Posted on 12/19/2012 2:48:20 PM PST by neverdem
In the aftermath of the horrific Newtown, Conn., school massacre, Americans from all parts of the political spectrum agree that we need to pay more attention to mental health issues. Public death threats and incitements to violence must be taken seriously. The incendiary witch hunt against law-abiding, peaceful gun owners is neither noble nor effective. It’s just plain insane.
Over the past week, I’ve witnessed a disturbing outbreak of off-the-rails hatred toward gun owners and Second Amendment groups. Whatever your views on guns, we can all agree: The Newtown gunman was a monster who slaughtered his own mother, five heroic educators and 20 angel-faced schoolchildren. He ignored laws against murder. He bypassed Connecticut’s strict gun control regulations, and he circumvented the Sandy Hook Elementary School’s security measures. Every decent American is horrified and heartsick by this outbreak of pure evil.
But tens of millions of law-abiding men and women own and use guns responsibly in this country. The cynical campaign to demonize all armed men and women as monsters must not go unanswered. What’s most disturbing is that the incitements are coming from purportedly respectable, prominent and influential public figures.
Consider the rhetoric of University of Rhode Island Professor Erik Loomis. He teaches “U.S. environmental history, the Civil War, late 19th and early 20th century America, labor history, and the American West” in the university’s history department. Online, however, Loomis is a militantly unhinged foe of all things conservative.
This week, the nutty professor took to Twitter to rail against law-abiding gun owners and the National Rifle Association. “Looks like the National Rifle Association has murdered some more children,” Loomis fumed. “Now I want Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick,” he added. (LaPierre is executive vice president and CEO of the NRA.) Loomis was just warming up.
“F**k the National Rifle Association and its policies to put crazy guns in everyone’s hands,” Loomis tweeted. “You are g*dd*mn right we should politicize this tragedy. F**k the NRA. Wayne LaPierre should be in prison,” he spewed. “Can we define NRA membership dues as contributing to a terrorist organization?”
If all that wasn’t clear enough, Loomis also re-tweeted the following message from a fellow left-winger: “First f**ker to say the solution is for elementary school teachers to carry guns needs to get beaten to death.”
When the conservative group Campus Reform called attention to the craziness, Loomis whined about a “right-wing intimidation campaign.” Sane university professors shook their heads. University of Tennessee law professor and blogger Glenn Reynolds explained the anti-NRA syllogism at work:
“(1) Something bad happened; (2) I hate you; so (3) it’s your fault. This sort of reasoning has played out in all sorts of places over the past century, with poor results. One would expect a history professor to know better.”
Unfortunately, Loomis is not alone. Famed author Joyce Carol Oates also took to Twitter to blame the entire membership of the NRA for one evil-doer’s massacre. “Another NRA-sponsored massacre for Christmas 2012,” Oates wrote. She then accused any politicians who supported the NRA of “felony homicide.” And then she mused hopefully for mass shootings against the NRA: “If sizable numbers of NRA members become gun-victims themselves, maybe hope for legislation of firearms?” Shockingly, actress Marg Helgenberger of the TV show “CSI” cheered her on: “One can only hope, but sadly I don’t think anything would change.”
In Texas, state Democratic Party official John Cobarruvias threw fuel on the fire. Cobarruvias is the Democratic Party precinct chair in Houston, Texas, and holds a seat on the Texas State Democratic Party’s executive committee. On his Twitter feed, Cobarruvias labeled the NRA a “domestic terrorist organization” and called for the assassination of NRA leaders and supporters: “Can we now shoot the #NRA and everyone who defends them?”
So, it’s come to this: Advocating beheadings, beatings and the mass murder of peaceful Americans to pay for the sins of a soulless madman. But because the advocates of violence fashion themselves champions of non-violence and because they inhabit the hallowed worlds of Hollywood, academia and the Democratic Party, it’s acceptable?
Blood-lusting hate speech must not get a pass just because it comes out of the mouths of the protected anti-gun class.
>>Chris Manfredonia, whose 6-year-old daughter attends the school, was heading there Friday morning to help make gingerbread houses with first-graders when he heard popping sounds and smelled sulfur. He ran around the school trying to reach his daughter and was briefly handcuffed by police. He later found his child, who had been locked in a small room with a teacher.<<
Thank you for the reply.
So he went to an elementary school to make gingerbread houses wearing camo pants? Maybe. There is no accounting for taste. And I suppose he was told to arrive around 9:30. Wouldn’t other parents also be invited and arriving about the same time. Or just him?
I’m trying to keep an open mind about this.
If you watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDrhhb0B5f8 you can clearly see the police running away from the school into the woods. Why would he run away from his daughter (into the woods) if he feared for her life and was trying to reach her?
Or.... at the end 2:00 of the the video I just now linked to, a boy says a man was pinned to the ground in handcuffs. That may have been Manfredonia.
But that still wouldn’t explain the guy in the woods wearing camo pants.
Maybe he was just arriving after being in a deer hunting tree stand earlier in the AM.
Nutty professor looks deranged
Mark
Eight professors have joined together to issue a statement in support of University of Rhode Island assistant professor Erik Loomis, who last week tweeted that he wanted NRA executive vice president ”Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick.”
The authors of the statement, posted on the blog Crooked Timber, defend Loomis’ tweet as an example of metaphor and say their defense was “pulled together on an emergency basis” — perhaps explaining why distinguished academics would cite the Urban Dictionary as their source in explaining what “head on a stick” means, as well as their omission of his retweets of other violent metaphors wishing for those who support arming teachers to be “beaten to death” and Dick Morris to be hunted down and skinned for breakfast.
Nevertheless, Loomis has found defenders in academia, who worry that “his lack of tenure makes him vulnerable,” a state of affairs the rest of us who don’t enjoy the defense of “academic freedom” — that is, ”scholars’ freedom independently to express views (even intemperate ones) on topics of public importance” — face every day while arguing our beliefs in the public sphere. The fact that Loomis’ tweets seemingly had nothing to do with his teaching or his field of study further stretches the idea that academics should enjoy special protection from criticism. Meanwhile, the authors of Loomis’ defense call on university administrators to “affirm … the protections of the First Amendment” while overlooking a call for the head of a proponent of the Second Amendment.
We at Twitchy wish harm on no one, but Loomis’ public tweets and retweets were enough to elicit a statement from the University of Rhode Island distancing the school from them. Supporters who made no mention of the ugliness of Loomis’ Twitter activity were quick to call the criticism of Loomis an “ugly, vindictive witch hunt.”
Pot meet kettle, Professor Loomis. When the heat in the kitchen gets a little too warm the pricks start whining about witch hunts they a started!
Today's "liberal" inteligencia are actually Maoists and/or Stalinists, who believe that those with opposing opinions aren't just wrong, but evil. And since they're "evil," they believe that calling for the "liquidation" of millions of their opponents is justified (just a Bill Ayers did). What was the name of that proposed Obama appointee that listed one of her philosophical heroes as Mao? Mao & Stalin were directly responsible for more than 100 million people murdered, combined!
The vast majority of people who believe they're "liberal" would actually be shocked if they only knew the beliefs and plans of those "in charge" of their "liberal movement." And like my step mother, they will refuse to look at the evidence (like direct statements) detailing what their inteligencia are proposing, since it could make them reevaluate their own beliefs, and that's something they simply won't do. Even when those beliefs are diametrically opposite of what their leaders are proposing and doing! Useful idiots are an apt name for them.
Mark
>>Maybe he was just arriving after being in a deer hunting tree stand earlier in the AM.<<
Very possible. Good point. Why would he run around the school and into the woods as police arrived?
He looks like the nut who shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. What was his name, Gerald Loughner?
“Can we now shoot the #NRA and everyone who defends them?”
******
Yes you can but don’t use a gun. Those are really bad.../sarc on big time
No, Michelle, the "sins" here are not those of the killer -- they couldn't care less about him.
The "sin" is our standing up to these bullyragging haters and telling them to eff off -- and making it stick. They hate that, they hate losing an issue, and they hate us.
Advice to Wayne LaPierre: Lawsuit time. Lawyer up. Then go get Larry, bigtime, for his blood libel.
Drive his car like you stole it. Auction off his house. Drink his liquor, ride his wife, carry away his cash, eat his food, burn his books, and sell his children in the flesh markets of Asia.
Jared Loughner, certified Moonbat. Whom ABC News tried to push off on the Tea Party. Implied he was a ninja assassin sent by Sarah.
PBS did a documentary on the "New America" paradigm and asked a young black woman, an Obama supporter, if she understood why whites are getting paranoid (I think they soft-pedaled that just a bit). The young woman answered straight up, smiling apologetically, "Well, I think they understand they're being 'niggerized', to use that word, and they realize what it means." Or words to that effect. Mind, she wasn't being malicious about it, but she put it out there.
There was one in the police car and one handcuffed down at the fire station according to reports.
The more bothersome thing to me though is this interview of Robbie Parker, the father of Emily. Something is not right with him:
That man is running away from the school. No way I’m buying he’s the father of a little girl in the class and he was just there to make a gingerbread house. WTF?
A local birder with incredibly unlucky timing?
They want to ban our guns...Liberals are hypocrites, and they will keep the ones they have (but won't talk about).
NRA members arm themselves, so they will likely not be killed by gun criminals. It seems to me that we who are of the so-called “gun culture” outlive liberals who hate guns; they end up killed by robbers and muggers while we won’t just sit by and let bad things happen.
He has the same goofy smile the shooters in Aurora and AZ had.
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