Former New York Times and Washington Post "journalist" Taylor Lorenz is not a very good person, but I want to start by making it very clear that the headline is not a threat against her. I wish her absolutely no physical or even psychological harm from any kind of violent encounter.
No, I carry a gun because of people like her, but not so much because I'm looking to hurt them.
I'm looking to make sure me and mine don't get hurt by the kind of people who want to impress people like her.
As you may have heard, Lorenz embarrassed herself by fawning over UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's alleged killer. Luigi Mangione reportedly shot Thompson with a privately made firearm with a privately made suppressor on the streets of one of the most anti-gun cities in the country.
Mangione is someone that, apparently, many women find to be a good-looking guy. He doesn't do it for me, but then again, dudes never will.
Lorenz, however, celebrated the murder from the start, and in her latest comments during an interview with CNN, she literally called Mangione "moral."
Yes, the guy accused of killing another, who Lorenz believes did it, was the moral one.
A lot of people agree with her.
This is sick and twisted, especially as this kind of celebratory attitude encourages others to kill people they disagree with or simply don't like because they did something "bad."
Yet Lorenz isn't exactly my biggest fan, apparently. She blocked me on X shortly after I criticized what one might laughingly call her work. I said she sucked at her job and she got bent out of shape over it. It's safe to say, at least at that moment, that she probably thought I was a bad person.
And now we know what Lorenz wants to see happen to "bad people."
In this day and age, there are a ton of people who think like this. They're the people firebombing Tesla dealerships or plotting to kill President Donald Trump or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro because they don't like what they believe these people represent.
So why would anyone believe those deemed "bad" won't become the target of people who want to be seen as "good" by their side, by people like Lorenz?
While I don't think I'm likely to ever be the victim of any such thing, I'd be stupid to act like I'm impervious. That's true of just about everyone out there, even those of us who don't have a particularly high profile. I mean, despite being a health insurance CEO, Brian Thompson wasn't that well known, all things considered.
People like Lorenz celebrate the murder of people they don't like, which feeds into the idea that the ends justify even the most violent means. It doesn't matter whether there are non-violent means available; they still support violence.
Taylor Lorenz will likely never act violently herself. Not for her politics and not for much of anything else, except maybe in her own defense.
But her and people like her celebrating and swooning over a killer and pretending he's a hero has the potential to result in a whole lot more deaths than Luigi Mangione could have possibly carried out himself.
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