How the Anti-Gun Media Skews Public Opinion

Fake News Media Biased
Fake News Media Biased

U.S.A. -(Ammoland.com)- There was a mass murder at a Pittsburgh Synagogue. If you read the posts on social media after that attack then you would think that guns are pure evil. Those writers seem not to know that guns save lives every day. Unfortunately, they are not alone.

Public Misperception

I’ll go further and say the average voter is only vaguely aware that ordinary citizens use their firearms to save lives every single day. Most people don’t know that firearms are life-saving tools because the US news media hides that story from us. This media distortion has serious consequences. What voters don’t know can move elections. Ignorance can cost lives.

Media Distortion

I don’t think the media’s treatment of self-defense and mass murder is merely a subtle editorial choice as assignment editors select articles based on excitement and novelty. It’s definitely newsworthy when a gun owner stops a sexual assault. It is important to the public debate that we know a legally armed citizen successfully defended police officers who were under attack. It is compelling news when a dad stops mass murder in a fast food restaurant, not just once, but here, and here again at a park. We could go on with millions of examples.

I’d have a lot less to write about if the media would set aside its agenda and tell the whole truth. Unfortunately, many of us only know what we read in the papers.

Crime Prevention

If you search deeply enough, you’ll find that victims who defend themselves with a firearm usually save their life. In addition, they make crime more difficult and less rewarding. An armed defender makes me safer even if I don’t carry a gun. Armed defense also reduces the incidence of rape after a sexual assault. Doesn’t that seem newsworthy to you?

Saving a Family

People who use a firearm for defense might protect themselves, but the might also protect their family. That saves lives for generations to come. I celebrate their defense as I would mourn their loss if they were injured.

Stop Mass Murder

Sometimes, people who defend themselves save many lives as they stop what could be a mass murder. These events are more frequent than we would know by looking at the television, the newspaper, or from most online media. When a mass murderer is successful it is on the front page for days. The self-defense story that stopped mass murder might never make it to the last page of Section B. That editorial decision means we never hear about the mass murder that didn’t happen.

Effective Self-Defense

The debate over guns in the US is skewed by media distortion and by public ignorance. The public thinks TV crime dramas are real. They don’t know the real-life drama where law-abiding citizens defend themselves with a firearm millions of times a year. The public never learns that firearms are effective tools in civilian hands. Citizens use guns more often than they use fire extinguishers.

Firearms Safety

The average citizen doesn’t know that US citizens with their concealed carry licenses are among the most law-abiding and non-violent group of people on the planet. That means that guns in the hands of honest citizens are extraordinarily safe. Even with that safety record, we continue with firearms safety education. The Eddie Eagle gun safe program reached its 31 millionth child this year. Unfortunately, there were 64 fatal firearms accidents with children under 13 years of age, so there is more work to do. The number of firearms accidents continues to fall over time.

Informed Debate

If you didn’t know that guns save lives then it makes perfect sense to restrict gun ownership. Firearms and firearm ownership only looks like a virtue after you learn that people save their lives by using their gun as a defensive tool.

The gun debate generates a lot of heated opinions. I wish the argument was over different interpretations of the benefits and costs of guns in society. We can’t have that debate until we have a common set of facts. That means we have to get unfiltered news.

I say guns save lives. Now do your own research and find out what the news media won’t tell you.


Slow Facts

About Rob Morse

The original article is here.  Rob Morse writes about gun rights at Ammoland, at Clash Daily, and on his SlowFacts blog. He hosts the Self Defense Gun Stories Podcast and co-hosts the Polite Society Podcast. Rob is an NRA pistol instructor and combat handgun competitor.

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larca

“I’ll go further and say the average voter is only vaguely aware that ordinary citizens use their firearms to save lives every single day.” I have a highly-educated (technical PhD) friend who once told me point-blank that guns only kill people, he has NEVER heard of a privately-owned firearm saving a life, and that *all* guns should be banned, period. I think this is a prime example of a normal human reaction to *fear* what we don’t understand. He clearly doesn’t understand anything about firearms — and the problem is, he (like so many on the blue Left) don’t *want*… Read more »

James Evans

There is a lot more to these media/2nd Amendment/shooting events, and if you haven’t figured it out by now you never will comprehend the depth and magnitude of psychological cultural warfare.

Quintessential Phorto

There’s a point that no one seems to mention very much: It doesn’t matter WHAT anybody thinks to the contrary, or whether they are fluent on both sides of the issue. All they need to know is that it is a fundamental right that cannot be taken away, EVER, and no argument or ‘debate’ can change that. Whether or not anybody likes it is immaterial. The answer is, immutably, NO, and cases must be pursued to the SCOTUS and get rulings to set that fact in stone, so that anytime some idiot says “yes, but…” we can respond “SHUT UP.… Read more »

Wild Bill

@QP, The SCOTUS is where ” a fundamental right that can not be taken away, EVER, …” are infringed, diminished, reduced, interpreted, and balanced against the needs of the state until the fundamental right is devoid of meaning.

larca

Wild Bill, you are right, that has been going on since the 1950’s, when the far-Left discovered that although it couldn’t make headway in Congress, it could subvert the Constitution by getting left-wing justices appointed to SCOTUS who were willing to legislate from the bench.

The solution to that is to only appoint strict Constructionist justices to SCOTUS. Two were appointed in the last year … it wouldn’t hurt to have one or two more, to seal that situation for the next 20-30 years.

joefoam

The elites in the MSM want our rights to bear arms taken away, hence they will put forth anything that gets them there. They would have you believe that 1) guns are evil and have no place in our modern society and 2) gun owners are murderers and have no place in our modern society. The sooner they can convince the masses of those two points the sooner weapons and weapon owners can be eliminated and the world can return to the Garden of Eden it was before guns were invented. They will ignore the fact that mankind is a… Read more »

Mark

To expect fair media coverage is like believing in pink unicorns – it won’t ever happen. This is why: there are only 6 corporations own all the media in this country. https://www.recode.net/2018/1/23/16905844/media-landscape-verizon-amazon-comcast-disney-fox-relationships-chart https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2016/06/01/these-15-billionaires-own-americas-news-media-companies/#72636d50660a https://www.freepress.net/issues/media-control/media-consolidation/who-owns-media https://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6 Does anyone with an active, critical-thinking brain really believe the owners are unbiased? We know Bezos and others are against Trump and all he has accomplished so far. It is because these elitists are supportive of communism. You can call it liberalism/progressive/socialism/democrats. It is only words. The ultimate goal is complete, world-wide control over the masses at the expense of liberties and freedom. We are… Read more »

J.D. Carpanzano

Mass shootings get national attention. Self defense shootings and saving of how many countless lives barely get local coverage. ‘The Armed Citizen’ in the NRA magazine is an eye opener for many but sadly the old news adage “if it bleeds it leads” hold true since it was first uttered.

Vlad

“If you read the posts on social media after that attack then you would think that guns are pure evil. Those writers seem not to know that guns save lives every day. Unfortunately, they are not alone.” Why do so many articles posit this subject as an education issue? “The press just doesn’t know… ” Then, we furiously spray facts and statistics at them in opposing articles. We push John Lott books at them. “They just don’t get it…” My point is that they really do get it just as well as we do. They just want us all disarmed,… Read more »

Jim Macklin

The media distorts or just doesn’t report or continue a story line if it doesn’t fit into their “style book” which used to call all rifles AK47s but now they call everything “semi-automatic assault rifles.” Back in the 1960s they wanted to ban “Saturday night Specials” until they discovered the racial connotation. Then it was “small, cheap poorly made” handguns until they did tests and found that the cheap guns were not dangerous and were most often used by poor inner city residents. The studies also showed that criminals preferred quality guns they same as police used, except they stole… Read more »