[VCDL] 20/20 - If I Only Had a Gun - a Synopsis

[allingeneral]

VCDL report/synopsis on the 20/20 piece "If I only had a gun"
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As predicted, ABC's 20/20 show last night was a propaganda piece on
guns. Except for work done by John Stossel, 20/20 has a history of
wearing their agenda on their sleeve and they don't even pretend to be
unbiased. 20/20 clearly had their conclusion before they started,
they only needed to make their story match that desired conclusion.

So let the fun begin:

20/20 asks children what President Obama should do about guns. While
the kids were cute, implying that little kids have the maturity to
determine our country's policies on freedom is just plain, er,
childish. But the anti-gun modus operandi is to use emotion and not
logical thought when it comes to guns and 20/20 didn't break out of
the mold.

They played up the "gun show loophole" myth during the show, never
mentioning that there is nothing you can do at legally at a gun show
that you can't do legally outside a gun show. Nope, why confuse
people with key information like that?

And then there was a segment where they gave Omar Samaha, whose sister
was murdered at Virginia Tech, $5000 and an hour to buy guns at the
Richmond gun show.

The first gun that Omar purchased, from someone standing in line, was
a Glock. 20/20 then says that it was chilling that he was sold that
gun, since one like it was used to kill his sister.

A Glock? That's probably one of the most common handguns in America.
Gee, what were the odds?

He then proceeded to buy various rifles and shotguns over that hour.

Image the horror - here was an adult buying legal products and in
quantity! Guess 20/20 never shops at Costco.

20/20 completely missed the point that criminals are always going to
get guns and gun control laws aren't even going to slow them down.

20/20 also did a segment where a shooter opens fire in a college class
room with an airsoft gun. They have one or two students in the
classroom who are armed and get to fire back. The scenarios they
showed always had their "expert" being the shooter and never the
student.

While they made an attempt to simulate a real situation, I wasn't
impressed. In real life, return fire from good guys would have
disrupted and thrown the shooter off balance as he tried to avoid
getting shot himself.

Everyone in the classroom started running in panic. However,
shootings at Virginia Tech and other schools show that students don't
tend to run in panic, but to hunker down in place. Also the students
don't seem to offer any resistance to the shooter in real life.

The shooter was just too unconcerned to be believable. I'm sure that
was largely because he knew he wasn't really going to die if he was
hit with an airsoft projectile.

While 20/20 pointed out that the students with guns didn't seek cover,
but just stood up and started shooting in place, a person's instincts
to get to cover would be different if someone is shooting a real gun
at at them.

And MOST IMPORTANTLY, 20/20 conveniently didn't point out just how
many students would have survived because of the major distraction the
armed students provided for the shooter. That was HUGE. But 20/20
didn't even bring it up.

Instead 20/20 concluded that since the armed students might not have
survived this surprise attack or there might have been some collateral
damage, that everyone would be better off unarmed and trying to flee
or playing dead. The "I'm unarmed, please don't hurt me" technique of
self defense.

Yeah - we saw how well that technique worked at Virginia Tech.

One other aspect 20/20 didn't touch on: at many of the school
shootings, people in classrooms could hear gun shots from other
rooms. With armed students that would provide time to setup an ambush
for the bad guy as soon as he walks into the classroom.

Jack Rumbah, with Suarez International, ran just such a scenario last
year in a classroom using airsoft guns. The result was the bad guy
got creamed every time, with little or no harm to the students in the
classroom.

I wonder why 20/20 didn't use data already available from Suarez
International or another professional self-defense entity rather than
setting up their own test with something they have no expertise in?
Surely a "news" organization wasn't trying to ensure in advance that
there was only one possible conclusion?

I would like to have seen what would have happened if 20/20 would have
let one of the regular students be the shooter and let 20/20's expert
be a student sitting in the classroom. That is every bit as likely a
scenario as the one 20/20 used and probably would have been a really
bad scenario for the shooter. But 20/20 wouldn't have liked the
outcome vis-a-vis their desired conclusion.

We're better of unarmed and helpless? Sorry 20/20, you go right ahead
and follow your own foolish advice, but I'll take my chances with a
gun in my hand.

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For those who want to read the details of Jack Rumbah's classroom
simulation, here is the article. It's a real eye opener. Too bad ABC
didn't contact Jack:

http://www.vcdl.org/pdf/Force-on-Force-Aug-Sept-07.pdf

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Reminder: 60 Minutes (CBS) will run the long awaited segment on guns
tonight (Sunday) at 7 PM.


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(VCDL). VCDL is an all-volunteer, non-partisan grassroots organization
dedicated to defending the human rights of all Virginians. The Right to
Keep and Bear Arms is a fundamental human right.

VCDL web page: http://www.vcdl.org

[Bob]

I'll take my chances with a
gun in my hand.

I agree 100% Rick.

Thanks for posting this. I never watch ABC or any of the other MSM networks much any more, I just end up getting mad and shouting at the TV.