So, here is Media Matters explaining the presentation of mythology in regard to the mere existence of a private sale loophole. I suppose it would be a time-saver, wouldn't it? Shut down the whole argument by pretending there is no such loophole. Naturally, they have tried.
MYTH: There Is No Such Thing As The Private Sales Loophole
NRA News Host Cam Edwards: People Prohibited From Owning Firearms Cannot Exploit The Private Sales Loophole. During the January 3 edition of Cam & Company on NRA News, host Cam Edwards first told guest Jim Geraghty, who writes for the National Review Online, that Geragthy was "incorrect" in his assumption that background checks are not required at gun shows. Edwards would later acknowledge that private sellers at gun shows conduct sales without running a background check on customers, but he also claimed that it was impossible for individuals prohibited from owning firearms under federal law from obtaining weapons through this process.
Using the standard method of blatant lie with later correction, Cam Edwards of Cam & Company on NRA News tells his impressionable young guest (heh, from the National Review Online) that he is flat out incorrect in thinking that background checks are not required at gun shows.
Now, one might think that if this premise is incorrect, that this would mean that background checks are required at gun shows. And they go on with their song & dance mocking the media and everything they've told me is wrong! and so on. And then, quietly slipped in is the part about how private sellers don't have to perform background checks except in some states.
They go on to discuss folks who are not permitted to purchase a gun and whether or not they can do so through private sales. Cam Edwards of the NRA responds with "not legally." Which actually settles the issue for them. As if that stops anyone. Now, this is the same organization that tells us how criminals won't abide by whatever tough legislation is passed to try to curb gun violence. The same message of futility and despair offered by gun enthusiasts, even here. The same message I do not take lightly and which I answer with better enforcement and further refinement of proposed legislation. And yet this loophole is permitted to go on because "not legally" means no one will ever do it...right?
Media Matters goes on to debunk this myth using, of all places, Politifact, which reviewed some statements made in July 2012 by Michael Bloomberg.
"We don't need more laws. We need a couple of fixes," Bloomberg said. "There's a loophole where you can sell guns without a background check at a gun show, 40 percent of guns are sold that way, same thing on the Internet. … The NRA has opposed anything."
This is what Politifact presents for fact-checking. This seems like a simple enough claim; 40%. What evidence did they evaluate?
Bloomberg’s office pointed us to a 1997 study by the National Institute of Justice on who owns guns and how they use them.The researchers estimated that about 40 percent of all firearm sales took place through people other than licensed dealers. They based their conclusion on a random survey of more than 2,500 households.
All right then, and for the Internet?
The City of New York commissioned an investigation of Internet gun sales. The report said on 10 websites, it found over 25,000 weapons for sale.The report said that over 60 percent of sellers allowed a purchase to move forward even when the alleged buyer said he didn’t believe he would pass a background check. Sellers who used Craigslist were most likely to violate the law, the report said.
Okay...and in typical Politifact fashion, they chose to rate this "mostly true," because the information is outdated, even though the ATF had nothing newer to provide to Politifact, and even though the NRA did not even bother responding to them. Even though Bloomberg and other gun control advocates know this, want new research, and rightly blame the NRA for opposing it. In spite of verifying the facts involved and finding nothing to rebut them, they go with "mostly true." Thanks, Politifact.
Media Matters, at least, goes on to document the exploitation of the private gun sale loophole, and mentions the undercover investigators from NYC that tested how many sellers would go ahead with a sale even after they specifically mentioned not being able to pass a background check.
So I guess they're not always required at gun shows, and not everything the media have told you is wrong, no special sunglasses are required to see the truth hidden from society...
In another myth related to the private sale/'gun show' loophole,
Media Matters spells out the mythology behind the claim that actually closing this supposedly nonexistent loophole would ban citizens from selling their guns at all.
MYTH: Closing The Private Sales Loophole Would Prohibit Private Citizens From Selling Firearms
Fox Regular Kate Obenshain On Fox & Friends: Prohibiting "Individuals From Being Able To Sell Guns To Other Individuals" Is What "Closing The Gun Show Loophole Is About." During a January 8 appearance on Fox News, Obenshain suggested that closing the private sales loophole would mean that gun owners could no longer sell firearms to a "buddy down the street." [Fox & Friends, 1/8/13]
Now, I already know from the previous mythbusting that the NRA understands this is not true. As Cam Edwards reported (ha!) in the video clip, some states like California require background checks on all private sales. Does this mean that in some states, there are no private sales of guns? Well. Um, no. Not so much. Last month, in Michigan,
the execrable governor Rick Snyder made news for vetoing legislation to allow concealed carriers in schools. And at the same time, he approved legislation to streamline the existing process for background checks during private gun sales in his state.
Even Rick Snyder knows that background checks are performed on all private gun sales in Michigan, and that such sales do go on.
And according to Media Matters, there was even a bill in the Senate introduced to require background checks at gun shows, which would not prohibit private sales. Let me guess, died in committee? Of course. I wonder if he'd have better luck with it this year. Perhaps Harry Reid would refuse it as having no hope in the House, like, I don't know...everything.
Gun Show Loophole Legislation Introduced In Previous Congress Permitted Private Sales. S. 35, a bill introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) during the 112th Congress to establish background check procedures for gun shows, would have allowed private sellers to make sales at gun shows through licensed dealers. [S. 35 via Government Printing Office, accessed 1/9/13]
Incidentally, about Kate Obenshain, Media Matters' poster pundit for this particular debunked myth. She is a regular Fox News 'contributor,' hell, she's got
her own website trumpeting the fact. Not the first time she's dabbled in pro-gun mythology on Fox, either.
Senator Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) outrageous "assault weapons" ban bill is no assault weapons ban. It's objective: to ban guns. This, coming from the woman who was packing heat in her purse with a concealed weapons permit in San Francisco before she ran for the United States Senate. Ah, yes, do what I say, not what I do. I am the liberal elite and I know what's best for you. . . .
This purposeful confusion of 'assault weapons ban' with 'gun ban' looked familiar when I saw it in
my last diary on guns over the weekend. Like the busted myth about banning private sales, it's a scare tactic. And perhaps it works over at Fox, where this sort of rhetorical excrement passes for journalism. Just reading through the Media Matters article, it appears they had to struggle to find media sources
other than Fox with which to document these nine myths. Of the nine, I counted five that were just Fox, one courtesy of a Washington Times writer (on Fox), one from Fox
and Meet the Press (honestly, David Gregory...
SMH), and a couple straight from the NRA, one with an assist from CNN (which wishes it were Fox).
Fox stands out as the culprit here, and on Media Matters in general in my experience. But here I see them offering a great contribution to the myth-making, providing a 'news' outlet for falsehood, giving lies the blessing of their alleged journalistic ethics and calling them truth. In that respect they are like priests to me, preaching BS under a cloak of false authority.
It's sad to see it here as well, that is, until it's demolished.
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