This story dominates the news for about a week or two, and then no matter how horrible it is,

something else happens and we move on. But the early coverage of the Newtown Massacre has created

dangerous myths that will endure. From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

One of those myths is the connection between the shooter's alleged autism at his crime.

There's absolutely no association between autism and acts of premeditated violence, such as those that we saw in Newtown.

And Congress's in-house think tank, the nonpartisan congressional research service,

had to tweak the language in a report when confronted with charges of bias.

Instead of Bush tax cuts, we now see Bush-era tax cuts.

Instead of millionaires, we see high-income taxpayers. All that and a whole lot more coming up next. Hi, podcast listeners. This is a free service of WNYC radio. Go to on themedia.org

to find out where On the Media is playing in your area and to support your local public radio station.

You can support this podcast by making a

donation at WNYC.org. From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. Broke-Ladstone is off this week.

I'm Bob Garfield. We've become accustomed in the past 20 years to seeing the issue of guns in America broken down into two camps.

Gun control advocates led by police chiefs and Sarah Brady against the all-powerful National Rifle Association,

which not only asserts a Second Amendment guarantee of gun ownership, but uses its vast war chest to elect sympathetic politicians

and defeat opponents. But according to Adam Winkler, UCLA law professor and author of gunfight,

the battle over the right to bear arms in America, there was a time, relatively recently, in fact,

when the NRA supported gun control legislation

and the staunchest defenders of so-called gun rights were on the radical left.

That piece has been excerpted in the Atlantic.

Adam, welcome to On the Media.

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