Clearly, CNN chose the wrong anchor to report on the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and the militarization of police that has exacerbated the unrest there.
Reporter Don Lemon during CNN’s coverage of Ferguson confused semiautomatic weapons with automatic ones when speaking to anchor Ben Ferguson.
“The gun law says that you and I can’t just randomly go out and buy automatic weapons, so let’s deal with the facts here,” Ferguson said. “A semiautomatic weapon is a gun that you and I are allowed to own and in different places they have different rules, but to imply that anyone can go out and buy an automatic weapon is just not true, Don.”
“What do you mean, anyone can’t,” Lemon replied. “Listen, during the theater shooting in Colorado, I was able to go and buy an automatic weapon and I, you know, have maybe shot a gun three, four times in my life. I don’t even live in Colorado. I think most people can go out and buy an automatic weapon. I don’t understand your argument here.”
Perplexed, Ferguson then asked Lemon for his “definition of an automatic weapon.”
“For me, an automatic weapon is something that you can shoot off a number of rounds very quickly,” Lemon responded. “I was able to buy an AR-15.”
Unfortunately for Lemon’s credibility, an AR-15 is actually a semiautomatic rifle, which Ferguson pointed out as politely as he could.
“In all due respect, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” explained Ferguson. “An automatic weapon is when you pull the trigger one time and it continually shoots off, one after another after another. A semiautomatic weapon means that you have to pull the trigger.”
Lemon refused to back down from his unfounded assertion, accusing Ferguson of “getting into semantics.”
Ferguson said of the difference between automatic and semiautomatic weapons, “It’s the difference between breaking the law and not breaking the law.”
Despite Lemon’s insistence, automatic weapons are very difficult to obtain, requiring extensive background checks.
Watch the CNN segment below.
