The mainstream media lies to us. They feed us propaganda. They don’t want us to know that gun ownership is widespread and that armed defense is common. I was at a conference for minor-media this weekend. There, an associate talked about being turned away from most of his local news stations because “we don’t run pro-gun stories. No self-defense.” Let me show you where the propaganda starts at the top.
Dr. John Lott looked at the five largest newspapers in the US. They ran 1 self-defense story for every 270 stories of criminal activity with a gun. (more here)
The good news, and there is some good news, is that we know better. We have data that comes from outside the media bubble. We caught major US newspapers lying to us. This time, we can actually measure the amount of media distortion.
We use a firearm for defense far more often than the thugs use guns during a crime. We legally defend ourselves about four times more often than a criminal uses a gun to threaten or injure us (467 thousand criminal incidents vs 1.4-2.3 million defensive gun uses).
We can quantify the media exaggeration. .....
"Anti-gun billionaires paid millions of dollars to twist the news. They ran "educational" conferences for the media on how to report self-defense as "gun violence". They also pay propagandists to recommend movie and TV scripts that distort the truth about civilian self-defense."