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Gun Misinformation: Bill O’Reilly Doubles Down

The only thing that might be dumber this week than the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics would be the outrageous statements from Bill O’Reilly about guns on Monday’s and Tuesday’s O’Reilly Factor. I had so much fun with my first rant on the subject, I thought I would fire another burst since he did not stop after Monday July 23, but followed up with even more outrageous and erroneous statements on the 24th.

First, let me apologize to Michael Moore for misspelling his name in my earlier piece. Apparently, my fat little fingers missed typing a second “O” in his name. I hope he can forgive me.

On the follow-up Factor which should have been called Dumb and Dumber, Mr. O’Reilly first stated, “It also makes sense for Congress to pass a new law that requires the sale of all heavy weapons to be reported to the FBI. In this age of terrorism, that law is badly needed.” He goes on in an argument with the Congressman, “I said heavy weapons, mortars, Howitzers, machine guns. In this age of terrorism if you do a flight school, the FBI is alerted but you can buy a machine gun and the FBI doesn’t know.”

Mr. O’Reilly clearly believes that these “heavy weapons” as he calls them are not subject to reporting requirements and can be bought readily at your local gun show. He goes on to say in reference to gun shows, “You can buy any weapon you want there and there’s no reporting anyway and you can walk right out.”
WOW! Where does one begin? Mr. O’Reilly exemplifies the definition of ignorant, at least on the subject of gun laws. (Please see the first article in this series lest I repeat myself.) The statement about heavy weapons is laughable yet he continues to repeat this falsehood that these types of “destructive devices” as the BATFE categorizes them are readily available and sales of them are not reported to the FBI. This could not be further from the truth. (Again see article one)

First, the alleged shooter did not use a bazooka, mortar, or even a machine gun, nor can you buy them at gun shows like O’Reilly suggests. The point he completely misses is that the alleged shooter purchased all his firearms through a licensed gun dealer, passed the necessary background checks for the firearms and nothing stopped him. O’Reilly suggests that one can walk into any gun show and buy any item under the sun and “walk right out.” But the alleged shooter did not do that!

In his rant, he states that, “This guy in Colorado got all this stuff and nobody knew about it.” It’s called Form 4473, Bill. Read about it before you open your mouth and embarrass yourself anymore.

So, despite the best efforts of the Left with all their gun purchasing laws, they failed to prevent anything. Mr. O’Reilly wants to stop gun sales at gun shows between individuals, but he forgets that the alleged shooter bought his guns through the channel he is advocating. Duh.

He also claimed that the shooter bought 60,000 rounds of ammunition. I ran the numbers and, assuming some general weights for each different round, he would have purchased nearly a literal ton of ammo. Regardless of this misinformed claim, Bill believes and stated that purchasers of large quantities of ammo should be reported to the FBI.

Let’s walk through this little scenario. In his fairy tale world, Bill and other uninformed people like him believe that if the Federal Government knew everything about every purchase regarding firearms, that the result would be the ability to make a connection between someone bent on destruction and their purchases that go bang.

Let’s further assume that they focus on all buyers of 1,000 round lots of ammo who also recently purchased a firearm. I would venture a guess that this happens thousands of times a month. How many thousands of agents would it take to investigate these purchases?

Consider the case of the alleged shooter with hundreds of reporters and bloggers searching for information about him and after several weeks the only things that we know about him are: where he lived, where he went to school, what he studied, that he was smart and that he allegedly had a beer with some guy in a bar the week before the shooting. Yep, that has mass murder written all over it.

And how exactly do we make the jump from purchasers of large quantities of ammo to arresting someone for suspicion of committing mass murder. Think that one through for a minute. The evidence would have to be substantial. And you on the Left were worried about someone having access to your library card?

Bottom line: It would be far cheaper to require every citizen to own and be able to shoot a firearm and have them on their person at all times, you know, the keep and bear arms thing. Imagine instead of being forced to buy health insurance through Obamacare, we were forced to buy guns. Now that’s some change I can believe in.

And one last thing, stop spinning Bill, you’re making me dizzy.

Steve Sheldon

Steve Sheldon is a lifelong outdoorsman, hunter, gun-rights enthusiast and widely published author. Steve spent a dozen years in private industry as an investment broker and owner of multiple businesses. He served the National Rifle Association almost ten years in various capacities before moving to Americans for Prosperity in his current role of External Affairs Officer. Steve has held various church leadership roles over the years and served in a jail ministry.

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