Is Infowars’ Sale About Gun Control? Maybe, Maybe Not.

I believe in free speech just as much as I believe in the right to keep and bear arms. The two go hand-in-hand in defending our nation against tyranny. That’s why a nation turning tyrannical is always preceded by restricting access to guns, then restricting what people can say. If you’ve got both of those, you don’t have anything to really worry about.

But Alex Jones, who is very pro-gun, has had his life destroyed because of something he said.

And for a lot of people, this is a gun issue, as noted over at The Truth About Guns recently. After noting the anti-gun push after massacres involving a firearm, the author noted:

Why the Jones Precedent Matters for Gun Owners

Infowars being dismantled isn’t just about one man’s conspiracy theories. It’s about establishing the legal precedent that controversial speech can be punished with financial extinction.

If it can happen to Alex Jones, why not to a gun rights commentator who dares call gun control “tyranny”? Why not to a Second Amendment organization accused of “radicalizing” citizens? The mechanisms are now in place, and the political establishment will use them.

Chris McNutt, President of Texas Gun Rights, put it bluntly:

“Whether you agree with Alex Jones or not, this judgment shows just how far the establishment is willing to go to silence dissent. Sandy Hook was used to push one of the largest gun control schemes in decades. If we don’t remain vigilant, the same forces that bankrupted Jones will come for anyone who dares to stand in their way—including gun owners.”

The Bottom Line

Alex Jones may have been reckless with his words, but the forced liquidation of Infowars isn’t just about him. It’s about the weaponization of tragedy and the willingness of elites to use courts, lawsuits, and billion-dollar penalties to silence opposition.

The problem I have with this isn’t that Jones was “reckless” with his words. He accused people of very specific things that ran counter to the facts. He did it loudly and repeatedly, and as these were private citizens and not public figures, the standards were a fair bit lower than they might be if they’d run the other direction.

Some of those plaintiffs claim they were harassed by people who believed Jones, which means there were damages, and that was probably enough to allow the plaintiffs to win their slander cases against Jones.

The fact that Jones is pro-gun is largely irrelevant here. He didn’t just articulate a pro-gun argument; he accused people who lost their kids of actually being paid “crisis actors” and ginned up hostility toward them based on something that was absolute nonsense.

Now, with that said, there’s a flip side that I have to acknowledge, too.

First, I’m genuinely skeptical of there being that many people who not only took Jones seriously, but seriously enough to track down someone he claimed was a crisis actor just to harass them. The Venn diagram can’t have all that much overlap, so I’m not sure if this was severe enough to actually be actionable.

The fact that Jones espouses unpopular opinions may well have predisposed people to take claims of harassment more seriously than they might have.

But let’s also understand something. I criticize some of these same people, particularly when they’re pushing their anti-gun agenda. I’ll keep doing it. I’ll do it, though, by addressing their arguments and avoiding claims that they’re just making up the tragedy completely. That’s what got Jones in trouble.

Is this something they’ll try against the rest of us? Maybe, but only if we screw up like Jones did, and 99.9999 percent of us won’t.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights, and they’re happy to use anything they can to advance that agenda.

Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership.