Cracked on how corrupt and overly powerful the police are

So last week Cracked Ran an article on how powerful police interrogations can be.
(But doesn't talk about why that's a real good idea to lawyer up once you've stated the minimum the situation deems appropriate. )

And today they did a piece about how abusive, racist and crazy US Police departments can be.

Keep these articles in mind the next time Cracked has an article going on about how "there ought to be a law!".

Cracked On Sandy Hook Truthers.

This is a heartfelt article on a parent's loss and the nature of how conspiracy theories work.

Not much to criticize about that.

But...  reading it one notices that the article repeatedly says "gun control never happened".

It's their blithe attempt to debunk a pillar of the "Truther" movement that is "The government orchestrated X tragedy in order to exploit it."

Here's the problem with saying "gun control never happened". Post Sandy Hook New York,  Connecticut, Maryland, Colorado and other states *did* pass stricter gun control in response to the killings.

And the President himself lobbied congress heavily to pass bills that would ban certain guns.

This is like saying "Bush didn't cause 9/11 because the Patriot act never passed"  or "We never invaded Iraq."

Obviously, the Sandy Hook Truthers are nuts, but saying they're wrong because "gun control didn't happen" is factually incorrect.

And then there's this...

 Some of these interviews didn't sit right with the conspiracy-minded, especially those who feared that the tragedy would be used as a pretext for gun control.

Well... yes  wasn't the tragedy used by Gun Control advocates as a reason to pass laws they thought would make things safer?  They were pretty open about using it as a pretext for gun control.


Here we see the article being very sloppy with terminology.  Basically, they're saying that because guns weren't fully banned, that there was "no gun control".


Heck don' gun control advocates go on and on about "gun control" is not "gun confiscation"? And that "nobody wants your guns"?

But here we have an article that deliberately equates gun control with mass confiscation.



What's funny is only a minor edit could have removed this bit from the article.

Just replace "gun control" with "mass confiscation" and the point would stand.

SO Cracked takes on Fast and Furious

So Cracked decided to wade into the whole ATF trafficking in guns to Cartels.

Why yes, they do blame all the Mexican gun violence on American gun laws.


And yes they do fear-monger on 50 bmg rifles.  Despite sheepishly admitting....

The Barrett is a rifle with almost no practical criminal uses. It weighs around 30 pounds and costs as much as a damn car. 

Oh but don't worry, they manage to blame you American gun owners.

The reason the cartels had use for the Barrett is chilling: When you're as large as, say, Los Zetas, your "turf wars" involve the Mexican army. A gun that can shoot through tanks is pretty useful for that. And, lucky for them, America had a surplus of Barretts, because "fuck yeah."

Note that these obviously illegal transactions are being done on the order of the ATF.
But it's us who get blamed.

This made for an interesting customer service dilemma: How do you deal with a customer you know is:

1. Actively providing firearms to one of the most dangerous organizations in the world and ... 2. Being monitored by the ATF, so ... 3. They're probably gonna go to super-prison for that.

Oh bless your heart.  You thought people would go to jail...

Oh wait... the next part admits that nope... the ATF botched even watching the straw purchasers.  And didn't have enough to get em.

Good job!


And note this bit of blame...

If our source's store had just followed their guts and refused to sell to the most obviously sketchy buyers, the world would've been a little bit safer. Instead, the ATF lost 1,400 (or more!) weapons to Mexico. Two of those weapons were tracked to the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent:

Recall that the store actually alerted the ATF.  And told them about this... and the ATF told them to continue the sales.  And it's... somehow the fault of the gun-store.

Meanwhile the worst Cracked has for the ATF is calling them "kooky".  Even through they admit that at least 150 people have been hurt or killed by those exact weapons.

And the article ends with a "junk on the bunk" picture to show how scary tat 50bmg is...  while not mentioning the RPG right next to it.


And in dog that didn't bark fashion... Cracked doesn't mention that no one at the ATF faced consequences for these actions.   Nor that the President was using carnage in Mexico to demand gun control....

Though the Cracked article itself did implicitly demand gun control.

Well, at least Cracked has admitted that the ATF did gunrunning.  Baby steps.