Response to an AP story

T

TailGator

New member
There was an AP story in the my local paper today about a certain presidential candidate proposing additional gun control. I have no idea why, but the same distortions that we have all read far too many times irked me enough today to email the editor and challenge the factual basis of the story. An excerpt of my email follows:

The article states, "Under current federal law, such checks [background checks on gun purchasers] are not required for sales made at gun shows or over the internet." Although that statement is often repeated and forms the foundation of arguments for increased regulation of firearms, current law in fact makes no distinction between sales made at gun shows and sales made at other locations, and does not exempt internet purchases from background checks.

A person who purchases a firearm from a dealer is subject to a background check and any waiting period applicable to the jurisdiction, whether the purchase is made at a gun show or at a retail outlet. A person selling a personally owned firearm does not have to run a background on the purchaser, and indeed cannot, because he or she has no access to the data base.

Guns purchased online cannot be shipped directly to the purchaser under current federal law; rather, they can only be shipped to a federally licensed firearm dealer who is then obligated to submit the background check before turning over the firearm to the purchaser.

The article states that, "Clinton pledged to require anyone 'attempting to sell a significant number of guns' to be considered a firearms dealer, and therefore need a federal license." The law already contains that provision, vague as it is.

As soon as I hit the "send" button I thought, "I just wasted my time. This isn't going to get a second look." To my surprise, the local editor replied fairly promptly that he had forwarded my note to the AP, and someone at AP replied before the day was out that they intended to investigate the things I wrote.

I am encouraged that there may yet be some people open to reason.
 
Good for you (and us) I very much hate to see this stuff go unchallenged in the media. The anti's may shout you down but your response is out there too.

Good luck.
 
Good for you.
Journalists may be biased propagandists.
But one thing they don't want to be is to look like fools.
And lose their preciously guarded pretense of credibility.
By exposing their ignorance you shook them to their very core.
The mass media does have its vulnerabilities.
 
Have you heard anything back yet from either AP or your local editor? The local editor may have simply "kicked it upstairs" and washed his hands of it. This set of misinformation is so common that it possibly falls into the category of "tell a lie enough and it will become believable". And if enough people don't notice the discrepancy AP and the editor won't care. ie Hillary's campaign workers:
http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/09/h...aw-whatever-you-can-get-away-with-just-do-it/
 
But one thing they don't want to be is to look like fools.
Click to expand...

Right.

The Huffington Post had an article explaining how the CMP was going to release thousands of untraceable military-grade .45 handguns to the public.

Every inch of that story was full of BS.

Even if I was anti-gun, if I was the author's manager, I'd fire him. You make the parent organization look like crap.
 
Have you heard anything back yet from either AP or your local editor? The local editor may have simply "kicked it upstairs" and washed his hands of it.
Click to expand...

Nothing since my first post. It is beginning to appear that the local editor did exactly that. I may follow up with a similar letter to the opinion page, and I may also follow up with the AP guy, whose email address appears in the response.
 
I worked for the AP for 31 years. I can tell you that they correct stories all the time, moving a separate item on the wire. Whether they did in this case is a question that's hard to answer unless you have access to their feed. Whether your local paper runs the correction or not is up to them.

One of the reasons I left, aside from the fact that those 31 years were served in CA and I just couldn't stand it any more, was the obvious and overwhelming swing to the left. While I liked and enjoyed working with my staff, they were overwhelmingly liberal, hated guns and couldn't understand how everyone didn't share their views. I retired in 2003 and moved to Texas. Had my CHL 6 months after we arrived and have carried every day since.
 
What I think will happen is the President will sign an Exectutive Order quantifying a "dealer" by the number of guns sold or traded a year.

The definition of "gun dealer" has been I think intentionally ambiguous under current law. Something I think was the intend since the GCA of 1968.

While I do not know for certain if this will happen judging by stories I have read the past few days this seems likely. How this will effect crime is it will not - but that's not the point anyway.

Regards,

Rob
 
Last edited:
The article states that, "Clinton pledged to require anyone 'attempting to sell a significant number of guns' to be considered a firearms dealer, and therefore need a federal license." The law already contains that provision, vague as it is.
Click to expand...
This isn't quite true. Currently you can sell all the firearms you want. Let's say that you are part of a family that loves to collect firearms and everyone in the family is wealthy. All your family (parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, siblings) goes on vacation in their private plane but you have to stay home because you have the flu. The plane crashes and you are the only heir. You inherit a collection that consists of 20,000 guns. Currently (in most states) you can legally go to your local gunshow and sell them all in one day. If you did that you'd probably have sold more guns in one day than any of the licensed dealers at the show sold that year, but it would be perfectly legal.

For you to run afoul of the current law, you'd have to be buying and selling.

By the way, although a 50 guns sold per year limit (a number that was being batted about recently in the news) may not make a difference to some people, it will negatively affect some folks pretty heavily. I have a friend whose father left him between 700 & 800 guns. As things currently stand, he can sell them all as fast as he wants. With a 50 guns per year limit it would take him 14-15 years to sell them all legally.
 
JohnKSa, thanks for the clarification. What you say makes a lot of sense on that provision. I get tired of hearing about the non-existent "gun show loophole" and overstated my case on the other portion.

The lack of further reply seems to indicate that the AP told me what I wanted to hear and hoped I would go away. An editorial in the local paper, however, made a reference to current gun regulations being sometimes misrepresented and misunderstood, so maybe the editor through which my complaint was routed is a little more aware.

My dad received his reward for a life well lived early Monday morning and I have not followed up with AP. I still think it is helpful to challenge the many falsehoods of gun control advocates in a calm, matter-of-fact manner, but I can't say I am a poster boy for the practice.
 
I agree that it's important and I've emailed several authors with corrections to their stories. Most of the time I get no response at all--which I interpret to mean that they either completely ignored my message and/or they know that what they've printed is in error and/or misleading but don't really care.
 
Condolences Tailgator and thanks again for stepping up and trying to correct some of the misinformation that gets thrown around out there.
 
Keep on letting the editors know their reporters are not being professional, eventually one of them will begin to shift towards objectivity a little bit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top