criminal expert to talk to that they can only interview someone from an anti-firearm organization? Then we have the 2nd policy expert that, although he does have some real credentials i assume with a relevent organization, contradicts the facts. He says that you can't hunt with it but we were just told that that is one of the 2 primary civilian activites. So apperently it can be, and is, used for hunting. In fact it is probably one of the only thinks that can reliably take out a large animal such as an elephant, rhino, etc. Btw it is legal to go on a safari to do this activity. Though i agree, it will destroy most of the meat of a squirral. Barrett makes a very obvious but intelligent that the gun is too large and expensive to be used in crime. How you would utilize something that big in an urban environment i don't understand and you can't really run or move around with it. That is pretty much all the facts presented in the article but of course they have their fun little quotes that are just silly. My favorite of these is the ability to shoulder fire the weapon, while it rests on a bipod. I mean really, WTF! If it needs to rest on a bipod, it really its shoulder fired but supported fired. It might seem like a minor point but it really isn't. The front needs to be seated to rest and the back end needs to be supported by the shoulder but this could just as easily be taken care of by placing resting it on a simple back stand. Shoulder fired refers to the position of having the entire weight supported by the shooter and it braced in the shoulder. MSNBC, either through ignorance or more likely malice, creates the impression of the 2nd postion and not the 1st which it actually refers to.
The .50 cal rifle
The .50 cal rifle
posted by Maddawg at 11/26/2005 10:30:00 PM
8 Comments:
I didn't see any malice in that peace. Honestly, I didn't see any bias in it, either. They let the dude defend himself against the charges made against the gun. They offered full weight for the defense of the gun, saying that critics exagerrate the power of the rifle and such.
I don't understand your hostility to a stand-up news organization. Maybe we should discuss that a little more in-depth, rather than bitching and moaning about some bias that wasn't even there.
Actually kent, they don't offer full weight for the defense. And they also don't say that critics exaggerate the power, i say that in my post when they ignore the facts. MSNBC points out several times how powerful they think the rifle is by opening saying it is routinely used to take out a tank (which it can't) and then again with the agent story, and then 2 "experts" that think its too powerful. And while they could have easily found someone knowledgeable about rifles they only get the manufactor's statement about it and then put that near the end of the article. They start with the premise that this rifle is in another league of power compared to other rifles. That is the bias. The entire tone of the article is negative towards the rifle even though facts support that it really isn't any more dangerous than other rifles and is much harder to carry, fire, and afford.
"Barrett and gun advocates say the gun's power has been exaggerated and doesn't pose a threat to citizens because the weapons are too expensive and heavy to be used by criminals."
Taken from the article, Jim. Find something else to spin.
Also, when I read this piece, I thought of it more as a praising, conservative, free market, "this guy used to make toasters or whatever he used to make but now he makes millions of dollars selling these big-ass rifles to the military and to Ted Nugent" kind of piece. It seems to me like MSNBC is PRAISING the guy, especially in the last part where it quotes his SON!
So they quote the maker of the gun and then they quote his son. Thats not convincing testamony at all because he has a vested interest in making more. You are attacking a straw man here because you are equating testamony from the maker with direct quotes from what MSNBC describes as experts. They are not equal. The only mention that MSNBC makes to support for the weapon is "gun advocates". That is a loaded statement in the first place, just as you wouldnt say "abortion advocates" The actual facts of the weapon are pretty much entirely left out and that is what would determine what the rifle does. All MSNBC told us about the rifle is that its a 50 cal that ways 30 lbs and shoots 2000 yards. We don't have any idea about how it compares to other rifles (well i do but the average reader does not) and the actual performance of the rifle. All the article does is quote 'experts' against the rifle and the maker of the rifle. That is not an even comparison in either weight for each side or in the inplied credibility. Also, since most people read onlly the first 3-5 paragraphs of articles online or in print, putting misleading, incorrect statments meant to imply the gun is much more dangerous in the beginning is a clear indication of bias. Example is the first statement, "When U.S. soldiers need to penetrate a tank's armor from a mile away, they count on a weapon that evolved from the garage tinkering of a former wedding photographer." When the writer of the article lies in his first statement about how big and scary the rifle is, that is exactly what bias is.
I don't know how that's lying. You argue that MSNBC lied about the armor-piercing capacity of the weapon intentionally, but you show absolutely no proof that MSNBC KNEW that the gun COULDN'T penetrate armor. And is MSNBC supposed to sacrifice their journalistic style by forcing both sides of the argument in the first 3 paragraphs and then elaborating on each seperately afterwards in order to appeal to people with ADD? I read the whole article. I got the sense of the whole article. I'm the target audience of MSNBC. If they were trying to appeal to the audience that just reads the first three paragraphs, they'd just write three paragraphs.
Hey Kent -
Its the journalist's job to do research before they write an article. Someone clearly was not doing their job correctly.
Since your content with relying on conspiracy theories, how about this one?
MSNBC asked the Army about this particular .50 caliber rifle. The Army said they use it to blow up tanks or whatever, KNOWING full well that it has no such capability. MSNBC writes the story on the Army's false facts, and military and gun nuts all over the country bitch that MSNBC is twisting facts and lying. It's just as likely as what you're suggesting.
Who am I going to trust, a reputable news organization, or a partisan, right-wing governmental organization? Hmmmm.
Well see the problem is i can verifiably prove that you are wrong. Easy to do too. Go to barrett's website and look under the news section. Hey here is a link Yep its right here. Then click on the Size Matters link. Its only one page of PDF, you can read it. It says clearly that it cannot take down a tank, not that hard to find out really. Isn't the internet wonderful. And its not a conspiracy, its someone taking their own views (check PEW polling reseach to see that the media overwhelming is democratic, liberal, and anti-gun) and putting them into a article. Now perhaps they thought a Russain made IFF (Infantry fighting vehicle) was a tank but if they did they can easily look it up.
Post a Comment
<< Home