Media Mythbusters Blog

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

I’ve really had it with ABC News and Brian Ross.

Last year in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, Ross and the crack staff of The Blotter lied about the effect of the 1994 Crime Bill as it related to pistol magazines used by the shooter, refused to issue a retraction, and deleted blog comments warning them of how wrong they were while continuing to get basic facts of the case wrong through carelessness.

Today, Ross and accomplice Richard Esposito continue that fine ABC News tradition of making up the news, in a story claiming that the U.S. Second Amendment is to blame for Mexico’s drug cartel problems.

The deception starts with the picture at the beginning of the article.

The focus of the story, according to ABC News, is that U.S. dealers of civilian firearms are to blame for Mexico’s drug cartels and their violence problems… so why do they highlight an M60 general purpose machine gun, a weapon still in use in Mexico’s military, but impossible to find in the open U.S. civilian market?

From that visual deception, we’ll transition to outright lie number one in the text, an attempt to smear the Bush Administration:

Assault weapons made in China and Eastern Europe, resembling the AK-47, have become widely and cheaply available in the U.S. since Congress and the Bush administration refused to extend a ban on such weapons in 2004.

AK-pattern rifles were legal to own or import during the entire life of the 1994-2004 “Crime Bill,” something that Ross knows for a fact… or should. This claim is a blatant falsehood.

The only effect of the law was to outlaw the importation or manufacture of certain specific firearms by name, and cosmetic features found on other firearms, without banning their manufacture, import, or purchase once these features were removed or replaced. The result was that the same functioning firearms were imported the day after the “ban” went into effect without a bayonet lug or flashhider, and with a thumbhole stock instead of a pistol grip. Functionally, the weapons were identical, with no reduction in firepower, magazine capacity, controllability, or lethality. The “Crime Bill” outlawed virtually nothing, and was merely a fig-leaf for anti-gun politicians.

As for Bush, he was in favor of extending the ban. ABC News failed to get that fact correct, either, even though checking it would have taken less than ten seconds on Google.

Now, to the second visual deception by ABC News. Once again, this article is about how common U.S. civilian weapons are being used by Mexican drug cartels.

So why does ABC News insist on displaying highly-restricted SBRs (short-barreled rifles), automatic weapons, what appears to be no less than 4 M-203 grenade launchers, and at least 20 40mm grenades, military hardware not readily available on the civilian market?

Once again, they post pictures designed to deceive, but we’re not quite done with ABC’s print deceptions, either.

The drug cartels’ weapons of choice include variants of the AK-47, .50-caliber sniper rifles and a Belgian-made pistol called the ‘cop killer’ or ‘mata policia’ because of its ability to pierce a bulletproof vest.

“It’s in high demand by your violent drug cartels, their assassins in Mexico,” said Newell of the ATF. The gun can fire a high-powered round used in a rifle.”

Again, more fiction, aided and abetted by a law enforcement officer that is either incompetent, or who is as dishonest as ABC News.

The FN Five-seveN (their punctuation, not mine) does not fire rifle bullets as the article claims. It fires a tiny 5.7mm personal defense round designed for light carbines, submachine guns and pistols.

It is not any more armor-piercing than many other pistol cartridges, and less powerful than all centerfire rifle cartridges. Furthermore for the 5.7 cartridge to be truly armor-piercing, it must fire special ammunition that is only available to military and law enforcement sources.

There are multiple inaccuracies in this story that display outright incompetence on the part of ABC News, or a willful desire to deceive. Based upon prior performance, the blatantness of the misrepresentations that far surpass simple incompetence, and a pattern of deleting comments that point out their errors in the past, an attempt to willfully defraud ABC News consumers should be inferred in this article until mere incompetence can be proven.

It may well be true that civilian weapons are making their way across the border into Mexico, but that does not give ABC News the right to manufacture or misrepresent evidence to increase their story’s impact.

Update: Warner Todd Huston notes yet another fabrication in an earlier version of the ABC News story.

Also made minor edits to the text to further clarify that M60s, SBRs, and machine guns are not readily available on the open market as ABC News implies. Such firearms are heavily regulated under the National Firearms Act.

Update: Story video here.