Within the class of picture over substance, Seattle’s KIRO 7 seems to have turned a felon-in-possession arrest into one more deceptive anti-gun scare story.
On March 20, KIRO 7 ran the headline: “Army machine gun discovered on public bus rider throughout KCSO elevated patrols.” Within the story, the station reported that King County Sheriff’s Workplace deputies encountered a person smoking marijuana on a bus, eliminated him from the bus, and through a pat-down discovered “a gun — an Uzi with a silencer” hid below his shirt and tucked down his pants. KIRO then instructed readers, “An Uzi is a military-grade machine gun that’s usually unlawful to personal in the USA.”
That may be a dramatic declare. Additionally it is one which seems to not match the gun KIRO confirmed its viewers.
By the very subsequent day, KIRO’s personal follow-up reporting described the seized firearm in a different way. As a substitute of repeating the “army machine gun” line, the station referred to it as “a copy .22 caliber Uzi-style machine gun with a pretend suppressor.” That wording continues to be sloppy, as a result of a semi-automatic .22 reproduction isn’t a machine gun. Nevertheless it strongly suggests the unique story exaggerated what deputies had really recovered.
That distinction isn’t a technicality. If the firearm proven was in truth a .22-caliber UZI-style reproduction, labeling it a “army machine gun” was not simply imprecise wording. It gave viewers a misunderstanding about what the suspect really possessed.
Product listings make the probably clarification much more apparent. Walther has marketed a semi-automatic UZI .22 LR tactical rimfire reproduction, describing it as a UZI rimfire reproduction and explicitly figuring out it as a semi-auto .22 LR rifle, not a select-fire submachine gun.
That seems in line with what KIRO finally reported: a “copy .22 caliber Uzi-style” firearm with a “pretend suppressor.”
KIRO accurately reported that the person was a convicted felon, which might make his possession of any firearm illegal no matter whether or not the gun was an actual machine gun or a semi-auto .22 clone. That was already a sound story. The true offense was severe sufficient by itself. There was no must inflate it right into a “army machine gun” narrative if the thing proven was really a rimfire reproduction.
Sadly, this sort of framing has a protracted historical past. In its well-known paper on “assault weapons,” Violence Coverage Heart brazenly argued that public confusion between machine weapons and semi-automatic firearms could possibly be politically helpful, writing that “something that appears like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun.” That line has aged higher than the media retailers that preserve proving him proper.
If King County deputies recovered a firearm from a prohibited particular person, report that. If the gun was a .22-caliber UZI-style reproduction with a pretend suppressor, report that too. However telling the general public a “army machine gun” was discovered on a bus rider, then quietly shifting to “copy .22 caliber Uzi-style” language later, is unhealthy reporting and precisely why folks have shifted away from mainstream media sources.
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About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a army officer, was on the College of Wisconsin Pistol Staff for 4 years, and was first licensed to show firearms security in 1973. He taught the Arizona hid carry course for fifteen years till the purpose of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has levels in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Division of Protection after a 30 yr profession in Military Analysis, Improvement, Testing, and Analysis.
