Wednesday night’s CNN show trial was just as hideously horrible as one could have predicted when it came to promoting gun control and confiscation in the wake of the El Paso and Dayton shootings (so just like the first one). At around 10:00 p.m. Eastern, Antifa supporter, judge, and jury Chris Cuomo’s dismissal (along with his panelists) of a female gun owner showed an invective toward those who don’t share their worldview.
And at another point, Cuomo offered a truly insane falsehood about the 1990s assault weapons ban.
So, an hour after Cuomo opened the show by ghoulishly maligning the National Rifle Association and Second Amendment supporters, Coalition of New Jersey Firearm Owners member Theresa Inacker told the audience (click “expand”):
I’m Theresa and I’m a volunteer with the Coalition of New Jersey Firearm Owners, so I'm a proud, female firearm owner and I just want to say I’m a firearm owner and I care too. So, I think there's a little bit of a misunderstanding that we don't care. But we do and, actually, we're against violence. All violence. Not just gun violence, so my question is do you believe a woman has a right to choose whether or not to defend her own body? And in the manner she chooses? And the government should not interfere with that decision?
Perfectly normal. She pushed back on CNN’s near-universal smearing of millions of people and wondered if women should be allowed to protect themselves. But the fix was long in, including the fact that one of the snarky chyrons merely identified her as “AR-15 owner.”
But CNN law enforcement analyst and former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey dismissed Inacker, telling her that her comments were “a little off-topic here, but I do believe in a woman's right to choose” and “when you get into the area about any means she chooses, I don't know what you mean by that.”
Ramsey continued by talking down to her as if she was some trigger-happy person, stating that “there are laws if you’re talking about deadly force” versus just owning a firearm, and that she should be fully read up on state gun laws “so they don't wind up doing something that could actually cause them some problems down the road.”
Cuomo then interjected with some mental gymnastics, talking about abortion and making a pretzel-twisted argument about how owning a firearm (i.e. the Second Amendment) infringes on someone’s liberty (click “expand”):
It's interesting. There's a transitive property involved, right? You're playing on what we see with reproductive rights. And in each case, though, people who are making these impassionist — impassioned argument what's the concern? The concern is the well being of the person who winds up being the recipient of the act, right? When you’re talking about reproductive rights which obviously isn't what we're talking about tonight, but still important. It's well, what about the fetus? Or what about the baby? When is it a person, right? You're thinking about, well, who is going to be impacted by the decision that's made. Well, that's the same thing here is that I have a right to own a gun. I do. I do own a gun. But my right has restrictions on it, Chief, right? And we start talking about what is the impact of my right on the rest of society that's where you get into what Scalia — and you have to say it that way — may he rest in peace. He was a genius jurist. Before that case, we didn't have an individual right read into the Second Amendment and the difference is huge. The Second Amendment used to be about what the state could make you do. That’s where it came from. You have to have the arm. It has to be able to be used and you have to know how to use it, so when you come to work in the Washington's army, you know what the hell you're doing[.]
A few minutes later, Cuomo falsely stated that the decade-long assault weapons ban that came about with the 1994 crime bill was unfortunate because “you cannot figure out if it made a difference in crime because we don't track it”, and that “the manufacturers went right around the restrictions and there were all these weapons that existed already that were willing for transfer.”
As individuals like the indefatigable Stephen Gutowski of the Washington Free Beacon pointed out, there was research done on whether it had an effect on crime and, turns out, there was no distinguishable difference in crime during that period. And seeing as how it’s the government saying so (and we know how much Cuomo’s love government), Cuomo’s claim could be deemed pants on fire.
Also in that portion, Ramsey went on a long-winded response, but most importantly, he concluded by making clear how compromise wasn’t an option for gun control supporters. Instead, it was their way or the highway:
I mean, there's a lot of moving parts and things that we need to think about. Take a comprehensive approach. But let me tell you something else. I don't care what they pass, if they don't get the assault weapons, it ain't going to make a damn bit of difference.
To see the relevant transcript from CNN’s show trial on August 7, click “expand.”
CNN’s America Under Assault: The Gun Crisis: Cuomo Prime Time Town Hall
August 7, 2019
10:00 p.m. Eastern
THERESA INACKER: I’m Theresa and I’m a volunteer with the Coalition of New Jersey Firearm Owners, so I'm a proud, female firearm owner and I just want to say I’m a firearm owner and I care too. So, I think there's a little bit of a misunderstanding that we don't care. But we do and, actually, we're against violence. All violence. Not just gun violence, so my question is do you believe a woman has a right to choose whether or not to defend her own body? And in the manner she chooses? And the government should not interfere with that decision?
CHARLES RAMSEY: Well, that's a little off the topic here, but I do believe in a woman's right to choose. Now, when you get into the area about any means she chooses, I don't know what you mean by that. I mean, there are laws if you're talking about deadly force, for example. You carry a gun or whatever. There are certain circumstances under which you can resort to deadly force, okay? And so it's important as a gun owner and that goes for gun owner to understand the laws of that particular state, so they don't wind up doing something that could actually cause them some problems down the road. But certainly if you're assaulted or whatever, you have a right to defend yourself. But when you talk about deadly force that's a little different.
CHRIS CUOMO: It's interesting. There's a transitive property involved, right? You're playing on what we see with reproductive rights. And in each case, though, people who are making these impassionist — impassioned argument what's the concern? The concern is the well being of the person who winds up being the recipient of the act, right? When you’re talking about reproductive rights which obviously isn't what we're talking about tonight, but still important. It's well, what about the fetus? Or what about the baby? When is it a person, right? You're thinking about, well, who is going to be impacted by the decision that's made. Well, that's the same thing here is that I have a right to own a gun. I do. I do own a gun. But my right has restrictions on it, Chief, right? And we start talking about what is the impact of my right on the rest of society that's where you get into what Scalia — and you have to say it that way — may he rest in peace. He was a genius jurist. Before that case, we didn't have an individual right read into the Second Amendment and the difference is huge. The Second Amendment used to be about what the state could make you do. That’s where it came from. You have to have the arm. It has to be able to be used and you have to know how to use it, so when you come to work in the Washington's army, you know what the hell you're doing so he doesn’t spend so much time and so much money training you up and equipping you. Now it's different. It's about what you as an individual are empowered to do. So, as reality, once you get passed that legal gobblebook and you're on the street, the reality of how many guns and in how many ways they're used in society and what that does to a police force, what's your experience?
RAMSEY: Well, first of all I started in the Chicago Police Department in 1968. I spent 30 years a Chicago cop. I remember when we used to recover Saturday night specials. A little, 22, 32, caliber handgun. Maybe could carry six rounds, seven round or whatever. Now you're getting high-powered, automatic weapons, including assault weapons. You go to crime scenes now, you never find one shell casing. You’ll find 30, 40 shell casings at scene. It has changed dramatically and the devastation of the wounds. Nobody gets shot one time. I mean, we're talking about people getting shot multiple times with a high power weapon that is designed to kill. I mean, that bullet expands on impact, it rips tissue, it rips anything that it touches and now people literally bleed out on the street. My cops in Philly were carrying tourniquets. They carry them every day. Just to be able to stop bleeding to get them to the hospital and we don't wait for an ambulance. You throw them in the back of the police car and get ‘em to the trauma center. That's how desperate things are.
(....)
10:09 p.m. Eastern
CUOMO: You know, Chief, the idea that we don't focus on a lot of the different aspects of this, 1994 the crime bill that was passed then is getting heat right now in politics, right? People are talking about how it was misplaced justice at the time. The assault weapons bill was part of it. I went back and I was reading through the bill. That bill gets more credit than it deserves. One, you cannot figure out if it made a difference in crime because we don't track it. Two, the manufacturers went right around the restrictions and there were all these weapons that existed already that were willing for transfer and that was done indirect response to the kinds of crime he's talking about.
RAMSEY: Sure, I mean — listen —
CUOMO: Barely passed, 216-214. So it wasn’t like there was huge consensus, but everybody looks at that as those are the good old days when we got it right. Did we?
RAMSEY: We have never got it right. We have never sat down and hve a discussion without getting overly heated and coming up with real solutions to the problem. Again, we're talking about it now because of mass shootings. I deal with homicides every day when I was a cop. 47 years in Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. I mean, it's absolutely incredible and I call it collateral damage that’s caused through — by the violence in many of our neighborhoods. You go to an outdoor crime scene. You’ve got a body laying there. Crime scene doing what they do. Look across the street there's little kids over there looking what you do. They’ve got to walk pass the same place to go to school the next day and then we wonder why they have trouble reading and writing. They're traumatized and there’s no way — there aren't the services in place to be able to help these kids. I saw my first homicide when I was 14 years old. It wasn't a gunshot. My brother’s best friend who lived next door to us got stabbed in the back by gang bangers because he wasn't in a gang. I mean, I grew up in Engelwood in the south side of Chicago, which we know has got its issues, right? I mean, this is not new. It’s not new. The impact it has on the first responders. The cops that have to deal with this. The medical personnel that have to deal with this. I mean, there's a lot of moving parts and things that we need to think about. Take a comprehensive approach. But let me tell you something else. I don't care what they pass, if they don't get the assault weapons, it ain't going to make a damn bit of difference.
