“[Clayton Brumby] reacted reflexively when a hot shell casing bounced inside his shirt back,” Tom Lyons [above] writes at the Sarasota, Florida herald-tribune.com. “When he quickly reached to get the hot metal out of his shirt, he did so with the hand holding the gun and accidentally pulled the trigger, firing behind him toward where his son was watching.”
Lyons go on:
No obvious safety procedure had been purposely or lackadaisically violated. It was a reflex action, a moment of fast and natural response without thinking. And reflexive action is inherently dangerous when holding a device designed to fire deadly hunks of metal.
Obviously, Mr. Brumby didn’t shoot his son “purposely” or “lackadaisically.” Nevertheless, he violated two obvious safety rules: he pointed his gun in an unsafe direction and he had his finger on the trigger when his sights were not on [a legitimate] target. Anyone even vaguely familiar with The Four Rules of Gun Safety would know this.
Anyone who bothered to ask someone who knows about guns would know this. And anyone with basic literary skills and access to Google would be instantly aware of Mr. Brumby’s fatal safety violations. (We’re talking 10,600,000 results for “gun safety rules” in 0.64 seconds.)
In short, Lyons is using weasel words to stretch the truth, to make it seem like guns are too dangerous for average folk, no matter what safety procedures they think they’ve mastered.
I see this all the time: journalists and commentators writing anti-gun screeds who get the basic facts wrong and/or ignore inconvenient truth. They provide plain old wrong or entirely misleading information which just happens to support their crusade for civilian disarmament. Not to mention the President of the United States, who recently railed against criminal access to “automatic weapons.”
Which leaves us with a question: is Mr. Lyons and his like lying, ignorant or just willfully ignorant? Are these lying liars or ignorant intellectuals covering their ears and shouting “lalalalala” whenever they write about gun control? Note: journalists are some of the laziest people I’ve ever met.
By the way: the comments sections of various publication always contain technical and statistical corrections from The People of the Gun. Which never seem to figure in subsequent news articles or editorials. I wonder why that is.
They’re neither. They’re a money making business who will say anything to increase clicks. Blood sells.
^^^^^^THIS!!!!!!
column inches for coin
Well then that begs the question as to why they are so anti gun. If guns and blood sells, why would they want to end the carnage by eliminating them? Of course we know that the guns have nothing to do with it, but there’s Robert’s original question again…
Willfully misleading and selective reporting for proper portrayal of approved “right think.”
Definitely lying. Gun owners regularly offer to provide knowledge and experience, but this falls on deaf ears.
In earlier times I imagine they were “stretching the truth for the greater good”.
This has morphed into “the truth as I see it” with no concern for how the truth has been stretched beyond belief and to the breaking point.
No lie or fabrication is too outlandish when you’re defending ‘the cause’.
Note: I’ve seen this phenomenon on the soccer field. When your guy does it, it was a ‘good, clean tackle…he got all ball ref’. When the other guy does it, it was a dirty foul worthy of a red card.
My opinion, There are some people out there who are so terrified of firearms that rational thought is impossible. They don’t know anything about guns, I’ve attempted to talk with some anti-gun people that when I discussed the possibility of them learning about firearms and maybe going to a range to overcome this fear and ignorance they had such a epic freak out it was sad and kinda comical. I have heard someone say she would rather see her children killed and herself be raped before she would pick up a gun and take a person’s life.
Lord! If someone said that to me and their child was somewhere around, I would insist that they look their child in the eye and tell him/her that they would rather see them dead. Especially if they have a daughter- what rational, sane, loving parent would truly say to their daughter “I’d rather see you raped and killed then to defend you.” I couldn’t believe anyone if they said something like that.
Yes, when I heard those words in that order I lost the ability to speak for about 2 minutes.
All too often, it is exactly this:
A hoplophobe is much like a herpephobe declaring “the only good snake is a dead snake”.
Both types actually know few facts about that which frightens them and have no intention of learning… thus – all of our protestations to their WILLFUL ignorance will always fall on deaf ears.
The best we can do is to properly educate those fence-sitters whose minds are open to new, if somewhat frightening, ideas that guns and those people who own them are not what the media keeps telling them they are.
Never attribute to Malice, what you can attribute to Stupidity. I wholeheartedly believe that these folks are just…..that….dumb…..
In this case, sir, I believe you have this exactly backwards:
“Never attribute to stupidity that which is obviously based on malice aforethought.”
Yes. Never let anything as trivial as the truth get in the way of the narrative. In this case the narrative is ‘guns are dangerous and can just go off all by themselves (unless you’re a cop)’. The gun must be blamed.
I’m sure some are ignorant and others willfully so and others still maliciously so.
The older I get though the more I have to conclude that journalist along with politicians, doctors, mechanics, tradesmen and virtually anyone in any field is just as broken, biased and lazy as any other human being.
Even when it comes to relatively mundane reporting journalists never ask any real questions, they never follow up, they never call out the people their interviewing even if they have a recorded sound bite from just minutes before to aid them.
My guesstimate is that from every socioeconomic level and all walks of life 90% of the time 100% of the people are half-assing it whatever their “it” happens to be. From Washington to Cronkite, from Billy Mays to Ron Popeil they’re all just morons going through the motions hoping to die before anyone calls them on it.
Is there much of a difference between lying and being willfully ignorant? Maybe if you factor in plain intellectual laziness of almost all main stream media members. Most probably know better that the should try to confirm what they believe are the facts. They choose not to do so to preserve a narrative. Either way, it is evil and despicable.
Some people are ignorant, some people have an agenda and others just write stuff to generate clicks.
It’s hard to know about the motives or ignorance behind one writer’s statement but in any case the Florida-Herald Tribune could clearly benefit from a better editor. Back when newspapers where more than dead-tree blogs, this article would likely not have seen the light of day.
Common sense is not very common these days.
“Common sense is not very common these days.”
Hmm. I can’t quite place it … that sentiment seems awfully familiar … almost like déjà vu.
??
If that’s an honest question RF, you lose a great deal of credibility.
Rhetorical, as in “Frankly my dear. I don’t give a damn.”
It’s time to stop pussyfooting around obvious truths. Real dialogue is impossible until we do so.
Why sweat the details when all you care about is using the narrative to raise a desired emotional response from the reader?
Dude, I am in NO WAY endorsing any kind of anti BS, but you’re not reading what the guy actually wrote. A paraphrase would go something like, “he didn’t violate any safety rules out of laziness or willfulness, he just reacted reflexively to a stimulus.” He’s not saying no safety rules were violated, just that they were violated involuntarily. That’s a poor argument, of course, and the next step will surely be “…and therefore we can’t allow these dumb animals access to stuff they’ll hurt themselves with,” so screw that. BUT, if you go around spouting off about how “ignorant” the antis are and then demonstrate that you can’t even READ, you’re not helping our side. You’re just validating their stereotype of us as a bunch of morons.
I think I might be done with this site. I see stuff like this too often, and it hurts our side. So long…
Point taken. text amended.
Thank you. I noticed that too and was just about to point it out when I saw someone had beaten me to it.
I’ve had hot 9mm brass go down my shirt before. Tucked in, and outdoors in the snow at that, so it wasn’t coming out. I still managed to keep my finger off the trigger and the gun pointed safely towards the ground downrange. Make of that what you will, but “involuntary?”
Tom
Hell, I’ve seen a guy severely roll his ankle during a USPSA stage, he fell in pain, all the while keeping the gun straight downrange until the RO could take it and clear it for him.
How about willful liars? The pace and volume of corrections has been so loud and frequent of late that even left wing publications have admitted they have a problem with using broken/dishonest terminology, and yet they still do. I submit that a man as supposedly intelligent as Barrack Obama would have to know that he is being dishonest in his statements when he has been corrected and fact-checked so many times but continues to spout the same lies.
What about the constant lies, deceit and heavily debunked crap the “pro-gun” side continues to crap out.
What about the NRA, the repukes and the gun lobby which has a financial and vile hold on congress, media and the government.
I don’t see the rest of the civilized world falling for this nihilistic, darwinist doom and gloom, more guns less crime crap the NRA and Gun lobby continue to promote.
Face it, You people are losing!
Too bad you brainwashed sheeple have your heads buried in the sand to understand.
I think these commie traitors have an agenda. That’s ok. So do free people. Our agenda involves them getting a short drop and a sudden stop.
Yeah I just got done saying this on another post. It is a combination of both. On one hand they know that if they were to educate people on the realities of gun ownership, knowledge usually brings with it a lack of fear. You fear what you do not know. So keeping up the narrative with obviously false reporting is to your benefit if you are trying to push an anti gun position. On the other hand, there are clearly those in the media that are just not familiar with guns and terminology surrounding guns. They simply get tasked to cover a story about firearms and don’t do the leg work required to get the story straight and take witness or police garb such as “assault rifle” at face value.
Of course this doesn’t excuse those with security clearance and dozens of advisors/briefing like the POTUS or any high ranking candidate for office for lying. You have ample time, effort, and manpower behind you to get the terminology and facts correct so that is pure narrative.
The press are ignorant of most everything they write, and it shows. It isn’t just guns – look at any story with nuance and detail that they cover. The press mishandles most any story with lots of technical details, regardless of the topic. Science, engineering, computer hacking, banking/finance, military events, aviation, economics, you name it, they know jack-all about it.
This condition comes about because most of the people in ‘journalism’ were humanities or liberal arts majors in their undergrad career, then they discovered that they either couldn’t get much of a job with that BA, or they decided they were going to “save the world,” and they got into J-school, where they learned even less about the real world. They then take up jobs where they work on deadline and believe it better to be first to publish or air their work before they have their facts straight, because being first is worth more to them than being correct.
All of this – their choice of education, lack of training and lack of interest in the facts – makes them willfully and deliberately ignorant.
To quote a fellow gunsmith who was in the USA as EOD: “It’s OK to be ignorant – everyone is ignorant of something. What really offends people is being proud of your ignorance.” That pithy quote (uttered about a gunsmithing student who was proudly showing off a large HSS drill bit he had friction-welded into a piece of 1018), is so very apt about the American press.
You could say almost the exact same things about politicians.
Willfully deceitful.
Lying. Like they do about everything.
They’re John Stewart, and Bill Mar – selling a moment’s feeling of “I’m better than them.” to people.willing to pay for that.
They’re S N L after it became an institution, only “going after” President Obama, or presumptive nominee Clinton once the audience had moved on from “That’s my hero.” to “At least my pick is better than those people, so, so am I.”
It’s snark, which assumes the joke’s already made, parading as journalism. Snark is mockery, not comedy. To do comedy, you have to come up with something new.
These days, everyone in political “journalism” thinks they are writing for The West Wing, or should be. The problem is, this is the really real world. You don’t get to build the scene to make your T V Clinton look good. In the real world, you engage in politics with the Clinton you have.
They’re not so much willfully blind as bad fabulists. If they were better at writing fiction, they might come up with something original. But that would require their audience to think, vs. relive a dis already in place. That’s not what they are selling.
Both.
Next question.
Can be both. I think it is.
As someone has said repeatedly recently: “Embrace the power of ‘and’ .”
Why not all of the above, ignorant liars who make a conscious decision to remain that way.
That guy looks like Rorschach from the Watchmen. Rorschach would not approve.
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If you’re a “journalist,” you lie. It’s what you do.
To be willfully ignorant you know deep down what the truth is but cannot bring yourself to face it. Denial of the threat from Islam falls into this category.
Journalists are just ignorant. They “know” things with the certainty that comes from arrogance and contempt for their audience.
Yes.
What I have seen:
Gun-grabbers oppose guns for emotional reasons and truth is quite literally irrelevant.
Thus, gun grabbers simply lob statement after statement after statement until something strikes a cord with their listener. In other words gun grabbers vomit words until they connect with their listener on an emotional level. Their words will range all over the place, from subtle/slight inaccuracies to blatant lies. Truth is of no consequence. All that matters is connecting on an emotional level and gaining allies.
No safety procedure, at least none that are obvious to this scribe who knows nothing of gun safety and is too lazy to learn anything, could have prevented this mishap…
I’m with hobbez. They’re stupid-really stupid.
By the way: the comments sections of various publication always contain technical and statistical corrections from The People of the Gun. Which never seem to figure in subsequent news articles or editorials. I wonder why that is.
Facts are uncomfortable when they don’t fit the narrative or your preconceived notions. Journalists however use the “credible sources” excuse to avoid looking at those facts. Comments in a comment section without doing the legwork to contact the person who made the comment or seeking out an “expert” on the topic is just “hearsay” and can therefore be excluded.
But it’s more insidious than that. Journalists want credentials. A BA/BS from here and a Masters/PhD from there in certain subjects. Now if you pay attention, a Masters in “Public Policy” qualifies one as an “expert” on guns but only if you hold anti gun views and do research on preventing gun violence. Those with pro-gun views must have better credentials and since there’s no way to get a Masters in “Firearms”, there are no “experts” on our side that are “credible”.
Just watch a debate on this on TV news. They’ll say “We’ve got two opposing views here. First, we have Mr X. He’s got a Bachelor’s in Public Policy from Cornell University and a PhD in Statistics from Harvard. He’s a professor at [insert school], has done extensive research on the damage guns do to communities has received multiple awards and citation and is an expert on [insert something flashy here].. Also joining us tonight is Mr. Y, he’s the assistant director of [insert pro-gun org here].” See the difference? One is a highly trained “expert” with immaculate creds and the other is probably just some asshole who lives in a trailer with 35 guns and twice as many cats.
That’s how it works.
Lyons has an ax to grind, to be sure (his columns are always overwrought with feels) but to the Herald Tribune’s credit they have a gun columnist on staff who is given FAR more leeway promoting guns than just about any other city newspaper I can think of.
As a new shooter I was at a range a couple years ago and the guy in the next lane over had ejected brass land on the back of his neck. Hew was wearing a hoodie. Dumb sh*t did a 360 and muzzled everyone in proximity.
A week or two later I was at same range shooting an XDs 45, a shell landed between my forehead and my safety glasses. I did not pirouette, but I now make damn sure to wear a baseball cap when shooting
I’ve been hit by hot brass so often now, barely react anymore. It’s something I trained myself to handle. I’m sorry for this person’s loss.
There are many subjects about which I know little or nothing. On the few I do know something about, I am repeatedly appalled at journalists’ ignorance. Their job is impossible since it requires them to be experts in everything. However, they could at least check basic, well established facts before publishing.
The honest ones will admit they are involved in propaganda, they will try to justify it by saying that they are on the right side. Remember former AG Eric Holder said “We must brainwash people about guns.” So the leftist reporters are just following through on his direction (and the truth ain’t in ’em).
Even if someone put the NRA gun safety rules poster in front of them, they wouldn’t be able to comprehend it (and they wouldn’t try very hard to try to comprehend it).
Stupid and lazy.
Why would one follow TEN rules, when there are four that are much more powerful, and much easier because four is less than ten?
Also the NRA rules are not the correct way to coexist with firearms. “all guns are never loaded”, is a rule that can only lead to excuses like; “Gee. I didn’t know the gun was loaded!”
IF the rule that one had learned had been; “ALL guns are ALWAYS loaded”, that excuse wouldn’t work, would it?
is Mr. Lyons and his like lying, ignorant or just willfully ignorant? Yes.
While on the topic of hot brass; yes, I have been hit and had hot brass in my clothes and I have been able to control myself. I work in foundries and have had spatters of molten iron on me and in my clothes, which is worse than hot spent brass. Yes, I could still control myself. This can and sometimes does happen.
“he violated two obvious safety rules:”
If one takes careful note of UDs, one might note that is almost always at least two of the four rules violated. They overlap each other, and so it virtually requires a ‘stack up’ of errors to have a serious gun ‘accident’.
Like in this case, the son would still be alive if the father had kept his finger off the bang switch while shoving a loaded firearm into his shirt. As silly as that action would have been, it would still have been alright IF he had ignored only rules one and two, but still remembered number three.
BUT…. ignore ALL of the safety rules and what can be expected, other than serious problems? In just what field can one patently ignore ALL of the safety rules in place, and NOT cause a disaster?
Can one ignore the open flame and smoking rules at a gas station, and expect to NOT die a fiery death? I think not…
But it sure sounds like the antis doesn’t it? “I think there might be a bullet in the thingy of this gun. I’m going to look down the front end with a flashlight and check. Here hold it by this little metal loop at the bottom of it for me will you?”
Just when you thinks humanity as nowhere lower to sink, they up and prove you wrong…
Both.
It has much to do with community exposure and experience with firearms. This is much more common in rural areas. Big cities tend to discourage citizens from wandering around with a rifle, something that is an ordinary thing in the countryside. Also, public entertainment appetites have changed over the decades. Once there were Westerns and war movies, and the audience could see guns being used to defend lives and slay the enemy. Now there are chick flicks, rom coms, and…God, this is so depressing. The fare is so feminised that it is hard to believe we don’t all now have periods. There are some (increasingly rare) action movies for the die hard fans, but they are so unrealistic they have almost no educative value, and are practically cartoons, if not actual graphic novels come to screen.
So the average schmuck will have no knowledge of, nor any interest in, guns of any kind. They only know guns from the movies, and not much at all.
Only those who realise what they are relying on if waiting for Police response to an emergency, might consider the possibility of defending their own lives. We live in an increasingly undependable world, with venal, ineffective politicians, lying public officials, and infrastructure that is crumbling around our ears. From here on in it is only downhill.
Those who close their eyes and ears and hope for the best may be disappointed. Perhaps fatally. I do not intend to be one of those people.
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