It’s important to recognize that progressives’ arguments against guns aren’t lies—deliberate fabrications and untruths—they’re myths—complete inventions and fantasies based on fears and psychological terror.
They feel overwhelming fear and horror at the very idea of inanimate objects that can cause instantaneous death and irrevocable action at a distance. It’s amusing then to watch their morbid fascination with the subject—from Hollywood and pseudo “news” stories. They’re compelled, against their conscious will, to create and assign virtually magical properties to guns, which they use as defense mechanisms, guarding themselves against realities they cannot face or control like the rest of us.
Fear-driven left-wing progressives then project these abject fantasies onto others, especially onto people who would dare to own and use firearms, as if those people suffer under the fears that terrorize leftists themselves. This is why the rest of us fight against such preposterous nonsense as invisible guns (polymer-frame Glocks), exploding airplanes (armed pilots), the BITS (blood-in-the-streets) myth should CCW permits be issued—which has never happened, now with all 50 states successfully on board. The Daily Caller is exposing these in this ongoing series. We, the innocent, honest public, must endure fantasy upon fantasy in defending our rights.
The Undetectable Gun Myth:
“This new ‘plastic’ gun can’t be seen by airport X-ray machines so terrorists will be sneaking them onto planes and they must be banned! Who in their right mind (scold the NRA here) could object to that!”
Democrats, liberals and their media allies hyperventilated when Glock came out with the revolutionary, innovative polymer-frame, safe-action sidearm, though it was anything but undetectable. All its operating components are easily detectable hardened steel, springs and sheet metal, not to mention the ammunition. Even Superman can’t see through lead.
Why let facts get in the way of airheaded hyperbole where the news is supposed to air. Reporters didn’t look much further than anti-gun-rights press releases in their initial waves of sensationalism.
Eventually federal law was enacted (18 USC §922(p)) requiring guns to have enough metal to be detected—the feds even created a physical sample called the security examplar—sort of like requiring meat to contain meat. Rampant speculation that the CIA has invisible guns will likely never end or be proven, and charges that people on the no-fly list are there because the scanners and everything don’t work on them, well, think about that. (They are still free to take the train, bus, car or walk.) That gross nonsense was exposed here.
The Glock and its imitators are so excellent—reliable, accurate, easily maintained—it has become the most popular sidearm in the world, the choice of our police by an overwhelming margin. Thank goodness the deniers and hoplophobes didn’t win on that myth.
If-Self-Defense-Was-Common-It-Would-Be-In-The-News-More Myth:
“It’s easy to prove that guns serve no valid purpose, because if they really stopped crime and worked for self defense you’d see it more in the news! Hah!”
Case in point: The Fabricius Case is about an ASU professor who, with his high-school-student son, counted local crime stories, decided self defense is rare, and declared it a scientific study. The community paper (now defunct), and a medical journal (from Canada), ran the “conclusion” as if it meant something. They took heat, but let it stand (juicy details at the link).
The media deliberately suppresses stories about self defense and highlights stories about misuse of guns, “for reasons that were unclear at press time.”
Actually, the reasons are well known—mainstream reporters are generally left-leaning gun-hating liberals. Studies constantly show it suits them, fits their bias, and matches their world view to hide truth on this issue. That’s what they do, they can’t see it, won’t admit it. I follow it closely, confront them about it all the time, it’s like they’re brain dead. Google the subject and be stunned.
An Associated Press bureau reporter once told me his bureau chief wouldn’t let a self-defense story run because it might encourage copy cats. I report on it frequently here, and here. The CBS-TV ratio of anti-rights to pro-rights stories recently was 22 to 1 against. Their ethical standards? They have none.
Dr. John Lott surveyed the media, the numbers are impossibly upside down. In one year, USA Today ran 6,000 words on gun-related crime and zero on the good that guns enable. A book is available (Armed) outlining 13 scholarly studies showing between 700,000 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses every year. Bloomfield Press pays to put self-defense stories in USA Today, as ads, so at least some news gets out. Excellent write up about it here.
Media excuses for suppressing self defense are myths unto themselves: they certainly wouldn’t want: to promote “vigilantism” (which is a criminal act and not self defense); frontier justice and taking the law into your own hands (which has nothing to do with self defense against assault); a dangerously armed public with everyone “packing heat” (a derogatory slur reporters love and use constantly); individual responsibility (OMG!) supplanting big-brother government safety (which everyone sees doesn’t work); stand-your-ground “shoot-first” Wild-West scenarios (silliness reflecting neither law nor common sense)—reporting on this is as mythical as virtually everything else you see about guns, if it’s on TV or in a “news” paper.
Next in the series: The “powerful gun lobby” myth, the “gun buy-back” myth, and whichever of the dozens of others strikes my fancy between now and then. Send me your favorite, I’ll consider it.
Get All The Busted Myths – Click On The Link To Read Alan Korwin’s Previous Articles:
KORWIN: No Fly List = No Buy List = Gun Confiscation List
KORWIN: Gun Myth Debunked – Armed Citizens Will Cause ‘Blood In The Streets’
KORWIN: The Manchin-Toomey Gun Myth
KORWIN: Obama’s Gun Control Starts With Myth
KORWIN: America’s Real Gun Problem – The Gun Myths
KORWIN: Talking Points For The 30-Round-Magazine Debate
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Alan Korwin is the author of 14 books, 10 of them on gun law. His book After You Shoot examines ways to lower your risks after a self-defense shooting. He has been invited twice to observe oral argument in gun cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. Reach him at GunLaws.com, where he is the publisher of Bloomfield Press.
