We all know that the media isn't exactly on our side. We've seen countless "news" stories that offer an incredibly biased report, quoting so-called experts like anti-gun activists who actually know nothing about firearms, often without mentioning the work for anti-gun entities.

We've also seen them frame reports by starting off by recounting the tale of some innocent soul--allegedly, anyway--getting shot, either in a mass shooting or not, it doesn't seem to matter. This is a means to prime people to want to support the legislation that follows.

That's how this piece out of Rhode Island started, but then it got worse.

Mia Tretta cared more about her Spanish grade and who was going to ask her to the school dance than advocacy as a 15-year-old growing up in California. That changed on Nov. 14, 2019.

“An older student I had never met before entered my school with a gun in his backpack,” the Brown University sophomore told dozens of people gathered Tuesday afternoon in the State Room of the Rhode Island State House.

That was the day Tretta was airlifted to a hospital where doctors removed a bullet from her stomach. She was one of six students shot with a Colt 1911, which the perpetrator had assembled at home. The shooting lasted 16 seconds, killing two students and injuring three others before the perpetrator shot himself in the head.

Tretta was surprised to learn Rhode Island did not have a ban on semiautomatic weapons like the one used in the school shooting in which she was injured. Now a student leader for Brown University Students Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety, she joined Gov. Dan McKee, Rhode Island’s general officers, a slate of lawmakers and a crowd of gun legislation advocates — many wearing orange and red shirts —  for a press conference ahead of legislation that seeks to ban what the state calls assault weapons.  

Now, note the weapon used to shoot Tretta. A 1911. As gun people, we know what that is. It's a semi-automatic handgun with an eight-round magazine capacity, something that would be permissible in any state with an assault weapon ban limiting magazine capacity currently--though Colorado residents will still be screwed if anti-gun lawmakers there get their way.

This is important because as you may have surmised by the last bit of the last paragraph, this is about pushing an assault weapon ban.

The proposed, new ban would apply to the sale, creation, purchase, transfer or ownership of weapons which fall under its provisions, and there would be criminal penalties for people convicted of violating the ban. Gun owners who already possess weapons singled out by the legislation would be able to keep their guns, with some additional registration stipulations put into place upon passage of the act. The act, if successful, would be effective upon passage by the Rhode Island General Assembly.

This year’s legislation is modeled after last year’s bills. Sen. Lou DiPalma, a Middletown Democrat, will bring the bill to the Senate, while Rep. Jason Knight, a Barrington Democrat, will submit it in the House of Representatives. 

Under the language of the previous bill, the Colt 1911 wouldn't be impacted.

In other words, while pretending that Tretta's story is somehow relevant and implying that if this bill had been in place, she wouldn't have been shot, they completely ignore the fact that the firearm used in that story would have been unaffected.

Literally nothing would have changed.

It should also be noted that they don't actually state what kind of guns are affected until the tail end of the article, when most people have quit reading, thus giving them something of a shield from accusations that they didn't present the criteria in question, even though they know most people won't see it.

Of course, while they do recount that there was a federal assault weapon ban that sunset in 2004, they don't cite the numerous studies that showed it accomplished absolutely nothing. That might suggest Rhode Island passing one won't accomplish anything either.

Now, with that said, I'm legitimately surprised that Rhode Island doesn't already have one considering some of the other anti-gun insanity I've seen displayed there over the years, but they don't. They really should keep it that way.

Unfortunately, with the media trying to present stories like this, it's unsurprising that so many people support such regulations in the first place.