President Barack Obama on Wednesday surrounded himself with young children as he advanced new gun control proposals via executive orders, prompting conservatives to accuse him of exploiting children and stirring up emotions to further his agenda.

Appearing on CNN Thursday, TheBlaze’s Will Cain argued that there is no place for “emotionalism” when drafting significant legislation, especially when it involves little kids who are not old enough to grasp all the implications of a complex issue like gun control. What needs to occur instead, is a rational debate about guns and violence, he said.

TheBlazes Will Cain Goes Off on Obama for Using Emotionalism and Children to Avoid Gun Control Debate

WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 16: U.S. President Barack Obama signs a series of executive orders about the administration’s new gun law proposals as children who wrote letters to the White House about gun violence, (L-R) Hinna Zeejah, Taejah Goode, Julia Stokes and Grant Fritz, look on in the Eisenhower Executive Office building, on January 16, 2012 in Washington, DC. One month after a massacre that left 20 school children and 6 adults dead in Newtown, Connecticut, the president unveiled a package of gun control proposals that include universal background checks and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Credit: Getty Images

“I cannot find an ounce of appropriateness in this,” Cain said. “I find it despicable. I find it stomach-churning.”

He continued: “It’s impugning the motives of anyone who disagrees with him. It’s draping yourself in the emotionalism of the debate, avoiding an intellectual debate, avoiding the policy debate and impugning those who disagree with you.”

According to Cain, Obama’s handling of the gun issue shows “the inherent intellectual weakness in the argument that is being put forward.”

CNN host Carol Costello said sometimes emotion is needed to “get the argument going, to get people talking about it because not everybody wants to.”

Emotion has no place in a serious policy debate, Cain rebutted, “because emotion doesn’t encourage debate — it shuts it down.”

“When the president is doing that, that’s exactly what he’s encouraging,” Cain added. “He’s encouraging you to feel your way through this debate – not think. Because everyone of these proposals…[will] not positively affect gun violence in the United States.

Mediaite’s Noah Rothman agrees with Cain:

Displaying children at signing events is a device intended to inject emotionality into a political argument, and there is no more formidable obstacle to devising and implementing shrewd and targeted public policy than the self-important urgency of emotionality. Indignation and agitation do not suffice for an argument. There was a time not long ago when the American public and its journalists applauded deliberation and rationality in response to “the fierce urgency of now.”

During the debate, Democratic strategist Maria Cardona accused the NRA of exploiting President Obama’s children in a new ad, which labels Obama an “elitist hypocrite.” She called the ad “despicable.”

Watch the segment via CNN/Mediaite below: