Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 12:19 am
Martin Bashir took down the tactics of the NRA against gun safety today, starting off with a clip of an ‘NRA mole’ who heckled father of a victim the Newtown tragedy, Neil Heslin, as he talked about the loss of his 6-year-old son Jesse.
Watch here:
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Transcript (with slight modifications) from MSNBC:
Roll Clip from Newtown:
Heslin (father of Newtown victim): Why anybody in this room needs to have one of these assault-style weapons or military weapons. All right.
Heckler: The Second Amendment shall not be infringed!
End Clip
Martin Bashir: A father’s grief interrupted by the cries of a heckler. That was the scene in Hartford, Connecticut, where the parents of children killed at Sandy Hook elementary testified before an audience that wasn’t always friendly. Neil Heslin talked about the loss of his 6-year-old son Jesse who was shot and killed while urging his classmates to run. In Washington the president and vice president met at the white house with law enforcement officials from towns that have been scarred by gun violence.
Let’s bring in Steve Kornacki, my colleague here at MSNBC, and Democratic strategist Julian Epstein. I want to put this question to both of you if I can. Steve, these gun lobbyists are fairly aggressive. They dragged the president’s children into the debate with that scurrilous advert but heckling the father of a child who was lost? Can you explain that to me?
Steve Kornacki: If you look at the outpouring of grief for these families, one thing that’s separated the aftermath of Newtown is this story has stayed in the news. It stayed in the news a lot longer than other shootings and it’s kept gun control in the news a lot longer which has created this political opening. When you look at a moment like that, which obviously it’s indefensible for somebody to show up at a hearing and treat a man like that, but I think it adds to the momentum. It adds to the outrage and it adds to the case for action to be taken here.
SNIP
Martin Bashir: Julian, you heard that father. Wayne Lapierre of the NRA will be going to the White House, sorry, to the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. What do you think of the reaction of these lobbyists to a father whose child has been murdered?
Julian Epstein: Well, leaving aside the fact that the hecklers have no idea what they’re talking about in the sense that the second amendment in no way restricts the outlawing of assault weapons, this has to be a new low in the debate. The idea that you would desecrate the memory of the victims of Newtown and insult their families. This shows just I think how extreme and outrageous the NRA and I assume the hecklers were NRA moles, how they’ve become.
END TRANSCRIPT
Heckling the father of a victim of the Newtown massacre is a new low for assault weapon defenders. Perhaps they are finally going to learn that bullying the parents who lost their children due to gun violence is not the best plan if they want to win in the court of public opinion.
The NRA defenders are starting to look like members of the Westboro Baptist Church — fringe lunatics.
Interrupting the father of a victim so you can get in your propaganda about the second amendment as you ignore other Americans’ right to life calls into question whether you are even capable of participating in the larger debate. It’s worth considering whether anyone who is so self-servingly enraged as to heckle a parent that lost a child to horrific gun violence is responsible enough to own a weapon of mass destruction.
Just as the Westboro Baptist Church members’ behavior is not a good argument for their version of Christianity, so too this behavior is not a good argument to the American people for why they should want people like this heckler to have access to assault weapons.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
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