Ignorant Journalists, Guns and Disinformation

by Paul Huebl
Crime File News

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There are those journalists who seem to think are experts on firearms. At least that’s what they want their readers and viewers think. For the most part they’ve never fired a gun and if they have it was not under the supervision of a professional trainer.

These folks write and speak words for a living, so they want to be colorful and use what they feel are the strongest terms and phrases. Too often they don’t have a clue what they are talking about. That’s when their ignorance is laid bare.

Here are the most misused terms:

1. Assault Rifle
2. High Powered Rifle
3. Point Blank Range
4. Execution Style
5. Clip

Journalists for some reason believe cops are experts on firearms. Some of them are but its rarely the police bosses or their department spokespeople. Reporters most often quote gibberish from their police sources.

Most readers think they know just what these terms mean. Okay here are the answers:
An assault rifle is a long gun or carbine that fires more than a single round for each pull of the trigger. Often the term Machine gun is used and that can be wrong too. Then there is the sub-machine gun. Confused? Each term has a different meaning. It may be time to do a little enterprising research!

High Powered Rifles. Carbines like the M-4, M-16 or AK-47 or the semi-automatic look-alike cousins are a lot of things but high powered is never one of them. When you say high-powered you are speaking of heavy ammunition with a lot of lead and gun powder. .308, 30-06 or larger rounds can be considered high powered compared to smaller round fired by the aforementioned carbines or hand gun rounds.

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October 19, 2012

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