Great confusion clouds Mitchell’s line of inquiry. She is sticking up for a long-standing tradition of Beltway media etiquette and restraint — that of leaving intact the privacy of the president’s offspring. That’s a good tradition.

And it’s also one that’s compromised not at all by the NRA promotion. That presidential children get armed protection invades their privacy about as much as reporting that they reside at the White House.

Now, if Mitchell instead had specified that she was addressing the prudence, the political appeal and the effectiveness of rolling the president’s kids into a promotion on gun rights, perhaps her segment would have come unstuck.