Media Bias: There's No Doubt About This Publication's Opinions

A recent CNET article appeared in its "news" section, which you might think is different than the "Op-Ed" section, but not as far as I can tell. They throw all sorts of opinion blogs like Technically Incorrect, the source of this article, into their news section.

Man orders flat screen on Amazon, gets assault rifle

Subhead: Customer who ordered a fine high-definition TV on Amazon opens the box to discover that the third-party merchant has sent him a highly defined murder weapon.

Well, we're not past the headlines before we've got multiple distortions and misrepresentations.

1. "Assault rifle" It's not an assault rifle. It's a semi-automatic rifle, just like any other. It would have to be capable of fully automatic fire to be an assault rifle. It's scary and black, though, so apparently that excuses them from using correct terminology.
2. "Highly defined?" What does that even mean? I think it means that it's a very high-end expensive rifle, which it is. Exactly the type of weapon that is almost never used by criminals. You don't need a rifle that costs more than $1700 to just kill people. This type of rifle attracts competition shooters, hunters and collectors. Not gang-bangers and psychos.
3. "Murder weapon." By this definition, all my guns are murder weapons, I guess, because they leave out the fact that for a weapon to be a "murder weapon" it has to be involved in a, you know, "murder."

The misrepresentations and editorial opinions continue in the body of the article.

"I cannot imagine who might be doing the choosing when ordering one of these things. I can only hope it would be someone with the appropriate qualifications and mental equilibrium."

How can I read that as anything other than liberal panty-wetting? Please, guy, grow a pair of balls. I hereby revoke your man-card for being unable to think of firearms ownership without getting the vapors. I certainly hope that last time the author bought a car -- more than a ton of steel that can barrel down a street killing everything in its path -- that the authorities made sure he had the appropriate "mental equilibrium." What? They let even felons and former mental patients drive in this country? Oh my God! Whatever shall we do?

"Some might imagine that this is one more example of how this gun thing seems far too easy in the U.S."

Again, we take the boundary between news and commentary and piss all over it. Throw in a complete lack of attention to the relevant facts, for good measure.

The use of "some" is particularly sweet. Columnists use "some" when they mean, "I" and maybe one or two of their friends. Sad, sad, metrosexual, pussy friends, in this case.

Given that it's already illegal to ship a firearm to someone who does not possess a federal firearms dealer license, and given that D.C. already has perhaps the most repressive, restrictive firearms ownership policies in the nation, what exactly is the author suggesting be done? The company that shipped the rifle is probably already liable for some serious charges. If a law exists, and people break it (even unintentionally, as this obviously was), is that a reason for more laws? Hey, we have laws against murder, but people still murder. Let's make a new double-plus bad murder law! We'll make it illegal to even think about murder! That'll stop'em!

It wasn't always this way. Until the mid-60s you could get firearms shipped directly to your home from sources as homey as the Sears Catalog. Nobody has ever presented any credible (or incredible?) evidence that forbidding that caused any reduction at all in the crime rate. In fact, crime rates rose steeply in the late sixties and seventies. I won't assert there's a causation there, though -- that would be the kind of sloppy thinking that they seem to like at CNET.