Quite irritated.

I just wasted an hour of my life watching ABC News pimp the Brady Bunch and their drivel with their 20/20 "If I Only Had A Gun" special.

One of the more infuriating segments to watch was the "scenarios" played out, headed by a willing police trainer stacking the deck in a lop-sided argument. Here's how it went:

20/20 took some college-age kids, mostly unskilled with handguns, NONE of which had defensive handgun training, and set them up for a force-on-force scenario. They were given simunition glocks and some rudimentary training, then thrown into an unexpected force-on-force scenario. In this scenario, the student is planted in a "class" with nothing but unidentified police officers as other "students" in on the ruse. The student is given a Glock in a holster - supposedly for later use - and told to conceal it under a t-shirt in a holster. In the middle of the class, the plain-clothes police officer in street clothes bursts in and starts firing to test the response of the student. There are multiple flaws that set up these students to be the patsies of this lop-sided piece of propaganda. I'll list a few here.

(1) This was the most obvious to me. The officer immediately targets the student with a gun before the student gives any indication he is armed, because he knows who this person is already. This isn't how it happens in the real world.

(2) The officer immediately opens fire in a rapid fashion. If we have learned anything from school shootings (which this is supposed to emulate), mass murderers in these scenarios don't spray bullets. They take aimed shots and execute their victims one-by-one, usually starting with the closest person and continuing along at a calculated pace.

(3) When faced with armed resistance, the first things these murdurers inevitably do are either run or kill themselves (or both). This has happened at every mass shooting I can think of - both those that play out until the police arrive, and those where the shooter is met with an armed civilian. The officer running this program does exactly the opposite in these manufactured scenarios by continuing and prolonging a shootout against armed resistance. I doubt the officer would be so confident about not being hit and continuing the assault had that been a real gun he was facing.

(4) Regardless of how realistic they are trying to make this, these students still know that these guns aren't real. These students are untrained in any kind of self defense techniques, are not intimately familiar with their weapons, and their issued cover garments look to be specifically intended to cause a hang-up during a draw. While considering all of that, these students are also forced to make sense of a situation that they've been put in, delaying reaction time. They know they have training guns, they know the officer is using a training gun, and they have to think about what they're supposed to do in reaction to all this in the context of this "training" class. All of this before they're unrealistically singled out before even drawing.

The answer ABC News gives us? You shouldn't have a gun. The police trainer in this video comes off quite smugly as one of "the only ones". Us little people aren't fit to carry weapons because we don't train all the time like the police (even though everyone I know who carries gets more range time in than the average cop). No, the answer isn't to know your weapon and get training in self-defense techniques. The answer is to die while you wait for the police to arrive and barricade themselves outside while you and your classmates are slaughtered. Thanks for clearing that up, ABC!

I'd invite these same people to set up this same scenario with a shooter possessing gun-handling skills similar to the garden-variety mass-murderer (see very little), and do not let him know who is armed. Then put in an average CHL holder who has bothered to get defense training in the classroom seat, with equipment he or she practices with and carries daily. The outcome is quite likely to look very different from what these shills gave us. But we all know that's not going to happen.

Really telling were the defense success stories that were glossed over. They ran tape from a convenience store robbery where the clerk was armed. The only point made was that 14 rounds were fired by both sides (clerk and 2 robbers), and not one person was hit. Ya know what? THE CLERK LIVED, DIDN'T HE?

There was another video all of us in the gun blogosphere have seen. A thug walks into a motel lobby wielding a shotgun. The clerk responds by tactfully drawing at the right opportunity and shooting the guy multiple times, center-of-mass, without missing a single shot. But all of this was glossed over because there was a lady with a baby in the room, and they were in close proximity. What they FAILED TO MENTION was that the motel clerk was a very well-trained handgun instructor. Know what else? He didnt' hit the baby. HAD THEY SHOWN THE ENTIRE VIDEO, we would have seen that he didn't simply draw and fire, but positioned himself in a calculated manner to minimize risk to any of the innocent individuals present.

HEY ABC! DO YOU KNOW WHY NO ONE WATCHES 20/20 ANYMORE? IT'S THIS UTTER SHIT YOU FOIST UPON YOUR VIEWERS! Pre-determing your conclusions before you set out to make the story isn't journalism, it's PROPAGANDA. You made absolutely no effort to show even a single interviewee on the pro-gun side of the argument. You are shills, the lot of you.

[EDIT]

Adding a link to Eseell's play-by-play analysis over at Found: One Troll: http://blog.knotclan.com/2009/04/11/if-i-only-had-a-gun/. Eseell has also been added to the blogroll.

Caleb over at Gun Nuts Media (the Blog formerly known as "Call Me Ahab") has his own take as well: http://gunnuts.net/2009/04/11/set-up-to-fail/.

Additional commentary from the Virginia Shooting Sports Association here: http://virginiashootingsportsassociation.blogspot.com/2009/04/abcs-if-i-only-had-gun.html

Sebastian from Snowflakes In Hell expands upon the VSSA's commentary: http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/2009/04/11/abc-2020-hatchet-job/

Another good review over at Sensibly Progressive in Politically Correct America: http://sensiblyprogressive.blogspot.com/2009/04/abc-anti-gun-hatchet-job-on-2020.html. Another good blog added to the blogroll.

SUNDAY UPDATE:

The Denver Gun Rights Examiner has an article here: http://www.examiner.com/x-2944-Denver-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m4d11-ABCs-2020--isnt-seeing-clearly

The LA Gun Rights Examiner has an article here: http://www.examiner.com/x-2323-LA-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m4d11-If-I-Only-Had-A-Gun-misfires-for-2020-when-they-cannot-stay-on-topic

[MORE STUFF ADDED]

Women of Caliber has another detailed review: http://womenofcaliber.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/2020-shoots-blanks/