The Media’s Five Biggest Fake Gun Control Stories in 2017

Last year, 2016, was officially the “Year of the Monkey” on the Chinese calendar, but it may be more appropriate to call 2017 the “Year of Fake News.”

Initially started as an explanation for Donald Trump’s supposedly unexplainable rise in popularity by those in the media, the term “fake news” quickly became weaponized by the political right, climaxing with Trump telling CNN’s Jim Acosta to his face “you are fake news.”

You didn’t have to look far to find examples of contradictory reporting from media outlets, desperate for whatever spin they could muster to attack Trump. Take the example of the NFL as exhibit A. After Trump took a stance against the “taking a knee” protests, and players fired back, NFL viewership did decline. So how did CNN report the obvious fact that ratings were declining? As follows:

Real consistent there, Frank.

Among the other countless cases of fake news we saw during 2017 was in regarding to a topic the media consistently craps the bed on: guns.

As the Daily Signal reported,

President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are strongly pro-Second Amendment, which means new gun control laws were dead on arrival in 2017.

But the mainstream media, not to be quietly defeated, exposed its anti-gun bias more than ever this year. The national newspapers and left-wing TV networks continued to churn out unbalanced reports on gun crime and laws, while refusing to learn accurate terminology. Here are the top offenders.

Here’s the rundown.

1. USA Today – The Introduction of the Chainsaw Bayonet

During a report on the recent Texas church shooter’s AR-15 style rifle, we learned about the number of possible accessories one could add onto a rifle. Among them was, and you can’t make this up, a “chainsaw bayonet.”

The tweet, which was widely mocked by all corners of the internet, remains up today. Here’s what an actual chainsaw bayonet may look like:

Seems a bit excessive.

2. CNN Thinks There’s a Mass Public Shooting Every Single Day

Did you know that since the horrific Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, there’s been a similar massacre every single day? There hasn’t, but here’s CNN’s Jim Acosta claiming there has been:

Incredible, ain’t it? There’s a Columbine everyday, and the gun-control-obsessed liberals in the media don’t even bother to cover it!

Of course, that’s because this is a bogus statistic. How did Acosta arrive at it? Simple: Change the definition of a mass public shooting from “a shooting in which four or more are killed in a public place” to “a shooting in which four or more are shot in a public place.” All of a sudden, most gang shootouts become “mass public shootings.” The average number of people killed annually in mass public shootings (accurately defined) is only 23 over the past 30 years.

A more accurate argument would’ve been something along the lines of: There’s a mass public shooting daily in our gun-controlled cities.

3. NBC Claims No New Gun Laws

According to NBC, even under the presidency of Barack Obama, there weren’t any new gun control regulations put into effect. Why?

NBC puts the blame on anti-gun groups not being unified against the powerful NRA. (That would come as big a surprise to the Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, and other pro-Second Amendment groups.)

NBC also nonsensically reports that gun control groups can’t compete with the resources of the NRA. It leaves out that those groups receive tens of millions of dollars from billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, while the NRA is funded by its grassroots members.

Two points. First, the only reason groups like the NRA are so powerful in the first place is because they represent a large portion of America, and second, Barack Obama passed 23 gun control regulations through executive order. They all have been instrumental in preventing zero shootings.

4. Assault Weapon Ban Amnesia 

In a November story about the tragic church shooting in Texas, The Economist cites “mass shooting” data from Mother Jones, a far-left outlet, rather than government agencies. Then the reporter writes that the shooter used an AR-15, which “was prohibited in 1994, but legalized in 2004 when America’s assault-weapons ban expired.”

That’s true, but not the whole story. The ban expired because Congress determined it was not effective in decreasing the number of homicides by rifle. The reader is left with the false impression that lack of a gun ban was directly responsible for the horrific church shooting.

And by the way, liberals don’t want to ban rifles because they’re the most dangerous form of gun (in fact, they’re among the least when it comes to the annual homicide statistics), they want to because they look the scariest.

5. The Worlds Largest Pistol 

A story published by the associated press claimed that authorities recovered a “40mm pistol” from the scene of the crime.

The gun was actually a .40 caliber pistol (which they eventually corrected after the error was pointed out) – a “40mm pistol” would’ve been a pistol about the size of a cannon or grenade launcher.

Funny stuff – but horrifying that these people influence public opinion.

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