After another break, we're introduced to 10-year-old Damon Weaver, an aspiring journalist who lives in a horrible neighborhood. Save enough by day, he claims, at night the 'hood erupts in gunfire as the gangs and drug dealers do their thing. There is ample footage of all the shooting victims and the program again cites "guns" as the cause, ignoring the gang bangers. To me, that's called a gross oversight. Again, via this child, the program asks a question of the President: "What are you going to do to help my town?" A question of my own: how would a new law / ban stop the criminals that dominate it?
The centerpiece of the special, though, is the gun show segment! ABC asked the brother of one of the victims of Virginia Tech to take $5,000.00 into a gun show and see what he could buy in an effort to see if guns are any harder to buy since the incident. Before he even enters the show, a "private seller" approaches him and offers him a Glock pistol for $450.00. What we're not told is that the seller had nothing to DO with the show! He could've offered it in a classified ad, or hung around outside a regular gun store. He was simply a regular guy selling a pistol and no doubt wanted a few more dollars than he could get from a licensed dealer. This distinction isn't made: it's all part of the mythical "gun show loophole!"
A pertinent sidenote: The Virginia Tech shooter DID NOT BUY HIS WEAPONS FROM A GUN SHOW! He got his from a regular dealer who had to run the mandatory background check. Because mental health records weren't included in the database, he passed. ABC called it "a breakdown of the system." More accurately, it was an unfunded Bush mandate, and Virginia just couldn't afford the manpower to have all that data entered into the system! What ABC ignored was that Congress, working with the NRA, passed the NICS Improvement Act, which fixed the oversight.
Back to our gun shopper, he went back in and proceeded to buy a bunch of rifles and shotguns. It was an impressive enough group that a man passing by asked him if he had any .22's for sale, mistaking him for a dealer! Our shopper explained that he bought them all easily, no questions asked. No checks required! This plays on the ignorance of the non-gun-owning public. GLARING HOLE: he never purchased another handgun from a licensed dealer! If he had, then he would've faced a NICS background check! Yet most states don't require them for long guns and never have. Is this possibly a good idea? Perhaps, but both Columbine and Virginia Tech's shooters used handguns. Those evil "assault style weapons" are seldom used in crimes because they're bulky, and therefore hard to conceal, and more expensive than a cheap handgun.
So, with all of this, ABC still yammered on and on about the mythical, non-existent "gun show loophole." The most glaring outright LIE was when they stated that, according to the BATF, gun shows are "a major source of crime guns," but then backpeddle, saying that actual figures are sketchy. They should've checked with their own John Stossel, who visited a prison and asked violent offenders where they got their guns. NONE cited gun shows! In fact, actual figures put crime guns from gun shows at less than .001%. Yet ABC closes the segment with the statement, "Omar and some of the nation's mayors are asking that something be done about the assault weapons!" Me thinks it's ABC doing the asking.
For the final segment, we return to footage from several video surveillance gunfights and are asked, "Have we learned any lessons on survival?" So-called "experts" then suggest running away! They pooh-pooh gun effectiveness (leaving me to wonder why cops would then bother with them) and suggest hiding, playing dead or leaving. (Which didn't work so hot at Columbine.) V/O: "Of course guns have been used to run off intruders, but..." As Dr. Phil says, the word 'but' means, 'forget whatever I just said.' "...police have another warning for the average citizen." And that turns out to be that the average boob will shoot an innocent bystander, friend or family member if the time ever comes to defend himself. While my CCW class drilled into our heads the fact that WE are responsible for our target and EVERYTHING BEHIND IT, this program used the possibility as another reason to fear ever touching a gun! They again speak of the effects on the body, turning again to the scenes from their classroom experiment.
Sawyer says, "Ashley comes within inches of hitting another student!" They toss-in an anecdotal story about a case of mistaken identity, which while sad because it is real, violated another basic safety rule: be certain of your target. These were presented to show how bad the students were, how horrible things worked out for another, and how bad YOU would be. It's not subtle, the message being "guns are useless for defense and dangerous to you and your kids." Funny, but I know a great many gun owners, but never met anyone who lost a child to accidental gunfire.
At the close of the show, Muir and Sawyer say, "Oh, and if you're wondering where all the studies are about the effectiveness of guns used by ordinary Americans for self-defense, keep looking. We couldn't find even one reliable study! Those we could find were contradictory. The CDC says that over a 10-year period, over 60,000 kids and young people have died from a gun.
This is an amazing admission from a professional journalist, since there have been a great many studies published over the years, some of which are in use by law enforcement! Economist John R. Lott's book called "More Guns, Less Crime" shows, in great detail, how guns directly impact violent crime. Other studies by Gary Kleck and David Mustard corroborate his conclusions. Further, each month the NRA collects newspaper clippings from around the country and publishes them in their member magazine in a segment called "The Armed Citizen." Each story details how someone successfully used a gun to stop an attack and save their lives, or those of their family. Perhaps they could hire a few more interns to work the Google machine and find those studies and stories for themselves! Depending on the study, defensive gun use in the U.S. happens between 800,000 and 2.5 million times each year, making their legal use between 3 and 6 times as often as their illegal use! So while guns are misused, and we really do need to do what we can to prevent it, the cost-to-benefit ratio is undeniable. Unless you're ABC news.
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