There are two constants we can expect from the ABC News blog The Blotter.

They will report in great detail on stories involving the criminal use of a firearm.

They will invariably get significant details grossly wrong.

Whether the subject is Mexico's drug cartels, items restricted by the 1994 Crime Bill, or basic descriptions of guns used in massacres, Ros and ABC News are predictably incompetent, and their streak continued today as they try to discuss some of the weaponry purchased by Fort Hood Jihaidi, Major Nidal Hasan:

Right next door to the strip club is the gun store, Guns Galore, where authorities say Hasan bought his semi-automatic pistol and bullets and in the weeks before the shooting, 13 extra ammunition clips that could hold up to 30 bullets each.

As anyone with a rudimentary understanding of modern firearms will tell you, modern handguns do not use clips. They use magazines, and yes there is a distinctive difference between a single piece of spring steel that holds a group of cartridges together (a clip) and an enclosed, spring-loaded mechanical device that encloses and protects cartridges an actively feeds them into a firearm's chamber (a magazine).

Then there is the fact that one cannot readily buy a 30-round magazine for the Five-SeveN pistol as ABC tries to claim.

Precisely two magazines are available with the Five-seveN, a 10-round magazine for states that restrict the number of cartridges a civilian's handgun can carry, and the standard 20-round magazine that the weapon was designed to accept. No one makes a 30-round magazine for the Five-seveN, though CMMG has a 10-round extension one can purchase separately and install to the base of the factory 20-round magazines. There are no reports that Hasan actually purchased such extensions, much less used them in his attack.

But that sort of inaccuracy is par for the course for a propagandist far more interested in pushing a political agenda than actually reporting the facts, and Ross is quite consistent in framing stories in such a way to give gun control groups an edge.

After all, who needs facts?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:21 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 The "clips" vs "mags" thing i can almost accept, that's just idiotic popular culture. but the 30 vs 20 round thing is pretty lame. Next its going to be a 200 round drum?

Posted by: John at November 16, 2009 01:39 PM (mAp1o)

2 Yeah, and the silly folks also think it was a nearly 6 inch diam. barrel. All they need is some square backed bullets and they'd be all set.

Posted by: brando at November 16, 2009 03:46 PM (IPGju)

3 Well the "clips vs magazines" thing is generational as well. As one who trained and carried the M1 Garand, I often find myself reverting to "clips" when I really mean Magazines. Of course the dimwit at ABC wouldn't know anything about that, and is likely just repeating whatever the anti-gun crowd has provided him as a "press release". That intellectual laziness continually pops up in the press, as they take, verbatim, the "facts" from the anti-gun groups and repeat it as fact.

Posted by: Jim at November 16, 2009 03:59 PM (WacVk)

4 "After all, who needs facts?" The above describes perfectly the liberal mindset: Facts? We don't need no Steenking Facts! Afterall, facts simply get in the way of what they believe.

Posted by: firefirefire at November 17, 2009 06:33 AM (tbYJ7)

5 The best definition I've read is "Clips load magazines". So wouldn't that make it "clips feed magazines, magazines feed guns"?

Posted by: Veeshir at November 17, 2009 04:05 PM (110Vq)

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The media is wasting very little time informing us that the weapon used by Major Nidal Malik Hasan in his rampage at Fort Hood was a "cop killer."

Ft. Hood terrorist used a cop killer FN-Five Seven tactical pistol—20 round clip -- Examiner

'Cop Killer" Gun though to Be Used in Ft. Hood Shooting, Offiicals Said -- ABC News

Fort Hood shootings: gunman used 'cop killer' weapon in massacre at US Army base -- UK Telegraph

Ironically, there is no known record of that weapon even being used to kill a police officer in the United States, and there is a distinct possibility that Sgt. Kimberly Munley, wounded while engaging Hasan, may have been the first American law enforcement officer ever shot with a Five-seveN.

How did the Five-seveN get it's "cop killer" reputation, then?

It was created in a Brady Campaign press release in February of 2005.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:04 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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