The Vitriol Came Much Thicker After the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting as it Did Before the Shooting

Listen to the left-wing mainstream media, politicians, and pundits? Their vitriol is as divisive as the vitriol they claim led to the shotting of Gabrielle Giffords. While ignoring Jacob Loughner was a freak, which is well documented--a freak who was liberal according to those who knew him, dabbled in the occult, had mental and drug problems, and admired Adolf Hitler and Karl Marx, the left is ready to further divide this country by pushing the blame to people who had nothing to do with this like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, while ignoring major politicians like Barack Obama have used references to violence in their own rhetoric. Remember "if they bring a knife to the fight, we'll bring guns."

Like I said yesterday, under the flawed logic of the left who continues to blame Palin or Limbaugh for Loughner, Barack Obama should be to blame since Loughner followed many of the same ideologies Obama embraces. Obviously Loughner brought his gun to the fight, and besides, Obama's people were wanting some kind of terrorist act to bring up Obama's approval numbers. Many on the left had been saying Obama needs an Oklahoma City. Yeah, the left will choose to ignore all of this as they continue to lay the vitriol thicker now than it was before the shooting. Just look at how many on the left are using the shootings to further push their agenda as numerous Democrats are calling for more limits on the First and Second Amendments. It's sickening.

National Review has a great article discussing how much things have changed since March of 1981 when another mentally ill man named John Hinkley, who worshiped Jody Foster (a far cry from Hitler and Marx) and shot Ronald Reagan.


When Reagan Was Shot
January 10, 2011 6:10 P.M.
By Brian Bolduc
When the obviously disturbed John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan in 1981, pundits blamed guns for the tragedy; they didn’t blame an ideology, left or right.

In the New York Times, David Rosenbaum quickly dispatched with the theory that Hinckley harbored political motivations. Citing Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan B. Sirhan, Rosenbaum identified a line of assassins who “were deranged loners, social misfits apparently acting alone.” Hinckley, Rosenbaum added, “fits that mold.”

Later, Rosenbaum enumerated three elements that “authorities agree contribute to assassinations”: lax security, a glorified presidency, and “availability of hand guns.” “Few doubt that it would be a deterrent to assassinations if handguns could be eliminated,” Rosenbaum argued.

In the Washington Post, Bill Prochnau and Art Harris picked up on a similar theme: a culture of violence in America. “The acts of violence were becoming so regular, so ingrained, so much a part of American life that the latest shootings — even with a president involved — left many Americans almost immobilized during the long day of televised irrationality when Reagan was shot,” they wrote. Further in the piece, they quoted former president Gerald Ford who lamented it was “impossible to protect presidents against attacks by ‘loners, kooks, screwballs, whatever you want to call them.’”

Years later, Sarah Brady, wife of press secretary Jim Brady, who was wounded in the assassination attempt, would take up the cause of gun control. But in the immediate aftermath, she conspicuously declined to ascribe ideological motives to her husband’s attacker. “I don’t know much about him, I haven’t read much about him, and I just don’t even want to think about him,” she told the Washington Post.

Indeed, gun control was the only blatantly political battle that flared then. As Steve Hayward notes in The Age of Reagan: “Senator Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) took to the Senate floor to proclaim that America was a ‘sick society,’ and Ted Kennedy called for more gun control; Pat Moynihan noted the irony that Reagan would instantly veto any new gun control law that Congress might pass.”

But Hinckley was never used as a tool against an ideology. In fact, he was often described as a loner, and it was left at that.

When it comes to Jared Loughner, some on today’s Left don’t have the decency to do the same.

Notice how different the press is treating this. They called Hinkley a loner. They didn't try to push blame on someone else and increase the vitriol.