Children at CNN Town Hall Meeting on gun control (courtesy theatlantic.com)
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The advocates of disarming the American people have always used emotional “arguments” to pass legislation, before calm and rational discussion can take place. They do so for two reasons: emotions subvert honest discussion and honest discussion is the enemy. Whenever there’s a fact-based discussion on the merits, Second Amendment supporters win. How low can their opponents go? . . .

Their now-standard ploy (so common it has become a joke): “Do it for the children!” The antis use this for every possible policy prescription. It’s their standard call and it’s become meaningless. At this point, any anti-gun rights law or regulation is “for the children.”

But what that argument needs is . . . children.

In the wake of the Parkland High School spree killing, gun control advocates are trying a new tactic. Instead of having adults push for childish policies, they are having children push for childish policies.

The children are sincere. But they are children, ignorant of the debate, arguing from emotion, being used by political operatives. From mlive.com:

ANN ARBOR, MI – High school students have taken charge of the national conversation on gun control and school safety in the past week, and now Ann Arbor Public Schools officials are looking for ways to support local students in continuing that work.

Students at Ann Arbor’s five high schools participated in a walkout the afternoon of Wednesday, Feb. 21 – joining students across the country in commemorating the one-week anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 people dead.

“After the other mass shootings, we didn’t have survivors of the incident come forth and take political action like we have now,” said Board Vice President Susan Baskett.

Trustee Jessica Kelly said this feels like a “tipping point,” and she asked for ideas on how the school district could amplify the voices of students, teachers and parents on issues related to school safety and gun control.

Susan Baskett must have missed Gabby Giffords campaign, or the Brady campaign or the efforts using Virginia Tech survivor Colin Goddard by the Brady Campaign.

The media enabled only certain survivors to come forth and take political action. Survivors that do not agree with the dominant media’s talking points and agenda are not given a platform.  From dailymail.co.uk:

Haab said was planning to ask about school safety, and the possibility of using veterans as armed security guards in schools, but the questions were rejected by CNN.

After allegedly being told he had to ask a scripted question, Haab decided not to attend the town hall.

CNN denies the assertion. But another father of a Stoneman Douglas High School student accused CNN of seeking out survivors who wanted to talk about gun control. From dailycaller.com:

“I actually spoke to a CNN producer on Thursday, the day after the shooting, and the producer insinuated to me that they were looking for people who were willing to espouse a certain narrative, which was taking the tragedy and turning it into a policy debate,” Klein claimed. “And I read that as being a gun control debate.”

CNN’s support for restrictions on gun ownership and is apparent to anyone who watches the channel. CNN anchor Don Lemon is not shy about his views. From newsweek.com:

“Anyone with any sense knows that this is the one common denominator that America has, the sickness that we have, is having this much access to guns. Especially this much access,” Lemon said. “Don’t tell me it’s not time to talk about it. You talk to those people down in Florida who lost their loved ones, they’ll tell you it’s time to talk about it.”

In another segment, Lemon said that the right time to talk about gun control was, in fact, “weeks, months, years or decades ago.”

Lemon consistently implies that extreme restrictions on gun ownership would solve mass murder in the United States, even though such restrictions have not done so in other countries.

CNN’s gave a platform to far left commentator, Van Jones. He calls the effort a children’s crusade. He writes:

Let the children come. Let them lead. Let them create the future they demand. Let us help them every step of the way. And let us live in the world they create.

For decades, the United States has had voluminous “conversations” about gun control. As a result, the right to keep and bear arms has been restricted and, in some places, removed.

The Internet has changed the game: the public now has instant access to unfiltered facts and educated, informed opinion. So the antis are resorting to the rhetorical equivalent of throwing a tantrum about firearms freedom, and encouraging Americans to do the same.  It is as if they read Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, and are using it as a playbook. “Ignorance is Strength.”

©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included. Gun Watch

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54 COMMENTS

  1. I agree with the article. But the fact is that a movement led by children and the MSM will be effective enough to turn the tide on this issue. Ranting and screaming by the alt left is old and many are tiring of it. The novelty of chldren leading a movement is a last ditch effort but a powerful one. There will be blood or there will be changes. Bump stocks and assault weapons will be the victims.

    • Unfortunately the victims will be these children as disarmed adults. Clearly these kids have not paid attention in history class and/or their parents failed them.

      • Are you sure there is a history class anymore? Covering the horrors of the 20th Century caused by Nazism, Fascism, and Communism would be counter productive to the liberal/Socialist ideology. Especially if they cover disarmament of citizens in what would become the Soviet Union and in Germany in the 1930s.

        • Leming Lemmon was never a source of anything credible! He espouses the tired old rhetoric of the left continuously and it the current set of facts don’t match, he will rewrite them till they do! If you want a good laugh, then he’s the evening clown!

      • They will end up as starving democratic marxists apologizing to each other over identity politics and micro-aggressions living in abject poverty while avoiding the identity police who visit periodically to make sure they are keeping up with their white privilege psycho therapy. There will be high profile school and mass killings daily as a result of societal decay, nihilism, and hopelessness. They will hear the details on the democratic Marxist news network after they edited it for what they wanted the people to hear.

      • If these kids are like many around here in Central TX, most of their “history” teachers are coaches that don’t really have a grasp on history itself because they are only filling a job requirement that all coaches teach an academic class. There are great ones out there (I lucked out and had a few), but not many. Further, in many of these classes, the coach/teacher is a Millennial (hold, not bashing M’s). As such, they really didn’t experience anything of the last century with an adult perspective. Nothing. No Cold War. No communist threat. No East Germany. No Soviet Union. No truly Red China. No Pol Pot. No Stalin (I’m too young for that one, too, but I have broken bread with survivors of his purges). They simply do not get our concerns about statism, disarmament, and oppression. We’ve failed them in making historical perspective a lower priority than lay ups and Instagram.

        Like others that comment here, I’m sure, I have walked the ruins of the collapsing Soviet Empire as it was crumbling. I’ve shaken the fingerless hands of men tortured at Toul Sleng, and winced despite my desire not to at the acid and burn scars of people whose homes and villages were destroyed by totalitarian thugs. These kids have truly seen an atrocity in Florida that I in no way mean to minimize. However, Cruz was a rank amateur compared to governments gone bad among a disarmed populace. Naiveté and strong emotion are how some of those past governments came to be.

        • My sociology teacher was a coach, most of the time we went over football plays, the history teacher was a marine retired , most of the time he tried to get volunteers to enlist

        • Went to school in Central Texas as well back in the day Gun racks in every pickup truck. Back then didn’t even lock doors not truck or house. After all neighbors might need to borrow a cup of sugar.
          Could not swing a dead cat without a hitting a pickup truck with gun rack in it on livestock auction day.
          Educated at a Catholic school if you misbehaved, it would not be a “time out” it would be a ruler across your hand, boys on knuckles, girls on palm. Was not unusual to have lunch with a homemade beer. My dad brewed homemade beer. I had a bit of a hangover one Saturday morning so got a bottle of beer out refrigerator for “hair of dog who bit you”
          My mom said “you are drinking before noon?”
          I said “yes, you want to split it and we had a nice mother- daughter chat.
          We were not snowflake kids, you did chores for an allowance.
          Too many people have moved to Texas Hill Country from California and told “don’t care how you did it there, this is how we do it here. We say Sir & Mamn here to adults.

    • “The novelty of chldren leading a movement is a last ditch effort but a powerful one”.

      Children are not leading the movement but being pushed forward by adults. The novelty is using teenagers who can articulate better than elementary students.

      This tactic will fail for two reasons. One shown at the townhall meeting, the irrational mob blaming the NRA and verbal assaulting guest. Second is time for truth. For the sheriff to lambaste Loach knowing his Deputies failed to respond to a murder exposes true intentions.

      If Coral PD came forward before the townhall meeting exposing the lies, then no national forum. Note the war of words is in full swing and pro gun must bring their A game and build the vote.

      • Children are no more “leading” this despicable charade than Hitler Youth were leading the farcical defense of Berlin. These children are nothing more than cannon fodder for the anti-gun cult.

    • The novelty of children leading a movement is a last ditch effort but a powerful one.
      This is not being led by the children. The children are sock puppets being led by the old Liberal groups.
      Think…
      The Young Communist League is the youth organization of the Communist Party of Cuba.
      The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League usually known as Komsomol was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union.
      The aim of the Soviet groups was to get young Russian people to swear blind obedience to the Soviet State. They would be brainwashed and lectured on doses of Karl Marx, and would be taught that their sole vocation in life was to serve the state.

  2. They’re scraping the barrel bottom for sacred cows. Minorities didn’t work. Women didn’t work. Now they’re dragging kids into it. If things keep going the way they are for them it’ll backfire. So far it all looks more like child abuse than sincere and innocent babemouth revelations.

    Time will pass then the cow cycle will repeat.

    • what “time” do you think you have?
      PotUS is chucking his not inconsiderable weight behind these “reforms”;
      you better do some-thing and do it fast or you will end up like the UK and Australia

  3. So, let me get this straight. These kids are too young and immature with brains no where near completely formed enough to be trusted with a firearm, but they can tell all the adults in the room what to do? How is it possible that they are trusted to drive two ton death machines, to sign contracts, to marry, to join the Army, to change their gender to one of the sixty approved varieties (including surgery and hormones), and most staggering of all, to vote? Strange, none of the wise children on this “crusade” seem to have any desire to restrict themselves on these issues. You want to keep guns from 18yo, fine; let’s make ALL these responsibilities wait until they are >21yo.

    • No, the kids are indirectly threatening everyone around them. Think about it; these kids say they shouldn’t be trusted with a firearm, yet *have access to them* and are *demanding the laws change to their liking or else*

      What’s funny about it, is the sheriff and FBI on scene didn’t take these kinds of threats seriously, and still aren’t (the Travon-inspired non-intervention policies are still going strong).

      So why should we?

  4. Yeah I don’t care what Immature, uneducated, no life experiance child demanding change when they don’t know squat. Wil they give up their volent video games? no, Will they stop bullying people, no. Will they put thier phone away in class, no. If they are not legal to purchase a firearm or vote, then they don’t have a right to say shit. It’s sad they have to experiance this type of trauma and it’ll affect their lives, but Don’t stand up and take my rights away because of it. The Systems failed, enforce them.

  5. I strongly encourage Leftists who are weary of following leaders, who function at the level of idiot children, to replace them with idiot children. They should use the movie “Wild in the Streets” for their road-map to the darkest dystopian future imaginable.

  6. Oh it’s going to get a LOT worse. Tide pod eaters controlling the narrative…you’d think there’s a conspiracy. Honestly I thought EVERYTHING was going into SHTF land after Vegas…😧

  7. I don’t really care about how many kids the democrats trott out to complain about a mass shooting they caused. At this point, at every turn, we need to demand accountability from the LEOs involved for their spiking of relevant reports and refusal to act. The whole lot of them need to be charged with conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism.

    • This whole mess goes deeper than just the craven LEOs.
      A great question wife asked is how he got in the building in the first place.
      School Administrators did not act in securing the school.
      FBI didn’t act.
      Foster parents did not act.
      Mental health organizations did not act.
      Police did not act on earlier incidents.
      The list just goes on and on and on.
      But hey, if we ban bump stocks the problem is solved!

  8. Can we have fair and balanced. Now that more of the truth is known can we have Fox News stage a town hall with Sherrifs Israel and Peterson along with an FBI spokesperson to explain how this shooting was the fault of the NRA. The audience can be 5000 NRA members plus parents from the school who are pissed off but not liberals. Maybe we can have Sherrif David Clarke as a guest to explain the necessity for the “Broward Crouch” as a department policy. Maybe the first question from the audience could start with “Sherrif Israel, when I look at you I feel like I’m looking down the barrel of multiple Glocks held by green uniformed men crouching behind cars…” or “Sherrif Israel, do you and your deputies plan to continue receiving your paychecks from Broward County in light of recent events.” Lets have the former NRA instructor who stopped the Texas church shooting for spice. Maybe he can explain why he violated policy and actually tried to interrupt a shooting of UNARMED PEOPLE.
    And yes, Dana Loesch gets to be there as well and she can say whatever she god damn well pleases.

  9. What the LEO did prior to the school shooting smells a lot like what went on with the gun running program that the Obama administration ran.
    The propaganda being spewed by the left is not meant for the gun rights activists- it is aimed at the uncommitted. We need to push back and show those that have no preconceptions that the gun control bots are pushing a false narrative and why it is false!

  10. They can make excuses. They can use children to blame objects. They can write lies. The government can say sorry. It’s too late…

  11. Never-again has gone full fascist with their Hitler Youth Brigade. They started with the usual attacks: politicians that take NRA money, NRA partners, and mutual funds that hold firearm stocks. Now they are shaming their peers into boycotting a week of instant gratification for spring break until Florida passes their list of demands for gun control laws. My guess is that Florida travel and tourism will benefit more from all of the progressive reporters flocking to cover the Hitler Youth Brigade marches than from a few minors finding another state with sunshine and sand. But, they won’t be happy until they burn everything down. I just wonder if the puppet masters have enough control to keep their own interests from going up in flames once the Hitler Youth go full narcissistic and cut the strings.

    • I was thinking the same thing, just my example was the Communist one. Hitler Youth and The Soviet Pioneers & Komsomol are really two sides of the same coin.

  12. I’m sure my parents thought this and probably their parents as well, but it’s getting harder and harder to tell the boys from the girls.

  13. Let the children come. Let them lead. Let them create the future they demand. Let us help them every step of the way. And let us live in the world they create.

    That’s the f’n problem with adults in America; they throw off all responsibility, all their duties. That’s why the kids are being harmed in all sorts of ways. That’s how kids become school shooters. Society will only get worse because of it.

    So the adults failed, now the kids have to deal with it? To kids in America, the adults are turning America into a sh******. Imagine how kids feel every time they look you in the face.

  14. Next time one of these pinko leftists tell you how we should think of the children, ask them how many little babies today had a sharp object plunged into the back of their head and then got sucked out of their mother’s womb with a vacuum.
    Liberal vermin scream for their fictitious right to kill the unborn, but claim they care for children. They are truly the most vile forms of life on this sick earth.

  15. “The children are sincere. But they are children, ignorant of the debate, arguing from emotion, being used by political operatives.”

    Bull. Fucking. Shit.

    That bald-headed chick and the other kid are both trained political operatives. That they still wear the ‘junior’ designation is beside the point. Did no one watch the Loesch public-shaming spectacle? The room was roaring with hatred, and that ‘mere child’ stood calm and maintained a professional (if highly disingenuous) demeanor in full control. She even calmed the crowd down when they were getting too rowdy for the cameras. IIRC, she even had explicit connections to gun control advocacy groups before this attack even started. Perfectly normal background and skillset for a typical highschooler, right?

    The boy has familial and professional connections to the national CNN news behemoth, which have gotten him on TV a number of times in the past, and suddenly he’s the point-man for every media outlet descending on the area. Reads a script like it was second nature, and again, maintains uncanny control of himself for being ‘a nobody’ thrust into the limelight as an emotional wreck. Mother is keyed into the national news scene, father is keyed into federal law enforcement & large-scale business. Again, perfectly normal background for some random kid.

    There’s no conspiracy, this school was just a birthing ground for the modern social justice warrior movement, is all. And coincidentally, the policies that everyone from the kids, to the teachers, to the school cops, to the principal, to the local cops, to the sheriff, to the local FBI call center people, to probably the governor, state attorney general, and state FBI oversight officials were pursuing to ‘make the crime numbers look good’ let dangerous criminals and psychopaths rump rampant until the situation we find ourselves in today.

    • Love the girl’s ‘statement haircut’. Wow. So woke. Looks great. (rolls eyes, yawns).

      She is borderline haughty, borderline condescending. It’s all bubbling under her surface.

      Girl is exceedingly annoying… we’ll be seeing her again.

    • Loesch is just another NRA nin-com-poop;
      she used the wrong approach entirely;
      she should have questioned the very validity of the incident and whether or not it even occurred;
      she should have ‘called out’ those two brats as “crisis actors”;
      @ the very least, she should have ‘stalled’ by demanding that the legal process concludes and that there be a full, independent inquiry before any decisions are made that will affect Constitutional rights;
      in and of itself, that would take a year or more @ the bare minimum;
      does the US still have a functioning judicial system or are criminal matters now decided by the main-stream media?

      • No, that’s tin foil retardery. This kids was there, trained media gadfly or not. No, she should have asked if this girl did a damned thing to stop bullying like the shooter experienced. Totally unfair, totally irrelevant to the incident, but right down in the same muck as the lynch mob in that studio.

        • uh…what……who says they were ‘there’ ?
          the media?
          who says any-thing happened?
          the media?
          why bother having a judicial process?
          why not ‘try’ all cases in the media?

  16. Given what they were able to do with doors, and drop-cloths, I wonder what would have happened if the kids who got their friends out had had side arms, let an AR-style defensive rifle, or two.

    It doesn’t take everybody having courage and presence of mind to make a difference, just enough people, only a few.

    Let’s ask some of the kids alive because of the other kids’ courage.

  17. If what I read about the behavior of the school shooter’s behavior were accurate while he was a student at the school. Why didn’t these students rise up against him ?
    When I went to school people like that were banished from the school. They were not pampered and treated like an endangered species.
    My own son was taken away from his mother and placed in my custody. He was taught violence in his former home. When he was almost 18 he started shoving me around. I had him declared wayward by a judge and placed in state custody.
    Later I met with him and a board of social workers concerning his behavior. They came to the conclusion that he had a “Behavior Disability “. I told the board that the only term that I was familiar with for him was an asshole and walked out.
    Weeks later he turned 18 and went to live with his mother and her husband who had a record for domestic violence.
    My son got arrested twice for assaulting both of them. That was 24 years ago. I moved out of state later on.

  18. You say you like to shoot it, just to have some fun. Whatcha you gonna do when they come for your gunz, Bad boys, bad boy’s, whatcha gonna do, whatchha gonna do when they come for youuuu

  19. They conveniently avoid the fact that their fellow Democrats are overwhelmingly responsible for the other 97+% of the firearm murders in this country…. Deflection from the violent, uncivilized tendencies of Democrats…

    • I always find it amusing and ironic when a black man on TV tries to tell me that guns are the common denominator – number of guns actually shows a negative correlation for murders (given the dropping murder rate since the 90s, with the large increase in number of guns owned in the US). The number of black people, however…
      If you solely look at the US white murder rate, you will find it is lower than many, if not most, Western European countries. It’s only when you include the murders by blacks that you find the US murder rate being more than 4 times that of European countries.

  20. The kids that want their rights taken away now will regret it 30 years from now when the government is standing on their necks, and their children are the ones dying to regain the freedoms they gave away.

    • Unfortunately, that doesn’t line up with reality. We have adult gun owners right here begging for more government infringement. These youth won’t know much better 30 years from now because tyranny will be even more normalized than it is now. No, they will be begging for more chains just like POTG for gun control do today.

  21. Ironically these kids are fully congizant human shields for any counter argument. It’s a big HS. Spread out. How many are freshmen that actually saw the carnage firsthand? Doubt many at all. Many are theater students and completely caught up in the cameras and lights more than they are mourning the loss of friends. It’s the age of hashtag virtue and narcissistic platforming and these kids get a buffet of it served up by policy coaches driving this little crusade/charade to disarm us all. This whole thing will burn itself out. The focus is swinging back to the egregious fails and outright cowardice displayed by sheriffs, FBI, the school administration, and the state.

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