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PBS webpage seeking gun-related stories
Right here. They're soliciting stories dealing with guns, with an eye toward an HBO documentary -- self defense, crime, how a person got interested. Just starting out, and the balance is tipping toward antis. I'd suggest routing any people with self-defense stories their way.
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My submission:
How Dumb Does She Think I Am?
by denton
We turned on ABC tonight to watch Diane Sawyer's "If I Only Had a Gun".
Her "attention grabber" was that guns kill 30,000 people per year in the US.
Really?
The official US statistic for homicides in the US in 2007, the most recent year with a full report, was 16,929. And accidental gun deaths number only in the hundreds per year. Elapsed time to debunk her claim on the internet: under 2 minutes.
Poof!
Diane Sawyer's credibility disappeared before my very eyes, and we switched to The Food Channel for a stimulating piece on ketchup.
I don't like being lied to. I really don't like being told a transparently stupid lie. It insults my intelligence.
So what does do for my attitude toward guns? It teaches me that at least some of the major media have an anti-gun agenda and spin a fabulous yarn unfettered by facts, designed to mold public opinion. Some people call that propaganda. Other people just call it lying.
Some portion of those shootings are gang-bangings and drug deals gone bad, no doubt, and the perps were already illegally in possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony...where one or ten or a hundred more gun laws would not have changed the outcome...
And of those 16,929, some significant portion also have to be righteous shootings in self defense by women like Diane Sawyer against bigger, stronger, hormone driven abusive men, whether ex-boyfriend, husband, or rapist, and another significant portion have to be righteous shootings in self defense by law abiding citizens of either sex against robbers, carjackers and burglars...
No mention is made of the harder to quantify tens- to hundreds-of-thousands of times where an attack is deterred without a shot being fired simply by drawing a gun in self defense, or where shots are fired and the assailant is wounded and captured without being killed...
Or the even harder to quantify number of times when one of the critters decided it just wasn't a good day to go out and rob or assault anyone because some significant percentage of potential victims are armed and could nail him to the wall...
Diane Sawyer and the rest of you hack journos,,,...may you never find yourself in a position where you REALLY say..."If I only had a gun...".
Here's mine... (link)
I was 12 and my brother and two cousins were 10 and 8 years old when grandfather was telling the story about shooting the bear that became the rug at his house.
We listened in amazement to a story that seemed to grow in the telling. As the eldest, I remember holding some skepticism about the details.
When the story was over, I asked, "What was it like to shoot a rifle?"
Grandfather jumped out of his chair, disappeared to the closet and returned wirh the U.S. Eddystone Arsenal Model of 1917 .30-06, saying, "Let's go!".
The five of us piled into the car and headed off to the TVA reservior.
Two rounds each fron the bolt action war rifle and we KNEW what it was like!
Grandfather left a legacy of experience in each of us that day.