Friday, March 29, AD 2024 9:59am

Intellectual Bankruptcy on Display

One can look at the blatant dishonesty displayed by gun control proponents one of two ways. These people are so dishonest and so loose with the facts that they destroy their credibility with each new fabrication. Alternatively, these individuals are so shameless and brazen that we can only stand aside in wonder as they run full steam ahead.

The latest display of such hubris is from the firestorm over the supposed heckling of Neil Heslin, father of one of the murdered children at Sandy Hook elementary, Jesse Lewis. The problem: he wasn’t heckled.

MSNBC is propping up its story with a blatantly edited video. In fact, Heslin was not heckled. Gun rights advocates in the audience indeed voiced their support for the Second Amendment — after he asked why anyone would need “assault-style weapons or high-capacity clips.” You’d never know based on the MSNBC version, which completely cut out the footage of Heslin’s question.

Fortunately, Twitchy has obtained the full, unedited video, which you can view for yourself below (relevant portion starts at the 15-minute mark):

You can go to the Twitchy link to view the video. Here is Ace’s summary:

At first you might think this is a rhetorical question; the audience in fact takes it as rhetorical, and doesn’t answer. Then he scans around the room, looking for someone to answer, and, as everyone’s silent, concludes, as he’d intended, that no one has a good answer.

At that point, people realize that their respectful silence is being taken for assent, and they begin chiming in “The second amendment.”

He asked a question and was legitimately looking for people to answer. People did, and they were shouted down for actually responding.

Obviously the man is still grieving, and should be afforded respect. At the same time, he is also willingly allowing himself to be placed in a public situation to make an appeal for legislative change to gun laws. No one shouted him down – just the opposite. People assumed he was making a rhetorical point, and when it was obvious that it was more than just a rhetorical question, they replied in kind.

Should people have remained silent even when pressed? Some will argue that a man in Heslin’s state should be given the utmost space to bare his soul. But it seems to me that the people who are disrespecting Heslin are the people who put him on that stand. They used him as a political prop. Well, that’s not entirely fair, because I am sure that Heslin was willing to make this public testimony. Yet those that are so indignant about people actually responding to Heslin when he asked them a question are simply enraged that their political theater was upstaged for a minute. How is it respectful of Heslin to use him as a political prop to bludgeon political opponents over the head with? If anyone is disrepecting Mr. Heslin’s dignity, it is folks like those at Media Matters, David Frum, and others who don’t really see him as a human being, but as a useful political tool. And those people frankly make me sick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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DarwinCatholic
Tuesday, January 29, AD 2013 9:18pm

Gotta love how the outraged tweets care so much about the allegedly heckled father and his personal tragedy that some of them assert he lost a son and others that he lost a daughter (it was in fact his son) in the shooting.

Really, though, this is symtomatic of the way in which, to the modern left, it is far more important to believe tht the right is wicked than to actually know anything about the issue involved. Thus, none of them know what the heck an assault weapon is, nor why we should be particularly offended by them and not by other weapons, but they’re darn sure that anyone who would defend the right to own such a thing is just a terrible, terrible human being.

Robert A. Rowland
Robert A. Rowland
Tuesday, January 29, AD 2013 9:54pm

The first thing any socialist tyrant does is to disarm the population. The guns are not the problem. The moral disintegration is what will destroy our nation. Leaving only the criminals and socialists armed with assault rifles is lunacy.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Wednesday, January 30, AD 2013 5:02am

When you ask a question, you must always expect an answer.

Paul W. Primavera
Wednesday, January 30, AD 2013 5:31am

How ironic and oxymoronic that the left demonizes the right over the right to keep and bear arms ostensibly in the name of protecting children while it is the left that murders unborn children to the tune of 55 million since Roe v Wade. The right may be incompetent in explaining and defending its position, but it is the left which is diabolically evil.

trackback
Wednesday, January 30, AD 2013 7:19am

[…] Intellectual Bankruptcy on Display – Paul Zummo, T.A.C. […]

Diane
Diane
Wednesday, January 30, AD 2013 8:44am

a better answer to his question would have been:

“In case the govt tries to move against the people”.

Donald R. McClarey
Reply to  Dante alighieri
Wednesday, January 30, AD 2013 1:50pm

That deserves a post!

Art Deco
Wednesday, January 30, AD 2013 2:19pm

The country is in danger of losing its credit rating, the President of the United States is acting like he can’t be broke ‘cuz he still has checks, and Congress, the press, and phonies in Mark Shea’s comboxes are making exhibits of themselves over the dangers of rifles, shotguns, and muzzle-loaders. The collection of police departments in a metropolitan center of ordinary size (say, Omaha) will have to investigate one or two homicides a year making use of these weapons, and they tell us it is a pressing national emergency. We are all drowning in humbug.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Wednesday, January 30, AD 2013 2:37pm

Comment of the week Art!

Becky
Becky
Thursday, January 31, AD 2013 10:15am

Re: the “blatant dishonesty” of gun control advocates — do you consider the Vatican to be “blatantly dishonest?” I “naturally” lean left but after much examination of conscience am working to accept the church’s authority on issues I find personally difficult (such as civil gay marriage). I don’t understand why those who lean rightward aren’t willing to similarly re-examine their political convictions in light of the Church’s firmly pro-gun-control stance.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, January 31, AD 2013 7:27pm

Sorry, folks.

Today, Chuck Hagel lowered the bar on “Intellectual Bankruptcy”, something Obama and the vile, lying media have been doing for, lo, these many years.

Also, so-called assault rifles, shotguns, etc. annually (with no free will) murder (half as many as hammers in 2010) at least 25,000,000 fewer of God’s children than do abortion and artificial contraception.

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