Chapter Five: Panic

Having long since realized the "facts" employed in writing this book are unreliable, skewed, or just plain false, I am no longer reading the footnotes and alternately laughing or crying at the terrible research. Checking the footnotes tends to reaffirm the poor quality of the book as a source of information. I no longer need to continue verifying this.

As I said I was going to review the book, however, I feel compelled to press on. However, as previously stated, I will only touch on the chapters lightly. To not take my speed in covering ground as any indication that the author's reporting credentials have improved. I simply do not wish to microscopically inspect the book to uncover each and every falsehood. Likely, the people who choose to believe his book wouldn't face facts even if I were doggedly determined to point out each and every one.

So, I'm not wasting my time.

Here, however, we see a point inserted into the book for no really good reason. As it is included, I feel it is safe to mention how this works directly against the interest of Katie Pavlich and her NRA buddies. Recently, there has been a push to limit clip size as a way to halt gun-related deaths and violence. The following is taken from Chapter Five of Katie Pavlich's book:

As the event began, a deranged young man approached the table where Giffords was visiting with constituents. At point blank range, he shot her with a 9mm handgun. The bullet went into her head and through  her brain. He then turned to the crowd and started shooting indescriminately. The gunman ran out of bullets and reached for a second clip of ammunition when Patricia Maisch tackled him, preventing him from killing anybody else. -- Katie Pavlich, Fast and Furious, pg 67

So much for people claiming limitations on clip size would have no effect. I discussed this with NRA members before. They insisted that a trained gunman can swap clips so fast it doesn't matter. I countered, clip size does matter when one's goal involves killing a lot of people in a short amount of time. The Army doesn't give its soldiers weapons needing many clips to be changed. If there were no advantage, the Army would not buy weapons with bigger clips. Certainly, we would expect our army boys and girls to be highly trained and competent gunmen. The incompetent gunmen, like random psychopaths shooting up schools and movie theaters might need the bigger clips to do their job...

See, exactly not helping her own agenda there.

Another point seems worth mentioning. Katie Pavlich works as an editor for TownHall.com. This website is devoted to conservative politics. This bias has already been addressed. The website was purchased by Salem 2006 and anyone can set up their own blog at this address. In other words, Katie is Editor at a website featuring any blogger who feels like typing. Yes, folks, normal people with no more reporting credentials than... ME!

That's kind of like mentioning management experience on your resume working at a whorehouse.

Given this perspective, it is interesting that she chooses to fluff up the importance of bloggers in uncovering the details of this story. Interestingly enough, with the sheer number of bloggers out there it becomes possible to find one of them that 'broke' a story citing anonymous sources before the mainstream media did. It is a logical fallacy sometimes called 'counting the hits' but is really just confirmation bias in another style of dress. See, you ignore the bazillions of bloggers reporting complete hooey and only direct the readers to those who made a lucky guess.

I will leave you with a link to an Article that might be better reporting and reading than this chapter...


Daft & Spurious: A Regular American’s Guide to the Tea Party’s Bogus Election-Year Scandal