Librado Romero/The New York Times
Randi Rodgers, 15, a champion shooter
dressed for her sport, demonstrated
her technique at the Wooster
Mountain Gun Club in Danbury, Conn.
Posted on 07/14/2002 4:58:17 AM PDT by Pharmboy
DANBURY, Conn., July 12. Karen Ali covers the courts for The News-Times in Danbury, but when it came to guns, she didn't know a flintlock from a firing pin.
"I was covering a murder trial," she said, "and I didn't know what a magazine was until I asked another reporter."
That's why Ms. Ali was at the Wooster Mountain Gun Club today, popping away with assorted revolvers, automatics and rifles, as a guest of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun manufacturers group. She was shown how the things she calls bullets which are actually called rounds are loaded in the magazine, and how the magazine goes into the receiver, which is inside the handle, called the grip, of an automatic, or in this case, a semiautomatic. And so on.
Librado Romero/The New York Times
Randi Rodgers, 15, a champion shooter
dressed for her sport, demonstrated
her technique at the Wooster
Mountain Gun Club in Danbury, Conn.
America's gun culture was not born on the wild frontier or in Hollywood fantasies but here in the river valley towns of Connecticut, where some of the great names in firepower Colt, Winchester, Smith & Wesson got their start and where many are still located.
Yet to expect the members of the Eastern news media to be able to compare, say, the advantages of open sights versus closed sights as readily as they can discuss the relative merits of arugula versus endive is to ask the impossible, to hear the gun makers tell it.
To them, the problem is far from academic. While gun sales have been increasing, especially after the attacks of Sept. 11, the gun manufacturers are under severe threat from a series of lawsuits that seek to hold them and their distributors responsible for abetting criminal gun violence. And the gun industry believes it sees a lack of basic understanding about its main product in the news stories about the gun control debate.
So in a breathtaking act of faith, manufacturers figured that putting guns in the hands of reporters for a day might help win, if not sympathy, at least understanding.
"We just thought we ought to be talking to you guys," said Michael Bane, a Colorado writer and publicist who has organized a dozen or so shooting sessions for the news media around the country. To be invited, it helps to have written an article the industry deemed negative.
"And when you have a question about shooting, maybe you'll call us," Mr. Bane continued. "Lots of reporters, when they have a question about guns, they call the Brady people, which is like calling the Klan for information on the N.A.A.C.P."
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, as it happens, is one of the groups that is suing the gun makers, and Dennis Henigan, its legal director in Washington, did not like Mr. Bane's quip at all. "I find the quote just outrageous and insulting," he said. "To compare us in any way to the Ku Klux Klan, to me, it just suggests an increasing desperation on the part of the gun industry."
Yet Mr. Henigan did not dispute the gun makers' sense that the news media is not always gun savvy.
"That is probably the case, but no more than journalists are conversant on other dangerous products," he said. "The mistake, though, would be to turn to the gun industry for that information rather than other sources, because they have their own profit-motivated bias."
With the news media out to lunch and the courts bearing down on them, the gun people are looking for friends wherever they can find them. They have one in David Rostcheck, a representative of the Pink Pistols, a gay shooters group whose symbol is an inverted pink triangle with a shooter inside, and whose motto is, "Pick on someone your own caliber."
"Gun owners face many of the same biases the gay community has faced," said Mr. Rostcheck, who was at the range that day. "They don't always get a fair shake in the media, and they don't know how to get their point of view across."
Mr. Bane said all types find a warm welcome in the gun world. "The way we see it is, if you shoot, we're cool," he said.
He said he didn't expect that every scribbler would be won over by the kick of a gun and a whiff of gun smoke. But it appeared to have had the desired effect on Ms. Ali, from The News-Times. She still doesn't get the fascination with guns ≈ "I think they're ugly, and in the movies they look so cool, you know?" ≈ but she liked a cute little number from Smith & Wesson called the LadySmith.
"I got a kick out of shooting, and I'm thinking of getting one," she said. "I want to get one. I really do."
No Dennis--it is an appropriate comparison. Neither you nor the KKK respect individual rights and you are both extremists. Live with it.
This is quite interesting, eh? A non-negative article on the gun industry by the Times. Has hell frozen over?
Many interesting things brought up in this article, for example, the inclusiveness of the gunners.
Let's try this one, 'Calling the Brady people on guns, is like calling Stalin for info on Freedom of the press', or 'Calling Brady on guns is like calling Nazis on religious rights'.
"That is probably the case, but no more than journalists are conversant on other dangerous products," he said.
Nice little slam there, Brady boy
"The mistake, though, would be to turn to the gun industry for that information rather than other sources, because they have their own profit-motivated bias."
And what motivates the Bradys? I suspect some are profit-motivated, after all their 'eternal' struggle, like the NAALCP does pay the rent. For most I suspect a Socialist agenda that includes disarming America.
Still totally toasty I'm sure, gotta have a warm seat for the management of the Times and the Brady's.
I'm sure the editors like at least one story a year like this, it keeps them 'balanced' against the hundred anti-gun stories they'll publish.
True enough, but they did publish this in the Sunday Times for maximum exposure rather than Saturday's paper for minimal exposure. Maybe 9-11 has gotten to some of the Gray Ladies' Reds?
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, as it happens, is one of the groups that is suing the gun makers
Sarah Brady, please explain how an inanimate object can harm a person. Perhaps you could start by explaining how a rock can hurt a person and progress to explain how a boot can hurt a person. Then explain how a drug can hurt a person. Then you could move on to explain how a gun can hurt a person.
Or will you concede that an inanimate object in and of itself cannot harm a person.
inanimate: 1 : not animate: a : not endowed with life or spirit b : lacking consciousness or power of motion
2 : not animated or lively :
Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards
Hmmm. I would've thought you knew the difference...;-)
The War of Two Worlds
Value Creators versus Value Destroyers
Politics is not the solution. It's the problem!
The first thing civilization must have is business/science. It's what the family needs so that its members can live creative, productive, happy lives. Business/science can survive, even thrive without government/bureaucracy.
Government/bureaucracy cannot survive without business/science. In general, business/science and family is the host and government/bureaucracy is a parasite.
Aside from that, keep valid government services that protect individual rights and property. Military defense, FBI, CIA, police and courts. With the rest of government striped away those few valid services would be several fold more efficient and effective than they are today.
Underwriters Laboratory is a private sector business that has to compete in a capitalist market. Underwriters laboratory is a good example of success where government fails.
Any government agency that is a value to the people and society -- which there are but a few -- could better serve the people by being in the private sector where competition demands maximum performance.
Wake up! They are the parasites. We are the host. We don't need them. They need us.
Take a non-shooter to the range today. Even if they're leftists. If they don't get a big doofy grin on their face, the first time they manage to put lead on the target, they probably aren't people you want to spend any time around. You'll probably make a convert.
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