Iowa News Shows Its Anti-Gun Bias

What if some big city gangbangers lead police on a high speed chase until they crashed in a nearby small town and then fled on foot and the pursuing deputy got injured, so two country boys decided to pursue the five suspects themselves and captured the bad guys at gunpoint and turned them over to the police? That would be a pretty interesting story, right? Especially in Iowa where the big news usually involves the butter cow at the State Fair.


Well apparently not to most Iowa news reporters. The old adage in reporting is, "If it bleeds, it leads." Apparently the new maxim in reporting is: "If it casts gun owners in a positive light, bury it."


For those of you who don't have press cards stuck in the bands of your fedoras, here's the scoop. According to Cedar Rapids CBS2/FOX28 news (to my knowledge the ONLY mainstream news agency to include the armed civilian good guy aspect of this story):

Five men are in jail after a very scary car chase.
The Linn County Sheriff's office says it all started with a shots fired call in Cedar Rapids and ended with a car crashing into a child's playhouse.
Deputies say, around 7 Wednesday night, they tried to stop a vehicle that matched the description of a car involved in a shots fired call.
They say the driver of the car wouldn't stop so officers chased them all the way to solon.
The chase ended after the car crashed into someone's yard plowing through a child's play house.
That's when the five men got out of the car and took off running; two neighbors saw the commotion and decided to help.
Tim Moore and Scott Eastwood say the five men threw drugs and a gun down in his yard as they ran across the highway.
During the chase, the deputy who was chasing them fell so Tim and Scott got into a truck and continued to chase the men.
The men were eventually caught when the neighbors confronted them and held them there [at gunpoint] until back up arrived.

The video of the newscast is a little more in-depth and contains interviews with Scott Eastwood, the permit-to-carry holder, and his neighbor Tim Moore who apprehended the five suspects. The story focuses quite a bit on the armed good guy aspect of the story. I highly recommend that you watch news video to get a full feel for the story.


The important thing to note here is that if it wasn't for CBS2/FOX28 (who share a news room) we might not know at all that the suspected bad guys were apprehended by an armed civilian permit-to-carry holder. None of the other news outlets even mentioned it.


KWWL news (Waterloo) reported:  "Five occupants of the vehicle took off on foot, and was [sic] later arrested by police officers." KCCI news (Des Moines) stated simply: "The five males in the truck tried to run from the scene, but they were soon captured."


The "Iowa City Press-Citizen" wrote: "The occupants of the vehicle fled on foot and they were pursued by the Linn County deputy who initiated the chase," [Johnson Co. Sheriff's Office Capt. Gary] Kramer said. With the help of some Solon residents, who alerted officers to the suspects' location, the five individuals were arrested a short distance away on Sutliff Road, Kramer said." [Emphasis added.]


"The Gazette" of Cedar Rapids, which normally is so fascinated by permit-to-carry holders that it periodically publishes their names and addresses when they apply for or renew their permits, yawned from the page: "[F]ive people were apprehended near where the truck crashed after they tried to run from the scene."


We've seen this many times on the national scene, when school shootings or other shooting sprees are stopped by armed civilians. The national news media usually just report that bystanders "subdued" or "disarmed" the gunman, never mentioning that they did so by pointing their own weapons at him.


If an Iowa permit-to-carry holder someday overzealously pulls his pistol on an innocent person or accidentally shoots himself in the leg you can expect a lot of media attention on THAT gun owner. If you're a supporter of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms just remember: No news is good news.

Black Rifle (Bam-Ba-Lam)

Semi-automatic rifles, variously called "sport utility rifles," homeland defense rifles," or "modern sporting rifles" by those who enjoy and support their use, and often derisively labeled "assault weapons" by those who wish to ban them, are among the most popular guns on the market today. The AR-15 style weapon is the most popular among them. Americans own about 5 million ARs with about 500,000 more hitting the private market each year.


With numbers like that there should be plenty of gun owners in need of training on how to maintain and safely shoot the AR platform. Recognizing this market, Corey D. Roberts and the rest of the crew at Tactical Insights LLC defense training have stepped in with their new "Black Rifle" Operator Course. Since the stated goal of the class is to "provide skills and knowledge to every student, from the new rifle owner to the experienced shooter" I decided to sign up for the class.  The debut class was June 7th.


Most of the 14 or so people in the class had .223 caliber M4-style ARs with 16" barrels and collapsible stocks. There were two oddballs. One guy had an AK-47-style rifle and I had a full-size .308 caliber AR with 20" barrel and solid stock. Thankfully nobody engaged in any Freudian speculation on why I needed the big battle rifle. (I'm just taking the advice of Boston T. Party, Fred, and Bob Cashner. Honest!)


The first three hours of the class were in the classroom. Roberts and Ryan Evans, a police officer and certified armorer, headed the class. There was an overview of the AR-15 and AK-47 systems, with definitions, capabilities and explanations of their respective ballistics. Students were walked through field-stripping their weapons followed by some shooting fundamentals. All in all the classroom section of the class was a good "basic training" for AR owners.


The next five hours were on the shooting range. Students practiced shooting from various standing, kneeling and prone shooting positions that one doesn't always see at the shooting range. We shot at moving targets, from under and around barricades and practiced shooting while on the move. It was a good day of practice using the AR platform in close quarter battle drills.


I thought the class was a great learning experience sure to provide new AR-15 owners and seasoned shooters with increased proficiency. If you've got a "black rifle" you might want to check it out.