May

27

The Strange Case of the PPK Revolver

May 27, 2008 |  Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment

I’m not sure if this post comes under the category of “Media Bias” or “Media Ignorance,” but it does refer to the fact that many media mavens are not familiar with the topics about which they write. Take, for example, the feature story on Page 1 of the Rocky spotlight, Rocky Mountain News, Saturday, May 17th, 2008, entitled “Hero Worship.” This is a would-be interactive piece that lists famous movie action heroes and asks the readership to name the “greatest action hero.”

Putting aside the apparently purely subjective listing of “weapons of choice,” such as the omission of firearms with regard to Bruce Wills’ character John McLane in the Die Hard franchise, the most glaring problem arises with none other than Hero Number (00)7, Sean Connery’s James Bond. His “weapon of choice” is listed as a “Walther PPK revolver.”

Anyone who has seen one Bond movie, or who knows anything about guns, knows that the Walther PPK is not a revolver. It is a semi-automatic pistol. You know, one of those “bad” guns that the “good” guys are always trying to ban.

Big deal? What does it matter? It matters, because the people who get their information on the gun debate from misinformed media mavens believe that semi-automatic firearms are full-auto “bullet hoses.” They believe that cosmetic attributes like pistol grips and bayonet lugs somehow affect the lethality of a weapon, or its suitablity in the self-defense role. I think the following quotation applies to this situation.

“Obviously, a man’s judgement cannot be better than the information on which he has based it. Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning processes, and make him something less than a man.” Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Publisher, New York Times, Speech, New York State Publishers Association, August 30th, 1948.

Let us resolve to correct and educate reporters and columnists, lest their mistakes become “facts” through repetition.

Def Mech


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