CNN’s town hall wasn’t a fair fight, it was out of control

The town hall was set up on a false premise

The fact that the Loesch was even there demonstrates that CNN’s town hall was set up on a false premise: The NRA is responsible for every gun crime, particularly school shootings, and should be held accountable. Holding the NRA responsible for a crime in which the shooter had told people he was going to kill students, where law enforcement had been called to his home more than 30 times, and the FBI was at least aware of, seems disingenuous at best and irresponsible at worst. Likewise, Rubio and Nelson are merely politicians who are in no way fully responsible for the shooter any more than law enforcement, the shooter’s family and friends — and most of all, the shooter himself.

Yet, because the town hall was set up this way, the students and parents who asked questions or commented had an advantage over the guests, who were immediately placed on the defensive rather in debate (though they tried to debate). One father, whose daughter was killed at the school, sneered at Rubio, “Your response has been pathetically weak.”

Instead of reframing the parameters of the entire debate, in order to actually engage in a robust dialogue, Rubio stood there like a lamb waiting for slaughter, sacrificing for a crime he hadn’t even come close to committing. Meanwhile, the sheriff, who happened to also support gun control, played to the bloodthirsty audience, while ignoring his own actual responsibility or lack of action in terms of what local law enforcement could or should have done.

CNN took sides

Although Jake Tapper is often one of the more fair and neutral mainstream journalists out there, the town hall itself seemed organized and executed as a partisan event, designed to lobby the issue of gun control rather than an attempt to explore an already-divisive topic. Question after question was pointed, partisan, angry, and full of blame toward the guests.

RealClearPolitics reported that a local news station, WPLG, interviewed Colton Haab, a member of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps who attended the debate but didn’t get to ask the question he wanted because it wasn’t pro-gun control enough. “Colton wrote questions about school safety, suggested using veterans as armed school security guards but claims CNN wanted him to ask a scripted question instead so he decided not to go,” WPLG reported. “CNN had originally asked me to write a speech and questions and it ended up being all scripted,” Haab said. “I don’t think that it’s going get anything accomplished. It’s not gonna ask the true questions that all the parents and teachers and students have.”

Several times when Loesch tried to speak, she was booed and heckled to the point where she herself had to quiet down the audience in order to even respond. Where was the neutrality, decorum, or even any effort at a fair look at this issue?

There failed to be a robust debate

Televised town halls are not typically known for housing robust philosophical debates that invent practical solutions, but there should have been at least a minimal attempt. That was not the case here. First, many in the audience were parents who have only just buried their children after a horrifying tragedy no parent should have to endure. Second, the audience also included teenagers who, likewise, have just buried their friends and feel intense pain. While there is certainly a time for debate and this could have been the place eventually, neither the timing nor the set up was ever going to allow for a debate — yet CNN still couldn’t help bill the event as such.

But every person there asked questions which placed blame, produced heckling or booing from the audience, or failed to ask a question at all — they would just ramble.

One of the most vocal students, Emma Gonzales, said to Loesch, “I want you to know that we will support your two children in the way that you will not. The shooter at our school used weapons on us that he obtained legally. Do you believe it should be harder to obtain semi-automatic weapons and the modifications for these semi-automatic weapons to make them fully automatic, like bump stocks?” While her question was certainly valid, her personal comment to Loesch about parenting was illogical, pointless, and failed to help engage in a discussion about obtaining firearms.

It’s clear from this CNN town hall the partisan divide on guns may be irreparable — at least as long as this is the format and timing of debates that affect all Americans.

Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.

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