UPI Story, and Angus Reid Poll, Includes Serious Misunderstandings of the Gun Issue

While the story titled “Under the U.S. Supreme Court: Fight over  gun laws far from offer,” was fairly unbiased and offered commentary from both sides of the debate, we noted that this piece from UPI lacked the level of fact checking that we believe is crucial in this subject. The story offers facts from an Angus Reid Public Opinion poll, which offers this polling result:

“About 68 percent said they think every eligible American should have access to handguns, but 67 percent say only police should have access to semi-automatic weapons.”

Whoever conducted the poll doesn’t understand the issue, which frankly could confuse the public. Likewise, the authors of the UPI story didn’t do their due diligence in explaining the issue. To any regular reader and gun enthusiast the problem with this statement is that it is highly questionable, because while 68 percent don’t see a problem with handguns some 67 percent think only the police should have “access to semi-automatic weapons.”

The wording of “semi-automatic weapons” could sound dangerous, even ominous to the uninformed. The simple fact is that many handguns are semi-automatic, many rifles are semi-automatic, many shotguns are semi-automatic. But the usage of the words with weapons could be seen to imply the image of a machinegun or at least an assault rifle.

To the informed this is laughable. For everyone else, all semi-automatic means is that you have to pull the trigger each time you want the gun to fire. You don’t need to manually cock it with a lever or bolt or hammer. Semi-automatic should never be confused with fully automatic, which is how a true machinegun operates. There is very big difference. It is irresponsible in our opinion for this to slip through un-fact checked in either the poll or the news story.

Angus Reid Public Opinion poll: Americans Say Second Amendment Guarantees Gun Ownership for Citizens