NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
By Michelle Malkin
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. We must take seriously public
death threats and incitements to violence.
But 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*** the National Rifle Association and its policies to put
crazy guns in everyone’s hands,” Loomis tweeted. “You are g**d*mn right we
should politicize this tragedy. F*** 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
evildoer’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 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
nonviolence 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.
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