One of the most frustrating things about being a Second Amendment supporter is that, for the most part, the parts of the media that aren’t misinformed are, actively or passively, spreading disinformation.
Not the worst example is this column yesterday from the left-leaning New York Daily News.
Well, no. It may be one for the bad-gun-grabber-article hall of fame. An epic.
But let’s take a step back.
Whenever I – like a lot of my fellow Real Americans in the Second Amendment movement – hear about another wave of gun control hysteria, I silently steel myself for another encounter with the inanity of Every Crusading Anti-Gun Media Figure and their invincible, comical ignorance about the subject.
And NYDN writer Gersh Kuntzman (what else?) delivered:
It feels like a bazooka — and sounds like a cannon.
One day after 49 people were killed in the Orlando shooting, I traveled to Philadelphia to better understand the firepower of military-style assault weapons and, hopefully, explain their appeal to gun lovers.
But mostly, I was just terrified.
I’ll save you some time; the writer went to Philadelphia to find the single anti-gun gun shop owner in the entire US, an obnoxious European guy who may be the one gun store owner in the US who can be made to come across sympathetically to a New York liberal audience.
(Tangent: Kuntzman tittered approvingly over this bit: “He also said he never sells a gun to someone who “looks a little bit funny,” and he claimed he had prevented many guns from getting into the wrong hands because the would-be purchaser “asked stupid questions…”. So – not selling products to people he doesn’t believe in selling products to? Huh. What a concept).
Anyway – remember what I said above about growing impatient with antis who clearly know nothing about the subject? I’ve added emphasis:
Many gun shops turned down our request to fire and discuss the AR-15, a style of tactical machine gun popular with mass killers such as San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook and Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen.
It’s not a machine gun. It’s not a machine gun. It’s not a machine gun. Not if you’re a civilian. Again – it’s not a machine gun.
And popularity with psychos and terrorists aside, it’s also the most popular single civilian long arm in American history. Over five million are in circulation. But then most of you know that.
Then came the big payoff. Kuntzman took his turn at the firing line:
I’ve shot pistols before, but never something like an AR-15. Squeeze lightly on the trigger and the resulting explosion of firepower is humbling and deafening (even with ear protection).
The video is hard to find – but judging from the photo…
…it might help if Kuntzman wasn’t holding the stock with his teeth.
The recoil bruised my shoulder. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick.
I’ve shot several ARs. They kick like BB guns.
How light is the kick? Light enough for a seven year old girl to shoot comfortably and accurately:
And this?
The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary case of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable.
“Temporary PTSD?”
What do you say, veterans?
Even in semi-automatic mode, it is very simple to squeeze off two dozen rounds before you even know what has happened. In fully automatic mode, it doesn’t take any imagination to see dozens of bodies falling in front of your barrel.
But it does take imagination, Gersh, because your AR15 didn’t have it.
So yet again – we who care about this nation’s Second Amendment human rights are being lectured by the utterly ignorant.
Same as it ever was.
Dibs on taking him to the range with a less lethal rifle like a 30.06 or 7mm Weatherby, or a safe gun chambered in .454 Casull.
You called dibs. Rules is rules.
I call shotgun. I think I can scare up a short-barreled Remingon 870 police shotgun. Cops used it. It must be easy, right?
I’ll call the Combat Commander in .45 ACP. Cure him of being limp-wristed in a hurry.
My grandson does this all the time:
I hate that.
You haven’t even tried it. Try one bite.
No, I won’t like it.
Just try it.
Yuck, see, I told you I wouldn’t like it. I hate it.
Of course, he’s four.
Name of self loathing gun dealers soon to be closed shop?
“Double tap”
Finding that kind of stupid is getting easier every day in our Obamanation.
We can assume he’s felt a bazooka, and heard a cannon in person, right?
The Orlando shooter used a Sig Sauer MCX.
Not sure how he smelled sulfur from a smokeless powder round. Maybe he farted during a bout of temporary PTSD?
Every word in that piece is bullshit, including “and” and “the.”
It’s all in the perception. He was shooting an AR-15 kid-killer. He should have tried shooting an M1 Garand – the gun that beat the Nazis! (With the added benefit that this gun actually has a “clip”!)
Oh, I didn’t even talk about the “bazooka” bit. A bazooka doesn’t actually kick.
There IS a smell to propellant; it hasn’t included sulphur in about 100 years. I’ve noticed that if you shoot the cheap russian stuff, it does smell a little like cat spray.
All spent powder has a smell, but sulfur is very distinct. To illustrate this, take a test tube or very small glass; place a teaspoon of sulfur in the tube or glass along with about one-fifth of a crayon; heat the glass over an open flame.
Be sure you conduct this experiment in an enclosed space, like a house or restaurant. Personally, I did this in the bathroom stall of a local roller rink. For added effect, do this during a first date to make a stunning impression
Kuntzman wrote a follow up piece:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/gun-lovers-opinion-assault-rifles-article-1.2674555
In the follow up, Kuntzman says that his AR 15 article was an opinion piece — but it appeared under the news/crime heading on the NYDN website. So does his follow up.
OK, gotta love this; educated at the Sorbonne and the Yale School of Drama.
http://www.nydailynews.com/authors?author=Gersh-Kuntzman
“Drama queen” is certainly what comes to mind when I contemplate claiming to get a nasty shoulder bruise from firing a .223.
One of the worst trends in Journalism in the last four decades is its gentrification. Carl Bernstein didn’t have a college degree when he & Bob Woodward broke Watergate. Bob Woodward was born in Geneva (Illinois) and had a lowly BA in journalism, earned as part of the ROTC. He did five years in the navy before he started working for WaPo.
These days, having degrees in drama and dance are considered qualifications enough when you are being paid to write about something you know nothing about.
Bento, I’m going to gently disagree with you; the worst trend isn’t gentrification, it’s that so-called journalists have conveniently jettisoned the distinction between truth and fiction. The idea that someone’s shoulder was bruised from a .223’s recoil can only invoke memories of one of my favorite Hans Christian Andersen stories, “The Princess and the Pea.”
Now maybe an Ivy League degree or growing up in hedge fund suburbs in Connecticut leads to this disconnect from reality, but I’m going to go with the disconnect with reality.
In his follow-up piece, he says an AR-15 is a “weapon of mass destruction” and a “semi-automatic killing machine”. Yet he concedes that it’s OK for cops to have them.
So either:
1. Mass destruction and killing are part of what we expect cops to do; or
2. He fully appreciates that AR-15s have a legitimate purpose other than mass destruction and killing
Yes, bikebubba, the #1 problem with this story is that it is in the wrong section, “News/Crime”. An op-ed is an op-ed. When Kuntzman defends his column in the follow up, he goes out of his way to say that his article was based on his opinion. Anyhow, when you look at the string of other articles he has written for NYDN, they are clearly cultural and opinion reporting, just what you would expect from a pop-culture reporter. That matches his resume.
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In basic training at Fort Benning, the drill sergeants had a unique way to show how little the M-16 actually kicks. Choosing a volunteer from the platoon, they hold the butt of the rifle up to a soldier’s private and pull the trigger a few times.
That means a 17 year old private has tougher cajones than the reporter has shoulders.
Dave Thul;
Our DI did the same thing at Lackland AFB.
A few guys in my training squadron had never shot a gun before, but after that demo, they all turned out to be pretty good shots.
I earned my Merit Badge for Rifle Shooting at 12 years old shooting a .22. They still use it in the BSA today…
https://www.meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Rifle_Shooting
Later in my brief (very brief, thankfully – Pentagon source) time as a Reserve Officer Training Corp candidate we were shooting a .22 in the enclosed range.
These people really need to get out more.
https://www.facebook.com/doubletapshootingrange/?fref=ts
Ironically, the next link on duck-duck-go went to an article with the title “GOP and the Rise of Anti-Knowledge.”
Thanks, Bento. Note sent to the NY Daily News encouraging Mr. Kuntzman to find a profession more suited to his abilities. He’ll be bummed that “Wal-Mart Greeter” is beyond them, however.
Let’s all do this. When a “journalist” makes stuff up, let’s complain and see if anyone gets shown the door.
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