Gun language facts...

Ignorant Journalists, Guns and Disinformation

by Paul Huebl

There are those journalists who seem to think are experts on firearms. At least that’s what they want their readers and viewers think. For the most part they’ve never fired a gun and if they have it was not under the supervision of a professional trainer.

These folks write and speak words for a living, so they want to be colorful and use what they feel are the strongest terms and phrases. Too often they don’t have a clue what they are talking about. That’s when their ignorance is laid bare.

Here are the most misused terms:

Assault Rifle
High Powered Rifle
Point Blank Range
Execution Style
Clip

Journalists for some reason believe cops are experts on firearms. Some of them are but its rarely the police bosses or their department spokespeople. Reporters most often quote gibberish from their police sources.

Most readers think they know just what these terms mean. Okay here are the answers:
An assault rifle is a long gun or carbine that fires more than a single round for each pull of the trigger. Often the term Machine gun is used and that can be wrong too. Then there is the sub-machine gun. Confused? Each term has a different meaning. It may be time to do a little enterprising research!

High Powered Rifles. Carbines like the M-4, M-16 or AK-47 or the semi-automatic look-alike cousins are a lot of things but high powered is never one of them. When you say high-powered you are speaking of heavy ammunition with a lot of lead and gun powder. .308, 30-06 or larger rounds can be considered high powered compared to smaller round fired by the aforementioned carbines or hand gun rounds.

Point Blank Range. I have seen great defense attorneys embarrass seasoned cops who have used this term during court testimony. Okay officer, would you please explain to the jury just what point blank range is? Are you scratching your head now? Don’t ever use a term you can’t easily define just because it sounds cool.
Execution Style. Again this term is generally misused when a defenseless victim is shot, perhaps while on their knees. However execution style is being tied to a stake, blindfolded and shot by riflemen. That hopefully only happens after some Due Process. Avoid this term except in actual executions by firing squads.
Clip. A clip for firearms is a metal device that holds ammunition rounds together. There are very few types of firearms that require clips. People trying to describe ammunition magazines redundantly and ignorantly use the term clip. Clip and magazine are not synonyms.

I ask every so -called journalist who reports crime stories; why not take a simple firearms course? Why stay ignorant?

One last thing! Gun store owners or salespeople are not NRA spokespeople! The may know guns but they are the wrong people to ask about gun control. Call the NRA and they will get you to the right local person for a really interesting soundbite.

Link:
http://www.crimefilenews.com/2012/10/ignorant-journalists-guns-and.html