Propaganda As ‘News’

The anti-gun groups have an advantage we’ll never have. They have a captured mainstream media that, while fewer people trust than ever before, people still listen to and internalize to a degree that we at Bearing Arms will likely never enjoy.

Which sucks because at least we’re honest about where we stand.

Anti-gun propaganda fills the airwaves and pages of print with every talking point they want, all without any real critical thinking on the part of the “journalist” supposedly crafting the report or even attempting to get an alternate take on any of those talking points.

Dean Weingarten, writing at Ammoland, exposes a prime example of it.

An article published on rollingout.com claims to “debunk” myths about guns with “real data”. All the “real data” used is from advocates who oppose the ownership of guns.

If you skip to the end of the article, the source listed for the numbers used in the article is Everytown Research. Everytown Research is one of the propaganda arms of the anti-Second Amendment organization Everytown for Gun Safety, financed by Michael Bloomberg, a staunch anti-Second Amendment advocate. To use such a source to “debunk” myths is similar to asking the Flat Earth Society to “debunk” myths about gravity.

The pitch starts with the presumption that some nebulous entity called “the gun industry” has “spent decades convincing people that danger lurks around every corner”. This is a peculiar and highly dubious statement. Gun makers are shut out of most major media. You do not see ads for guns on major television shows. There are no ads for guns at the Super Bowl. You hardly see any ads showing guns used defensively against crime. Most social networks vigorously ban advertisements of weapons. To claim otherwise is a Marxian fantasy. The old dominant media often parrot anti-Second Amendment myths. Such dominance is fading.

Having grown up in the gun culture in the decades referred to in the article, there is some truth about the danger of crime to families being overemphasized. It isn’t by the “gun industry”. It is largely attributed to the old media, including movies and television shows, as well as the emphasis on violent crime in the media.  This correspondent recalls many television shows that would have become much shorter if the “victims” were armed.

Yes, the gun culture in the United States has shifted from hunting to personal protection, target shooting, and protection from government tyranny. It is a reasonable shift that accompanies the transition from a rural culture to an urban culture.

Moreover, the firearm industry has never uttered any such thing about how there are dangers around every corner.

They may highlight cases where there is a danger, but never to claim that’s everywhere. The problem is that, for someone, that’s precisely what’s going to happen if they’re unprepared. It may only be a few people in relation to the total population, but it can and will happen to someone.

Weingarten continues to shred the Rolling Out piece, but honestly, it shouldn’t have come to that.

The truth is that anyone who wants to even look like they’re being fair should know better than to take the word of anti-gun groups at face value. Everytown Research may dress up like an unbiased research organization, but they’re funded by a gun control organization and have never produced a single bit of research that is anything but justification for gun control. That’s a statistical improbability unless you’re either working from a preconceived outcome or you just spike every study that doesn’t advance the narrative.

This is like echoing the Communist Party as to why communism works. Of course they’re going to say that. They have a vested political interest in telling people this and will come up with any justification they can.

Yet this is coming to people via the news. It’s not announced upfront where the information came from, and even then, it doesn’t go into detail about exactly who “Everytown Research” actually is.

This isn’t news; it’s propaganda, and it’s something the pro-gun side will never get the opportunity to do unless something radical happens.

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment. 

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