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Protestor brings gun to Obama town hall
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Hand gun carried by Obama protestor. Source: You Tube
Last week, I wrote about the Pittsburgh shooter, George Sodini, the man who walked into an L.A. Fitness center and started killing women because he couldn’t get a date.
The article was titled, Pittsburgh shooter: What if he had been a health care protestor? Of course it was a stretch and there was no correlation between Sodini’s act of violence and the aggressive behavior that is playing out at town hall meetings across the country, except “anger”. What I was trying to demonstrate in that article, was that there is a fine line between “spirited debate”, argument, pushing and shoving, brawling, and killing.
Yesterday, in the Huffington Post, Josh Horwitz wrote a piece titled Handguns and Health Care Reform. In it he lists numerous town hall meetings that have been less than civil. He also links to reports that the ante is being raised and people are being encouraged to and have begun carrying concealed weapons to town hall meetings and other political events. Frighteningly enough, many of the same people who are against health care reform, are the Second Amendment people who believe that the Second Amendment still applies today literally as it was intended when it was written over 200 years ago. The Second Amendment was important then, because the sum of the colonist’s army consisted of local militia groups. If the individual colonists hadn’t had guns, we may have still been under British rule. Today that is not the case.
Yesterday, outside the town hall meeting that President Obama held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a protestor was walking around with a loaded 9mm handgun proudly strapped to his leg. He was carrying a sign which said “IT’S TIME TO WATER THE TREE OF LIBERTY.” This is a play on the Thomas Jefferson quote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
William Kostric, the gun toting protestor admittedly was not concealing his weapon, had a permit to carry his gun according to New Hampshire law, and was not exhibiting any violence. What he was doing though, was demonstrating a fringe belief among extreme “militia types” that can be found throughout this country. Militia types like Timothy McVeigh who believed that the Federal government needs to be overthrown. Extremist preachers like Pastor Rick Knapp, who the Pittsburgh shooter George Sodini in his writings claims convinced him through his teachings that “you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven.” A Christian extremist sounding very much like an Islamist suicide bomber don’t you think?
While other members of Rick Knapp’s Tetelestai church deny that Pastor Knapp has ever said anything of the sort, go to the church’s website and you can get a hint of what Sodini might have been talking about, evidence of Right-Wing extremism. While their church’s “doctrine” is currently being “revised” for some mysterious reason, their prayer list is quite revealing.
Pray for America's Leaders
President — George W. Bush
Vice President — Richard B. Cheney
Secretary of Defense — Donald Rumsfield
Secretary of State — Condoleeza Rice
Secretary of Homeland Security — Michael Chertoff
Attorney General — Alberto Gonzales
Director of CIA — Michael V. Hayden
Director of FBI — Robert S. Mueller
Members of Congress
It’s been almost eight months since Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States, don’t you think they would have been able to find the time to update the prayer list with America’s current leaders? Or does that simply reveal that Pastor Knapp is not praying for Barack Obama, and Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, because he doesn’t agree with them politically? Where is the Christian forgiveness Jesus taught?
The point is, extremism is dangerous, and if you put guns in the hands of angry extremists, people get killed. There is no place for weapons of any kind at any political rally except maybe strapped to the legs of law enforcement. Not according to William Kostric who was interviewed yesterday on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews when he was asked, “Do you think if there were a thousand people there today and they were all armed that would have been a safer crowd?” Without hesitating Kostric answered, “Absolutely.”
Absolutely wrong.
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