Clickbait “news site”.
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What a joke,
The title is a complete lie as they wait till the end of the article to explain that he didn’t purchase the gun.
After he walked me through the paperwork, all five pages of it, I told him I changed my mind and wanted to think more before I bought an AR-15. He told me it wasn’t a problem and listed the store hours if I wanted to come back. I then said thank you and walked back to my car.
Then this quote in the article:
Seconds. It took seconds for the salesman to take an AR-15 off the shelf and begin selling it to me. If I had stayed for maybe three minutes longer to fill out less paperwork than I did for the hiring process at my school’s bookstore, I would’ve driven home with an AR-15.
No delay. No extensive background check. Just my recently expired driver’s license, my vehicle registration, and filling out some paperwork.
That paperwork the guy needed to fill out was the background check. he would then have to wait for the shop to call it in and have it processed. Wow!
Here is another click bait article posted by one of my progressive buddies on facebook.
I think the comment from TacticalPen best summarized my views on the article:
The analogy of the AR-15 to an F1 car is a poor one (the pick-up truck analogy mentioned in a previous comment is much better actually). Also, so you know… you actually can drive an open wheel race car (like an F1 car) on the street as long as it meets the DOT requirements (they just happen to be exorbitantly expensive and impractical) and there are a few out there. They do not require any special license to own BTW.
Next, historically small arms in the hands on citizens have indeed been used to prevent the encroachment of tyrannical governments (or foreign powers), grenades not withstanding. Governments that have systematically disarmed their citizens have had some questionable track records (and please don’t give me that whole “this would never happen here” bullsh!t because that’s what they thought over there as well) so I believe that is something to consider.
As for the NEED to own them. Nobody needs a steak either, you can survive on bread and water. Nobody needs a nice house, basic dorm housing or a tent will suffice. Nobody needs a sports car or M Series BMW, I mean they’re designed to break the speed limit, right? NEED has nothing to do with it, having the freedom to pursue what you enjoy is, to many I think, the issue.
Finally, bad things happen. They just do and they always will. The entire “if it saves one person” argument some make is idiotic. If that were the case we’d get rid of all cars, outlaw any contact sport, force everyone to wear safety glasses all the time, etc. etc. We return again to what is reasonable and to a great extent every individual is responsible for their welfare and security (mostly through common sense) and to believe otherwise is negligent. This does NOT mean that we should not behave rationally and do our best as a society to prevent it, just that ultimately there is a great deal of responsibility with not society as a collective, but with the individual for themselves and their loved ones.
Lastly, (and I think rational people can simply disagree without vilification) I don’t believe that getting rid of AR-15s will end mass shootings. Just as I don’t believe that banning F1 cars (or hyper-powered open wheel sports cars) will make the streets significantly safer. I do feel that training, education and the imposition of consequence (say a mandatory death penalty for any murder committed with a firearm of any kind) would make a massive difference but the odds of that taking off seem slim in today’s climate.
And even so, even if we did all of that… bad sh!t will still happen and people will still die.
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Last time I checked the FBI statistics, rifles in general are a literal drop in the bucket relative to handguns when it comes to the weapons used to commit murder.
Edit: Honestly, I feel like this is such a divisive issue because it’s so tic-tac-toe in terms of rhetoric. Voices on the left seem to approach the problems of lethal violence exclusively from a gun control perspective. Voices on the right seem to ignore the various and many problems that lead up to our high murder rate. While I feel like there’s no ready-made solution to the freak incidents of mass shootings - they may well be covered widely but they’re still vanishingly rare from a per-100,000 perspective - I do feel like there are approaches that could nibble away at the larger violence problem… but those would require a far more frank and uncomfortable discussion than the usual factions want to have.
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For me it has proven incredibly difficult to understand much of the statistics around firearms. Much of this has to do with suicide by firearms being inserted into stats of crime. Add to that the obvious miss representation of facts by those in government and media and it makes it very hard to get a real understanding of the facts.
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For many people firearms may be a non essential until they encounter that one situation that changes their mind; if they survive it.
The following, unrelated video seems to be a thing that may be starting to become a thing. However, if he knows his firearms he should’ve cut it across the receiver. So, maybe he’s not wholly as committed to chuck away the monetary value of a pre-ban M-16 as he says. Just a thought.
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Adherence to ideology inhibits critical thinking, constrains free speech and creates tyrannical controls. It’s the responsibility of the wise to fight these nonsensical systems so that we may progress.
That poor man is naive. He produced a drama but certainly did not “destroy” his gun.
The only rights you can keep are the ones you are willing to fight for.
Russell
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We are mostly ignoring the role media plays. The constant overwhelming coverage gives attention to those desperate for it, positive or negative, at least they now feel they will be noticed. And for people with that need, it glorifies their actions.
Cover the news but do we need it on every channel with the reporter shooting a background shot in front of the school/family/church? The coverage is so shallow and never gets the facts right in the first place.
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Unfortunately, the sensationalism is working and you can see it on how people respond/behave/react to many issues. 
Modern mainstream media & new media/blogs = whose $ do you want to believe.
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This is a great and common point made at these times. I feel like the media could cover these stories better by sticking to just the facts, not publicizing the shooter in the cases where they have been caught or killed, and trying to stay away from the emotions involved. But, our media, including the news are all based around entertainment. So asking them to follow these kinds of standards is like handing them a winning lotto ticket and asking them to not cash it while your not looking.
But facts and no drama is boring and don’t bring eyeballs to the outlet; therefore evil.
“Reporters” who put words in the mouths of interviewees and their editors who make the sound bites sound much more than what they are are the devil’s handiwork.
You can also look up the "In the NOW’ Facebook page’s Chinese troll farm video.
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Nice article,
Ferman, you should come to our philosophy meetups on Wednesday Evenings. I think your reading and view point would be a great addition to the group.
As for the article, it really excites my conspiracy hairs and that scares me a bit. This is due the the anonymity of the internet. Personally, I like the fact that it seems that I’m mostly anonymous of the internet. Yes some advertisers and service providers may have a better understanding of my actions on the internet, but to them I’m just one of the needles in a massive hay stack. But, when it comes to information, the anonymity of the internet is becoming more and more of a negative.
Dropping ALL politics here…
I read the article. What’s fake?
All the facts in there sound reasonable. It has an opinion and a point to make, but that doesn’t make it fake. The title is a bit sensational, but not blatantly false.
No one with a reasonable mind expects the same journalistic excellence of a place called the tab, of an article written by a 20 year old, to really be top quality.
The issue with the term fake news is multifaceted.
We all know it exists. I hope none of you are infowars fans… but things like “Hillary Clinton heads a secret underground network of Pedophiles out of a pizza joint in North DC.” (The infamous pizzagate). And Donald Trump raped a 15 yr old at a party thrown by Jeffrey Epstein” or “Donald Trump paid hooker to pee on bed slept on by Obama in Russia”. Don’t get on me about these stories- with President Trump it’s so hard to tell what’s real anymore, and I know these stories haven’t been fully substantiated or discredited. I could find better examples, much better, for the left and right, but I’m on my phone and those were really big stories.
But the practice of lumping articles in with the Tab and articles in with places like the New. York Times with anything that disagrees with idealology is really damaging. It’s used just to discredit opinions.
Some of the really nasty dictators around the world have started calling their crimes against humanity exactly that “fake news”. So it’s critically important to distinguish between opinion pieces you disagree with politically and legitimate fake news. Fake events, fake quotes, maybe even fake pictures, on fake sites.
It’s even more important to tell the difference between factual reporting that reports on something people think is against their ideology or paints their viewpoint in a bad light and labeling that fake news.
Now this article, as I said, is opinion. So much of that gets labeled fake news now. But there is nothing in the article that is not plausible, or in fact likely. If you’ve been to a gun shop, and if you are reading this sub forum then you know that no laws were broken here, and it just sounds like good customer service.
It is relatively easy to buy an AR 15. I mean let’s be real. If you don’t have a felony and have around $1000, you’re good. If it was another semi auto rifle- and say a .22 that wasn’t built to look like a military rifle, this would be a non-story. It really is a non story as is. And I’ve never heard of the Tab. It just seems like a gun control favoring 20 yr old.
Labeling things fake news allows people to discredit real news organizations with anything they don’t like.
Now I’m a second amendment guy, who believes that the right to bear arms is a fundamental stone upon which our country was built. But I also know we all agree there are limits to what you can buy or own, or else I’d be able buy a stinger missle of eBay. And I’d really like to have a hand grenade just in case. As weapons have advanced from the musket stage of technology, we’ve had to determine where that line exists and debate over where that line exists is not anti-American or anti-second amendment, it’s just a fact of applying a document written in the 1790s to 2018. The NRA has done a great job muddying the issue. Maybe there are some hardcore guys on the left that want to outlaw some military like weapons like this, but most the talk lately hasn’t focused on that. Of note, this article is two years old. Anyway, I’m gonna leave it there, like I said, I really don’t want to delve into politics here.
One thing I’ve learned in my life as a student of political science. No matter how obvious I think something is or how well informed I am, I have never once succeeded in successfully changing someone’s mind on a political issue. Political views are something we’ve been taught to defend at all costs. This becomes a problem when normal debates get politicized. And gun control has definitely been politicized. Long before, Gay people, the climate, evolution, oil and gas, transgender people, bathrooms…, racism, policing, fake news and on and on and on. This means that Once something is politicized, effectively all problem solving and rational discussion stops. Immediately. And nothing more is done except arguing. I’ve had to force myself to really listen to all sides once I realized this. And subsequently, I became apolitical and apathetic to politics, but at least I’m not really arguing politics anymore- this polemic aside.
My point is we need to be better at spotting fake news, yes, AND figuring out when something is opinion or biased, but not FAKE.
I see nothing fake here. Opinion. Yes. Biased. Yes. Sensational. Yes. A who are you news site that might be funded by Venezuela, maybe. But Fake? I’m not convinced.
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Back when any given market had 3 national TV stations, 3 local TV stations, perhaps a dozen radio stations, 2-3 newspapers, and there were perhaps 100 monthly magazines with any readership it was easier to have commonly-agreed upon Standards™. High barriers to entry and little competition make for easy money for existing players as well as easy facilitation of gentlemen’s agreements about what will be covered and how.
Flash forward to today where there are more than a half-dozen 24-hour news networks, a thousand other channels on TV, a million youtube channels, many millions of news websites, and anyone with something on their mind and twenty bucks can publish something online that looks professional-ish and Standards™ have vanished under the strain of a highly competitive media market where even the big boys are fighting hard to retain fleeting readers, viewers, and listeners. If you’re not one of the big big boys you thrive by specializing somehow - subject area, platform, demographic, ideology, something. Report “just the facts” and you’ll pretty quickly go out of business because even if people claim that’s what they want, it’s not what they consistently react to in ways that help you make payroll this month.
There are tweaks the media industry could make, but the fundamental issue is with the audience and the inherent issue of hyperpluralism.
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I have found that if you’re willing to just honestly talk to people outside of the usual boundaries of tic-tac-toe, us-vs-them rhetoric you can move the issue slightly over time. But it needs to be an open conversation, you yourself need to listen for comprehension rather than merely for reaction, and you need to be open yourself for some movement of your view on the issue. This is not particularly easy even on issues not wrapped up in identity thus it’s an uncommon thing.
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Amen, brother. 
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I would like to invite you to the Philosophy meetup. I would love to jump further into your points. Especially your final statement,
I find it hard to blame the audience solely and expect for any changes to be made by that audience. Also, I feel hyperpluralism is more of an issue of anonymity. As it is easy to amass fake armies in online media week after week, but to do the same in the physical space is much harder. Some groups manage it once, which is enough for our media cycle. But, when you look back weeks later you find out no one is carrying the torch for the issue anymore.
These are the kinds of topics we dive into at the philosophy meet up and I would love to hear your points beyond just reading them. I find the back and forth of discussion opens the door to seeing the other’s perspective more clearly.
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People respond to sensationalism unfortunately. Everyone on my Facebook is buying bulletproof inserts for backpacks and doorstops even though they are much more likely to die or lose a child from car wrecks, drunk drivers or medical mistakes. But it’s boring to demand that we use technology to reduce deaths due to cars and doctors and taking drivers licenses from drunk drivers after the first offense is viewed by most as “harsh” in my experience.
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