Montel Williams, Shannon Watts Have Meltdown Over Senate Candidate’s Gun Proposal

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US Senate Candidate from Missouri Austin Petersen has been much more careful on Facebook following his suspension from the platform being lifted. He was previously suspended from Facebook for linking an AR-15 giveaway from his campaign website. On two different occasions, actually. Twitter is a different story.

At the March For Our Lives event, Stoneman Douglas student Delaney Tarr stated regarding gun control, “When they give us an inch, that bumpstock ban, we will take a mile.”  Candidate Petersen doesn’t appear to be interested in giving an inch. In fact, he’s taking a mile of his own in a call to repeal the National Firearms Act (NFA).

The tweet earned Austin Petersen local affiliate headlines around the country. Of course, some figures took notice, and an Easter morning melee on Twitter raged on into the late afternoon. It was first picked up by Moms Demand Action spokeswoman Shannon Watts. Gun control advocate Watts likely has the largest block list on all of Twitter, so if you’re reading this, there’s a chance you’ve been blocked by her. Luckily viewing the tweet through this article does not utilize your Twitter login credentials, so for some of you this may be the first tweet of hers you’ve seen in a while.

Since she quoted the tweet to her followers to amass her internet army, Petersen made the same call to arms by quoting her to his followers.

The exchange between Watts and Petersen continued regarding this issue, with Petersen declining to directly answer the question regarding his thoughts on tanks, grenades and rocket launchers, oh my.

(Petersen’s claim checks out. In the fully sourced Cracked.com article 6 Things You Won’t Believe Are More Legal Than Marijuana, #5 on the list is Real Goddamn Tanks.)

Petersen then invited Watts to an in person debate on the issue, seeing she graduated from Mizzou out of Missouri.

Of course, Watts refused to answer about setting up debate without a 280 character limit much like Petersen refused to directly answer her question.

Petersen’s decision not to directly answer her question was smart, as well as Watts’ decision not to respond to a debate request. Of course smart for different reasons, but Petersen knows both reasons while Watts does not. I’m going to explain why, and then show you some of Shannon’s followers’ tweets to Austin.

Petersen’s headline grabbing tweet called for a full repeal of the National Firearms Act. People like Watts do not understand firearms nor existing gun laws (which is problematic for a gun control lobbying entity), therefore do not know the scope of what Petersen was suggesting. It may come as a surprise to gun control advocates, but repealing the NFA changes nothing in policy regarding tanks, grenades, biological weapons or nuclear weapons. These types of weapons are not governed by the NFA. In essence, Petersen’s opponents pushed the envelope much further than he did without knowing it, and were absent of the knowledge to argue it.

In essence, they did not have an argument because what they were arguing was well outside the boundaries of what was being proposed. This is why Petersen proposed the debate. This is why Watts was smart for not accepting, because she would have been destroyed showing up for a debate armed with nothing more than a strawman. Petersen doesn’t even need to get into the cost prohibitive nature of such items (if you’re reading this, congratulations, you’re probably too poor to own a tank) because they aren’t relevant to his position on the NFA that Watts was attacking him for, using items outside the NFA.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s look at the some of the tweets Petersen received.

But is Shannon Watts really the one who is winning like in the above tweet from Twitter user @seanl_79? No, we already ruled that out. The followers aren’t winning with the same losing argument. They’re just loud. But hey, when all else fails, I suppose you can just amplify the nails on chalkboard effect and call someone a racist, am I right?

If you thought this was the end of the story, you are mistaken. After all, I promised an appearance by a certain has-been talk show host who was also previously the face of predatory payday loans. Montel Williams.

Actually, the correct hashtag is #MOSen since he’s running for US Senate rather than state legislature.

Unlike the Mom’s Demand crowd, Montel doesn’t rely on Strawman arguments. Rather, he relies simply on Ad-Hominems. Nothing that he has said is an argument. In fact, he hasn’t really said anything. But then his personal bookie jumped in.

Ed Krayewski joined the conversation, who worked alongside with Austin at Fox Business.

Actually Jon, *bald faced came before bold faced, which originated from bare faced. But hey, you can always threaten to sue people for defamation for simply telling you that you’re wrong.

Would it be ironic that this bookie, whose Twitter feed is saturated with anti-Trump tweets, threatens to sue people for defamation where none actually exists? I think he’s a bigger Trump fan than he realizes.