NSSF calls out NBC News' anti-gun bias

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

NBC News isn’t quite MSNBC. While the cable news network makes no bones about its leftward bias–something I can respect, even if I disagree with it–NBC News at least pretends to be an unbiased news agency.

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It’s not, but they want people to think otherwise.

Yet that’s hard to do when you’re carrying gun control’s water, and NSSF’s Larry Keane is calling them out for it.

Media outlets often peddle “reports” on firearm issues through a biased antigun lens. NBC News is out with a report detailing the “major wins” by the gun control movement over the past decade and completely ignores numerous countertrends in favor of lawful gun ownership during the same period, arguably more impactful and protective of Constitutional rights.

Surprising no one in the gun owning or supportive community, NBC makes their case by almost exclusively citing a report it “first obtained” by Giffords, the gun control group founded by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.).

It’s not surprising. There’s an important story to tell about the American gun owner and changing gun laws but the media mostly ignores it.

NBC News takes the Giffords report and presents it just the same as they would a report from an unbiased an non-partisan research organization, yet Giffords is nothing of the sort. Its entire purpose is to push for gun control, even if they try to avoid using that word.

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As Keane goes on to note, though, this report ignores the massive gains gun rights have made over the past decade, including constitutional carry and shall-issue laws, to say nothing of the Bruen decision.

But the problem here, at least in my eyes, is the blatant media bias.

Yeah, NBC News isn’t doing anything that the rest of the mainstream media hasn’t done, they’re just a convenient example of the problem.

See, they present propaganda as if it’s news, then wonder why so many people are mistrustful of what the media says. It’s hard to tell what’s actual reporting and what’s propaganda. That’s especially true with regard to guns, but it doesn’t begin or end there.

Seriously, take a look at most of the stories out there relating to guns. They routinely present things in such a way that it’s hard not to get the impression that gun control is the only viable way forward, but if you actually understand the topic, you can see how blatantly they’re misrepresenting things.

The phenomenon called Gell-Mann Amnesia is where someone reads something they know about and sees all the lies and/or mistakes and shakes their head, then goes on to look at other news and takes the information there as being accurate. The “amnesia” comes as a result of forgetting just how screwed up the other stories were.

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Yet I think people are waking up to this. As Keane notes, we’re seeing a large and diverse group of new gun owners, people who are finding out that what they thought were the rules really aren’t and that other gun owners are more than happy to welcome them into the fold.

So, they’re starting to see through the BS of people like NBC News.

Unfortunately, they won’t understand that and will keep peddling Giffords’ stuff uncritically, just like always.

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