Gun rights advocacy not responsible for killings

June 22, 2:09 AMSt. Louis Gun Rights ExaminerKurt Hofmann

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     Oleg Volk photo caption or credit here

Recent, high profile murders--of Pittsburgh police officers Eric Kelly, Stephen Mayhle, and Paul Sciullo, abortion doctor George Tiller, and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen T. Johns--were apparently motivated, at least in part, by political considerations.  The Pittsburgh officers were killed by a white supremacist who had spoken of an impending "Obama gun ban," Tiller's murderer had apparently decided that performance of late term abortions warranted killing, and Stephen Johns, as a black man guarding the Holocaust museum, was apparently a target too tempting to resist, for a neo-Nazi.

Some are trying to make political hay of this "wave of violence incited by the right-wing hate machine," implying that partial responsibility for the killings lies with people who not only did not pull the trigger, they did not even urge anyone else to do so.  The "logic," apparently, is that "extremist rhetoric"--by Bill O'Reilly, or the NRA, for example--fosters an environment that pushes some already unstable people over the edge, causing them to wreak evil that they would otherwise have resisted.

I wrote a little about this not long ago, when some suggested that the murder of Dr. Tiller showed that the Department of Homeland Security's "Right Wing Extremist" report was right, after all.

More recently, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has tried to lay responsibility at the feet of the NRA.

As if the wackos weren’t dangerous enough to begin with, the fuel to further inflame them is available in the over-the-top rhetoric of the National Rifle Association, which has relentlessly pounded the bogus theme that Barack Obama is planning to take away people’s guns. The group’s anti-Obama Web site is called gunbanobama.com.

First, there is nothing "bogus" about the assertion that Obama is an avowed gun-hater.  If his legislative record is too old to be convincing on that score, his cabinet choices and Supreme Court nomination show that nothing about his antipathy toward private gun ownership has changed.

There is no Obama gun ban on the way. Gun control advocates are, frankly, disappointed in the president’s unwillingness to move ahead on even the mildest of gun control measures.

True, both the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership have backed away--for now--from the idea of waging a frontal assault on gun rights.  That doesn't mean that such an assault is not in the works for when the time is deemed ripe.  There are also sneakier ways to ban guns, such as the Inter-American Arms Treaty (more commonly known by its Spanish acronym, CIFTA, also discussed here).

Crazy, violent, evil people do crazy, violent, evil things, with or without hearing "extemist rhetoric."  All three of the perpetrators of the above mentioned murders had some rather serious issues that had nothing to do with anything they heard from Bill O'Reilly or the NRA.  Now, the Bob Herberts of the world are trying to claim that simply issuing warnings about impending attempts to attack that right that shall not be infringed is immoral and irresponsible.

That sounds kinda familiar.  Perhaps we should call him "Supreme Leader Herbert."