Without waiting for the facts to emerge about the Newtown massacre, the usual combination of political and Hollywood elites, along with progressive social media types moved in to place the blame for this horror squarely on the National Rifle Association, calling the organization and its members murderers, and ironically calling for them to be shot.
Over the last 72 hours, we’ve learned something about the shooter, Adam Lanza. He was a loner who had Asperger's syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, along with a myriad of mental health issues. His mother, Nancy, was a well-liked divorcee who collected guns, and taught her sons how to shoot.
Unknown still is why Lanza shot his mother four times (possibly while she slept), then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School, shot the glass out so he could enter the school, then executed 26 people. Yet the facts don't matter to those on the far Left.
While some Americans want to engage in a rational conversation of the core issue - mental illness, others want to attack the NRA.
For clarification, the Second Amendment reads:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Alan Gopnik writing in New Yorker Magazine on the day of the shooting, blames all gun lobbyists:
The people who fight and lobby and legislate to make guns regularly available are complicit in the murder of those children. They have made a clear moral choice: that the comfort and emotional reassurance they take from the possession of guns, placed in the balance even against the routine murder of innocent children, is of supreme value. Whatever satisfaction gun owners take from their guns—we know for certain that there is no prudential value in them—is more important than children’s lives. Give them credit: life is making moral choices, and that’s a moral choice, clearly made.
Jezebel.com explicitly blames the NRA, and goes off on a nonsensical tirade:
F*ck you, NRA. You guys are f*cking murderers.Today, we don't need prayers. We don't need thoughts. We need action. We need to politicize this, and we need to politicize this now. F*ck everyone who isn't ready to talk about gun control. You're the reason 27 people (and counting) died today. Don't forget it.
Celebrity tweeters joined in, calling for the banning of guns and blaming the NRA as well:
F*ck the NRA and the cowardly politicians who refuse to do a single goddamn thing about gun violence in America. - Wil Wheaton, Actor (over 2 million followers)Gun control is our only road to freedom. Freedom from the fear of senselessly losing children. - Rashida Jones, Actor "Parks And Recreation" on NBC
(How ironic that Jones believes that freedom from fear can only be attained by controlling the people. Has anyone asked her how that control is achieved?)
Social Media aggregator Twitchy.com compiled a group of tweets calling for the murder of the NRA’s President, David Keene, and members. A sampling:
All NRA members should be shot!!!! I thank you, that's one of my own !! - @sammyswordfishMurder every NRA member - @90srememberer
Solution: Get every member of the NRA to stand in a circle, aim & shoot! Sorted - @arseburgers
Yet, it was a tweet from @bayareahouston that truly stood out:
Can we now shoot the #NRA and everyone who defends them? #PrayForNewton
Turns out, as Twitchy discovered, that @bayareahouston is the Twitter account, "...for John Cobarruvias, a Democratic Party precinct chair in Houston, according to Houston blog Big Jolly Politics. (Update: He is also member of the State Democratic Executive committee.)"
Cobarruvias then doubled down on his tweet, proclaiming, "Let's face it. The #NRA is nothing but a domestic terrorist organization. They have done NOTHING to stop this violence except make excuses."
Fellow politician, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY,) also
We have a lobby, the leadership of the NRA, who function as enablers of mass murder. And that's what they are. They're enablers of mass murder
Rep. Nadler further stated that President Obama should "exploit" the shooting to push forward on gun control.
Blaming the NRA for the horror of Sandy Hook Elementary is unfounded. Support of the 2nd Amendment did not lead to the murder of these children and their teachers. The millions of members of the NRA, by actively supporting their right to bear arms, did not condone, assist or make possible Lanza's terror spree. To think otherwise is irrational, and dangerous.
For the Democrat Cobarruvias to call NRA members "terrorists" while the White House classifies the murder of 13 soldiers at Ft. Hood by Nadal Hassan a "workplace incident" is beyond absurd. Rep. Nadler's call for "exploiting" the massacre is the kind of craven politics that turns stomachs. And social media's call for violence against NRA members is as horrifying as it is misguided.
Rule #12 in Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals: “Pick the target. Personalize it. Freeze it. Polarize it." Political and cultural Leftists, who don’t like the whole idea of guns (Constitution be damned!), have chosen the NRA as their target. Rather than engage in rational conversation about the central issue, mental illness, they demonize millions of Americans, quite literally calling for their execution.