I recently watched the following video by .. . eugh . . . Zelph on the Shelf:
The lack of intellectual integrity of those associated with Zelph on the Shelf is pretty well known. See, for instance, my article:
My friend Stephen Smoot as a great article satirising their approach to the Church:
Tanner Gilliland made the following comment at the 6:11 mark about Joseph Smith at Carthage Jail:
You know, [Joseph Smith] only killed three people
I pick this brief comment as it exemplifies how little Tanner (as well as Samantha Shelley) know beyond the works of Dehlin and Runnells, as well as a 10-second google search.
Joseph Smith did not kill three people at Carthage Jail. According to John Taylor’s account of Joseph’s futile attempt at defending himself and those with him at Carthage reported that the two (not three) men who were wounded by Joseph’s six-shot pistol (only three of the six shots were discharged properly) died later due to their wounds, something he heard through the rumour mill. However, these injured people would later turn up to the trial of the accused assassins of Joseph and Hyrum(!) and were identified as witnesses. As Dallin Oaks and Marvin Hill wrote:
Wills, Voras, and Gallaher were probably named in the indictment because their wounds, which testimony showed were received at the jail, were irrefutable evidence that they had participated in the mob. They undoubtedly recognized their vulnerability and fled the county. A contemporary witness reported these three as saying that they were the first men at the jail, that one of them shot through the door killing Hyrum, that Joseph wounded all three with his pistol, and that Gallaher shot Joseph as he ran to the window.[Hay, "The Mormon Prophet's Tragedy," 675] According to Hay, Wills, whom the Mormon prophet had shot in the arm, was an Irishman who had joined the mob from “his congenital love of a brawl.”[Statement of Jeremiah Willey, August 13, 1844, Brigham Young correspondence, Church Archives.] Gallaher was a young man from Mississippi who was shot in the face.[Hay, "The Mormon Prophet's Tragedy," 669, 675. Another source says Wills was a former Mormon elder who had left the Church. Davis, An Authentic Account, 24.] Hay described Voras (Voorhees) as a “half-grown hobbledehoy from Bear Creek” whom Joseph shot in the shoulder. The citizens of Green Plains were said to have given Gallaher and Voras new suits of clothes for their parts in the killing.[Statement of Jeremiah Willey, August 13, 1844] (Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith [Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 1979] 52)
This is just the tip of the large massive iceberg of the ignorance of all things “Mormon” those who are associated with Zelph on the Shelf have.
