Oaksterdam Tribune - Where weed, journalism and gun control intersect

Cowboy Confessional ^ | 7/2/2012 | Guy Smith

[guyshomenet]

Oakland California is ground-zero for recreational drug use, which apparently continues to affect the dwindling staff at the Oakland Tribune.

Like some other San Francisco Bay Area rags, the Trib has a congenital dislike for private firearm ownership, though in the wake of continuing gun control movement defeats our local press has suddenly become concerned with how criminals get guns and less about guns themselves. Sadly, the media’s meandering modus operandi retains the end goal of enacting more useless gun control laws.

Hence, the Oaksterdam Tribune’s recent propaganda piece of inveigling ink, proving once again that the paper is better rolled than read.

The bulletin’s backstory concerns a band of convicted felons who created a network devoted to acquiring and transporting firearms into other criminal hands (no, this gang is not the BATFE). Police – doing good work – identified and brought-down the smugglers, a fact obscured in the Trib’s dribble of facts intermixed with conjecture and contradictory data. The newspaper’s goal was to create a call for gun control at the federal level while freedom-unfriendly forces still occupy the White House. Like the alleged intent of operation Fast and Furious, a case needed to be made where no case existed. To create this case, Oakland’s leading newspaper (which is the measure for how low the local journalistic bar has been set) had to present propaganda.

Early on, the Trib complains “In California … buyers undergo background checks and a waiting period before they can take home a gun. But in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada -- some of the biggest sources of illegal guns in California -- there is no waiting period.” The Catalog of Canards defines this paragraph as The Lie of Non Sequiturs (combining vaguely related, or completely unrelated, information to create a false impression or conclusion). Foremost, all states require background checks for firearms purchased from dealers, which is federal law. But the Trib’s sentence construction was designed to convince people without this knowledge that some states do not require dealer background checks by intermingling the unrelated topics of waiting periods (which are not universal or sane) and background checks (which are both). The goal is to accuse other states – where violent crime rates are lower – as the source of California’s and Oakland’s gangland woes. They failed.

It's Hard out Here for the Press.

Key to the Trib’s tirade is the assumption that “lax” laws elsewhere are the source of grief in Oakland. This perjury appeared early and often in the article, well above a map showing that California was 12 time above the next most likely state as a source of crime guns – in other words, Oakland’s home state is the biggest contributor to gangland bloodshed. Given this admitted fact, it is odd that the Oakland Fishwrapper glorifies California’s tougher gun control since it appears to have the opposite and undesirable effect. Even Arizona, the neighboring state where our federal government runs guns for the Mexican mafia, is positively deficient in terms of Oakland’s firearm supply.

Newspapers should not contradict themselves in the same column inch.

One revealing canard in the Oakland Spittoon’s piece is the intermingling of gun buys, gun dealers and gun shows. The article notes (we hope correctly) that the newly re-incarcerated gang leader had his agents buy guns at gun stores (who tipped off the police) and at gun shows. The implication is that gun shows are a problem because the Tribune also included the obnoxiously incorrect term “gun show loophole” and a rather unsteady and heavily edited video taken at a gun show in neighboring Nevada (why, pray tell didn’t they video the near-by San Francisco gun show). What the Oakland Tribunal didn’t disclose is if the criminal network bought guns from federally licensed dealers at gun shows, which is the same as buying them at gun stores (same rules, regulations, paperwork, background checks, ad nauseum). This reporting rift likely leads us to The Lie of Omission (purposefully excluding information to inappropriately change beliefs about an issue). Forget that the reporter asserts that “assault rifles” were acquired (those are machine guns that require months of paperwork, extra background checks and heavy taxes) or that this criminal network likely bought many of their guns in California – the article fails on even basic correctness much less identifying the true cause, effect and cure (criminals, gang violence, good police work).

To my few remaining friends at the Tribune I beg: quit tokin’ ganga before deadline.

[UCANSEE2]

Oaksterdam Turbine.