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Rep. Brian Mast and the Sound of Silence

Brian Mast speaks — silence ensues

Rep. Brian Mast is a double amputee courtesy of the munitions disseminated by Qassem Soleimani in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. (Rep. Mast himself sustained his injuries in Afghanistan.) We posted Rep. Mast’s remarks condemning his Democratic colleagues on the floor of the House last week in “Brian Mast speaks.”

Rep. Mast followed up his remarks on the House floor in the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing yesterday (video below, C-SPAN video here). This time around, Brian Mast speaks and silence ensues.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • ghostsniper January 15, 2020, 9:13 AM

    While I am in agreement with much of what he stands for I will never agree with the following, and at the very least, he should go back to 2nd grade and learn what the words “…shall not be infringed…” mean.

    From wiki:
    Mast wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times in support of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, but “it does not guarantee that every civilian can bear any and all arms.”

    (In fact, that is EXACTLY what it does.)

    Mast supports a ban on assault weapons in the United States, citing his military background—”I cannot support the primary weapon I used to defend our people being used to kill the children I swore to defend.”

    (The 2nd does not define specific guns and Mast should know better than that. If he does know, then he is an out right liar.)

    Mast rejects the idea that the Second Amendment protects the rights of civilians to bear “any and all” arms. Following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Mast announced his support for the following policies: prohibiting the sale of assault and tactical firearms without confiscating such weapons that are already owned, ensuring that all firearm purchasers undergo a background check, improving background checks, banning the sale of gun accessories that enhance the firing rate of weapons, such as bump stocks, preventing those who have been detained for mental illnesses from purchasing firearms, ensuring that those on the Terror Watch List cannot purchase firearms, and placing anyone who makes threats of violence against schools on an FBI watch list for “a long time”. Mast also supports conducting further research on gun violence, which is currently prohibited in some ways by federal law.

    (Again, back to 2nd grade.)

    Mast has blamed violent video games and violent movies as at least partly responsible for school shootings. In March 2017, Mast voted in favor of the Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act. The measure passed the House of Representatives, but ultimately stalled in the Senate.

    (Must be something in the water that makes seemingly sane people blame INANIMATE objects for the BEHAVIORS of some people. Seriously, I just don’t get people these days.)

  • Vanderleun January 15, 2020, 9:58 AM

    In this instance I don’t think we’re judging what went on based on views of th3e 2nd Amendment.

  • Auntie Analogue January 15, 2020, 11:55 AM

    How poignant is it that this double-amputee prosthetic-legged man left everyone else in the room without a leg to stand on?

  • Vanderleun January 15, 2020, 12:19 PM

    Well that one gets comment of the month so far, Auntie

  • Bill in Tennessee January 15, 2020, 1:43 PM

    Why is it that all the Demwit Party characters — from the chairman of this committee, to Jerry Nadless Nadler, to Nancy Pants Pelosi — ALL look, not like Bond villains, but rather like the old Batman TV series villains? It was a cheesy, campy TV show, and the villains were all garish, over the top characters, not unlike the Dims we see prancing on TV today. Why is that?

  • Tom Hyland January 15, 2020, 1:43 PM

    “Ray guns don’t vaporize Zorbonians. Zorbonians vaporize Zorbonians.” – cartoonist Gary Larson

  • ghostsniper January 15, 2020, 2:07 PM

    Seems that votists see a thin sliver of a politicians persona and make their decision whether they are worthy or not. This method may not be the totality of truth. Only later do they find out the picture is much bigger than they originally presumed and inwardly regret their vote – though they never admit it to others for that would appear as an admission of stupidity.

    Remember the parable of the blind men and the elephant? The first blind man felt the elephants trunk and thought it was a large snake. The 2nd man felt it’s leg and thought it was a tree. The 3rd felt it’s tail and thought it was a rope. The last blind man felt the elephants wrinkled nut sack and thought it was Hitlery Klintin’s turkey waddle neck. None of them saw the whole picture and all of them were wrong. None of them received the totality of truth.

    Politician Mast above mentions something about the war victims and nobody in the room had a leg to stand on. This reflects admirably on politician Mast as it should but it is not the totality of truth as I said in my other comment. Immediately it’s said that what I wrote is not the point. I say my point casts shade upon the original point. To see clearly one must open both eyes.

    Politician Mast’s stance on guns overshadows all other things he professes, good and bad. How so you ask?
    …..
    Over the past 30 years, I’ve been paid to write almost two million words, every one of which, sooner or later, came back to the issue of guns and gun-ownership. Naturally, I’ve thought about the issue a lot, and it has always determined the way I vote.

    People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single- issue thinker, and a single- issue voter, but it isn’t true. What I’ve chosen, in a world where there’s never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any politician — or political philosophy — is made of, right down to the creamy liquid center.

    Make no mistake: all politicians — even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership — hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it’s an X-ray machine. It’s a Vulcan mind-meld. It’s the ultimate test to which any politician — or political philosophy — can be put.

    If a politician isn’t perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash — for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything — without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn’t your friend no matter what he tells you.

    If he isn’t genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody’s permission, he’s a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

    What his attitude — toward your ownership and use of weapons — conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn’t trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

    If he doesn’t want you to have the means of defending your life, do you want him in a position to control it?

    If he makes excuses about obeying a law he’s sworn to uphold and defend — the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights — do you want to entrust him with anything?

    If he ignores you, sneers at you, complains about you, or defames you, if he calls you names only he thinks are evil — like “Constitutionalist” — when you insist that he account for himself, hasn’t he betrayed his oath, isn’t he unfit to hold office, and doesn’t he really belong in jail?

    Sure, these are all leading questions. They’re the questions that led me to the issue of guns and gun ownership as the clearest and most unmistakable demonstration of what any given politician — or political philosophy — is really made of.

    He may lecture you about the dangerous weirdos out there who shouldn’t have a gun — but what does that have to do with you? Why in the name of John Moses Browning should you be made to suffer for the misdeeds of others? Didn’t you lay aside the infantile notion of group punishment when you left public school — or the military? Isn’t it an essentially European notion, anyway — Prussian, maybe — and certainly not what America was supposed to be all about?

    And if there are dangerous weirdos out there, does it make sense to deprive you of the means of protecting yourself from them? Forget about those other people, those dangerous weirdos, this is about you, and it has been, all along.

    Try it yourself: if a politician won’t trust you, why should you trust him? If he’s a man — and you’re not — what does his lack of trust tell you about his real attitude toward women? If “he” happens to be a woman, what makes her so perverse that she’s eager to render her fellow women helpless on the mean and seedy streets her policies helped create? Should you believe her when she says she wants to help you by imposing some infantile group health care program on you at the point of the kind of gun she doesn’t want you to have?

    On the other hand — or the other party — should you believe anything politicians say who claim they stand for freedom, but drag their feet and make excuses about repealing limits on your right to own and carry weapons? What does this tell you about their real motives for ignoring voters and ramming through one infantile group trade agreement after another with other countries?

    Makes voting simpler, doesn’t it? You don’t have to study every issue — health care, international trade — all you have to do is use this X-ray machine, this Vulcan mind-meld, to get beyond their empty words and find out how politicians really feel. About you. And that, of course, is why they hate it.

    And that’s why I’m accused of being a single-issue writer, thinker, and voter.

    But it isn’t true, is it?

    –L. Neil Smith

    Politician Mast will sell you out in a NYFM because votists are willing to hold a hand over 1 eye and settle for only part of the overall picture.

  • Sna January 15, 2020, 5:52 PM

    Ghost,
    Thanks for the insight and completing the picture on Mr. Mast.

  • TrangBang68 January 15, 2020, 5:56 PM

    I wouldn’t piss on the graves of those leftist cockroaches in that hearing room.

  • Snakepit Kansas January 15, 2020, 6:00 PM

    Whoops, hair trigger.
    Ghost, thanks for completing the picture on Mr. Mast. I appreciate his service, but not all of his ideas. If the public starts conceding their gun rights to pacify the media and politicians, then it will never cease until we are completely unarmed. History shows how that turns out for the unarmed.

  • Nori January 15, 2020, 8:28 PM

    Much to ponder,Ghost. Getting the same whiff of untrustworthiness I get from former Seal Dan Crenshaw. Their military record is impeccable. Both have sacrificied hugely important body parts in that shithole. They have survived,endured,healed. Been elected.
    Yet both seem blind to our civilian right to have our own weapons.

    DC Swamp dichotomy;it infects upon election.

  • twolaneflash January 16, 2020, 4:38 PM

    About those “impeccable” “military” records…not worth the paper they’re written on. Proof? I give you John F’ng Kerry-Heinz and John Sh!thead McCain-Hensley, seditionists, gold-diggers, cancers & parasites on the body politic.