I am grinding my teeth trying to restrain myself from commenting on some of the drivel being written about the recent murder of US soldiers by a muslim US army officer… but this is just a measure of the ignorance that permeates the profession and which is directly responsible for the growth of so called ‘new media’, i.e. things like blogs. Nick Allen writes in the Telegraph in an article titled “gunman used ‘cop killer’ weapon in massacre at US Army base” (a catchy ‘yellow journalism’ title if ever there was one):
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, used an FN Five-Seven, a semi-automatic pistol popular with SWAT teams, that can fire armour-piercing bullets.
Oh for fuck sake. Any weapon can fire ‘armour-piercing bullets’. I know little about Nick Allen, but I assume he is a Brit and therefore knows bugger all about firearms and thus parrots the equally dismal urban US journalist propensity to describe any handgun firing a round capable of penetrating (some) body armour as a “cop killer”. Also I strongly suspect 9mm and 10mm handguns are far more popular with SWAT teams, as SWAT teams have rifles for use against armoured targets.
The weapon is designed for high(-ish) penetration for use against low end body armoured targets (the victims at Fort Hood were almost certainly unarmoured), but it has rather poor stopping power (that said, when it comes to handguns, bullet placement rather than calibre is the largest single determinant of stopping power), making the FN actually a poor choice… presumably the high magazine capacity may have been why the murderer chose it, knowing he was going to commit his crimes at very close range in a ‘target rich’ environment.
If journalists want to be credible, they need to try to avoid loaded (no pun intended) and rather ignorant terms like “cop killer” and not make meaningless remarks about weapons being capable of using “armour piercing” rounds (which is just another way of saying “they can shoot the rounds they are loaded with”). This ghastly incident contains more than enough news fodder that such sloppiness is inexcusable from ‘professionals’.
Let’s not forget this gem:
“One of the most startling incidents was when a Fabrique National 57, an assault pistol used to kill big game…”
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
As I remember it the 5 7 was an attempt by FN to make a second weapon that would fire the 5.7mm round that they had developed for their original P-90 (I may get the designation wrong submachine gun. This had a magazine that laid flat on top of the weapon and was designed to be easy to carry and to use.
It has not sold well.
The ignorance of the press when it comes to firearms is only to be expected, the ignorance of senior Army officers is less forgivable, but that’s another subject.
I think the P90 (as well as looking cool) is a viable iteration of the SMG concept (i.e. the “personal defence weapon”) for an era of ubiquitous body armour where 9mm might not hack it. However from a pistol length barrel (i.e. an FN Five Seven)… well it ain’t a weapon I would care to have my life depend on against an enemy capable of shooting back.
I am extremely pro-gun and while I don’t have the expertise to be outraged by any misuse of the language of assault weaponry, there is a British journalists’ – print and broadcast – term that drives me to … wanting to grab a gun. And that term is “gunned down” when they mean “shot”.
The term comes from the US and its real meaning is someone being hit by several bullets from guns being shot by several people. It does not mean one person shooting one person.
I saw it today in – I think it was a headline in The Telegraph; I can’t remember for sure because a red mist descended – “British man gunned down in bar in Amarillo, Texas”. They are so anxious to sound cool and knowing and they sound like such needy jerks.
This story just proves the cost of ignorance.
Instead of being removed from our daily live they should become a part of it. The exposure will lead to greater understanding of what a pistol/rifle can do. Additionally, fear of fire arms will be replaced by respect for them and what they can do.
If our journalists and reading/listening/viewing public know, understand, and respect what a firearm can do then dribble like this will cease and a distractor from the heart of the story will be removed.
Let’s focus on the motive(s) for this attack and not the means used.
Sorry, but the line between respect and fear is very thin. They are just bits of metal and plastic, and can do nothing – it’s humans who can do things, and they are the ones who need to be respected or feared (or both, or nether).
I certainly agree about focusing on motives though.
Sorry, ‘neither’ rather than ‘nether’.
I know little of firearms but something of logic, and calling a ‘pistol popular with SWAT teams’ a ‘cop killer’ is laziness above and beyond the call of journalistic duty. He might with at least as much justice have termed it a ‘killer cop weapon’!
Not happening any time soon in the Trickledown Model Media, I do agree.
Haven’t we all zoomed off on the wrong topic here?
It doesn’t matter what kind of firearm was used in the killings, except in so far as it was a firearm. The main missed point in this case is the motivation of the perpetrator.
The dishonesty surrounding this subject in the mainstream press is the real reason for the collapse in newspaper sales.
Opportunist that he is, Tony Blair used the Hungerford massacre to disarm the British as a prophylactic measure, because he knew that what he was going to do to our democracy would motivate an armed rebellion.
And here we are, our democracy in shreds around our feet, and armed only with blogs.
That is specifically what I am *not* talking about. My article is about crap journalism, not the horrendous crime. Until the details come out I am pointedly resisting the urge to say anything about the crime itself.
“informed journalism”
What a novel idea! Someone should try it sometime.
From the Daily News article:
Mockumentaries not paying so well?
Yes, Mr de Havilland, you have a point, but the central issue around this story is the media’s deliberate and dishonest obfuscation of the motivation, which is to my mind the central issue here.
No, Brian, the central issue is whatever the blog owner has decided it will be. In this case, journalists’ ignorance about guns and their presenting their own misapprehensions as facts. Most of these people have never held a gun in their lives. (With the honourable exception of journalists in Texas.)
I suspect that the only item of gun knowledge colleges require would-be writers to master these days is that the difference between the .44 Magnum pistol cartridge and a tactical nuke can be overcome by handloading.
Really, though, why get bothered? These people are pig-ignorant about everything (except possibly newsroom politics) and that isn’t going to change. Be patient. They’ll be gone in a few years.
I hate to sound like the
devil’sjournalists’ advocate, but as Perry rightly points out it is too early to discuss motivation. Of course this is not the real reason why they are not discussing it, but that is beside the point.PersonFromPorlock: .44 Nuclear? That’s way cool! I wonder where I can buy a few rounds?
The press is not ignorant. They popularize ignorance.
They intentionally lie. A newspaper, Cicero Tribune, was owned by the Capone family. The Hearsts have been no better. (Orson Welles wasn’t a paranoid conspiracy theorist) Mark Twain got to know blacklisting
One has to “read between the lines”. Sometimes, a reporter will write a story in such a way that it passes the bosses; but, has hidden in it, implications of the truth.
There’s a use of the word “suit”, that, to experience says it all. A suit is worn by gangsters, gov’t. and corp.
functionaries. Seeing a “suit” is never good news for the “little people”.
Modern journalism serves the suits; by creating a false sense of reality. Conventional thinking is a contradiction
Believe half of what you see; and, none of what you hear. Old, but good advice.
The “mainstream” media tells us to trust the security forces with a de facto monopoly of firearms – like an Army Major?
And the msm tells us to trust “mental health experts” – like a head doc?
The FN FiveseveN is a curious toy, but no more. I don’t know of a single cop that carries one. MO Highway Patrol t&e’ed the carbine that took the same cartridge (FN P90) as a possible patrol rifle, but I think they went with a fairly conventional Colt AR instead.
The selling point of the 5.7mm round is that one variant can be made to penetrate soft body armor.[1] However, the AP round is not sold to the general public. FN won’t do it, and Federal law doesn’t allow it. Nor is the AP variant sold to individual police officers or individual soldiers. If we wanted it, then we would need to have a department purchase order.
Meaning that I highly doubt that shitbird was flinging AP ammo around.
As for the guns that cops carry (and SWAT in particular)…around here, no toys like that. We’re pretty much tied to the same 9mm/.40[2]/.45acp Glocks and Sig-Sauers (and lately, S&W M&Ps), and the same Colt/LMT/S&W M&P/Bravo Company AR15-pattern carbines, loaded with the same factory-loaded JHP rounds that I’d recommend to the commentariat.
I don’t know why this reminds me…the incompetent terror plot to crash a gate at the airport in Glasgow…Muslim doctors on the government’s payroll for their day jobs, right?
[1] As Perry suggests, it has absolute crap terminal ballistic performance off of a rifle. Off of a handgun, I think I’d rather be armed with a .22lr pistol instead.
[2] I have to ask: is 10mm Britspeak for .40s&w, or do you mean 10mm as in “Bren Ten/Glock 20/Colt Delta Elite 10mm?”
Our host wrote: “My article is about crap journalism”
Then Perry, dear boy, an article simply cannot do the subject justice. You would need to write a book, nay an encyclopaedia!
We can all agree that there is far too much crap journalism. Now let’s get to the real question. How can an army officer/doctor escape notice when he openly pushes Muslim propaganda to soldiers wounded defending Muslims from other Muslims? Not all the guilty parties in this drama are lying in a hospital bed receiving better-than-NHS medical treatment and the protection of an armed guard.
But didn’t you know, it is the first sacred duty of lamestream journalists to represent all guns as evil? Unless, of course they are used in the service of the Holy State.
If you’re waiting for all the “details” to come out – well, dude, you’re in for a long, long wait. Expect whitewash, cover-ups, political correctness and nannyish rebukes (but you Brits surely must be used to that by now given that you have even more leftwing nutbots than we have in Canada) but the one thing you will NOT get are the facts. The truth being too dangerous to the powers-that-be.
Sunfish:
2] I have to ask: is 10mm Britspeak for .40s&w, or do you mean 10mm as in “Bren Ten/Glock 20/Colt Delta Elite 10mm?”
The 10mm auto and bren ten are very different beasts. 10auto was developed after the FBI discovered that most of their folks couldn’t put two successive rounds into the same county, let alone the same target. So, a round that only takes one shot! That’ll solve the problem…
The 40S&W came from the 10auto (bullets of .400 and .4005, respectively), but the .40 has a case which is about a quarter inch shorter. It carries more punch than the 9mm, but less than the 10auto. I came to love my SW4006 after carrying it for 7 years, but I still own my previous Smith 9.
RE: the FN57… I’m glad other people noticed the inherent conflict:
1.) An assault pistol,
2.) for lions & tigers & bears?
So, who hunts bears with a glorified EU-poodle shooter? I’d be afraid I’d only get his attention… Must be all those bears’ dens full of drug dealers that the LAPD has raided. Again, I agree with Sunfish, in that I know of NO law enforcement colleagues or departments would use it.
I doubt Doctor Shrink was assigned that weapon — having an active duty i.d. as an Army Major, he likely bought it over the counter in the last few weeks. And remember what psychiatrists are, people. They are doctors who discover — too late in their training — that they can’t stand the sight of blood. Oops! (Smack to head). NOW what do I do? (With apologies to who the decent shrinks I have met over the years… both of them!)
Finally, that last point by liam is spot-on. The guilty parties (other than Dr. Shrink) are likely riding desks in the Pentagon or at Walter Reed. The big “why” here will have to be read between the lines.
If someone were gunning for me and I didn’t have body armor… AP instead of hollowpoints? Yes, please!
Verity:
It was the Thatcher government which in 1988 used Hungerford as an excuse to ban self loading rifles and massively increase the paperwork involved in owning shotguns.
It was the Major government which in 1997 used Dunblane as an excuse to ban almost all pistols, apart from a very small number of .22 pistols to be stored at gun clubs under Fort Knox style security.
The Blair government merely enacted the endgame to a long series of Conservative betrayals by banning .22 pistols. In reality, few if any clubs could have held them under the terms proposed by the Conservatives, so, amazingly, Blair was actually being honest for once, enacting an outright ban rather then a de facto one.
The sad fate of British gun owners is to be fucked over worse by Conservatives than by Labour, and that is why I hate them both.
John K – It was the Dunblane massacre to which I was referring. I got mixed up.
Whoever did it, banning guns is wicked. I had a gun when I lived in Texas, and the knowledge that I could legally shoot anyone who put one foot over my threshhold uninvited was a great comfort.
The one time I did have the police out, they asked me where I kept my gun – the assumption being that as I looked relatively normal, I would naturally have a gun in the house. They also advised me that if the lurker came back and set one foot in the house, I should shoot to kill.
That’s an attitude that I can respect. And that’s why the police themselves get a lot of respect in Texas. They are palpably on the side of the law-abiding.
A lot of gun enthusiasts seem to think that if we were simply able to take journalists out to the range for a day, they’d learn that firearms are not the manifest evil they portray.
My experience has been different; I have taken avowedly leftist reporters to shoot and they simply dont have the temperament for it. One told me that all he could see in the generic silhouettes were shop keepers and school children, and that it was a ghastly experience.
The people who beat anti-gun drums in mainstream media know what they are doing; they are willingly lying and distorting in order to pursue a disarmament policy. It is not even the noble motive of lying in order to sell more newspapers.
They arent going to report correctly because they have no intention of doing so.
The only time I’ve ever seen 5.7×28mm is on Stargate, where they use P90’s as PDW’s, simply because they look cool and space-agey. But you really have to see the cartridge to understand how minuscule it is. It’s not much bigger than .22 Magnum (which is a rimfire cartridge) and develops muzzle energies in the same regime (300-400 ft lbs). .22 Hornet develops two to three times as much energy. 5.7×28 is a varmint cartridge.
Darryl
..but of course he still believes that you’re insane and he’s perfectly healthy.
Visualizing a particular scenario in a silhouette target is a legitimate training technique. However, most normal people (including most if not all shooters in this thread, no doubt) probably visualize actual bad guys rather than whatever this reporter clown said.
FlyingPig:
LOVE the 4006? Wow. I’d never met a Smith[1] that I’d even grudgingly liked until the M&P series.
The FBI’s 10mm project was a damn fiasco, to be sure. And to think they replaced the Sig for it….
I can pretty much assure that he wasn’t issued it. .MIL issues the Beretta 92 for the most part. A few roles are issued a SIG P228 instead, but I think that’s limited to NCIS/DA CID for plainclothes use. And of course SOCOM is an entity unto itself, but I doubt that the major had anything to do with the latter.
If he was a resident of Texas, buying pistols was easy enough. Walk into a dealer, do the NICS, and walk out. Someone able to maintain a commission in the Army and a medical license is unlikely to be a prohibited person under Federal law.
If he bought it while still at Walter Reed…I don’t know. Did he live in VA or MD? VA’s purchase restrictions shouldn’t be radically different from TX. MD maybe, but a doctor who’s an officer in the Army shouldn’t have too much trouble with navigating Maryland’s gun laws, at least WRT purchase.
Same story with a private-party sale. Legal in at least two of the states I mentioned.
[1] semiauto. Their revolvers are fine for secondaries or if you’re kicking it old school.
Sunfish:
LOVE the 4006? Wow. I’d never met a Smith[1] that I’d even grudgingly liked until the M&P series.
It was a gradual process. When first issued, it had a horribly stiff action and the trigger guard tore up everyone’s third finger. By the time I returned it, one armorer insisted I return it to him, as it had “the smoothest action I’ve ever felt”. Since alterations on department arms were strictly verboten, I have no idea how it all happened… (I knew exactly what I was doing, or would never have made changes on a piece I relied on so much). If the armorer didn’t want it, I would have bought it, which was standard practice with that department.
According to what I just read, Doctor Hasan finished his studies in June, transfered to Hood in July, and bought the FN57 from a Killeen dealer “in recent months”. The apartment he cleaned out was also in Killeen. So a Texas purchase, most likely showing an active duty officer’s i.d. He would have sailed through the NICS.
Their revolvers are fine for secondaries or if you’re kicking it old school.
My first assigned weapon was a Model 10, “Korean war surplus”. I still hear the old sergeant: “fer chrissake, don’t put any +P+ in it, or it will blow up in your face!” Hence, my purchase soon after of a secondhand 59. They only allowed the 39 or 59 then if you wanted your own, and the 59 fit my hand perfectly.