NY Daily News Splashes AR-15 Across Navy Yard Shooting Cover
The New York Daily News must have had the print its cover Tuesday before the FBI confirmed that Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis did not, in fact, use an AR-15 assault rifle in the shooting that killed 12 people Monday in Washington D.C. As recently at 8am ET, the Daily News tweeted a photo of the cover, which features the headline, “SAME GUN, DIFFERENT SLAY.”
As CNN’s Pamela Brown reported at approximately 9:30am ET Tuesday, FBI officials have confirmed that Alexis did not use an AR-15, but rather is believed to have carried one shotgun and 2 pistols.
The paper has also been promoting, on Twitter and elsewhere, a story by Mike Lupica with the headline, “AR-15 is the rifle for the ‘sport’ of hunting humans.”
Lupica opens his article by writing, “So it takes nine months and two days from Newtown, from 20 dead children and six adults, for someone else to carry the same kind of AR-15 that Adam Lanza carried into Sandy Hook Elementary School into the Washington Navy Yard.”
He goes on to say, “This time the shooter is reported to be a Navy reservist named Aaron Alexis and when he is shot dead by law enforcement, taken out before he can put a gun to his own head the way Lanza did, he has his light, handy assault weapon with him, and a semiautomatic pistol, and a shotgun.”
The Daily News has not updated the article with any correction as of 11:30am ET.
The apparent confusion over exactly which guns Alexis used persists, even within a CNN.com story about the AR-15’s role in recent mass shootings. In the article, last updated at 8:59am ET, Ben Brumfield writes:
A U.S. law enforcement official said Monday that gunman Aaron Alexis unleashed a barrage of bullets using an AR-15, a rifle and a semi-automatic handgun. Authorities believed the AR-15 was used for most of the shooting, the official said. The news prompted Sen. Dianne Feinstein, one of the strongest proponents of a ban on assault weapons like the AR-15, to issue a statement the same day asking, “When will enough be enough?”
However, federal law enforcement sources told CNN Tuesday that authorities have recovered three weapons from the scene of the mass shooting, including one — a shotgun — that investigators believe Alexis brought in to the compound. The other two weapons, which sources say were handguns, may have been taken from guards at the Navy complex.
The sources, who have detailed knowledge of the investigation, cautioned that initial information that an AR-15 was used in the shootings may have been incorrect. It is believed that Alexis had rented an AR-15, but returned it before Monday morning’s shootings. Authorities are still investigating precisely how many weapons Alexis had access to and when.
More on the media’s AR-15 confusion can be read here, via Mediaite’s Noah Rothman.
[photo via screengrab]
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