December 14, 2012

Conservatives blame anything but guns

Predictably, gun apologists came out in force to blame the Newtown shootings on anything but guns. In the lunatic fringe aka the Republican Tea Party, people were saying things like this:

Hate Site Free Republic Gets Even More CrazyI have no reason not to believe this pResident was not somehow directly or indirectly behind the mass murders that occurred today or all the others that have happened under his pResidency.According to Victoria Jackson 20 kids murdered in a school shooting is just like abortion

Huckabee Blames ‘Tax-Funded Abortion Pills’ For Newtown Massacre

What about the gays? Won't somebody blame the gays?

Tennessee pastor: Mass shootings because schools teach evolution and ‘how to be a homo’

Finally! I knew the gays were responsible!

Five crazy right-wing theories about why the Newtown shootings happened

Among the so-called causes: Jon Stewart and godlessness, weak women and gun control supporters

God MIA during shootings?

Particularly hilarious were the attempts to blame the shootings on a lack of God in schools.

Huckabee: Schools ‘A Place Of Carnage’ Because We ‘Systematically Removed God’

Because God is well-known for preventing massacres, not causing them. Yeah, right. (See Noah's flood for the prime example.)



Let's see: Several million schools, businesses, and government offices go without explicit mentions of God. And that's so horrible that one or two places out of several million get shot up?

What about the several million that don't get shot up? If they're somehow causing shooting sprees by not mentioning God, why aren't we seeing a myriad of sprees every day?

A few good tweets on the subject:Dan Savage @fakedansavage
God is everywhere. Except your kid's school. God too busy pouting about separation of church & state to save your kid.

Zandar @ZandarVTS
So, if I don't base my life around praying to your God, he will kill my kids in a school shooting spree. Oh that's a sales pitch.

Tamra M Burgess ‏@ilovemytroops
So sick of hearing that "God removed from schools" to blame shootings. There was "God" in school DURING JIM CROW & desegregation lynchings.
For more on gun control, see Newtown Shootings Show America's Pathology and Time to Talk About Guns.

2 comments:

burnedweenie said...

I have more reason to believe bigfoot, UFO's and ghost are real over an all knowing entity that watches his creation torture and kill each other without interferring as they each worship it devoutly and violently as a loving and merciful god?

Even Bigfoot makes rare appearances.

Anonymous said...

I love Condescending Wonka.

The big problem with many of these theories is they make no sense, and rely on urban legends, like the boy saying "Do you believe in God?" at Columbine (which conveniently has no surviving witnesses).

As a teenager, I wondered about the moral panics. Most teenage boys play video games. Most teenage boys watch violent movies. I don't remember being particularly religious either.

So it goes:

1920s: Dime novels, film
1950s: Comics
1950s-60s: Rock music, television
1970s-80s: Heavy metal, role-playing games
1980s-90s: Rap music
1990s: Internet, film again, video games

Individual responsibility is lost in this.