This video is yet another example of why I have the US media with a white-hot passion. It isn’t news. It isn’t even opinion. It is just flat out propaganda.
Propaganda so over the top it would make Goebbels wince…
This steaming pile of crap literally checks off every propaganda box the left has been spewing for years.
The video start off with a voice over saying “This is what an AR-15 sounds like.” Then we are treated to footage of a white-haired gentleman shooting an AR-15 at a gun range. Of course he shoots it like an 86-year old grandmother would. He is leaning backwards instead of squaring-up and leaning slightly forward like anyone who has ever fired any kind of rifle would do. He also is holding the rifle with the stock away from his body, instead of pressed against his shoulder. Why is he firing the weapon in such an awkward and unorthodox way? So the gun will recoil back violently while causing his whole body to shake. The whole point is to make the AR-15 seem ulta-violent and scary to people who don’t know any better. Holding the firearm like this, his line of vision is nowhere near the sights of the rifle. So clearly, he is not even bothering to aim his shots. As an extra added touch, he flinches and winces with each round fired. At the conclusion of what surely has to be one of the most pathetic displays of firearms technique ever recorded, we are introduced to a retired Army General.
Is this really how liberals think you shoot a rifle???
Why did they choose an Army General? Propaganda value. It’s the video equivalent of the argument from authority fallacy. This isn’t just another crazy leftwing anti-gun activist talking (or so they want you to believe.) He is a military man. He must like guns and support the 2nd Amendment. He just wants you to realize how extraordinarily dangerous and scary the AR-15 is. And how it should not be allowed in civilian hands. He is just for common sense, is the implied message. Of course it is all bullshit.
For starters, the AR-15 is not at all violent to shoot. In fact, one reason for it’s popularity is it’s exceptionally low recoil. Recoil in the AR-15 is much less than a typical hunting round and pales in comparison to a 12-guage shotgun. The AR-15 is easy for smaller people and people who are possibly older and frail to shoot safely and effectively. The .223 Remington ammo it (most usually) fires is quite mundane and actually kind of wimpy for a rifle round. So why did the US military choose it? Because it had just enough ballistic power to barely pass their requirements. It is much smaller than the round it replaced, so troops could carry a lot more of them. And the low recoil greatly improves the accuracy of fully automatic fire because it is much easier to keep the sights on target.
Then we hear about how the AR-15 looks almost identical to the fully automatic M-4 adopted by the military. And, yes, it does look virtually identical. So what? Functionally, it is not at all identical. The M4 has burst and fully automatic modes. The AR-15 does not. So despite the visual similarity, the two weapons are far from being equivalent. He also says some people buy the AR-15 because it “looks cool” like the military guns. Which is almost certainly true. Again, so what? People buy products all the time for stupid reasons. That doesn’t make the product bad. Otherwise, we would ban all the cars with spoilers.
The General goes on to say that gun collectors and gun aficionados (?) should be able to own AR-15s. Really? Maybe this will be a balanced and informative piece after all?
NOT! The General then goes on to demonstrate how the gun can be fired “on full semi-automatic.” This is a meaningless (and utterly stupid) term invented by the anti-gun crowd to demonize the AR-15 and make it sound more exotic and powerful than it actually is. The fact a military man would use such a term and then do a “demonstration” tells you he is more interested in propaganda than information and facts. What is the difference between the “normal” mode and the “fully semi-automatic” mode??? The video doesn’t explain. But the difference is in “fully semi-automatic” mode the general pulled the trigger faster. I’m sure the reason they failed to explain this is not because it would have made them look deceitful and stupid. Maybe they were pressed for time.
The reporter explains how the defining characteristic of the AR-15 is the speed and power of it’s bullets. The 223/551 does zip along at a pretty good pace… typically around 3100 fps or so. As a rifle round, it is far from extraordinary though. Many hunting and target rounds match or exceed that velocity. And the power part is a flat-out lie. One of the down sides of the 223/556 is it’s lack of ballistic power. Power is a function of speed and mass. While the 223/556 has pretty good velocity, the mass of it’s little 55-62 grain .22 caliber bullet is far less than most hunting and military rifle rounds. Less mass means less energy. And energy is how the destructive potential of a bullet is measured. The military switched to the steel-pointed “green tip” ammo specifically because of the ballistic short-comings of the original round and it’s propensity to bounce off of helmets and body-armor at longer distances.
In case there was any doubt this was a propaganda piece, the General then goes on to repeat one of Joe Biden’s whoppers. The AR-15 can “literally tear out the inside of the body.” What is meant by this exactly is unclear. At least he didn’t claim it would physically remove organs like Creepy Joe. Nor was it explained how the wounds caused by an AR-15 are different than any other rifle. Apparently, the .22 caliber bullets know what kind of gun they have been fired from, and can adjust the damage they inflict accordingly.
The General goes on to describe a soldier who “was shot in the shoulder and had the bullet come out his ass.” Again, how rifle bullets ricocheting off of bones is somehow unique to the AR-15 is left unexplained. Lee Harvey Oswald must of had an AR-15 along with his Mannlicher-Carcano. How else to explain the deflection of the Magic Bullet in the Kennedy assassination if the AR-15 is the only rifle that fires a bullet that doesn’t always go straight through a body?
The whole thing is just chock full of lies and deceptive half-truths: the AR-15 was not a precursor to the M-4, it did not used to be a “weapon of war” in the sense that is has never been issued by any military that I am aware of, it does not meet the definition of an assault weapon (so they call it “assault-style” to confuse), and on and on….
Fuck CNN. Fuck all of the lying propagandists and narrative-pushers that call themselves “journalists.”
Conservatives like to say that the only solution to a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun. Liberals love mocking this statement as gung-ho cowboy fantasy thinking, and declare that successful defensive uses of firearms almost never happen. Yet, for events that supposedly never happen, they seem to occur with amazing regularity. Even if they only make national news when the bad guy wreaks havoc. See the post below for the feel-good story of the day. (Yes, I said feel-good. It makes me smile when evil assholes get what is coming to them instead of being allowed to victimize the innocent.)
NEW DETAILS: A woman is being credited for saving multiple lives after a man started shooting at a graduation party. Truly a miracle no one else was hurt. @WOWK13News
“President” Joe Biden clearly signaled Democrats plan to go full speed ahead on gun control while answering media questions yesterday. And that he as absolutely no fucking clue what he is talking about.
Detestable old fool gives incoherent answers to questions…
The reporter started by asking Joe a question about different policy options that have been kicked around….
Is there one element…. Is it age? Is it red flags? Is it some component you think could be most successful now?
– Reporter
President Pants load was having none of it. He didn’t even try to pretend to know what she was talking about. Instead he went straight to his gun control talking points.
I know that it makes no sense to be able to purchase something that can fire up to 300 rounds.
– President Pants Load
What? Is he saying he wants to ban 300 round magazines? Because that isn’t even a thing. In fact, the overwhelming majority are 30 or less. Even for semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15. Certainly less for handguns. Is his decrepit brain off by a factor of 10? No gun fires 300 rounds without several reloads. Is he saying he only wants guns that aren’t reloadable? How can this idiot ever hope to improve public safety if he doesn’t even grasp the most basic of facts?
There is only one reason for something, that, you know, can fire a hundred shots.
– President Pants Load
Now the magic number is 100? There are actually lots of reasons you might need to fire multiple shots. Saving children from a heavily armed maniac being just one of the many.
And I asked him, I said, “What’s the difference? Why are so many…” not that many more people were being shot… this is now 20 years ago, errr 25 years. I said “Why are they dying?” And they showed my a, uh, X-ray. He said a .22 caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out. .. maybe able to get it and save the life. A 9 mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.
– President Pants Load
A 9 mm bullet “blows the lung out of the body”? What???? If you don’t know firearms, I can’t begin to describe to you how utterly stupid that statement is. The 9 mm is a totally mundane pistol round. People shot with one tend to have a little entrance wound hole where the bullet enters. Most often, there isn’t even an exit wound when expanding self-defense ammunition is used. Under no circumstances are major organs separated from the body.
And, 25 years ago was the late 1990s. Does “President” Dirty Diaper think the 9 mm was something new back then? The 9 mm pistol cartridge was developed in 1901. It has a been a popular round since the end of World War I. Semi-automatic 9mm pistols did see a rapid increase in popularity among police departments back in the 1980s and 90s. But they were largely replacing .38 Special and .357 Magnum revolvers. The .38 has about the same power as a 9 mm. The .357 Magnum has significantly more. The 9 mm certainly wasn’t replacing the .22 LR cartridge, either among police or civilians. This story is total fiction, just like nearly everything Sleazy Joe says.
Saying a 9 mm “blows the lung out of the body” can only be overheated rhetoric to intentionally manipulate the fears of the ignorant, or the imbecilic rantings of a total moron. There can be no other explanation.
If they are even coming after the meager 9 mm cartridge, than that is a clear signal they are coming after everything.
The Constitution… the 2nd Amendment, was never absolute. You couldn’t buy a canon.
– President Pants Load
This is a bald faced lie. Private citizens in the newly formed United States absolutely could own canons. Even the left-leaning fact checkers Politifact had to admit this statement is total bullshit. Yet Sleazy Joe just keeps repeating it. It just sounds so common-sense and folksy. Like the sage wisdom your old grand-pappy might spout. What a phony-ass douchebag.
those people… say the tree of Liberty is watered with the blood of patriots, and what we have to do, we need to take on the government when they’re wrong. Well, to do that you need an F-15 (fighter jet) , you know? You need an Abrams Tank, I mean…
– President Pants Load
So, here Joe Biden choses to completely disparage the rationale for the 2nd Amendment as written in the actual text, and try to ridicule citizens who actually believe firearms are a bulwark against tyranny. Recent history would seem to rebuke Joe’s position. The U.S. just got their ass handed to them by a rag tag army of terrorists in Afghanistan. The same thing happened in Iraq. And Vietnam. And to the Soviets in Afghanistan. And on and on. The evidence that a group of motivated insurgents can prevail against a more heavily armed occupying force is now pretty overwhelming. At least he didn’t threaten to use nuclear weapons against Texas this time.
So to summarize the presser: Demonize run-of-the-mill guns and accessories? Check. Make outlandish and provably false claims about firearms? Check. Spread lies about the effectiveness of the 1994 crime bill? Check. Mock the 2nd Amendment as irrelevant and outdated? Check. Totally ignore real solutions that might actually be achievable and make a difference to public safety in order to pander to your ignorant base and bash your political enemies? Emphatic check.
The country just suffered a terrible atrocity. Thankfully, school shootings like Uvalde are still very rare, despite the impression the media tries to portray. There are things we could agree on together to make them even more rare and less deadly. The pathetic response of the Uvalde police and lax school security would be obvious places to start. There are many other good (and realistic) ideas floating around out there. But the Democrats have strongly signaled that gun control is the only thing they are interested in talking about. Even if it means failing to actually do anything at all. Or only passing a limited (and Constitutionally dubious) gun ban with zero effect on safety. It’s an election year. They are in big trouble, politically. And there are warm bodies to self-righteously preach in front of.
Democrats have been off the rails the last few days trying to use the tragedy in Uvalde to pass gun control to please their base and demonize Republicans as heartless gun nuts to help their political fortunes in the midterms.
It is looking more and more like the school shooting was a total failure to follow the system rather than deficiencies in the design of the system itself. A clearly disturbed kid passed his FBI background check (fail) and was able to legally buy a rifle. He was able to linger outside the school for 12 whole minutes shooting his gun at the building without being confronted (fail) before entering. He was then able to walk right in through an unlocked door (fail) with no armed security on site (fail.) He was able to gain access to a classroom that wasn’t locked down (fail) despite multiple gunshots ringing out for several minutes. There was no police response at all for 14 minutes (fail.) The police who did respond briefly tried to enter the building, but then decided it was just too dangerous and retreated outside (gutless, cowardly fail.) It took a full hour (fail) for competent law enforcement to arrive and end the siege. So the system had multiple opportunities to work, but multiple failures on the part of the people in charge of implementing it allowed the evil bastard to carry out his depraved act. However, that doesn’t mean there are not things we can still do to improve the system. Enhanced background checks, red flag laws, single entry points for schools, and certainly more armed security are worth considering. Lots of people have ideas on how to make schools safer. The more robust the security is, the better.
But the only thing Democrats want to talk about is gun control. Or more to the point, gun bans. And their main target is of course the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.
They call it an “assault rifle.” Technically, it isn’t based on the US Army’s definition. While it does have many of the features of an assault rifle (compact, intermediate power cartridge, detachable magazine), it is missing one critical feature. The AR-15 is semi-automatic. Assault rifles are fully-automatic. Or to be more precise, assault rifles are select-fire, meaning they can function in both semi and fully automatic modes by flipping a switch. The difference is important. When you pull the trigger on a semi-automatic weapon, one bullet comes out. To fire again, you have to release the trigger and pull it again. A fully automatic weapon will keep firing bullets at very fast rate until the trigger is released or it runs out of ammo. Basically, it operates like what most lay people think of as a “machine gun.” So are semi-automatic weapons rare? Not at all. Almost all modern pistols are semi-automatic, as are several styles of rifle. While not technically semi-automatic, the functionality of revolvers is basically the same too. You pull the trigger and a bullet comes out. Release the trigger and pull it again, and another bullet comes out. This is in contrast to weapons where some other action must be performed before it is ready to fire again. For example pump shot guns, lever-action rifles, bolt-action rifles, and even some pistols need the user to manually manipulate some mechanism to load the next round before the trigger can be pulled again and another round fired.
They call it a “weapon of war.” Well, yeah, It is a weapon so it could be used to fight a war. So what? So is a Glock pistol. So is a tomahawk or a bow-and-arrow. What they really want the uninformed to think is that the AR-15 is some kind of ultra-deadly weapon of mass destruction that could only have military applications. This is silly. The AR-15 is an excellent choice for home defense. It is also a prime choice for varmint hunting. Some people use them to kill off nuisance animals. And it is extremely well suited to serving the prime function of the 2nd Amendment, defense against tyranny, both external and internal. The 223 cartridge fired by the AR-15 actually isn’t very powerful for a rifle round. In fact, it is significantly less powerful than a typical hunting round. Some States actually ban the 223 for deer hunting because it could result in an unethical kill (i.e. the animal might suffer a needlessly slow and painful death.) The 223 is virtually identical to the 5.56 NATO round used by the US military. Obviously, the military aren’t complete idiots, so what gives? Basically, the 223/5.56 was chosen as the standard military round because A) it is small, meaning soldiers can carry more of them so they are less likely to run out of ammo in a fight, and B) it has very light recoil making it much easier to keep on target when firing in fully-automatic (i.e. machine gun-like) mode. The 223 was definitely not chosen for it’s ballistic power or lethality.
They call it the “weapon of choice” for school shooters. I don’t know offhand what percentage of school shooters use AR-15 style rifles, but it certainly seems significant. Again, so what? The AR-15 is wildly popular in the United States. If some evil asshole is going to use a rifle to commit some atrocity, odds are pretty high it will be committed with an AR-15. If a hero stops a bad guy using a rifle of his own, odds are that will also be an AR-15. Part of the reason AR-15s are used so often is they are excellent weapons. Another reason is AR-15s are ubiquitous… which is also in part because they are excellent weapons. The “operating system of choice” for computer hackers is Microsoft Windows. The “phone of choice” for prank callers is the iPhone. Not because there is anything inherently bad about them. It is just what everybody uses because they are popular, effective, and widely supported. The implication Democrats want you to make is that without the AR-15, school shootings wouldn’t happen. Or at least they would be less deadly. This makes no sense. How much firepower do you think is required to slaughter school children cowering under their desks? The AR-15 is certainly up to the task, but so is virtually any other semi-automatic weapon in existence. (Along with many other weapon types, for that matter.) And when I say virtually every other semi-automatic weapon, that includes run-of-the-mill pistols. Don’t believe me? The deadliest school shooting ever in the United States is still the Virginia Tech massacre. In that shooting, an evil asshole named Seung-Hui Cho murdered 32 people and injured 17 others. The weapons he used were two small(-ish) semi-automatic handguns: a .22 caliber Walther P22 and a 9mm Glock 19. Most gun people think the .22 is woefully inadequate for personal defense because the cartridge is so underpowered (The idea being a personal defense gun needs to be immediately disabling. It doesn’t matter if the perp eventually bleeds out if he is still able to murder you in the meantime.) So clearly, you don’t need to have an AR-15 to murder a bunch of unsuspecting and defenseless bystanders.
Joe Biden used the fist 60 seconds of his address to the nation to display a little bit of empathy and offer some words of healing. With that obligatory formality out of the way, he was able to move on to his primary goal. Demonizing law-abiding gun owners and accusing Republicans of murdering children. All while shamelessly spewing anti-gun propaganda. Of course, he had to include his favorite stupid quip about deer not wearing Kevlar vests (Again, the 223 is not particularly powerful, and certainly not armor piercing. It’s an asinine saying, but he must have polling showing that it plays well with his firearms-ignorant base. Or maybe it actually sounds clever to his rotting old brain.) He then went on to tell a bullshit story (as he often does) about his personal anguish over how these types of shootings only seem to happen in America. The Twitter thread below, does a pretty good job of debunking this myth. I would recommend clicking the link and following the whole thing if you are interested.
A thread on how the media is telling you two major lies about mass shootings and gun control
1: Other countries with vastly stricter gun laws than the US have higher rates of mass shootings.
2: US jurisdictions w/ gun laws have exponentially higher rates of gun violence#2A
President Pants Load also tried to claim that the 1994 assault weapons ban was a rousing success. This is total bullshit. First of all, it didn’t even ban semi-automatic rifles, is just limited the number of features they could come with from the factory. Features and options which a shooter could easily buy separately and bolt on themselves after purchase if they were so inclined. It did limit the capacity of new magazines to 10 rounds. So, in the case of the AR-15, instead of the standard 30 round magazine you would get a 10 round magazine. You might say, “Wow, they reduced the number of rounds by 2/3. That is a big deal. No wonder people were safer.” The thing is, magazines are swappable. You can have multiple magazines loaded up and ready to go. As many as you can carry. That is the whole point of them. How long does it take to swap out the magazine in an AR-15? A total doofus could do it in 10 seconds or less. With practice, you can learn to do it in less than 3 seconds. How much difference is that 3-10 second pause going to make in a real world situation. If you are in a fire fight with another person shooting back at you, it could be the difference between life and death. If you are mowing down high schoolers hiding in closets or college kids stumbling out of a bar at closing, it won’t make any difference at all.
But Biden said gun deaths went down after the 1994 ban, you might complain. And, that is factually correct. However, the drop was a continuation of a decades long trend in falling violent crime. The impact of the ban on gun crime, if any, was indiscernible. Which is totally unsurprising to anyone who understands firearms and what the 1994 bill actually did. Biden went on to further say that mass shootings “tripled” after the ban expired. The truth is, the trend in mass shootings can vary wildly depending on how you define a “mass shooting.” The government itself has changed how it defines mass shootings several times over the years. The current definition is “a single incident where 4 or more people are shot.” I can’t find the link right now, but someone reworked the calculation using 3 and 5 as the number of victims, and in both cases the trend went in the opposite direction. I’ll leave it to you to speculate on why the government chose “4” as the magic number for the cutoff. What we can say for sure is the overall rate of gun violence was unaffected when the 1994 gun ban expired.
I’m going to be blunt. Guns are very dangerous. By design. All guns. Not just the AR-15. Any gun that is effective for self defense purposes will also be effective at slaughtering defenseless innocents. When the Democrats get on TV and say they respect the 2nd Amendment but just want “common sense” gun control laws, they are either ignorant or lying. Banning the AR-15 won’t reduce gun crime one iota in this country. The only way to put a meaningful dent in gun crime with a ban is to ban almost everything. Certainly all semi-automatic weapons would need to be banned. That includes the most popular sporting rifle in the world, the AR-15. It would include the most popular handgun in the world, the Glock. Every pistol designed for concealed carry. Virtually everything outside of bolt action hunting rifles and single shots. If you are an evil prick determined to murder innocent people and you have a modern firearm, you are going to be able to cause a lot of carnage. That is just the sad truth. So don’t say you support common sense gun laws as a means to reduce shootings and still maintain you support the 2nd Amendment. You either believe in the 2nd Amendment, or you don’t. You believe that people have a God-given right to defend themselves or you don’t. Fiddling around the edges won’t make a difference. And everybody who has thought the gun debate through realizes that. (This article is an excellent explanation of that point.) The Democrats “common sense” gun bans are just a foot in the door to get a little closer to their ultimate goal. A total ban on most, if not all, privately owned firearms in the United States. It might sound like a moderate position to only want to ban the “really dangerous” guns. But the reality is they are all really dangerous.
According to the FBI, rifles are only used in 3% of the murders committed using firearms in the United States. And that is considering all rifles, of which the AR-15 is just a subset. Even if you assume that 100% of those rifles were AR-15s. Even if you assume that every one of those people murdered by a rifle would have been saved, and not just murdered with a different kind of weapon. Even if you assume it is possible to confiscate the 10s of millions of AR-15s currently in circulation in the U.S., without causing the people to revolt. Even if you make all of those dubious assumptions, an AR-15 ban would still only reduce gun crime by 3%. In other words, it would be barely noticeable. 97% of the gun violence would still remain… at a bare minimum. Do you really believe the gun grabbers will be happy with that result? Do you really believe they will stop with the AR-15?
The Founders put the right to keep and bear arms right near the top of the Bill of Rights for a reason. They understood how crucial it was for the people to be able to defend themselves, both individually and collectively, to the security of the country and the protection of liberty. The Democrats and the left don’t believe in the right to keep and bear arms. They think it is a silly, frivolous, and self-indulgent right that serves no real purpose in the modern world. They think the 2nd Amendment is misguided, antiquated, and irrelevant in today’s society. They can’t imagine a scenario where citizens would need firearms to protect themselves. They think right wingers are a bunch of heartless, paranoid, gun nuts who love their AR-15s more than they love their own children. And they think allowing millions of racist, retrograde, nationalistic yokels to keep more firearms than most armies is crazy.
Conservatives believe that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is absolutely necessary to the security of a free state. Just like the 2nd Amendment says in plain language. We believe that guns are the last bastion against tyranny. We believe the right to own firearms for one’s own defense is an essential feature of liberty. We believe private gun ownership provides far more benefits to society than harm. And many of us believe that taking our guns by force is a line that we can not allow to be crossed. Once the government takes away a fundamental right, you will never get it back. And the left believes none of this. Which is why they are so flippant about allowing the government to disarm the citizenry for even the chance of a small benefit. It is quite easy to give up something you don’t actually value.
Ever since COVID, it feels like the global left has dramatically increased the push to advance their agenda. Clearly, they saw the lockdowns and the unprecedented power governments wielded over their citizenry as a sign that a new world order could be imposed without invoking too much of a backlash. The left now feels empowered to remake the entire world according to their vision. Biden even adopted the Build Back Better slogan that encapsulates this idea for his campaign. Disarming the hoi polloi is obviously a mandatory step to enacting their Great Reset. Even I am not cynical enough to think that is the only reason for the Democrats big push for gun bans. The tragedy in Texas affected us all. Our common desire to prevent future senseless tragedies is genuine. But the global political landscape is a backdrop that reinforces the left’s push to change the parameters of the gun debate. The left feels emboldened to try and make radical changes to society that would have been unthinkable just a couple of years ago. Yet they feel their window is closing. In the coming months, the 2nd Amendment is going to be attacked like never before. We must be ready and steel our resolve in it’s defense.
