PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Re-committed to APPROPRIATIONS
Last Action Date: May 6, 2024
Obama and Rubio: Who got Pinocchios? Who Received the Gepetto Rating? :: 12/20/2015
Now that the New York Times has openly shown its true colors by putting an opinion piece on the front page and calling for gun confiscation, the Washington Post instead took a different approach. Instead of publishing opinions, the Post opted for fact checking and left the bias on the printing room floor.
In fact, the Post’s Fact Checker column concluded that Barack Obama deserved a rebuke for recent comments on gun control, while giving a statement by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) its highest award for credibility.
Of particular note in the Post’s article were Obama’s repeated claims that high-profile shootings do not happen with the same frequency in other countries. For example, President Obama during his June 19 speech before the anti-gun U.S. Conference of Mayors said, “[w]e are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.”
This is so patently false; it is unlikely that it took much of a sleuth find the falsehoods. All the post had to do was research the rate of deaths resulting from mass shootings in 11 countries (conducted by State University of New York-Oswego professor Jaclyn and Texas State University’s H. Jaymi Elsass). In the article, the Post points out, “The United States had a lower rate of mass shooting fatalities per 100,000 people than Norway, Finland, or Switzerland.”
The President’s speeches had so many flaws, the Post did not stop there. The Post looked to economist John R. Lott, “If you are going to compare the U.S. to someplace else, if you are going to compare it to small countries, you have to adjust for population. Alternatively, compare the U.S. to Europe as a whole.” When this method is applied, Lott contention reveals that, “2009 to 2015 shows the rate of mass shootings in the United States and Europe are about the same.”
In the end, after calling the President out for his falsehoods and misleading claims, the Post concluded the article with an appeal for more transparency and honest from the nation’s leader, “[w]e urge the president to be more consistent and precise in describing mass shootings in the country… rather than using vague or misleading phrases.” Perhaps the Post had a moment of weakness or was in the giving mood when it awarded the president just two “Pinocchios.”
Who knows for sure what the future will hold. Obama still has a year to use to his phone and his pen. What he cannot do through the Congress, he has hinted he will do without it. Presidential candidates are lining up though and many with pro Second Amendment agendas, a few with very anti Second Amendment agendas.
NASHVILLE, TN – APRIL 10: U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) speaks during the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum at the 2015 NRA Annual Meeting & Exhibits on April 10, 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee. The annual NRA meeting and exhibit runs through Sunday. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
For example, Sen. Rubio recently earned top marks for a December 4 statement on CBS This Morning, “[n]one of the major shootings that have occurred in this country over the last few months or years that have outraged us, would have been prevented by the proposed gun laws.” This is a point the NRA, the Shooter’s Log and many of this readership have made on time and again. With even just a modicum of common sense applied, it is easy to deduct that anyone committed to carrying out a mass attack (murder) against innocents at a soft target—by an often suicidal perpetrator—would never be deterred a law that made acquiring the firearm illegal. However, expecting lawmakers to use common sense, at times can be a stretch. So, for proof, the Post examined 12 high-profile shootings to determine whether any of the more popularly supported gun control proposals, such as semi-auto restrictions and bans on private transfers (known as the gun show loophole), could have prevented the incident.
The Post’s conclusions will not be much of a surprise to any of us. “Rubio’s statement stands up to scrutiny,” earning the Post’s highest award for truthfulness, the “Geppetto Checkmark.” As if that was not sweet enough, the Post went on to deliver the coup de grâce with the following, “three of the mass shootings took place in California, which already has strong gun laws including a ban on certain weapons and high-capacity magazines.”
It is not often the main stream media (or politicians in many cases) get it right when it comes to our Second Amendment rights or exposing the fallacies spewed by the gun control crowd. Image what the gun control debate would look like if more media outlets analyzed the facts and reported them truthfully. Most likely, there would not be a debate at all if more voters were better educated with the truth.
How will you help educate voters and pressure the mainstream media for truth in their reporting?
http://blog.cheaperthandirt.com/obama-rubio-statements-pinocchios-gepetto-rating/
