-By Warner Todd Huston
NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd feels that the crime at Sandy Hook school in Newton, Connecticut should give rise to a new “middle ground with the National Rifle Association,” meaning that more gun control is somehow in the middle.
Of course, this is nothing else but a rhetorical trick as the basis of the phrase assumes that the NRA must come toward more gun control because that is what would make such a compromise the “middle ground.”
Todd did not note that the issue of firearms is a Constitutional question and instead focused on the debate as if gun control issues were merely an act of legislations or regulations as opposed to a civil rights issue.
That isn’t the only trick Todd employed. Another one of those rhetorical tricks is to focus on “assault weapons” as the problem, but the truth is there is no such thing as an “assault weapon,” at least not legally. The term is general and does not define any particular weapon or any particular type of weaponry. Using the phrase “assault weapon” does not inform the news consumer, as it is practically meaningless and is little but emotionally tinged rhetoric.
Todd employed these rhetorical tricks on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews during the December 17 broadcast.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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