I guess it's okay since I only stabbed him

At a townhall, Rep. Tom McClintock (CA) was confronted by a constituent who asked an intelligent, if long winded, question about Wall Street criminality that boiled down to when re we going put some people in jail and breakup their organizations. McClintock responded by denying the whole idea of financial crimes.

Well first of all, for a criminal practice there has to be a gun. It's pretty simple.

This is a perfect example of the principal of rhetorical stupid. Whatever good points or bad points he might have had to make about regulation the financial markets were completely overshadowed by the complete inanity of his attempt at cleverness. Half the people who were there to to hear what he had to say just ran into a wall and missed everything else he had to say. "Huh? No gun means no crime?" His voice just became background noise while all those minds began composing outrageous responses. "What about shoplifting?" "What if I run over my idiot brother in law?" "Not even arson?" And more seriously, in his attempt to be clever while pushing back against regulation of anything, he has come within arguing distance of denying the existence of white collar crime--especially fraud. Though the questioner left some pretty big openings for a reasoned response and even a dialog, McClintock went for a lazy put-down and made himself look stupid in the process.

Watch the video here.