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By Mike Morrison

Thursday the Washington Post sent the above message out on their Facebook Page. Awful right? Yet another tragic case of gun violence running rampant, right? Nope. But don’t let me tell you that, let’s go to the text of the article . . .

Eighteen-year-old Malachi Heisler didn’t recognize the man when he pulled the trigger. Heisler only knew that the armed intruder dressed in black tactical gear — including a ski mask and thigh holsters — was aiming a gun at his mother.

It’s one thing for the media to misconstrue the words of Second Amendment advocates, but it’s another level entirely when they lie about their own article. Let’s continue reading:

About midnight Tuesday, deputies said, John Heisler crept onto the property and tried to break in through a front window. Andrews and her boyfriend, 47-year-old Alton Pyles, heard a “loud crash” and ran outside. They found a man clad in black, armed with two BB guns.
Andrews and Pyles ran back inside and tried to slam the door, deputies said, but John Heisler pushed past them. He then grabbed Andrews and tried to take her to the ground, deputies said.
Pyles called out for help.
“I heard the words ‘Malachi’ and ‘help,’” Malachi Heisler told WFLA.
“Just by the sound of the person’s voice, it was distress,” he told the Tampa Bay Times. “And I knew it wasn’t a joke.”
Malachi Heisler swung open his bedroom door and came face to face with the intruder.
The teen grabbed a rifle.
Deputies said John Heisler had a gun on Andrews and then turned to the teen.
Malachi Heisler pulled the trigger, hitting his father in the upper body, deputies said.
John Heisler was pronounced dead at the scene. No one else was injured.
“At first it felt like I made the wrong decision. That’s how they made me feel,” Malachi Heisler told WFLA about the investigation. “At first it felt like I made the complete wrong decision, everybody was raised voices, K9 units, guns pointed at me.”

That’s right. The violent estranged father broke into the house and the son saved his mother and himself with a firearm. But WaPo has to follow the narrative, making it out like the kid made some horrible mistake and oh-my-God-GUNS when in reality this is a textbook example of why the right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in our Constitution.

Shame on WaPo’s social media team for misrepresenting the truth so blatantly. And I wish the best to Malachi Heisler, who after saving his mother’s life said:

“If I didn’t,” he told the newspaper, “people would be dead, and more than one.”

This article originally appeared at medium.com and is reprinted here with the author’s permission. 

 

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24 COMMENTS

  1. Hey, if it doesn’t convey an anti-gun message, Facebook might delete your post…

    http://wfla.com/2015/09/08/st-pete-teen-kills-masked-intruder-who-turns-out-to-be-his-dad/

    Heisler tells News Channel 8 that his mother had a restraining order against his father, after he was arrested at their home in April of 2015 and charged with felon in possession of firearms.

    “I had a feeling that something like this would happen but I didn’t know when,” said Heisler who is convinced his father was there to kill him.

    “He wanted to scare us first, and then kill us while we were afraid.” Heisler was released after hours of questioning Tuesday morning.

    “He wasn’t a good dad, no (expletive) father of the year awards,” said Heisler finally.

    • I read that article as well earlier this week and was pretty pissed when I realized the headline and the story didn’t really match. The headline made it feel like it was an accidental shooting like he wouldn’t have shot if he knew it was his father.

  2. Yep, saw the same kind of “teen shoots dad by mistake” type of headline at either Yahoo or MSN a day or two ago. Obviously for this story. It may have been his dad, but it was no mistake.

  3. So… To sum it up, son shoots violent deadbeat dead who was is the process of assaulting his mother. News at 11.

  5. 60 Minutes piece about a school teacher who defended his class from an active shooter by shooting and killing the shooter!!! My mouth here; my jaw: on the floor!

    I missed the first half of it, because I never watch 60 Minutes. Maybe someone caught the details?

  6. The Washington Post lies. That’s why it’s called “Pravda on the Potomac.” People wrongly expected some improvement after it was purchased by Jeff Bezos, but instead it’s gotten worse, just like its circulation.

  7. So, a case of “domestic violence” where the [female] victim was protected from the [male] violent attacker by someone in her home who had a gun?

    Hey Shannon! Shove that right up your narrative!

  8. “Shame on WaPo’s social media team for misrepresenting the truth so blatantly.”

    It’s who they are, it’s what they do.

  9. Off topic a bit, but why does the kid have a bandana mask? Is this an unfortunate picture taken from social media and being used to make the guy look criminal, like old school cowboy criminal? It can’t be for anonymity, his whole name is in the papers, and his name isn’t exactly common.

    • He did an interview with WFLA-TV, they publish his name and show a pic of the entire front of his house, but he didn’t want his face on TV?

      “I heard the words Malachi and help, that’s all I heard when I woke up,” said Heisler in front of his home. Heisler spoke with a bandana covering his mouth.”

  10. I frequently post pro-gun messages on Farcebook; only one was ever deleted, and that was because I inadvertently violated a no – profanity rule in a particular group. The sanitised re-post is still there.

  11. If the kid had used a baseball bat for the same purpose, would WaPo be whining about that, instead? The scary part is that I think they might.

  12. The Washington Post, like many other news organs, doesn’t suffer from cognitive dissonance, it revels in it instead.

    If the story doesn’t fit your narrative, change the story until it does.

    It must be noted that most “journalists” are arts and humanities majors where the only critical thinking required is to strictly adhere to the lecturer’s doctrine. Otherwise it is an automatic fail.

  14. Hapened in my area. The dad was known to dress up in tac gear and roam the neighborhood hiding in bushes and such.

    • Anyone stupid (or crazy) enough to dress up in tactical gear and threaten others with what even APPEARS to be a gun or other deadly weapon, is just a Darwinian moment away from leaving the gene pool via the intervention of an armed citizen who is behaving rationally and altruistically (or self-defensively). The dad had this coming. It’s just too bad his son now has to live with killing him. It was neither an accident (he was shot intentionally), nor in any way wrong (as I said, he had it coming). The dad’s behavior was just plain stupid, and to paraphrase Heinlein’s Lazarus Long, “the penalty for stupidity is early death.”

  16. TTAG, maybe you should start posting instances where the WAPOST, LAT, NYT actually prints something factual or truthful. Most people that can fog a mirror understand these are propaganda vehicles and that they are overwhelmingly adverse to writing non-agenda driven articles.

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