“Every hour a child is rushed to the emergency room because of gunshots,” Diane Sawyer intones, introducing the network’s special report on children and guns. Yes, well, TTAG eviscerated the study upon which ABC’S “special report” is based here. Specifically, we pointed out that the study sample included children and teens. A fact that Sawyer’s co-anchor David Muir also ignores in his second intro. It’s only until we get into the news package that the network acknowledges the teen component – without mentioning that gang bangers account for a large percentage of those numbers. It gets worse . . .
The report earns the prestigious “50 seconds of FUD” award for major misdirection when the anchor whacks viewers on the head with the stat “7,391 children [italics added] per year hospitalized by guns” and follows with “so often accidents in the home” with a video of a shotgun being removed from its hidey hole. How often are these injuries and deaths related to unattended loaded firearms? Not specified. As a percentage of the total, not so often.
ABC focuses on firearms-related accidents because they don’t involve criminal intent. Focusing on the statistically significant incidents of teenage gang-related firearms injuries and fatalities would completely ruin the net’s narrative: guns are dangerous. Not people. Not gangs of people. Guns. The headline stat mentioned above highlights the point. The “children” were “hospitalized by guns.” Not negligent discharges and criminal acts. Guns!
“1.7 million children live in a home with an unlocked and loaded firearm,” the report tells us (without attribution). Seems to me that would indicate just how safe firearms are, given that you can round down the number of children “injured or killed by these guns” to zero. Of course, stats are funny that way; they’re fairly easily debunked. But anecdotes? Anecdotes are convincing!
And so, once again, ABC devises an experiment carefully designed to piss on guns, gun owners and the National Rifle Association (NRA). Nick can tell you the experiment’s procedural defects. I’ll simply point out three facts: 1) the NRA’s Eddie the Eagle program has saved thousands of lives, 2) the teacher told the kids that the gun was in the classroom for a memory test, which implies that an authority figure considers it safe to handle, and 3) we didn’t see ANY of the children who DID NOT play with the gun hidden amongst candy and toys.
“We want to hear from everyone tonight, joining forces, on all sides of the issue,” Sawyer concludes. Yeah? How about those of us who want gun safety courses in public schools, from early Eddy the Eagle instruction to hands-on safety classes for pre-teens to rifle teams for high schools? And how about ABC teaming-up with American gun makers to air Public Service Announcements on gun safety (e.g., the four rules)?
Based on this taster, ABC’s “Young Guns” report on Friday will be another anti-gun extravaganza. Meanwhile, note that the “year in the making” ABC report is airing at the same time as Pediatrics published the gun control-masquerading-as-science study. What’s the bet ABC colluded with Dr. Sege to produce this anti-gun agitprop? If so, how great is that?