Tell people who've saved their lives
with a gun "It never happens"
By David Codrea, June 13th 2014
JPFO writer contributor, © 2014.
"Comedy is often rooted in truth,"CNN's "New Day Saturday" host Victor Blackwell joked with co-personality Christi Paul as the pair began a segment stumping for "gun control" by presenting a Daily Show sketch ridiculing open carriers. That disparagement through derision is Rule 5 in the late "community organizer" Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" is not lost on those who know to look for such things, meaning most of the show's regular audience was probably oblivious to being manipulated.
It was a "humorous spin," Blackwell noted segueing into what they really wanted to spin, "on a story that a lot of people just don't find funny at all."
They were talking about Open Carry Texas and highly publicized incidents at restaurants like Chipotles, taking full advantage of the made-for media imagery. They were, according to Paul, "flaunting their firearms to advocate what's already legal, you know, in Texas, openly carrying long guns."
Left unsaid, of course, and intentionally, is that openly carrying handguns is still illegal in The Lone Star State, a prohibition activists hope to end. There's been plenty of debate about the wisdom or lack thereof exhibited by some of the more ardent and visible protestors, and that's resulted in plenty of fireworks -- not only within the gun community, with NRA having to walk back a statement calling the protestors "weird" while reaffirming its commitment to the practice of lawful open carry, but significantly, from those who oppose the right to keep and bear arms. They've seized such displays to pressure timid corporate decision-makers into abandoning their policies of following state law and imposing blanket bans on all guns on their premises.
That, of course, is exactly their goal.
In fairness, the hosts gave a good amount of time to rights advocate Tov Henderson, allowing him to make his points uninterrupted, and they were courteous and professional in their on-camera treatment of him. Still, it can' go unnoticed that as he was talking, the other half of the screen at one point showed a photo of open carriers that the anti-gunners have seized on as something they can exploit on the "Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America" Facebook page. Plus, they sandwiched him in between the "Comedy Central" opening bit and the main event, Shannon Watts, previously a highly-placed corporate communications/public affairs professional.
"What you just heard," she smirked professionally, dismissing Henderson's sincerity and competence in true Rule 5 fashion, "was a creation by the NRA leadership."
Perhaps it truly doesn't occur to her that people are capable of forming opinions outside of those espoused by NRA, particularly those who practice a brand of activism the association just proved itself behind the curve on. What's evident is those she would cavalierly brush off with superior airs are better informed than she is.
"All that paranoia, all that fear, all those inaccurate statistics, "she went on, obviously on a talking point-parroting mission as long as she had the floor. "None of that is true or happening," she added, broaching her nonexistent right to "know that we are protected from people who think that they are somehow vigilantes."
In other words, she has a right to the services of armed monopoly of violence agents, obligated to risk their lives to protect someone who will neither protect her own nor tolerate any private individuals who will. She's obviously never read JPFO's "Dial 911 and Die," by Richard W. Stevens, that lays that myth to rest along with plenty of legal precedents to prove no such duty exists. Or who knows? Maybe she has and wants it ignored.
And in other words, merely possessing the means of self-defense -- forget about actually engaging in it -- is the equivalent of hunting down, capturing and executing someone without benefit of a trial in Shannon's mind. But she's not done spouting inane views, and again, to his credit, Blackwell asked a question that needed to be heard.
"Is there an example in school shootings or a mall shooting or these public facilities, where that has been wrong?" he asked, after citing NRA Executive Director Wayne LaPierre's contention that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
"Where a bad guy with a gun has been stopped in any other way or by a person other than a law enforcement officer with a gun or by killing himself?" Blackwell continued.
"This has never happened," Watts claimed. "Data shows it doesn't happen."
"But it does happen--and it happens all the time," Breitbart columnist AWR Hawkins argues, giving several recent documented examples proving Watts either doesn't know what she's talking about, or that she knows the truth but has no intention of letting that stop her. And if one wishes to expand documented incidents beyond institutional shootings into the realm of personal defense, you need go no further than "The Armed Citizen", and similar compilations of news stories.
Perhaps Ms. Watts would like to convince one of the subjects of those reports that their story never happened, or better yet, accuse them of vigilantism. Perhaps she would like to admit to them that the Bloomberg machine would rather see them dead than armed. No?
While CNN gave her the last word, and while the sympathies of the network are hardly in doubt, perhaps enough experiences where they're forced to walk back baseless claims by Watts and her Bloomberg handlers will at least be required to survive credibility checks in the future. After getting caught repeating the claim that "there have been 74 school shootings since Sandy Hook," and after having that called into question by people who actually do check facts, CNN did some backtracking their own and concluded all is not as being claimed. As a matter of fact, most is not.
Heck, I could have told them that. And I have neither a newsroom staff with major network resources, nor grant money from any billionaires.
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David Codrea is a field editor at GUNS Magazine, penning their monthly "Rights Watch" column. He provides regular reporting and commentary at Gun Rights Examiner and blogs at The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance. David Codrea's Archive page.
