Last month, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic man with a
criminal history was nonetheless able to obtain three guns and at least 500
rounds of ammunition and ran
a police roadblock where President Obama's motorcade was about to pass
through. He had previously made threats
against others, including President George W. Bush. What could have motivated him to run the
roadblock while armed to the teeth?
During the Democratic National Convention, a gun owner who
had previously been charged for drug offenses made threats
on Twitter to kill the President, threatening to "aim the Assault
Rifle at Barack's Forehead" and, in his words, "plotting president Obama's
murder." The Secret Service
interviewed him. What could have led
this man to make threats?
In August, a man in Washington state sent
emails to the FBI threatening to kill the President, saying, "I will kill the
president. I don't give a f*** but you know that." When U.S. Secret Service agents arrived at the
man's door, the guy charged at them with a shotgun, ammo, and pistol. He
had an arsenal of assault rifles at the ready. Luckily they subdued him without
gunfire. What could have spurred this
man to make threats and act violently?
Could it be that these paranoid and violent gun owners could have been
motivated by calls for insurrection and conspiratorial thinking from
conservative leaders and the NRA?
About a year ago, NRA vice president Wayne
LaPierre declared that the President's inaction on gun control was a
"big fat stinking lie!" and "part of a massive Obama conspiracy
to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second
Amendment." Since then, a
number of completely unfounded pro-gun conspiracy theories have been rolled
out, accusing the President, specifically, of plotting to hand over the sovereignty
of the United States to the United Nations, declare martial law and take away
our guns, purposely letting guns go to Mexican drug lords in order to justify
taking away guns from Americans, and even staging the mass shooting in Aurora. The NRA even started a website, www.gunbanobama.com, wherein they expound on
LaPierre's conspiracy theory (and make numerous appeals for donations).
And various conservative pro-gun leaders have taken the
NRA's call and spread it. This month, a
Republican congressional candidate in Tennessee "welcomed"
President Obama to Tennessee by posting a picture of a handgun on his campaign
Facebook page.
This summer, the chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party responded to the Supreme Court's decision to
uphold the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act by calling
for armed insurrection, calling our government a "gang of
criminals" and writing, " To resist by all means that are right in the
eyes of God is not rebellion or insurrection, it is patriotic resistance to
invasion. May all of us fall on our faces before the Heavenly Judge,
repent of our sins, and humbly cry out to Him for mercy on our country. And, may godly courageous leaders rise up in
His wisdom and power to lead us in displacing the
criminal invaders
from their seats and restore our constitutional republic."
Only the day before
that, a former
Michigan Republican Party spokesman declared, "There are
times government has to do things to get what it wants and holds a gun to your
head. I’m saying at some point, we have to ask the question when do we turn
that gun around and say no and resist.”
And let's not forget the king of all pro-gun extremist haters,
NRA board member Ted Nugent, who earlier this year publicly
and loudly announced a threat against the President which warranted a visit
from the Secret Service:
Speaking at the NRA's annual meeting Nugent accused President Obama of having a "vile, evil America-hating administration" that is "wiping its ass with the Constitution." He went on to tell a crowd that "We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November" and said that "If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year."
It's not the first time he's done this. Nugent has said Obama was "a piece of
shit" who should "suck on my machine gun." Nugent has a long, long history
of illegal, racist, hate-filled behavior.
But he's famous, and a certain fringe of extremists love to pay
attention to his hatred and gun-worship.
So much so that Nugent now has
a cable TV show on Discovery Channel, wherein he shoots stuff up (and
markets his line of ammunition, of course -- follow the money).
Should we hold public figures accountable for calling for violence? The gun guys, who often echo this hateful
rhetoric on their own blogs, argue that these people are only exercising
their right of free speech. Even if the
guy who shot the window of the Obama campaign, yesterday, were caught and told
police that he did it because of something Ted Nugent said, for instance,
Nugent still wouldn't be held accountable.
It's just words, right? They didn't make the shooter pull the
trigger.
Public figures such as these should understand that words matter. Their followers listen to them for cues on
how to act and what to think. Their
words form a cloud of thinking in the minds of the impressionable. Mix that with a violent or mentally unstable
mind and an arsenal of guns, and you have a recipe for murder or
insurrection.
When a mentally-unstable and potentially violent pro-gun extremist hears LaPierre say, "The
guys with the guns make the rules," and buys into the
false assumption that the Second Amendment allows for armed insurrection
against our elected leaders, it's a small step toward that extremist arming
himself and shooting up a window of a campaign office or running a presidential
roadblock with guns at the ready.
Hate-speech, whether toward an individual, our President, or
our government, should never be tolerated or spread. It should be condemned, and those who speak
it should be held accountable, in order to make a new trajectory for our communities away from gun violence.
