CBS News report screenshot

A CBS News report posted last week claims to do a deep dive into the trend of guns sold by police agencies ending up in the hands of criminals. And according to the report, called “Four takeaways from our investigation into police agencies selling their guns,” somehow that is law enforcement agencies’ fault.

“About nine times a day over two decades, a gun used in a crime has been traced back to its original owner: a law enforcement agency,” the reports states. “A joint investigation by CBS News, The Trace and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting has found at least 52,000 such incidents and identified more than 140 police agencies that sell or trade in their guns, allowing dealers to then resell them.”

Just so you don’t have to read the whole thing, the gist of the report is that police selling their old firearms or confiscated firearms, typically to cut cost when purchasing new guns, is somehow a very bad thing. But in the report, authors John Kelly and Chris Hacker didn’t include one very important fact—all of the guns were sold to proven law-abiding Americas since they had to pass a federal background check in order to purchase them!

The report is a synopsis of a larger, previously posted report called, “Police departments sell their used guns. Thousands end up at crime scenes.” In that report, the author nearly got to the truth about how the guns wind up in criminals’ hands, but also left out the most important part.

“Once sold by a department, weapons enter a secondary market where they can be resold to members of the public or other dealers,” the report stated. “By the time they turn up at crime scenes, the guns may have been stolen, traded or resold multiple times with little documentation. They sometimes still have the departments’ name stamped on the side.”

Again, there was no mention in the larger report that the guns from police departments had been sold to licensed firearms dealers, who must do a federal background check before transferring the gun to a buyer. Consequently, all the guns were originally sold to lawful citizens as determined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

What can we conclude from this “investigative report” by CBS? Just what the headline says. If CBS doesn’t want these guns sold, it stands to reason they don’t want any guns sold. After all, former police guns are no different than any other firearms sold legally in the country. It’s not like a violent felon can just walk in and purchase one of the guns without committing a federal felony that will land him in prison for a decade.

In a day when gun-ban advocates and their media enablers constantly call for so-called “universal” background checks, it’s ironic that CBS focused in this report on guns that were sold to buyers who passed those very same background checks. If anything, the report proves that criminals can get guns, despite the background check law. And that’s a good reason lawful citizens should be able to buy guns, too.

In the end, CBS is simply doing to police departments what it and other so-called “mainstream” media outlets constantly do to firearms manufacturers—blame them for violent crime instead of blaming the criminals who choose to use guns to kill others. Incidentally, that’s a felony, too.

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43 COMMENTS

  1. President Trump was correct when he called the media the “enemy of the people.”
    Most of the high level folks in the media are [email protected]‘re com.muni.sts. They don’t believe in the Bill of Rights at all.

    But they certainly do want the first amendment for themselves and only for those that they agree with politically.

    • Hence the incredibly accurate label (Ruling Class) that I referenced in my comment below!

      The Ruling Class loves their position because they make the rules, which includes defining to whom the rules apply. (Hint: the Ruling Class virtually always exclude themselves from the rules.)

  3. “Does CBS News Really Not Want Guns Sold To Law-Abiding Citizens?”

    Does a bear sleep in the woods?

    The answer to both questions is an obvious and resounding YES!

  4. “CBS is simply doing … what it and other so-called “mainstream” media outlets constantly do …”

    Correct. They are advancing their Ruling Class Elitist agenda which entails generous rights and privileges for the Ruling Class Elite and very few (if any) rights and privileges for the Working Class.

    One prominent element of the Ruling Class Elitist agenda is weakening the Working Class to the maximum extent possible so that the Ruling Class Elite can use, exploit, abuse, and consume the Working Class. Needless to say, that particular agenda item requires an unarmed Working Class. Hence the Ruling Class’ unending efforts to disarm the Working Class.

    And before anyone rolls their eyes and discounts my statement above, please open your eyes to the truth. You have encountered selfish scumbags in your life who would take you to the cleaners if they thought that they could get away with it. (Or else why do you lock your vehicle and home doors and keep your financial account details private?) Absolutely nothing stops such selfish scumbags from being members of the Ruling Class Elite. The problem with such selfish scumbags who are members of the Ruling Class Elite is that they are able to game the system to effectively position themselves ABOVE the system. And once they do that, their ambitions increase to a whole new level.

    • Don’t worry, they fully intend to delete, er, sorry “degrowth” the working class.

      • I expect that. Sadly, 99% of the population has no inkling of that agenda.

        I am wondering, though, if the Ruling Class gets their wish and wipes-out some giant percentage of the population: will the remnant be too small to support the extreme luxury lifestyle that the Ruling Class Elite are expecting?

        Important clarification regarding, “will the remnant be too small to support the extreme luxury lifestyle…”. At first glance it seems like a small remnant would still be able to support some aspects of luxury lifestyle such as growing/providing food (even good quality food) and servant services (e.g. personal assistant, housekeeping, groundskeeper, gardener, and skilled trades basics). Upon a bit more thought, I am thinking that more subtle aspects of luxury living would be largely unavailable. Some examples of luxury living that could very well evaporate are anything involving highly skilled services or intricate/complex to produce products such as many chemicals, pharmaceuticals, technology, and complex mechanisms/machinery.

        The reason that I believe that last class of services and products would evaporate is because the upper-middle class drives them and I believe that the mechanism which culls the population would hit them and their corresponding supply chains the hardest.

        So, word to the wise you Ruling Class Elite snobs after culling the population: good luck getting your hands on Botox, targeted gene therapy pharmaceuticals, home automation systems, automobiles, yachts, and private jet aircraft. And even if you manage to acquire said items, good luck finding Working Class people who are able to help you use them.

      • “…they fully intend to delete, er, sorry “degrowth” the working class.”

        While I don’t doubt that one bit, who’s gonna do their menial tasks?

        By the next 2 major election cycles, the ‘new Americans’ will be voting for us, not them. It’s sure gonna be amusing watching them demand an actually secure southern border, and watching them denounce the new immigrants as racists…

        • “By the next 2 major election cycles, the ‘new Americans’ will be voting for us, not them.”

          I would not bet on that based on the way R’s currently work and have for decades.

          The Democrats, as a political animal, are anything but stupid. Unlike Republicans, they have an entirely ruthless system of intra-party meritocratic promotion. That’s how Nancy Pelosi got where she was/is. Whatever else you might say about her, she’s has long been the best political money-raiser in the country. By leaps and bounds too.

          James Carville may be off his game, but the next guy like him won’t be. If you assume that they will simply stay on the current path, you’re asking to get rolled. At some point they will recognize the diminishing returns of Obama-style identity politics and move away from it.

          And the public has a short memory for that kind of fuckery.

          I’m old enough to remember that Trump was going to sail to victory in 2020 and that there was to be a Red Wave in 2022. Neither materialized.

          Without gutting and rebuilding the GOP, I expect that to continue.

        • I posted a comment last night speaking to your question of who remains to implement the Ruling Class’ lav-i$h lux-ery lifestyles. And my comment keeps disappearing (moderation and then deletion). I will try one last time to post it or something similar.

        • Geoff PR,

          I give up. I have tried six different ways of sharing my thought and this site keeps hiding it.

          I will say this: the remnant after the cull will be able to handle the menial tasks that Elites expect. I also anticipate that the culling process will decimate the portion of the Working Class and complex supply chains that deliver the more subtle and “refined” elements of Elite lives. Whether or not Elites will consider losing their more subtle and “refined” elements of their lives as a fair trade for the cull is anyone’s guess.

        • I give up. I have tried six different ways of sharing my thought and this site keeps hiding it.

          All I will say is this: the cull will produce a remnant which will deliver the menial/basics that Elites expect. I also anticipate that the cull will produce a remnant which is UNABLE to deliver the “finer things” that Elites expect. Whether or not Elites will consider that a worthwhile sacrifice to achieve their cull is anyone’s guess.

      • strych9,

        If the Ruling Class Elite culls the Working Class population, the Working Class remnant will still be able to provide basic aspects of the superior and ultra-comfortable life style that the Ruling Class Elite have come to love and expect. My intuition also tells me that more subtle elements of the Ruling Class Elite ultra-comfortable life style would evaporate and be unavailable.

        My thinking on that last bit is that the more subtle elements of their life style require highly skilled services and/or highly complex/intricate products–which also happen to have complex supply chains. Our Upper Middle Class is the primary workforce for those highly skilled services, complex products, and complex supply chains. I have a hunch that the Ruling Class Elite’s culling process will decimate the Upper Middle Class and our complex supply chains.

        I can only imagine if the Ruling Class Elite will ever recognize that they unwittingly undermined their own life styles.

  5. I love MSM articles that basically have the sub-headline “No one in this country can do basic arithmetic, let alone enough critical thinking to know what calculations would produce answers that actually matter. Let us rub your face in that with bullshit”.

    You’d sort of assume that the people doing the writing know this based on how the present the stories. The slant always cuts in their preferred direction, suggesting that they’re not just idiots throwing spaghetti at the wall.

    Hardly shocking, I guess. I’ve had people in their seventies tell me that 5/10 ≠ 500,000/1,000,000. yOu CanT JuZ dEleTe dA ZeRoz! DaZ NoT MaFf!

    Brah, they’re called “ratios”. 3rd grade level shit here, bossman. (And don’t touch the blue shit in the engine room either, at least trust me on that.)

    K-12 has been screwing the country since the late 1950’s. The results are a large number of people who couldn’t reason their way out of wet paper bag. Not because they’re stupid but because they’ve been trained not to even really try.

    The level of, actually pretty deft, manipulation is really rather staggering in both its depth and its breadth. Which makes it rather interesting that younger people have cottoned on faster than older people, simply by rejecting the status quo and being rebellious by nature.

    • This very observation, that people obviously can’t add (much less divide), drives me nuts on a regular basis. People take a handful of meaningless, out of context numbers and, knowing that they are talking to a numerically illiterate populous, go all sturm and drang and gnashing of teeth.

      I could probably, without doing any research whatsoever, write: About nine times a day over two decades someone has fallen while getting out of the shower and seriously injured themselves. Shower manufactures, plumbers and building contractors have failed to address this clear and present safety hazard.

      (Ignoring, of course, the population of people in the nation/world, the frequency of shower usage and the probable fact that most of those 9 a day were over 80 years old.)

      • [For future reference “numerically illiterate” = innumerate. Makes you sound all edjumakated and shitz.]

        You can play this game in a lot of ways. I’ve pointed that out before in my math section on propaganda which is no longer post-able because WP won’t allow a lot of the words in it. (Which is interesting since I wrote it in the style of a Blue Book Essay for a polisci stats course.) Which is why I don’t bother attempting to re-post it. Writing it again so that WP would allow it makes it difficult to understand and stats is already hard enough for most people since most people, of all ages, actually struggle with basic arithmetic, never mind actual math.

        It does make me laugh about the quote people love though; “Lies, damned lies and statistics”.

        While a good quip, it’s not correct. 99% of statistical errors I see come from the author not understanding what statistics should be employed to answer the question at hand. This is true even in hard science papers (which, admittedly get really far into the stats weeds and authors should employ a PhD statistician as part of their team because, yeah, it’s that complicated in many cases).

        And then there’s the gamesmanship. A common example is using Standard Error of Mean (SEM) in calculations instead of the SD because SEM almost always produces a tighter range than SD does, yet this is effectively meaningless. Choosing SEM doesn’t make your data better or worse, it’s just a different way to represent it. One that just so happens to make nicer looking graphs with nice, tight, error bars.

        Nothing wrong with using SEM as long as you announce it openly but a shocking number of people don’t read figure legends and just glace at the graphics.

        • “For future reference “numerically illiterate” = innumerate.”

          I’m aware but, as if on queue, most aren’t.

          “This is true even in hard science papers (which, admittedly get really far into the stats weeds and authors should employ a PhD statistician as part of their team because, yeah, it’s that complicated in many cases).”

          Also aware and, conveniently am one. Well, to be fair, a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering with a focus on stochastic modeling, simulation and optimization theory.

          • The point of using words that many people don’t really understand is that, when done right, it arouses curiosity which is a gameable emotion which you can use to shift their perception of a topic.

            It can’t come off as high handed, so avoiding overuse is necessary. You have to say it as if you expect that they can follow what you’re saying (which mostly they can) unless it’s highly technical.

            You sprinkle that with the occasional “in” for an emotional manipulation.

            And if you’re gentle about exploiting that opening they will look at you as highly intelligent/educated.

            This will produce a Y junction in the interaction. One side is for those who consider themselves the same. The fact you’ve thrown them something they don’t know suggests that you probably know more things like this which they desire to know (this is similar to how gurus exploit people). The desire for comradery here can be used to your advantage as it’s a way to win trust or place them in an inferior position where they want you to look at them as an equal.

            Combine that with a friendly demeanor overall and you can take a very large percentage of people who believe [X] and change their belief to what you wish it to be by giving them something they want but don’t really need.

            People might say this is unethical, but knowingly or not, it’s exactly how a good teacher works to teach something complicated/boring. Really good teachers can smoothly tailor this to the individual.

            Education is manipulation of another, it’s simply for the benefit of those being manipulated rather than the person doing the manipulating. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.

            Brainwashing and what we normally call “propaganda” are the inverse, for the benefit of the manipulator.

            If you wish to undo such manipulations, which are at base emotional, you must start at the emotional level. Not just because you can’t reason someone out of a position they emoted themselves into but because this is, fundamentally, how the brain works.

            • Oh, yeah, the other side of that Y is people who don’t consider themselves educated/smart enough to understand.

              Which is where the proper offering of assistance in the form of a hand up rather than a handout works extremely well.

              That’s another thing good teachers do quite well. Not belittling and not saying “Oh, you can do this” but finding ways to tell someone “Oh, you can do this” without simply saying something that can be seen as patronizing.

        • I can count to 21 if I take off my shoes and unzip my pants.
          Thank goodness the teacher took my pocket knife away on the day we learned subtraction

          • I can only count to about 20.75 due to a nasty run-in with a freshly sharpened jointer several years ago.

            • Heh heh.
              Working at a cabinet manufacturer one of the employees cut off his finger, he looked at the missing digit and the first words out of his mouth was “How am I gonna role a joint now!!”

    • “…simply by rejecting the status quo and being rebellious by nature.”

      While I’d *love* to see that, I have a hard time imagining the kids of recent Ivy league ‘kollege’ graduates turning into MAGA supporters.

      Some dogs will never hunt…

      • The fact that people Right of Center focus on the Ivy League is proof positive that emotional misdirection works and of what I’m talking about with regards to basic math and logic.

        Kinda like “avocado toast” or any of the other bullshit foisted on the masses of intentionally dumbed down people over 50 via television.

        Stop focusing on what is flashed in front of you to grab your attention and ask questions about the entire data set and why they don’t want to show it to you.

        Treat literally everything that is pushed by media or .gov with skepticism and immediately start asking “What would need to be true, and what would need to be false for what they’re telling me to be true or even matter? How would I determine this? What data do I need to determine if the parts of truth and falsity add up in a way that makes their story even plausible? And, even if it is plausible, does it have any relation to larger reality and how would I test that?”.

        In this instance, why are they specifically telling you to focus on a tiny minority which itself is pulled from an extreme outlier? Is it because flashy stuff grabs headlines because it attracts eyes? Are they selling a narrative? Both? Maybe combined with something(s)else too?

        Want a gun example? The 3 shots at 3 yards in 3 seconds thing is one. That comes from data on police encounters. Are you a cop? Are you doing cop things? If not, is this data even applicable to the question at hand?

        This is becoming nearly as tiresome as the childish science vs. religion argument.

  6. It still doesn’t really make it sound any better, that theyre sold to “law abiding Americans” first.

  7. Media, corporatists, globalists, lefties, too many righties all agree that guns existing at all outside of government possession is the real problem. Criminals = not a problem. Guns = problem.

  8. Cut the chase…cbs news prefers Gun Control an agenda Rooted in Racism and Genocide over The Second Amendment.

    Back from the grocery where disgusting joe bidenomics was in full swing.

    TRUMP 2024

  9. LOL
    Crooks selling gunms to crooks naturally they’re going to wind up at a crime scene

  10. “Again, there was no mention in the larger report that the guns from police departments had been sold to licensed firearms dealers, who must do a federal background check before transferring the gun to a buyer. ”

    Why “mention” the truth and ruin the scam?

  11. Bryan Malinowski sold guns that (allegedly) ended up at crime scenes, the ATF murdered him for it. Will the ATF go after the cops since they did the same thing?

  19. I imagine this would increase the cost of buying from the used market with less supply available. That would be a win in their book.

  20. The solution to this “Problem” is easy. Bloomberg & Soros can use their money to buy PD excess guns & destroy the weapons.
    Outbid the smurffs !!!

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