Following every mass shooting in recent memory, the gun lobby has struggled to deflect blame onto to everything except the availability of firearms, not to mention the U.S. gun culture the NRA helped to manifest. After Sandy Hook it was video games. After Aurora is was mental health. After Virginia Tech it was a movie. But today, we’re told by the same pro-gun people that pointing out Alex Jones’ influence on Jared and Amanda Miller is just crazy talk.
Strange how that works. I suppose we could just default back to the availability of guns or the unwillingness of Congress to act upon the will of 75-90 percent of voters who want stricter gun laws, but that’s out of the question, too.
In the case of the Las Vegas shooting, you’d have to be utterly blind to not see the influence of Alex Jones lurking transparently beneath the surface, immediately below the shooters themselves and their firearms. The Millers were deeply ensconced in the anti-government conspiracy subculture where Jones is the kingpin — the Svengali for millions of paranoiacs who are each convinced through systematic indoctrination that a revolution is coming.
Sorry, but rap lyrics or a Japanese horror movie don’t exist anywhere near the same marketplace, nor are they operating in the arena of serious political discourse, telling us that our constitutional rights shall not be infringed, or else. It’s about your rights and your liberty, they say. A talk radio host, presenting what he claims are legitimate documents and expert testimony regarding how our government, by means of the NSA or juice boxes or so-called chemtrails in the sky, is seeking to control every aspect of our lives is so vastly different than the rather trivial nature of a fictitious shoot-em-up video game. But I get it, there are some people who have trouble discerning fantasy from reality, but Alex Jones and his copycats don’t deal in fantasy. They have all the evidence. They know. This is really, really happening in the dark corridors of power in Washington. So get ready!
Did they really believe they could talk like this for so long and at such an urgent fever-pitch, encouraging armed revolution and Second Amendment solutions, and believe that no one would act upon the nonstop join-or-die hype? It’s not just Alex Jones, either. We’re also told by our elected leaders — those we’ve tasked with passing laws and safeguarding our liberty — that we should seek Second Amendment Solutions against domestic enemies.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN):
“I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us having a revolution every now and then is a good thing. And the people — we the people — are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country.”
Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS):
“We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition.”
Former Rep. Allen West (R-FL):
“I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendment rights was they gave a Second Amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will.”
Former Senate candidate Sharon Angle:
“People are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying, my goodness, what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you, the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”
Senate candidate Joni Ernst… READ MORE
(h.t Karin Riley Porter)