I can’t even keep track of all the lies the media tells about guns; about “high powered” “assault weapons” (.223 has less than half of the muzzle energy of common hunting rounds such as .270 Win.), about the lack of background checks at gun shows, or about the dangers posed by CCW holders (who typically commit fewer crimes than police!).
But here’s a good one you might have seen this morning: The New York Times says the NRA has hypocrically banned guns from its convention (they have since issued a very limited correction).
The most basic of journalistic responsibility requires that you call someone for comment. Or in this case, take 30 seconds to read the NRA’s convention webpage, that spells all of this out.
My question is this: if you can’t get the most basic, simple, easily-confirmed factual matters correct, how can you POSSIBLY have any confidence that your opinions on the issues are worth anything? If I were to, I don’t know, get into a shouting argument with the NYT’s opera critic over the greatest living opera singer, and discover that someone I had believed to be a tenor was actually a baritone, might that be cause for me to reconsider my strongly-held views? Or maybe (just maybe), stay the hell out of opera debates altogether, since I know as much about opera as an elephant knows about economics?
No. They know they’re right about the difficult and complicated stuff, even when they are provably wrong about the easy and simple stuff.
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