robkeeney

MSNBC has this piece on their site now: Gun in Super Bowl plot was banned, now popular

A semiautomatic weapon a Tempe man bought for $899 to commit mass murder at the Super Bowl was banned until three years ago.

The title of the article, and the part of the lead sentence which I've emphasized, are plain, 100%, flat-out falsehood. It couldn't be anymore false if it said that 2 + 2 = 5. These statements cannot be anymore false. Well, OK, ARs are very popular, so they got that part right. BUT NEVER BANNED. The only ban was on making and selling them WITH CERTAIN ACCESSORIES. From 1994 to 2004, the years of the "Assault Weapons Ban", you could walk into any decent gun store anywhere in America and buy a brand new AR-15 or AK-47 clone.

To illustrate, let's say there was a law that forbid making and selling new SUVs with more than two of air conditioning, sun roof, and radio. You could still own them. You could sell pre-existing ones. You just couldn't make new SUVs that had all three of those features. Then the law expired; it was not renewed. So now it becomes legal again to make and sell a new SUV with all three options; air conditioning, sun roof, and a radio.

Is it factual to say that SUVs were banned? What would you think of a reporter who wrote that they were? You might think that either he was lying purposefully because he hated SUVs. At best he was just a negligent lazy reporter who really didn't care about the truth.

So if reporters are lying to us about this issue, what other issues are they lying to us about?

BTW Remington has launched a new line of varmint rifles based on the AR-15 platform.