As predicted, ABC's 20/20 show last night was a propaganda piece on guns. Except for work done by John Stossel, 20/20 has a history of wearing their agenda on their sleeve and they don't even pretend to be unbiased. 20/20 clearly had their conclusion before they started, they only needed to make their story match that desired conclusion.
So let the fun begin:
20/20 asks children what President Obama should do about guns. While the kids were cute, implying that little kids have the maturity to determine our country's policies on freedom is just plain, er, childish. But the anti-gun modus operandi is to use emotion and not logical thought when it comes to guns and 20/20 didn't break out of the mold.
They played up the "gun show loophole" myth during the show, never mentioning that there is nothing you can do at legally at a gun show that you can't do legally outside a gun show. Nope, why confuse people with key information like that?
And then there was a segment where they gave Omar Samaha, whose sister was murdered at Virginia Tech, $5000 and an hour to buy guns at the Richmond gun show.
The first gun that Omar purchased, from someone standing in line, was a Glock. 20/20 then says that it was chilling that he was sold that gun, since one like it was used to kill his sister.
A Glock? That's probably one of the most common handguns in America. Gee, what were the odds?
He then proceeded to buy various rifles and shotguns over that hour.
Image the horror - here was an adult buying legal products and in quantity! Guess 20/20 never shops at Costco.
20/20 completely missed the point that criminals are always going to get guns and gun control laws aren't even going to slow them down.
20/20 also did a segment where a shooter opens fire in a college class room with an airsoft gun. They have one or two students in the classroom who are armed and get to fire back. The scenarios they showed always had their "expert" being the shooter and never the student.
While they made an attempt to simulate a real situation, I wasn't impressed. In real life, return fire from good guys would have disrupted and thrown the shooter off balance as he tried to avoid getting shot himself.
Everyone in the classroom started running in panic. However, shootings at Virginia Tech and other schools show that students don't tend to run in panic, but to hunker down in place. Also the students don't seem to offer any resistance to the shooter in real life.
The shooter was just too unconcerned to be believable. I'm sure that was largely because he knew he wasn't really going to die if he was hit with an airsoft projectile.
While 20/20 pointed out that the students with guns didn't seek cover, but just stood up and started shooting in place, a person's instincts to get to cover would be different if someone is shooting a real gun at at them.
And MOST IMPORTANTLY, 20/20 conveniently didn't point out just how many students would have survived because of the major distraction the armed students provided for the shooter. That was HUGE. But 20/20 didn't even bring it up.
Instead 20/20 concluded that since the armed students might not have survived this surprise attack or there might have been some collateral damage, that everyone would be better off unarmed and trying to flee or playing dead. The "I'm unarmed, please don't hurt me" technique of self defense.
Yeah - we saw how well that technique worked at Virginia Tech.
One other aspect 20/20 didn't touch on: at many of the school shootings, people in classrooms could hear gun shots from other rooms. With armed students that would provide time to setup an ambush for the bad guy as soon as he walks into the classroom.
Jack Rumbah, with Suarez International, ran just such a scenario last year in a classroom using airsoft guns. The result was the bad guy got creamed every time, with little or no harm to the students in the classroom.
I wonder why 20/20 didn't use data already available from Suarez International or another professional self-defense entity rather than setting up their own test with something they have no expertise in? Surely a "news" organization wasn't trying to ensure in advance that there was only one possible conclusion?
I would like to have seen what would have happened if 20/20 would have let one of the regular students be the shooter and let 20/20's expert be a student sitting in the classroom. That is every bit as likely a scenario as the one 20/20 used and probably would have been a really bad scenario for the shooter. But 20/20 wouldn't have liked the outcome vis-a-vis their desired conclusion.
We're better of unarmed and helpless? Sorry 20/20, you go right ahead and follow your own foolish advice, but I'll take my chances with a gun in my hand.
For those who want to read the details of Jack Rumbah's classroom simulation, here is the article. It's a real eye opener. Too bad ABC didn't contact Jack:
http://www.vcdl.org/pdf/Force-on-Force-Aug-Sept-07.pdf
I didn't watch the show, but they had the segment of the guy buying at the gunshow on the 6pm news.
In addition to everything you said, what struck me was that ABC news essentially set up a strawman purchase. Something that is highly illegal (it's what Hillary is getting upset with in the Mexican border incidents).
Chip H.
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