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The Annoyed Man wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:I just watched it this morning, and it made me cringe.

That's what I'd expect, so please tell us why it's cringe worthy so the rest of us don't have to suffer through the video.

nightmare69 wrote:Anything with James Yeager is cringe worthy.

Nightmare69 nailed it. The program makes him into the national voice of AR15 owners—particular his video rant about how he's going to start killing people, blah blah blah. On the other side, they chose a guy who is billed as a "former NRA member" and now a national gun-control leader (can't remember his name for sure, but it might have been "Martinez"). They make him sound very reasonable, and of course, they don't need to help James Yeager sound like an angry wingnut.....he does that all by himself without any of their help. Part of why they chose him was because this angry maniac is training other AR15 owners, AND, they made a big deal out of the fact that Yeager owns FOUR AR15s AND a couple of fully automatic weapons too.....and isn't that just a little bit crazy? I mean, how many do you NEED?!?!?!?

If they wanted to feature someone who trains people in the use of the AR15, they could have gone to Gunsite Academy, or Travis Haley, or any number of other nationally prominent and well-qualified firearms trainers, who aren't full of braggadocio and who are calm and reasonable sounding. Instead, they chose Yeager. They chose him because of who he is. And toward the end, they pulled a "gotcha" on him during an interview segment, at which point he got up and walked out.

There were no "gotcha" questions for the gun-control advocate.

Now, the basic points that the piece made about why most people buy AR15s - everything from "fun to shoot", "good for hunting", "home defense", AND "because they might get banned" - are all there, and reasonably fairly covered. They talk about people being more afraid than ever before of societal breakdown. But the biggest bias in the piece was in whom they chose to represent either side in the debate: a "well-respected" (among gun control advocates) gun policy wonk on one side, and a gun rights activist on the other side who is even controversial among gun rights activists for his angry rants and propensity for violence. They didn't interview Wayne Lapierre or any other person from NRA-ILA to represent our side. The represented the NRA as "the gun lobby" and not as a national gun-rights organization representing the will of its membership.

It was cringe-worthy.