For the second time in less than a week, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings has erroneously reported on an aspect of so-called “assault weapons,” claiming in an ABC Radio report broadcast Monday afternoon that the husband of Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) was killed with an assault rifle.
“That is not true, and even the slightest research effort by Jennings or a research assistant would have shown that Dennis McCarthy was killed with a 9mm pistol, purchased legally in California by a racist lunatic named Colin Ferguson,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF). “With this assertion, Jennings is quickly establishing himself as ABC News’ director of anti-gun propaganda instead of its nightly news anchor.”
The 9mm Ruger pistol was not covered under the 1993 ban on so-called “assault weapons,” and even if it had been, that crime occurred in December 1993, nine months before the law took effect. That law has expired, and all Jennings has done is add to the hysteria being fomented by the media over the long-overdue sunset of this law, Gottlieb observed.
“Last week, Jennings and correspondent Bill Redeker teamed up on a report for ABC’s World News Tonight about the ban that started off with footage of the North Hollywood bank robbery in 1997, showing the robbers using fully-automatic machine guns,” Gottlieb noted. “The image of that shootout gave viewers the impression that the end of the ban would allow people to purchase machine guns, and that is simply false.
“We realize that the end of this ten-year gun ban fraud is big news with anti-gun broadcast media,” Gottlieb said, “but is there no shame with these people? Don’t they at least owe the public some semblance of informed objectivity? Must they be so blatantly biased that they distort even the simplest report?
“If Peter Jennings cannot be balanced, he should at least be factual,” Gottlieb concluded. “Absent either of those conditions, then ABC News owes it to the listening and viewing public to cut the anchor; suspend Jennings or dismiss him.”