NY Daily News Writer Corners the Market On Ignorance

Considering the competition for that dishonor, NY Daily News writer Joanna Molloy really had to go out of her way to prove her ignorance, and in Ex-NYPD top cop Bill Bratton pushing for overdue ban on assault-weapons ammo clips she certainly does her best, encapsulating several decades worth of ignorance—not to mention stupidity and laziness—in just the second sentence of a dim rant.

Former New York top cop Bill Bratton has joined forces with the city's Citizens Crime Commission to support the ban on assault-weapons ammo clips that have been used in virtually every mass murder since 1984.

We can start by stating with absolute authority that assault weapons ammo clips have never played a part in a mass murder. Not before 1984, and not since.

Never. Ever. Happened.

Ammo clips are nothing more or less than strips of metal—typically spring steel—that hold one or more ammunition cartridges by the base. The rifles of both sides in World War I used ammunition clips. So did the rifles of World War II and Korea, from Mosin-Nagants designed in the 1890s to Enfields and Garands and SKSs that were obsolete by the 1950s.

Below, we see an example of the 8-round en-block clip of the M1 Garand on the left, and the 10-round stripper clip of the SKS rifle on the right. The most common clips in America, they have never been an accessory in any mass murder.

Oh, but I'm being completely unfair, aren't I?

Poor befuddled Ms. Molloy is but a journalist, and can't be expected to tell the difference between a clip and a magazine any more than she should be able to tell the difference between a car and a truck or a cat and a catfish.

A clip holds bullets to load magazines. It is the difference between a gas pump and a gas tank, or a Democrat and a Republican. It's so hard.

But back to Ms. Molloy's contention that "assault-weapons ammo clips that have been used in virtually every mass murder since 1984." Even if we generously allow her to plead obvious ignorance and substitute clip for magazine, her claim still fails to be true.

Arguably the most infamous school shooting in America took place at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold used as their primary instrument of death a Hi Point 9mm carbine that was designed specifically to comply with the very Ban on Scary-Looking Guns that Molloy would see re-implemented.

Richard Farley killed seven without using a single assault weapon in his 1988 murder spree.

The 1998 Westside Middle School Massacre was perpetrated by two kids armed with rifles with standard capacity magazines.

Patrick Henry Sherrill is the reason for the phrase "going postal," and used a pair of .45 ACP pistols to kill 14 of his co-workers in 1986.

Terrorist soldier Nidal Hassan shot up Fort Hood with a pistol.

Atlanta trader Mark Barton killed 12 with a pair of handguns and a hammer in 1999.

Just last year, Omar Thorton used a pair of standard-capacity pistols to kill 9 at a Connecticut beer distributorship.

Seung-Hui Cho perpetrated the Virginia Tech massacre of 32 of his fellow students using standard-capacity magazines in a Glock 19 and Walther P22.

Jiverly Antares Wong used a pair of standard-capacity pistols in Binghampton, NY in 2009.

Shall we go on?

Jeff Weise killed 9 in Red Lake Minnesota using handguns and a shotgun. Likewise, the North Illinois University shooting was perpetrated with pistols and a shotgun. Charles Carl Roberts, infamous for the Amish schoolhouse shooting in 2006, used a 9 mm handgun, 12 gauge shotgun, .30-06 bolt-action rifle. Kip Kinckel, Eric Houston, and Charles Andrew Williams also committed their mass shootings without using any assault weapons.

Purely as a matter of empirical fact, assault weapons and their magazines have been used in just fraction of murders of any kind.

But NY Daily News employee Joanna Molloy isn't acting as a responsible journalist, informed editorialist, or critical thinker. She is an ideologue dedicated to deceiving her readers in order to get them to agree with her.

Come to think of it, Joanna Milloy isn't ignorant. She knows exactly what she is doing. The only question is whether the NY Daily News finds this sort of deception acceptable.