U.S.A. – “It wasn’t mental health that killed these people, it was an automatic rifle with bullets,” a quote tweeted by MSNBC/NBC/NBC News Now Senior Producer Shawn Reynolds claims. “I’m a former police officer, a former Army officer. These M4s, AR-15s, they’ve got to get off the streets or this is going to keep happening.”
The dual Fudd/”Only One” claimant is Steven Spainhouer, an “Allen, TX mall shooting witness” in an interview with Jonathan Capehart, another “left-of-center journalist” desperately trying to up his substandard MSNBC ratings. And right off the bat, Spainhouer hits an audience gullible enough to tune in for their morning dose of confirmation bias with both a logical fallacy and a lie he’s confident they’ll never catch on to.
It’s wrongheaded to presume that because of his police and military experience, Spainhouer is qualified to provide an expert assessment of gun laws. The American Psychological Association calls that “false authority”:
“a type of informal fallacy or a persuasive technique in which it is assumed that the opinions of a recognized expert in one area should be heeded in another area. For example, Mr. X should know how to deal with government deficits because he is a successful businessman. Also called expert fallacy.”
And the lie? Two, actually, saying “automatic rifle” and “M4s.” That deception goes back to a 1988 strategy advanced by the Violence Policy Center, advocating:
“The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”
For “top media professionals” like Reynolds and Capehart to allow Spainhouer’s statement to go without challenge either means they know it’s not true and they’re being complicit, which makes them liars, or else they’re unaware of VPC’s deliberate deception, which makes them incompetent investigative reporters who refuse to look at any source that doesn’t echo their prejudices. And, of course, there’s nothing that says they can’t be both liars and incompetents.
For his part, Spainhouer’s got more cards to play.
“I’m a gun lover, I have guns,” he asserts. “We need some action in our legislatures at the federal and state level for better gun control, and I’m saying that as somebody who knows guns.”
Those are the same cards being played by the minds behind the recent “diverse” Gun Culture 2.0 and the 97percent movements. The aim is to divide and conquer Second Amendment advocacy efforts by pitting Astroturf-manipulated “responsible” gun owner factions against “Shall Not Be Infringed” absolutists who not only won’t give another inch but are committed to regaining lost ground.
What’s lost in all the gushing is that it’s not about guns and never has been—it’s about freedom. If being a “gun lover” was all it took, we’d have no better pals than Mark Kelly, David Chipman, and Lon Horiuchi. It’s tough enough keeping “moderate” Republicans from turning coat, but any gun owner who proclaims respect for the Second Amendment and then votes Democrat is flat-out abetting the ultimate disarmament of themselves and their countrymen.
Not surprisingly, the deception and manipulation rely on another logical fallacy, the prohibitionists defining themselves as “responsible.” That presumption automatically smears anyone who doesn’t go along with their infringements as irresponsible (leading from there to accusations of being “extremists,” then “racists”…) There’s actually a term for it, the “No true Scotsman” fallacy, noting:
“The word ‘Scotsman’ can be replaced with any other word to describe a person or group.”
Spainhouer is nothing if not a “true Scotsman” in the most fallacious sense of the term, and he’s been making quite a name for himself as the authority du jour and the DSM’s (Duranty/Streicher Media) go-to guy for being “reasonable.”
NBC Dallas/Fort Worth made sure to identify him as “a gun owner” in its report. Now This News calls him “a Second Amendment supporter.” And not to be left behind, in between emoting for the camera, CNN’s Poppy Harlow acknowledged Spainhouer’s (disingenuous) “pro-Second Amendment” bona fides as he rattled off a laundry list of infringements straight off the Giffords/Everytown/Brady wish list:
“We can put red flag laws in place. We can limit high-capacity rounds like I found…We can stop putting some of these weapons like M4s and AR-15s in the hands of people that don’t need them. I hear our governor talking about mental health issues. We’re always going to have mental health issues. But if we don’t do something about the guns, the people-killing guns, we’re going to continue to have the same thing happen.”
What they’re not telling viewers, and this is deliberate, is that in addition to professing to be a “gun lover,” Spainhouer is hardly the neutral broker and Texas cowboy he’s being postured as. He’s also a Democrat apparatchik aspiring to political power as Chair of the Collin County Democratic Party:
“Experience Counts. I’ve been a precinct chair in Collin County for over ten years. I’ve been tied to Democratic Party campaigns at the State and Federal level, as a Volunteer Coordinator, dating back to 1980 (43 years).”
He’s going for his 15 minutes of fame here and is savvy enough to avoid any appearance that won’t automatically promote the image he’s trying to create. Case in point: He not only rudely refused a polite request to do a Zoom interview with Fox News, but he also ignored their equally polite request to redact the host’s non-public phone number when he posted their message on social media. In other words, he “doxes” his political enemies. What a punk thing to do.
It figures someone like that would prefer to play it safe. Just like his media cheerleaders:
“It wasn’t mental health that killed these people, it was an automatic rifle with bullets… I’m a former police officer, a former Army officer. These M4s, AR-15s, they’ve got to get off the streets or this is going to keep happening” – Allen, TX mall shooting witness Steven… pic.twitter.com/QFmXgq1DU8
— Shawn Reynolds (@ShawnReynolds_) May 7, 2023
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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