Did he or did he not heckle

So it's been quite the buzz around the Internet (always a fine and reliable source for unvarnished truth) that while testifying before Congress, Neil Heslin, father of slain 6 year old Jesse Lewis, was heckled by a gun rights advocate.  First, let me say I have no idea how Mr. Heslin can even do what he's doing.  If that were me, I'd still be curled up in the corner of a bathroom picking flowers off the toilet paper.  Truckloads of Valium would be needed for me to even survive day to day.  So I applaud his strength and ability to try to use what happened to promote what he sees is the greater good.

Now it gets a little thorny.  That doesn't mean I'll agree with him. Maybe I will, maybe not.  Just as I wouldn't automatically agree with anyone on the basis that they have suffered the insufferable   That merely means I will listen, take into consideration the unspeakable pain and anguish he has suffered, and try to assess what is the best course of action.  I know, that can get you in trouble.  Way back in my getting banned from the Huffpost days, I dared point out that at least a couple of the ladies known as the 9/11 widows appeared to be drifting from message, and using their status as 9/11 widows as leverage against anyone who disagreed with their growing number of political opinions, many of which had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.  Call me a suffering realist.

But here's the thing, even if I disagree with someone, I'm going to be damn sure to take into consideration what he's or she has gone through. I'll try to be respectful,  kind, and not do anything to ad an iota to the hurt they must live with the rest of their life.  So I was somewhat shocked to hear someone could be so insensitive as to heckled him during testimony, especially since he referenced his own unimaginable loss.  No, I didn't run with it and try to pin the heckler on the gun owner, suggesting however subtly that this is what them gun clingers are all about, and it shows how evil the NRA is (how the NRA got dragged into it, I don't know).  But I admitted it was a rotten way to go about debate.

Until I read this link.  This suggests that - and you might want to sit down for this - MSNBC, which has been the main source of this story, might just have (wait for it) fudged the story a bit.  It may not have been heckling at all.  It looks like Mr. Heslin asked a question, and after waiting, someone in the audience answered.  Perhaps Mr. Heslin thought it was a rhetorical question, but if the transcript is accurate, he may well have been asking a valid question.  One that was not answered by anyone in Congress, that someone in the gallery then felt obliged to answer.

If that's the case, then this has been much ado about nothing.  Or worse, and outright exploitative lie on the media's part designed to take advantage of a grieving father while simultaneously misrepresenting a person (and by extension, and entire side of the debate).  A little lesson about believing venues such as MSNBC, who is now jumping on the legalize drugs bandwagon, using the gun debate to say that everything won't matter as long as we have the war on drugs, since it turns out that is the biggest cause of gun violence in our country.  I don't know.  I know I trust MSNBC slightly less than FOX News.  I also know that if I ran with the above story, and it turns out to be false, especially if I tried to link a lone non-heckler to them evil NRA types, I might be inclined to own up and recant my statements and even go so far as apologize.  But that's me.