ABC Airs Two Segments Blaming Guns, Not Criminals

ABC's World News keeps beating the “guns are bad” drum.

On October 4, anchor Charles Gibson used a “brazen double murder” in Philadelphia as the pretext to push gun control, giving the Philadelphia police commissioner a platform to denounce the availability of guns.  The whole pitch to upend the 2^nd Amendment took only 33 seconds of air time, but the message was clear.  It's the guns that cause the problems, not the people who misuse them.

Gibson: A brazen double murder today in Philadelphia is sparking extraordinary outrage from this city's police commissioner. Two armed guards, both retired police officers, were shot and killed, leaving the police commissioner to call the availability of guns in this country a disgrace.

Sylvester Johnson (police commissioner): Anytime you have in a country, where there's 100,000 people shot or killed, it's not even an issue in the presidential campaign, there's something wrong with that.

Gibson: A massive manhunt in Philadelphia, looking for that gunman, continues tonight.

To reinforce the guns-are-awful theme, ABC followed the brief murder story with an exclusive interview with Lee Boyd Malvo, one of the snipers who terrorized the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area in 2002.

Gibson: Five years ago tonight, this broadcast began with news of different gun crimes. Sniper shootings, terrorizing the Washington, D.C. area. 

While ABC ran the sniper story to promote their “guns are the problem” message, Malvo departed from the script and pushed the story in the direction of personal responsibility.  Malvo, who appears genuinely contrite, told ABC News he is glad he was caught and he deserves to be in jail.  He recently contacted a relative of one of his victims to deliver a personal apology. 

Kristen Fyfe is senior writer at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the MediaResearchCenter.