Here’s an example of a story not only being too good to check but being so good — potentially — that it warranted a little “help” from the media to reach that full potential. It has everything a fair-and-balanced gun-control advocate/reporter could want: An eminently sympathetic victim calmly making the case for more regulations while the ogres known as “gun-rights supporters” try to silence him by shouting him down. It’s a passion play, the supreme manifestation of what Obama was trying to achieve by having kids onstage when he signed his executive memoranda on gun control a few weeks ago. If you oppose new gun regs then you’re basically in favor of murdering children. Heckling the father of a boy killed in Newtown is simply the logical conclusion of that impulse.

Except that’s not what happened. I’m going to send you over to Twitchy to watch the vid (click the image below to watch), but first you must watch the clips at MSNBC and HuffPo to see how the media’s crack video editors are presenting the exchange. It’s not “deceptive,” it’s outright propaganda designed to demonize gun-rights supporters. But it’s useful to gun-control activists as a parable of how fanatic and terrible their opponents are so naturally it’s making the rounds. Piers, of course, bought it hook, line, and sinker and doubtless will defend getting fake-outraged about it even after he sees the unedited video:

SICKENING: Sandy Hook father Neil Heslin heckled as he pleads for ban on assault weapon that killed his son Jesse: http://t.co/PmGwlpbU

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 29, 2013

But then, Piers is also wont to say things like this:

A child's right not to be murdered by a gun supersedes ANY other right.

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 29, 2013

Exit question: If you’re going to take the position that all other rights, including freedom of speech, must bow to regulation if it’s designed to protect children, why circumscribe it by saying “by a gun”? Does protecting children from murder by knives or arson not quite rise to the same level?