
The NRA's TV network complained that James Shaw Jr., the hero who stopped the Waffle House shooter, didn't use a gun while doing so.

NRA TV complained that James Shaw Jr., the citizen who heroically stopped the Waffle House shooter, was unarmed and could not completely incapacitate the assailant.

Shaw leapt to action during the shooting, knocking the gun out of the murderer's hand and putting an end to the carnage.

But that wasn't enough for the folks at NRA TV.


Host Grant Stinchfield did describe Shaw as a "hero." But he couldn't leave it at that.

"If someone was there with a gun, we wouldn’t be having a manhunt right now," Stinchfield claimed.

It was a bizarre complaint he went back to later in the program. "Yes, a good guy with guts stopped a bad guy with a gun momentarily. But he didn’t stop him permanently. And this guy is still on the loose."

The shooter was apprehended by authorities after the NRA program was broadcast.

But Stinchfield's comments reflect the single-minded gun mindset the propaganda network and its parent organization embraces. In every situation, the NRA demands that more and more guns be poured onto America's streets.

The pause in the Waffle House shooting that allowed Shaw to act — either because the shooter was reloading, or his gun jammed — further highlights the NRA's extremism.

It has resisted efforts to limit high-capacity magazines, ignoring the destructive power such an accessory gives would-be mass murderers.

The shooter might have killed even more than the four lives he took if given access to the firepower the NRA continues to support.

Similarly, the organization opposes proposals like assault weapons bans and enhanced background checks, wildly popular measures that would help reduce gun-related homicides.

In the NRA's ideal world, those deaths would only increase, not decrease.

Yet the group still has the gall to criticize Shaw, who acted with courage when faced with a nightmare. NRA TV paid lip service to his heroic deed. But still, in the service of the gun, denigrated the end result of his actions.

Shaw's resolution of the situation without being a "good guy with a gun" exposed the callous lie and stubborn myth on which the NRA's continued existence and unhinged rhetoric relies.