WATCH: NRA TV host lashes out at ‘biased’ reporter for describing guns as ‘weapons’
NRA TV host Grant Stinchfield is once again attacking the mainstream media — and this time it’s over articles that describe guns and firearms as “weapons.”
Stinchfield went on a lengthy rant against an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that talked about fears that campus open carry laws would lead to college students getting drunk and firing their weapons. Stinchfield singled out the use of the word “weapon” as a textbook example of “media bias” intended to make the general public afraid of guns.
“It’s their use of the word weapon that has me bewildered,” he said of the article. “The reporter uses ‘weapons’ in place of firearms or guns so many times, it just becomes bizarre. Here, ‘Fears of gun owners getting drunk and firing their weapons.’ I firmly believe she uses the phrase weapons over firearms in an effort to scare the uninformed.”
Stinchfield then acknowledged that the reporter may have been in the right referring to firearms as “weapons” because the state of Georgia does refer to its open carry permits as “weapons carry licenses.” However, he continued to insist that the term was not the correct way to describe guns.
“I don’t like that name at all,” he explained. “To me, the military carries weapons, guns carried for offensive purposes. I carry a firearm, a tool used for self-defense. To me, it is actually a very important distinction. By Georgia, a state rich in firearms history, using the term weapons in an official capacity, it hurts the perception of law-abiding gun ownership.”
The official dictionary definition of the word “gun” is, “a weapon consisting of a metal tube, with mechanical attachments, from which projectiles are shot by the force of an explosive; a piece of ordnance.” The definition for “firearm,” meanwhile, is, “a small arms weapon, as a rifle or pistol, from which a projectile is fired by gunpowder.”
