Last month, when the hideous Assault Weapons Ban renewal was in the news, CNN took some heat over not knowing the difference between an automatic rifle and a semi-automatic rifle. That time, CNN's shoddy reporting, conveniently furthered the gun grabber position.

Today, CNN makes another blunder when they picked up the AP story about Harold McCord. Harold McCord is the three strike felon who used a fake gun made of toilet paper, cardboard, and news print to break out of a Washington court house.

CNN added this photo and caption to the AP wire story:

The cardboard fake gun, left,
resembles a 25 mm handgun, right.
(screenshot)

A 25 mm handgun? That would certainly be a bitch to shoot. I realize that knowing the difference between metric and standard can be a problem for some people, but any idiot should be able to look at that pea shooter and know that a 25mm round isn't coming out of the end of it. They do have an idea of what 25 mm is, right?

Am I being picky? Perhaps. However, I think that CNNs constant mistakes represent an underlying ignorance of firearms. If they have absolutely no knowledge of firearms, how can we expect them to accurately report on the subject? This may be just an honest mistake, but when you add up all the other honest mistakes, you have to assume CNN is either ignorant, does half-assed reporting, or is out to deliberately mislead people (as was the allegation during the AWB flap).

UPDATE: I get results, baby. An hour after I posted this, CNN realized the error and updated their page. Apparently they still have no clue what type of pistol is pictured, because now they simply say that it "is shown by Tacoma authorities."