Is Politifact really the organization that should be fact checking Facebook on gun related facts?

If gun control advocates were more confident with their arguments, presumably they wouldn't have to so grossly exaggerate their numbers.  On December 27th, 2016 Politifact evaluated this claim that there are 7 children a day who die from guns, and Politifact's Chris Nichols concluded that this claim by Congresswoman Jackie Speier that "more than seven children PER DAY have died from gun violence" was "mostly true."

Politifact relies on a quote from the Brady Campaign’s website: "Every day, 7 children and teens die from gun violence." The website notes that it crunched CDC data for children and young people through age 19.

Are 18 and 19 year olds "children"?

For 2013 through 2015 for ages 0 through 19 there were 7,838 firearm deaths.  If you exclude 18 and 19 year olds, the number firearm deaths for 2013 through 2015 is reduced by almost half to 4,047 firearm deaths.  Including people who are clearly adults drives the total number of deaths.

Even the Brady Campaign differentiates children from teenagers.  If you just look at those who aren't teenagers, the number of firearm deaths declines to 692, which comes to 0.63 deaths per day.

Even just excluding 18 and 19 year olds reduces the number of firearm deaths by almost half to 4,047 firearm deaths, 3.7 per day.  Defining children as those under 15 reduces the number to 1,312, about 1.2 per day.  It isn't that 18 and 19 year olds aren't important, but Speier was obviously focusing on "children" for a reason.

Homicides are not Murders

Most people, apparently including the Brady Campaign, just assume that homicides and murders are the same, but the difference between them is that homicides include justifiable homicides.  Do you really want to lump in murders with cases where someone uses a gun to stop a murder or other crime from occurring?  For murders for those under 18 for 2013 to 2015, the total for those three years is 573 fewer deaths than homicides (1,551 firearm murders (2013 479, 2014 519, and 2015 553) versus 2,124 firearm homicides).

So for those under 18, if you add up murders 1,551, accidents 245, and suicides 1,589, you get a total of 3,385, not 4,047.

So for those under 13, if you add up firearm murders 338 (=92+124+122) , accidents 145, and suicides 77, you get a total of 560, not 4,047.  That comes to 0.51 deaths per day.

The CDC numbers that Politifact relies on is making comparisons include mistakes that the CDC still has not corrected.

Mixing in gang murders and other deaths.

The vast majority of these deaths for 15 to 19 year olds involve murders involving gangs, primarily drug gangs.   Linking children and guns is done to connote guns in the home for law-abiding households, but the causes and cures for drug gang violence are dramatically different children getting a hold of gun in law-abiding homes.  The notion that you are going to be able to pass laws to stop drug gangs from getting guns is about as easy as stopping those drug gangs from getting drugs to sell.  For a related discussion see here.  This is an additional reason to not include 15 to 19 year olds.

As an aside, during the three years that they studied the number of accidental gun deaths have declined from 59 in 2013 to 44 in 2014 to 42 in 2015.

Importantly disarming law-abiding citizens or locking up people's guns makes them more vulnerable to criminals

The laws that Congresswoman Speier and the Brady Campaign are pushing lead to more deaths.  Regulations, such as "Safe Storage Laws," disarm law-abiding citizens, thus encouraging criminals to attack and making them more likely to succeed in committing their crimes.

Do we really want Politifact serving as the fact checker for Facebook?

As the CPRC has previously written, fact checkers, such Politifact, have their own biases — usually the same liberal biases that we see in the rest of the mainstream media.  This latest example from Politifact just provides additional evidence for those concerns.

George Soros and Facebook, Soros using Facebook's new rules to bias what news people read

Because of misleading news coverage, a lot of Americans apparently already believe that "fake" news is a big problem (survey available here).  Here is some background on the changes in how Facebook will protect people from "fake" news.

Facebook has announced its plan to tackle fake news by harnessing fact checking and, potentially, making disputed stories appear lower in users’ News Feeds. . . . 

The social network announced Thursday that it will make it easier for users to report fake news when they see it, which they can do by clicking the upper right hand corner of a post. If enough people report a story as fake, Facebook will pass it to third-party fact-checking organizations that are part of the nonprofit Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network. 

Five fact-checking and news organizations are working with the company on this: ABC News, The Associated Press, FactCheck.org, Politifact and Snopes. Facebook says this group is likely to expand. . . .

For information on why this is a problem using these fact checkers see this article available here.

 But the problem gets even worse.  Enter George Soros who will be funding an organization to flag stories that he believes to be false and also to fund fact checking.

The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) drafted a code of five principles for news websites to accept, and Facebook yesterday announced it will work with “third-party fact checking organizations” that are signatories to the code of principles. . . . 

IFCN is hosted by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. A cursory search of the Poynter Institute website finds that Poynter’s IFCN is openly funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and the National Endowment for Democracy. 

Poynter’s IFCN is also funded by the Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The Omidyar Network has partnered with the Open Society on numerous projects and it has given grants to third parties using the Soros-funded Tides Foundation.  Tides is one of the largest donors to left-wing causes in the U.S. 

Another significant Poynter Institute donor is the Craig Newmark Foundation, the charitable organization established by Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark. On Monday, just days before the announcement of the Facebook partnership, Poynter issued a press release revealing that Newmark donated $1 million to the group to fund a faculty chair in journalism ethics. . . . .

and from the UK Daily Mail:

Billionaire Clinton donor George Soros is among a line-up of wealthy liberal figures who will fund Facebook's fake news fact checker.  

The 86-year-old Hungarian financier's Open Society Foundation is listed among organizations which are backing The International Fact Checking Network, the body tasked with flagging bogus news stories to social media users, on its website. 

Soros, a staunch Democrat who tried to block George W. Bush's campaign in 2004, has given $25million to Clinton and causes dear to her.  

Other donors involved in the new fact checking feature include eBay founder Pierre Omidyar who has committed more than $30million to the Clintons and their charities. Google, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy are also funding the pilot.   

The line-up feeds criticism from right-wing commentators that the new fact checking feature will be biased towards left-wing causes and could interfere with the social media feeds of millions of voters. . . .

Is the media selectively using pictures to help Hillary Clinton by making her look much younger than she is? Hillary Clinton's stock pictures where she is pictured with other candidates look photoshopped to eliminate wrinkles

UPDATED Several Times Since first posted on January 28, 2016: Here are some screen shots from CNN and ABC of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders giving live speeches. I then used a computer program to estimate the ages of the candidates.  The computer program provides fairly accurate estimates of their ages.  Both pictures is be fairly accurate in estimating their ages.

The weird thing occurs when you look at the stock pictures that the different networks use for the candidates.  Below are the pictures from CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS News, ABC News, and NBC News.  In virtually all of them it is clear that Hillary Clinton's picture has been photo shopped so that she has a plastic type look and she appears to be much younger than she is.  Some of these pictures of Hillary Clinton are clearly airbrushed, particularly CNN and MSNBC.  While Hillary Clinton's campaign might have provided some of the pictures, many are clearly taken from these news programs stock footage.  But all the pictures of Hillary Clinton show her decades younger than her true age.  By contrast, half of Bernie Sanders pictures indicate that he is older than 74.  For Martin O'Malley, 3/4ths of his pictures show that he is older than his true age of 53.

Across the news show pictures shown below, Hillary Clinton's average estimated age is 38, about 30 years younger than her actual age.  Even eliminating CNN's picture where she appears to be only 29 years old, the average for the other five news organizations puts her at 28 years younger than her actual age.  The pictures used for the other candidates create an impression that the candidates are much closer to their actual ages.  Bernie Sanders' average estimated age is 71.3, about 3 years younger than his actual age.  Martin O'Malley's average estimated age is 58, five years older than his actual age.

To put it differently, if you relied on the stock photos provided by news organizations, Hillary is by far the youngest Democrat in the race, 20 years younger than O'Malley and 33 years younger than Sanders.

Even if wants to restrict the analysis to the polling type line up that I have for four of the news organizations, the results would have implied that Hillary Clinton was now 37.8 years younger than Sanders (Hillary Clinton estimated age of 39 and Bernie Sanders 76.8) and 20 years younger than O'Malley.  So as to reduce arbitrariness and facilitate comparisons where pictures are picked for pure news shows, I have limited myself to still shots where at least two of the candidates are pictured next to each other.

Note that there are other oddities with these pictures.  For example, for CBS compare the smiling Clinton to open mouthed Sanders or O'Malley.  I have no idea whether this makes her look more sympathetic and friendly, but it is interesting just to note that almost all the other networks have pictures for these polling results of all the candidates smiling.

The point of the two pictures of Clinton at the top and the one at the bottom show that there are lots of stock pictures that the media could have picked that would have treated Clinton similar to her Democratic opponents.

More pictures from the AP on June 7th.  This picture for Hillary is not as extreme as the ones shown above, but while the picture makes Hillary look younger than she is, the picture for Trump makes him look older.  Just looking at these two pictures seems to me that the one for Hillary is much more positive and happy compared to the one for Trump.

Here are two pictures on June 7th from Fox News.

I have also examined some pictures of Carly Fiorina for a comparison and the computer accurately predicts her age.

ADDITIONAL PICTURES

Here are some additional pictures to help gauge the accuracy of the How-Old.net program as well provide additional information on how Hillary is treated.  Megyn Kelly is 45, but she looks like she is 47.  Lester Holt is 58, but he looks 55.  Amazingly, at least to me, Megyn Kelly looks older than Hillary Clinton's still pictures used with the polling numbers.

See also

Washington Post's Christopher Ingraham again cherry picks research and misstates what those studies show

The Washington Post's Christopher Ingraham has another new post on gun control (earlier ones here), where he is claiming that most people are wrong to believe that permitted concealed handguns make them safer.  In this case, Ingraham is responding to a new Gallup poll that finds that by a 56-to-41 percent margin Americans believe that more people legally carrying permitted concealed handguns would make them safer.

 Summary: Ingraham's piece selectively picks eight studies on right-to-carry laws and crime rates: six find no effect on crime and two claim to find a bad effect.  Of the two that claim to find a bad effect one is inaccurately described (for homicides it provided no evidence of a bad effect and some statistically significant evidence of a benefit) and the other paper is unpublished with severe flaws.  Of the peer reviewed studies that Ingraham references no evidence of a statistically significant bad effect from right-to-carry laws is offered.  With the exception of part of Lott's research, he ignores all the national studies that find benefits from the law.

 I have reached out to Ingraham both by email and telephone to discuss these points, but have not received a response from him.

  Details: Much of the discussion here focuses on the research by John Lott, but Ingraham has again cherry-picked research to give a very selective view of peer-reviewed research on concealed carry.  Table 2 in this paper from the University of Maryland Law Review in 2012 has a survey that shows most research show a benefit from concealed carry, but there are other more recent papers that find a benefit (see papers here towards the end of this list).  As with other gun control advocates, Ingraham wants to imply that it is just Lott's research versus various critics, but this ignores that most of the peer-reviewed academic research using national data supports his and David Mustard's original research.  In a similar vein in claiming that Lott's research was "completely discredited," Ingraham completely ignores our responses here and here to those assertions.

-- "Lott, for his part, still stands by his idea, although he has nuanced it a bit. He's recently argued that studies critical of right-to-carry laws have failed to properly account for state-level differences in how difficult it is to acquire a handgun permit."

The paper that Lott wrote looked at 4 studies.  In direct contrast to Ingraham's claim about me responding to studies "critical of right-to carry laws": two of those papers that Lott discussed found a benefit from right-to-carry laws, one claimed no effect, and one claimed increased crime.  The point of Lott's was that those papers (even the two that found a benefit) were biased towards not finding a benefit.  If Ingraham had looked at the new paper closely or my research from 2000 on, he would also know that the term "recently" is incorrect.  Lott has been trying to account for the change in permits since the second edition of "More Guns, Less Crime" in 2000.

-- "But as Evan DeFilippis and Devin Hughes recently point out at The Trace, even more recent research from Texas A&M looked at the number of permits issued, not just the passage of various laws. Philips found 'no significant effect of concealed handgun license increases on changes in crime rates... this research suggests that the rate at which CHLs are issued and crime rates are independent of one another—crime does not drive CHLs; CHLs do not drive crime.'"

In a previous post on this website we mentioned numerous problems with the Texas A&M study, we mentioned several problems.  One included (emphasis added):

No explanation is offered for why these authors exclude other states or years?  County level permit data are easily available for Illinois and Wisconsin because no permits were issued over this entire period of time.  Oregon, Tennessee, North Carolina, and other states have county level data over this period of time.   This is important because the test that they are preforming compares these states relative to one another during the period that they all have right-to-carry concealed handgun laws.  When authors throw out data there had better be a good explanation for why they are doing it, but no explanation is offered here.

On other studies:

-- "Changes in gun ownership are significantly positively related to changes in the homicide rate" (Ludwig, 2002)

If Ingraham had read the paper he cites here, he would have not only noticed that the paper was done by Mark Duggan, but, more importantly, Ingraham doesn't mention the part of the paper that deals with concealed handgun laws (the purpose of his piece).  In Table 12 of Duggan's paper, out of the 6 results that are reported on murder rates, 5 out of 6 estimates show a drop in murder rates after adoption of the law (three of these are statistically significant).  The sixth estimate was essentially zero.  None of the estimates show a significant bad effect.

 If one looks more broadly at all the violent crime categories (22 of the 36 estimates imply a drop in crime rates, with 15 of those coefficients showing a statistically significant negative effect, and only one coefficient show a statistically positive effect on crime rates).

 Chapter 10 in Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime" explains why Duggan gets the biased results that he did. In particular, that he looks at only before and after averages.  As to the part of the Duggan paper that Ingraham does cite, these results are also questionable as Duggan uses only the sales of one gun magazine to proxy for gun ownership.  Research using the sales of the other six largest gun magazines get the opposite result.  The magazine that Duggan used was unique because it was the only magazine that had to make large self purchases to guarantee those who bought ads a certain level of circulation.

 Ingraham cites a list of seven papers, but he ignores that the debate among published research has been long recognized as one between those who say that there is no benefit and those who say that there is a benefit.  Listing some papers that show no impact from the law doesn't change what has already been discussed.

-- "Right-to-carry laws are associated with substantially higher rates" of aggravated assault, robbery, rape and murder. (Aneja et al 2014)

This website has long had a detailed discussion of the problems with this unpublished paper.  Research shown here as also provided a detailed discussion. More discussion will be added later. Ingraham has this tweet up pushing his claims.  Presumably he is trying to discredit the research by linking it up to the NRA doing "an amazing job selling" it rather than thinking that the academic debate has has some influence here.  Unfortunately, Ingraham ignores most of the academic research, and, as noted above, he doesn't respond the critiques that have made of the research he cites.

 

Biased media: Compare how ABC’s George Stephanopoulos badgered Peter Schweizer with how he interviewed the preside

Put aside that Stephanopoulos didn't acknowledge his donations to the Clinton Foundation when he interviewed Schweizer about the foundation.  Just compare the tone and badgering of Schweizer with how he was differential to Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.

Why is it with all these cop shows have people registering their guns?

 Why is it that television police shows consistently assume people are required to have their guns registered.  That is true whether the show is said to take place in Florida or, as in the case of the video shown above, in Oregon (Backstrom, Season 1, episode 7, "Enemy of my Enemies").  Hint: Oregon definitely doesn't require people to register guns, let alone "all" their guns. Of course, the other even worse inaccuracy with these shows is that they often have registration being used to solve crimes.

UPDATE: Miguel Gonzalez has told about something called the Entertainment Industries Council. The Council has put together a long list of suggestions on how to write up television and movies to get across gun control ideas (see here). The number of inaccuracies in their write up is simply staggering and I don't have the time to go through them now.

-- "Consider depicting the reality that women are far more likely to be shot by husbands or lovers than by an intruder. Odds are that a gun in her home will be used against her rather than in her defense."
-- "Consider showing someone who is attempting to use a gun in self-defense being overpowered by the attacker who then uses the gun against him or her."
-- "Consider having characters successfully use alternatives to guns for self-defense, such as pepper spray or mace."
-- "Consider showing a parent chastising his or her spouse for leaving a gun where their children can find it."

My newest piece at Fox News: "Media Matters, the facts and me"

My newest Fox News piece starts this way:

With just one telephone call this year, Erik Wemple of the Washington Post was able to convince Media Matters to let me respond to their attacks on me in the comments section of their website — after they ignored my emails, telephone calls, numerous tweets and posts for seven years. 

Media Matters purports to correct misinformation that the “conservative” media puts out, but, ironically, they have systematically hidden comments critical of their work from their readers. They have a blog where it appears that conservatives and others can respond, but they don’t tell their readers that they have regularly removed responses that they couldn’t answer. 

I have been attacked in over 80 posts on Media Matters over the years. They have even criticized reporters from such places as the Washington Post and the New York Times just for interviewing me. They have described me as a “discredited gun researcher.” They have claimed “Gun Advocate John Lott Lashes out at Trayvon Martin’s Mother.” They say I’ve misrepresented Obama’s record on guns, what “assault weapons” are and the views of police on gun control. They have used doctored pictures of me and screen shots of posts. 

Media Matters uses a hit-and-run strategy: Attack, and move on to the next attack. They never acknowledge responses, even those published in major media like the ones I’ve written for Fox News.  

If Media Matters started engaging in debates, their readers would quickly learn that their criticisms of others involve mischaracterizations, carefully edited quotes and outright lies. Their unwillingness to post contrary comments says a lot about their inability to defend themselves. 

A typical example was their March 20 post covering a piece I wrote for FoxNews.com on Vivek Murthy, President Obama's nominee for surgeon general. Media Matters’ headline read: "On Obama's Surgeon General Nominee, It's Medical Experts Vs. Discredited Gun Zealots." With 288 mainly positive comments on their post, Media Matters apparently worried that people might find the ones I posted with a link to the discussion on my website. So Media Matters simply removed my comments. . . . .

The piece continues here.

Fortune Magazine completely mangles story on gun sales "declining"

Fortune magazine's Laura Lorenzetti makes a lot of logical mistakes in her "news" article here.

It looks like Americans may be buying fewer guns this year. 

Smith & Wesson  SWHC , the 162-year-old gunmaker, lowered its guidance for the quarter and rest of the year, even as it reported better than expected sales in its fiscal fourth quarter that ended Apr. 30. Shares of Smith & Wesson’s stock had dropped nearly 9% by the close of trading Friday following the announcement. 

The company reported sales of $170 million in its fourth quarter, higher than the average analyst estimate of about $164 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue was almost 5% less than the year-earlier quarter. . . . 

The once high-selling gun industry may be facing a comedown as incidents of gun violence have soared this year. There has been an average of almost one school shooting every week for the past year and a half, the Washington Post reported earlier this month. . . .

Does reporter Laura Lorenzetti have any idea how inaccurate the Bloomberg claim is that there was one school shooting every week for the last year and a half?  The claim that increased gun violence is responsible for a drop in sales makes many errors.  Does a sales drop for Smith & Wesson imply an overall drop in gun sales?  No.

So what do the NICS checks numbers show on gun sales (click on screenshot to enlarge it)?  NICS checks are not a perfect measure of gun sales, but it is hard to see how its biases have changed in a systematic way this past year.

With the exception of background checks in January and February, 2014's background checks exceed those in 2013 and they are well ahead of those in 2012 for all months.  Fortune incredibly fails to even mention the explosion of gun sales right after Newtown and President Obama's re-election.  Does anyone believe that January and February sales in 2013 were normal sales to make comparisons with?  Even if Smith & Wesson's sales might be down for the last quarter, sales for the entire industry during the April through June quarter look like they are still higher than 2013.  How the Fortune reporter can spin a discussion from one gun maker into a general commentary on the entire gun industry is pretty disappointing.

John Walsh vows to continue Piers Morgan's Gun-Control campaign on CNN

Walsh will be much more effective at making this argument than Piers for the simple reason that he is much more likable.   From The Wrap:

Besides hosting “America's Most Wanted” and advocating for victims’ rights, Walsh has been a longtime advocate of background checks and other safety measures. He said he would continue that fight now that he is joining CNN as the host of “The Hunt,” a new show about catching fugitives. . . .
“I am the guy that has seen both sides of the issue,” Walsh told reporters Monday. “I own guns. I'm the father of a murdered child. I've done nothing but track violence in America since my son was murdered. We have a serious problem with guns in this country. And we refuse to address it. And the NRA solution to arm every grammar-school 80-year-old teacher with a gun is absolutely ludicrous,” he said.
Walsh said the NRA is so deeply in the pocket of the gun industry that “they're not a lobbyist on Capitol Hill, they're a gun manufacturer rep.” He also said Vice President Joe Biden recently agreed with him that politicians are “scared s—less” of the NRA. . . .

Just because background checks work well in theory doesn't mean that the current system actually works that way.  You can find out some of the problems with the background check system here and here.

Obviously the claim that the NRA wants to arm everyone in schools is a gross exaggeration.  The NRA proposal was to arm uniformed guards, something that Bill Clinton had supported when he was president, and something that I thought was a mistake because armed guards are likely to be the first target.

On polls Walsh says:

“I said to Joe Biden, '90 percent of Americans are for a responsible background check for a gun, and you know what this Congress has done? Not voted on it, not brought it to the floor, not introduced a bill,'” Walsh said. “I said, ‘They're all scared shitless of the NRA, aren't they?'” . . . 

You can find out why his claim is incorrect here. 

The media misleading about job growth: Full-time jobs falling, part-time service sector jobs up

The media talks about what a great jobs report came out today.  Take CNN's headline: "Great jobs report: Strong hiring, unemployment down"

The U.S. economy added 288,000 jobs in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. 

That number beats economists' expectations and comes along with other good news: Job growth was revised higher for both May and April. 

Taken altogether, that means employers added 1.4 million jobs in the first six months of the year. 

That's the strongest six months for job growth since 2006.  

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is now 6.1%, down from 6.3% in May. The drop came for the right reasons: More Americans said they had jobs, plus more people joined the labor force. . . .

Barron's has the title "Dow Tops 17,000 on Stellar Jobs Report"
Jobs did rise, but they are part-time, not full-time jobs.  Indeed, full-times jobs has fell significantly and has been down slightly since the beginning of the year.

Unfortunately, the jobs are not only part-time, but about 80 percent are service sector jobs.

It is pretty amazing how the media keeps on making the economy look better than it is.

One thing that is clear is that the percentage of long term unemployed as declined since the long term unemployment insurance benefits were reduced.

Fox News is far more trusted than other TV news: The Public Religion Research Institute and The Brookings Institution poll

Via Erik Wemple's blog at the Washington Post with the title "Ouch: MSNBC barely registers in media study":

The failure of any outlet to reap a wider Democratic/liberal audience, suggests the report, could stem from ideological diversity within the Democratic Party (46% liberal, 31% moderate and 20% conservative). . . .

An alternative explanation is that there is relatively little difference between Broadcast News, CNN, and Public Television.  Possibly MSNBC's and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart's performances is so small because there are relatively few hard leftists.

Huffington Post on the claim that "there is absolutely no evidence" of net benefits of guns

From Mike Weisser at the Huffington Post:

The self-satisfied folks who really believe that 'guns don't kill people, people kill people,' simply refuse to accept the fact that if you pick up a gun, point it at someone else and pull the trigger, that the result is going to be very serious injuries or loss of life. There Is no other way, including running over someone with a car, that has such a devastating effect. The NRA gets around that problem by promoting, with an almost mystical reverence, the notion of using guns for self defense. John Lott's nonsense to the contrary, there is absolutely no evidence which proves that guns save more lives than they destroy. . . .

"Absolutely no evidence which [sic] proves guns save more lives than they destroy"?  Seriously?  There are four more refereed studies that have since showed that guns on net save lives, but this is a start (see the list available here).  Why is it that people want to ignore the academic work of so many other scholars?

In the Santa Barbara killings, the media tries to avoid discussing murders committed with anything other than guns

On February 23, 2001, David Attias, a University of California-Santa Barbara freshman, "plowed his turbo-charged Saab into a group of young adults in the same Isla Vista neighborhood of the coastal community, killing four and permanently injuring another before climbing atop the car and declaring himself 'the Angel of Death.' Charged with murder, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a state mental institution. He was released in 2012, having been locked away for slightly more than two years for each of his dead victims. 'He’s out because he got treatment and he finally learned what he needed to say,' said Sally Divis, whose son, Christopher, was just 20 when he was run down by Attias. 'Do I actually think he’s safe? Not really.'"

Given that both Elliot Rodger and Attias used cars to hurt people and that they occurred in the same place, you might think that the media would bring up comparisons.  But while a Google news search comes up with 156 news stories on "Elliot Rodger," there were only two news stories on "David Attias" and "Elliot Rodger."  (Click on screen shots to make them bigger.)

Google is pretty abysmal these days for any useful search.  Bing does a better job.  There are only 9 news stories that mention both names and if you limit yourself to real news services, there are four such stories.

Britain's National Ballistics Intelligence Service/BBC claims anyone attempting to fire a 3D printed plastic gun would probably maim or even kill themselves,misleading

This BBC story is quite misleading.  Note that it is only at the very end of their video that they concede that it is indeed possible to use a 3D printed plastic gun.  From the BBC:

Police are warning technology enthusiasts not to attempt to use 3D printers to make plastic guns, because each time they have been tested the weapons have exploded.
Relatively cheap plastic printed guns have been fired successfully in the United States.
Scientists in the UK say without additional expertise and the right type of ammunition, anyone attempting to fire one would probably maim or even kill themselves.
They also point out that to do so would be illegal. . . .

Ratio of self identified Republican to Democrat journalist falls to new low in latest poll

In 1971, the ratio of self-identified Republican to Democratic journalists was 0.72. 
1982: 0.49
1992: 0.37
2002: 0.50
2013: 0.25

These are numbers compiled from various polls by Lars Wilnat and David Weaver, professors of journalism at Indiana.

Sharyl Attkisson talks about how reporters and the Obama White House coordinate actions

Sharyl Attkisson was talking with Chris Stigall on WPHT when she explained how things work in Washington:

“I wouldn’t surprised if sometimes there is that level of cooperation with some questions. If I need something answered from the White House and they won’t tell me, I’ll call our White House Correspondent. They’re friendlier with the White House Correspondents in general. So the White House Correspondent may ask Jay Carney or one of his folks about an issue and they will be told ‘ask that at the briefing and we’ll answer it.’ They want to answer it in front of everybody. They do know it’s coming and they’ll call on you. 

"There’s that kind of coordination sometimes. I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s sometimes more coordination. I don’t think it’s everybody on every briefing, every day. I’m pretty sure it’s not. But I think people would be surprised at the level of cooperation reporters have in general with politicians.”

More on Sharyl Attkisson's resignation from CBS

I found this pretty shocking.  From Fox News:

None of the investigative stories that Attkisson proposed in the past year were greenlighted for the “CBS Evening News”; in fact, most of her pitches were turned down. She wound up working on stories that the network assigned, say those familiar with the matter, including a string of investigative pieces on health care. But her output has declined significantly since 2008. . . .

Evidence that the media doesn't have a clue about guns, claim that "George Zimmerman’s Chilling Firearms Arsenal"

This from Radar Online just shows how little the media understands guns.  Their article on the weapons that police found in Zimmerman's home is almost comical.  Consider these quotes: "RadarOnline.com has learned that he could still be a very dangerous man" or "police uncovered a chilling arsenal of weapons and ammunition inside Zimmerman’s home, the full extent of which has never been pictured — until now."  So what was found?

-One Keltec 12-gauge shotgun 

-One Walther .380 handgun with seven rounds of live ammunition in the magazine 

-One Taurus 9 mm handgun with live rounds in the magazine 

-One Glock 19 handgun with 16 live rounds 

-One AR-15 semi-automatic rifle-Dozens of rounds of ammunition 

-Several gun holsters and bags

Do they understand that a rifle and a shotgun do quite different things?  You would expect any moderately serious gun owner to own both types of guns.  Indeed, it wouldn't be surprising for people to own multiple rifles or shotguns for different purposes.  A 12 gauge shotgun might be good for self defense or hunting, but if you have kids who want to go skeet shooting (e.g., Boy Scouts), you need a shotgun with a lot less kick to it, possibly a 28 gauge.  

Are three types of handguns really excessive?  Different size handguns might be useful depending on whether one is carrying the gun or whether it is for self-defense at home.  You don't want a heavy gun to carry around, but a gun with greater stopping power can be quite desirable.  

As to the ammunition, there were 23 rounds of ammunition for the three handguns.  And dozens for the rifle.  Possibly there is a total of 59 or so rounds.  That isn't enough to make it worthwhile going target shooting.  You would be out of the handgun ammunition in at most just a couple of minutes.

If anything, I am surprised by how few guns and particularly how little ammunition that Zimmerman has