Media Matters Gins up Phony Outrage Over Radio Host Carrying Gun at Costco

David Codrea and Mark Walters on the set of American Trigger Sports Network.

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Prominent pro-gun radio host promotes the dangerous practice of openly carrying firearms where they are explicitly not allowed,” Media Matters practically gasps in a Friday hit piece designed to stir up those who find some kind of weird relevance in acting like they’re indignant. “Mark Walters: ‘I walked out of there … laughing, because I’m carrying a gun in violation of their policy.’”

They were referring to Thursday’s Armed American Radio Daily Defense program when I was Mark’s guest. The segment of our conversation they featured was where Mark and I were discussing where boycotts can work, as demonstrated by Dick’s CEO Ed Stacks’s latest admissions about losing a quarter billion dollars, and where they’ll be negligible and/or can impose more burden on the boycotter than the target.

That they’re talking about us at all shows they have someone listening to us, and that says we’re not only on their radar, they feel compelled to direct negative attention our way. This is the second time in recent months they’ve felt forced to clutch their pearls and treat our on-air chats as something juicy they just can’t wait to hiss to their echo chamber about.

The thing is, if they’re listening, they’re not doing it that closely. Either that or (more likely, come to think of it), accuracy doesn’t matter to them, at least as much as agenda.  From their transcript:

“Because I’ve picked up the phone before and called Costco and said, ‘I was just in your store, laughing and carrying my sidearm in violation of your store policy.’”

The recording they posted on their site clearly states at 1:45:

“I was just in your store lawfully carrying my sidearm in violation of your store policy.” [Emphasis added.]

Walters broke no law. And Media Matters is about the last group that should be feigning outrage. Notably since in 2012, Daily Caller reported “paranoid” Media Matters founder David Brock had bodyguards, and an “executive assistant [who] carried a handgun to public events,” including in Washington, D.C. At the time of the report, that was illegal. Add to that Media Matters reportedly coordinated spin with Eric Holder’s Department of Justice on stories about ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious “gun-walking” plot that resulted in the deaths of two federal agents and an untold number of Mexican nationals.

The Daily Caller report cited employee assessments of Brock’s “volatile and erratic behavior and struggled with mental illness,” and his abusive treatment of employees:

“Meanwhile, Brock became rigid and harsh with his employees — ‘viciously mean,’ in the words of someone who witnessed it. ‘He spent a lot of time ripping up researchers. It was abusive. I never understood why more people didn’t quit.’ One staffer recalls Brock saying he would like to fire a researcher for being physically repugnant. ‘David definitely does not like ugly people.’”

It makes it fair to ask what kind of self-loathing lickspittles would work for such a man, or for Media Matters President Angelo Carusone, who “wrote of ‘japs,’ ‘jewry’ and ‘trannies’.” If there’s one thing “progressives” are consistent with, it’s in-your-face hypocrisy.

The other thing they’re consistent with is a total lack of original ideas – like the documented evil of “socialism” advocated by these geniuses and their even more-pathetic fanboys. Leaving ignorant and childish comments invoking Markley’s Law and equating open carriers with being mass-murderers-in-waiting is hardly new and “forward-thinking.

That’s how you know these people are totalitarians. A true egalitarian would understand that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is the most equitable power-sharing arrangement ever devised.

You can listen to my entire interview with Mark Walters, in context and sans cherry-picking and lies, at the Armed American Radio archive.


About David Codrea: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,” and is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.