Footage of House sit-in proves social media is changing the rules

You can’t cut off the cameras anymore.

When House Democrats started their sit-in Wednesday morning, trying to force a vote on denying guns to suspected terrorists, Speaker Paul Ryan cut off the cameras so that CSPAN couldn’t broadcast the Democrats speeches.

CSPAN doesn’t own or operate those cameras, as one tweet explained after the video feed was cut off.

C-SPAN has no control over the U.S. House TV cameras.

— CSPAN (@cspan) June 22, 2016

But it didn’t work.

Representative Scott Peters had a smartphone with an app called Periscope. The app lets anyone beam live video to anyone who wants to log on and watch. The camera work wasn’t that good. For a while, all we saw was Representative Peters socks, but the audio was clear enough. Especially when Rep. Keith Ellison – the first Muslim to be elected to Congress – challenged the Republicans.

“Come down here, and take your vote, and you explain to your constituents why you think somebody suspected of terrorism ought to have a gun,” he yelled.

Related: Congress just gave the bad guys the green light

Hundreds logged on, then thousands logged on to the underground feed. CNN, CBSN, and CSPAN itself picked it up and Democrats finally taunted one Republican to push back.

“It appears as if the gentleman is afraid to vote and afraid to debate…”

“Radical Islam killed these people…” the Republican said.

Radical Islam killed these people. At that point, most of the Democrats weren’t interested in hearing any more. It looked like it was about to get physical.

Social media has changed the rules. The party in power no longer controls the cameras and the Speaker better figure out a way to have a genuine, orderly debate on this before Congress becomes completely irrelevant.

Below is one of many Periscope feeds from Scott Peters.

LIVE on #Periscope https://t.co/WRxWGI67xH

— Scott Peters (@ScottPetersSD) June 22, 2016

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