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Wall Street Journal lapses into Orwellian Newspeak on guns

Mike

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Please click on and DIGG this column!

By driving these columns to the top of DIGG they get read by more people who get educated as to the bogus terms for guns used by the antis

http://www.examiner.com/x-2782-DC-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m3d7-Wall-Street-Journal-lapses-into-newspeak-when-it-comes-to-guns

SNIP

"U.S. law-enforcement officials have seen a spike in heavy-caliber rifles heading to Mexico. A World News article Saturday incorrectly quoted William D. Newell of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives describing a spike in machine guns. "Machine gun" is a technical term for a classification of a firearm that doesn't describe the type of weapon he was referring to."

This correction was printed on page 2 of the Wall Street Journal on March 5, 2009, and made me feel like I had slipped into an Orwellian world of “newspeak.” You know, the language being promoted by the ruling elites of England in Orwell’s book 1984. Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar whose aim is to make any alternative thinking impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on. . . .
 

Grapeshot

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We can really trust the Wall Street Journal - like following their lead on what stocks to buy and when to sell. :shock:

Yata hey
 

Repeater

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Mike wrote in his column:

But an “assault weapon” is just an Orwellian term coined by anti-gun politicians for “scary looking rifles” which are not machine guns – just dressed up cosmetically to look like military assault rifles with pistol grips, flash suppressors, and perhaps a bayonet mounting lug.

Actually, it was Josh Sugarman at the VPC that coined the inflammatory term.

From Jeff Chan, who wrote

The so-called "assault weapon" is a term invented by anti-gunners, specifically Josh Sugarman in his March 1989 paper titled "Assault Weapon: Analysis, New Research and Legislation." In it Sugarman recommends exploiting:

"...the public's confusion over fully-automatic
machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons
[sic] -- anything that looks like a machine gun
is assumed to be a machine gun...
"

This confusion along with most of the propaganda and lobbying strategies he proposed to exploit this confusion in support of semi-automatic firearm bans were picked up by anti-gun legislators like Feinstein, former California Attorney General John Van De Kamp and others. They used the confusion to successfully promote gun bans in the state and federal legislatures.
 

demnogis

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Before October of 2007 the Wall Street Journal was an excellent source of independent and influential news.

Since then, they are now owned by Rupert Murdoch's International influential News Corporation.

A tidbit on Rupert Murdoch...

He is the dominant source of news in the world. When he bought Dow Jones & Co, Inc two years ago he also bought the Associated Press, Reuters and the Barrons Weekly Financial Magazine.

He essentially controls the news through every major outlet.

I left working at WSJ shortly after the buyout happened.

Since then I have noticed that most of what they print is worthless information. Even the financial information that WSJ used to be about is worthless and months behind what the real money-makers (ie: thieves and robbers) are doing to separate everyone else from their dollar. It is heavily sided information to the perspective of Mr. Murdoch and his editorial pocket-people.
 

sjalterego

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Repeater wrote:
Mike wrote in his column:

But an “assault weapon” is just an Orwellian term coined by anti-gun politicians for “scary looking rifles” which are not machine guns – just dressed up cosmetically to look like military assault rifles with pistol grips, flash suppressors, and perhaps a bayonet mounting lug.

Actually, it was Josh Sugarman at the VPC that coined the inflammatory term.

From Jeff Chan, who wrote

The so-called "assault weapon" is a term invented by anti-gunners, specifically Josh Sugarman in his March 1989 paper titled "Assault Weapon: Analysis, New Research and Legislation." In it Sugarman recommends exploiting:

While I fully agree that the term "assault weapon" was exploited by Brady/VPC and other anti-gun groups and that they have promoted the use of that term in order to demonize various firearms, it is NOT true that they created, inventedor coined the term. A simple Google Book search for the term "assault weapon" restricted to dates predating 1989, reveals numerous uses of the term "assault weapon".

The term had a fairly well understood military meaning. It is really the successful effort to extend the useof this name "assault weapon" or "assault rifle" to the context of semi-automatic only rifles in an effort to build support for the various state and federal "assault weapons" bans that is problematic.



I agree with the sentiment but it is false to state that the anti-gunners 'invented" the term. Really they misappropriated it.
 
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