One would think local media would be attentive to providing balanced reporting. After all, the expression, “Get Woke, Go Broke” is a thing for a reason. Or maybe they’re “hiring” interns to write their reports. Who knows. Either way, in a recent story about stolen guns, WCIA’s scribes practiced a whole lot of journalistic malpractice and victim blaming instead of targeting (pun intended) the criminals who commit the crimes. And then are released thanks to the Land of Lincoln’s “soft on crime” attitudes in the General Assembly.
Here’s the story and my fisking of said trash. Is it any wonder why local media, both print and broadcast, are struggling to survive?
CHAMPAIGN COUNTY, Ill. (WCIA) — Officials in Champaign County are trying to teach people how to properly store firearms through a gun safety initiative.
Because people are too stupid to know how to store their firearms without the help of an all-knowing, all-benevolent government? Here, let me make it easy for you. Store your guns so they are inaccessible to unauthorized persons.
In September, Champaign County received more than $150,000 from the Illinois Department of Public Health. The program’s goal is proper gun storage and theft prevention.
You want theft prevention? Send thieves to prison for lengthy terms to pound big rocks into little rocks. Send me a $100 of that grant for doing your work for you.
“If you want the responsibility of being a firearm owner, you need to take the responsibility to learn how to store it correctly and safely,” said Erin Hardway, whose husband died at the hands of a stolen firearm.
Meet Erin Hardway. Her husband, according to the slipshod writing in this story, “died at the hands of a stolen firearm.”
Really, Ms. Hardway? The firearm killed him? My guns haven’t killed anyone. Not even the ones that I haven’t lost in boating accidents. In fact, I have yet to find a firearm that kills people. It’s the person – the criminal – who kills. The firearm is just the tool of opportunity used. Years ago, maybe before Ms. Hardway’s time, there was a guy who was killed in Champaign County with a ceramic toilet tank lid (or whatever you want to call that thing). Nobody, and I mean nobody, at WCIA or anywhere else said that person was killed “at the hands of a toilet topper.”
Gun Safety Training Coordinator Shawna Den Otter said the program is helping.
Show me the data Shawna.
Even though it’s tough to track whether the gun safes, locks and trainings are stopping crimes that could have happened
In other words, the dog ate her homework. She doesn’t have any numbers. Because it isn’t making a damn bit of difference. She’s got a handful of money that’s buying her kind words for a foolish exercise that’s about as useful at preventing crime as so-called “gun buybacks.” The people who illegally have illegal firearms are reckless in handling and storing the firearms. They by and large don’t care about you, me, our laws, gun safety or anything else.
she said they’ve given out over 200 safes to people across the county and are struggling to keep them in stock.
Really? Are those the safes like the ones that Bloomington Police gave away a year or two ago? Those gun-rusting safes that specifically say in the instructions not to store guns or anything else that can rust inside the safe. Why? Well it wasn’t in the instructions as to why they rust stuff, but here’s the scoop. Those cheap, craptastic Chinese-made safes (gun or otherwise) use equally craptastic gypsum board as “fire insulation.” That board gives off trace amounts of sulfur gas for many months after it’s made, that when it mixes with the moisture from the static air inside the safe to become sulfuric acid fumes. How handy, right?
To add further insult to injury, those safes that Bloomington procured were ordered through a company that charged them $190.35 per safe AND had a big $1370 delivery fee. If they had ordered them through Walmart.com, they would have cost substantially less ($172) and Walmart would have shipped them for free.
That’s an encouraging sign for Erin Hardway, who lost her husband to a bullet fired from a stolen gun.
Oh, now it’s the bullet’s fault.
“My husband Brandon was shot with a gun that was stolen out of vehicle,” Erin said.
Maybe so.
Monday marked the one-year anniversary of the death of Brandon Hardway. He was outside of Pour Bros. Craft Taproom in Downtown Champaign, where he worked, when he was shot with a gun his wife Erin said was improperly stored.
If it was stored in a locked vehicle, it was properly stored. It’s not the gun owner’s fault that his car was broken into by a mope looking for drug money.
No more than it’s the fault of a rape victim for wearing a skirt that’s too short or no bra.
“And I honestly believe if the gun owner had properly stored their firearm, then my husband would be alive today,” Hardway said.
Your husband would be here today if he wasn’t a smoker out taking a smoke break that fateful day. If, if, if. You can “if-then” this all day long and it’s just wasting time. Do you blame the tobacco companies too? Of course not. The person responsible was the career criminal who shot and killed him. It wasn’t the gun’s fault, or the carmaker’s fault, or the gun maker’s fault. Or the gun owner’s fault. Not in the slightest.
SeeBS affiliate wcia has been a left wing trash dump for a long time and I stopped watching them years ago.
This is the same station that, four years ago when officer Chris Oberheim was murdered and the perp killed, did a story on the perps family and the loss of their family member. There were many businesses that pulled their advertising as a result.
Also four years ago, one of their reporters did an on-the-street report while wearing TWO face diapers. This was even though there was no one else in the picture, or even close to the reporter, other than the camera person. She looked like an absolute dolt.
Advocacy journalism.
Didn’t know about the Oberheim thing. That’s despicable.
Would IDPH award a $150K grant to GSL for “community outreach” training in the safe handling use and storage, or is the grant “curriculum sensitive,” only for “community organizers?” People learn in many different ways.
Hey John, why don’t you apply for the grant?