LAPD gets punked at the LA “Gun Buyback Program” – Media in full hype mode

You see all the major news media using a particular image of a “military rocket launcher” that LAPD Chief Charlie Beck seems to delight in waving around to show just how badly legal gun owners need to turn in their weapons:

Over 2,000 weapons were taken off Los Angeles streets during a gun buyback on Dec. 26–including two military grade rocket grenade launchers.

“Those are weapons of war, weapons of death,” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told the Los Angeles Times. “These are not hunting guns. These are not target guns. These are made to put high-velocity, extremely deadly, long-range rounds down-range as quickly as possible, and they have no place in our great city.”

Los Angeles police believe the rockets are antiquated, “stripped-down shells” that can no longer be fired. The LAPD is cooperating with the U.S. military to investigate whether the rockets were ever stolen.

What the much used image doesn’t show is how the LAPD and the willing media schmucks are using empty props to demonize all gun owners:

I’m not sure if this is theater for the credulous press or the top brass at the LAPD really are as stupid as stupid as this piece makes them seem. In a bit of anti gun theater the LAPD produced a pair of “rocket launchers” obtained at a recent gun buy back. Upon examining the video what I saw was a pair of empty AT 4 tubes.

The AT 4 is an antitank rocket invented in Sweden and made in Sweden and the US. US forces used it in Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan. (The US Army calls it “Lightweight Multipurpose Weapon M136.”) You can not reload the AT 4; It’s disposable. Once you have fired the missile that comes with it the remaining tube is an inert non-weapon, not even heavy enough to make a decent club. Even if you managed to get another rocket from somewhere the tube is not strong enough for a second shot.

But the CNN field reporter calmly assures us that since it’s “US made” it must have been smuggled in from somewhere. The “International Security Expert” LAPD has consulting for their gun buyback makes sonorous noises about an “RPG Launcher” and “assault weapons.” As someone hired to undermine the Second Amendment he’s earned his thirty pieces of silver. Candy Crowley and the field reporter wonder about how many other rockets got smuggled in.

An image the media doesn’t show is a close-up of the rocket launcher -

It’s a training device that someone, presumably ex-military, had laying around and wanted to turn in. Maybe so LAPD could also use it as a training device?

Whatever, the dupes at CNN, MSNBC, and others will be showing the “deadly rocket launcher” out of context every chance they get. You when you see it, you can laugh and point the way I do.

Related articles

• Rocket launchers turned in to LAPD apparently were from military (sacbee.com)
• Rocket Launchers At LA Gun Buyback? Give me a break! (fromthetrenchesworldreport.com)
• Rocket launchers, military weapons left at L.A. gun buyback (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• L.A. gun buyback nets 2 military rocket launchers (latimes.com)
• LA Gun Buyback Yields … Rocket Launchers?! (newser.com)
• The LAPD Got Punked And Bought Back ‘Rocket Launchers’ That Literally Do Nothing (businessinsider.com)
• LAPD Gun Buyback Nets 1,962 Guns (Oh, and TWO ROCKET LAUNCHERS) (gawker.com)
• Rocket launchers surface during LA guns buyback (usnews.nbcnews.com)

Authored By [author-name] A TowDog

Authored By [author-name] A TowDog