Complicity in Idiocy

Fox News posted the following highly-misleading graphic on the front page of foxnews.com tonight, as the click-through image for a story entitled Clinton: U.S. Shares Blame in Mexico Drug Wars.

The obvious implication of the image, echoing recent rhetoric by the Obama Administration and the Mexican government that the firearms industry in the United States is responsible for supplying drug cartels with massive amounts of firepower, including military weapons.

But what does the picture actually show?

A close look at the picture shows at the top a short-barreled AR-15 carbine where the flash hider begins immediately in front of the front sight.

Such weapons are highly-regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1934, and buyers must have approval from the ATF and pay a $200 transfer tax. Such weapons are most commonly seen in use by law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border in urban tactical dynamic entry or SWAT teams. It is possible, and perhaps probable, that this firearm was acquired by cartels from Mexican law enforcement, and not from civilian firearms dealers.

The next firearm down, a civilian-legal AR-15 carbine, has a noticeably longer 16-inch legal minimum barrel, as does the Mini-14 carbine. The AR-15-style rifle below that has a 20-inch barrel.

Dominating the photo, however, is a collection of military weaponry that is simply unavailable for purchase by American civilians at any price. There are either rockets or mortar shells (probably the former, but I'm not sure) and a M-72 LAW, a disposable anti-tank rocket.

Our President and Attorney General and have been more than willing to mislead the American people by including military weaponry in displays of arms confiscated from cartels, in hopes of pushing for what the President likes to call "common sense" gun control measures, as if anti-tank rockets, hand grenades, IEDs and police and military-issued machine guns can be had under existing gun laws.

We except such deception from Barack Obama, a man who was once part of the anti-gun Joyce Foundation and who was part of an attempt to con the Supreme Court. We also expect the media to be largely ignorant and heavily biased in stories involving firearms.

We should, however, expect at least the most basic level of intellectual curiosity from our media, such as wondering why government officials are implying military anti-tank weaponry is available for purchase by civilians in U.S. gun shops.

Journalists are abdicating their responsibility to ask these questions.

This failure to follow the basic tenets of journalism is a large part of why the public holds the media in such low regard, and why their news organizations continue to collapse around them.