This Thursday, Democratic Representative John Tierney slammed Republicans who were conducting a hearing that he charged were inspired by conspiracy theories. The debunked stories claim the Department of Homeland Security is stockpiling huge rounds of ammunition with the intent of using them against the American people.
Starting off the hearing, subcommittee Chairman and GOP congressman Jason Chaffetz pointed to “recent news reports” about the “federal government’s massive procurement of ammunition.”
“The question is, what is an appropriate use of this ammunition, where is it stored, how much are they paying for it and what are they doing with it?” Chaffetz asked.
In his opening statement, Chaffetz mentioned mainstream sources such as The Associated Press, but in reality, most of the DHS stories originated from conservative websites like Alex Jones’ infowars.com, Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, World Net Daily and even in the bizarre rantings of televangelist Pat Robertson.
“To the extent that we’re responding to conspiracy theories or whatever, I think we’re really wasting everybody’s time on that,” Tierney said in his response. “It might have been predictable that Sarah Palin would have taken opportunity to feed these conspiracy theories with statements that the government was preparing for civil unrest, but it was a little more disturbing that Senator Chuck Grassley would seize the opportunity to accuse the government cornering the market on ammunition to drive up prices.”
“Unsubstantiated false conspiracy theories have no place in this committee room — hopefully,” he went on to say. “Federal ammunition purchases are a fraction of the total ammunition market and they’ve been decreasing in recent years. Even the National Rifle Association distances itself from these conspiracy theories.”
Watch the Senators’ statements in the video below.
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