Shot in the Dark

Hate Crime

Big Left has been warning us that there’s a wave of ideological hate crime just around the corner, and that  you gotta watch out for those crazy right-wingers.

It’s a Berg’s Seventh Law occurrence, of course.

A gunman attacked a Republican congressional baseball practice this morning.  His mission?  “Kill as many Republicans as possible”.

Shortly after the shooting Wednesday morning at a congressional baseball practice, Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.) told NBC News that it appeared the “gunman was there to kill as many Republican members as possible.” Walker, who was at the practice for the upcoming annual congressional baseball game in Alexandria, Virginia, confirmed he was “shaken but okay.”

“Punch a Nazi”.

“Anti-Fa”.

Hello, Liberals – when so much of your side is awash in demented hatred (the real thing, not the “disagreement with our narrative is hate” thing that so many of you jabber about), and given the instability wrapped in entitlement that so many people on your side have, what do you think is going to happen?

Be careful out there, Real Americans.  It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.

UPDATE:  While Berg’s 19th Law is still in effect (“Nothing the media writes/says about any emotionally charged event – a mass shooting, a police shooting, anything – should be taken seriously for 48 hours after the original incident.  It will largely be rubbish, as media outlets vie to “scoop” each other even on incorrect facts”), the shooter’s Facebook page indicates he is a Sanders supporter.

UPDATE 2:  The WaPo has ID’ed the shooter as a 66 year old Illinois man.

UPDATE 3:  As usual, many on the left are acting like poo-flinging baboons.

UPDATE 4:  James Hodgkinson is the name, and this is from his Facebook page:

Apparnetly “& Co” is “All Republicans”.

Clearly, we need universal background checks for Democrat voters buying guns.

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49 responses to “Hate Crime”

  1. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Don’t fret, the shooter seemed perfectly reasonable when he lawfully purchased his firearm. As a aside, I’m a bit taken aback that there were no congressmen carrying. Good guy with a gun and all that……

  2. TKS Avatar
    TKS

    I could be wrong cause I’ve never tried it but I would imagine playing baseball while packing could be a little bit problematic.

  3. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    I’m a bit taken aback that there were no congressmen carrying.

    Given that they spend most of their time in DC, where it’s pretty much illegal (and unnecessary, because there is no crime in DC), it’s really not surprising at all.

    And it WAS good guys with guns – Capitol cops who were Scalise’s security detail – who stopped it.

  4. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Of course the police captured the perpetrator. Because it is extremely rare that civilians with a firearm impact such an event.

  5. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    It’s not clear that the guy did purchase his weapon legally. Barrington, where he lived, is partially in Cook County, where assault weapons are banned. Plus, if we really want to work the gun control angle, Illinois as a whole has some of the strongest ones available, with de facto gun owner registration via the Firearms Owners ID.

    The perp also was charged with assault back in 2006, but not convicted. It could well be that he was only allowed to purchase because the police dropped the ball on what should have been a conviction.

    Regarding the rarity of armed citizens stopping such events, no less than the Department of Justice under Bill Clinton found about a million defensive uses per year back in 1998, and it’s worth noting as well that the bigger factor, per John Lott, is the crimes which are never attempted because the would-be perp knows that someone in the vicinity could be armed.

    Emery, maybe….stop parroting the Brady talking points? You’re not exactly making yourself look smart by doing so.

    Something to add; either the rifle he had wasn’t very accurate, or the shooter wasn’t very good. Praise God for that. Reports I’m seeing indicate he fired 50 rounds and hit only 2-3 people.

  6. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Oops, Belleville, not in Cook County. That noted, until journalists find his valid FOID, we do not know he bought the weapon legally. Never mind the hypocrisy of a Sanders supporter buying an assault rifle.

  7. Scott Hughes Avatar
    Scott Hughes

    There are suggestions that his vitriol against Trump (&Co.) he used on his Facebook page should have triggered an investigation into his mindset and intentions. Hodgkinson is dead so any determination of his motives and how he was influenced to act as he did will be done by forensic techniques.

  8. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Or you could simply implement reasonable gun laws. Like not allowing known mentally unstable people to purchase guns.

  9. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    My sister always wanted a Chatty Cathy doll (but never got one because they were expensive). The doll had a string in her back. When you pulled the string, the doll recited some random pre-recorded phrase.

    Emery reminds me of that doll.

  10. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Like not allowing known mentally unstable people to purchase guns.

    Emery – THAT IS ALREADY THE LAW. If you have a record of violent crime or mental illness, you flunk your NICS test.

    Here’s the deal – the mentally-ill also have due process.

    What would you like to change.?

  11. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    You can’t blame Emery too much for his ignorance. The MSM regularly prints editorials and news articles (“fake news”) that state as a fact tat in the US, in any locality, any person can walk into a gun store and walk out with as many legally purchased hand guns and “assault rifles” as they like.
    This is not true, as any person who has actually bought a gun knows.

  12. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Thinking of mentally ill people with guns, that would include most of the kids who shoot up their schools, as well as Dylann Roof. In those cases, laws against underage purchase of guns, purchase of guns by the mentally ill, carry of guns without a permit, carry of guns in a school (or place of worship), and more did not serve to stop them.

    Plus, if the perp here had an FOID, he was by definition not adjudicated as mentally ill. What ya gonna do, Emery? You gonna argue that more laws would help? I’m thinking that our best approach is to make sure that the lawless have something to fear from the law-abiding.

  13. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    Emery #1: We need to call off the War on Drugs because making it illegal to own drugs isn’t working.

    Emery #2: We need more gun control because the laws we have aren’t stopping criminals.

    So, Emery, which one should we believe? The one that says normal citizens won’t be stopped by laws from committing illegal acts that they want to commit, or the one that says that criminals will be stopped by making something even more illegal than it already is? After all, the possibility of capital punishment for committing murder wasn’t enough to deter this Bernie Bro, so obviously we need more laws because it’s not illegal enough?!

  14. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Suppose Hodgkinson had attacked the GOP’ers with a knife?
    What would the Lefties say about that?

  15. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    We don’t know much about the shooter or how he got the gun.

    But we do know he’s a Democrat, from a Democrat jurisdiction, quite probably inflamed by Democrat rhetoric, who carried out his attack on Republicans in a Democrat jurisdiction, against targets that were visiting from the most Democrat jurisdiction of all, where they were disarmed (on pain of felony charges) by Democrats carrying out Democrat policies.

  16. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Murder is one of the last remaining taboos. It is shocking how many people, mostly people on the left, use rhetoric that justifies not only assault but the murder of their ideological enemies.
    A not insignificant number of people in this country wish Hodgkinson had killed them all. These people consider themselves normal, and they can point to mainstream rhetoric to justify their belief. Pelosi called Trump mentally ill, not just once, but many times. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, in his latest column, throws the DSM at Trump:

    Of course, if we were psychoanalyzing Trump, we might throw the entire DSM at him, starting with antisocial personality disorder and working our way through narcissistic personality disorder and then paranoid personality disorder.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/of-course-trump-called-comey-a-liar-thats-his-strategy/2017/06/12/6ff4b4a8-4fa6-11e7-91eb-9611861a988f_story.html?utm_term=.be9e1d83b78e

    These people can’t tone it down because if they do, the loony left will tear them to pieces.

  17. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Speaking of narcissistic personality disorder, I notice that Milbank’s first marriage ended in 2015, and his first date with his now wife was in February 2015. One of the characteristics of NPD is sexual risk-taking. So if it takes one to know one, Milbank could be better qualified than we’d think.

    Except for the fact, of course, that if we’re going to talk about disorders of this sort, he seems to have not had this near-psychiatric ability when we had a guy who would use the first person singular dozens of times in each speech in the White House. One of the things I like about Trump, by the way, is that he does seem to do a good job of praising other people. Not classic NPD, to put it mildly.

    (where does Milbank get off playing psychiatrist, anyways?)

  18. Ian in Iowa Avatar
    Ian in Iowa

    Hodgkinson’s actions are to me the logical conclusion of the leftist’s rage: They found their ideas didn’t resonate with enough people in November (or, if we’re talking about the primaries against Clinton, with enough of the “right” people (*cough* super-delegates *cough*), so now their solution is to resort to violence– to “win” by trying to kill the political “impediments”. There’s a word for that: Treason. Someone attempted to assassinate members of the constitutionally-elected government of the U.S. What difference is there between Hodgkinson and the Bolsheviks, other than the level of success?

    But Emery would rather talk about background checks…

  19. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Dana Milbank, in his latest column, throws the DSM at Trump

    As part of their campaign to do for words like “Anti-Social” and “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” and”Sociopathy” what they’ve done for “Facist” and “Holocaust.

  20. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    He likes Dan Rather.
    He likes Rachel Maddow
    He likes The Berne
    He likes MSNBC

    He hates Scott Walker
    He hates Republican-Americans

  21. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    Was the terrorist radicalized by MSNBC and CBS News?

    By the way….4 PM WCCO on the hour news barely mentioned his political views. Maybe spent 7 seconds on that angle.

  22. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    Emery, I think mentally unstable people should be banned from owning firearms.

    I wonder how far the 1st amendment goes when it comes to anti-Republican hate groups on Facebook and MSNBC.

  23. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    A Buffalo NY congressman who already has a CC permit says he will be carrying all the time now.

    Is Al Franken still releasing his anti-Republican hate book?

  24. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    The tolerant lefties were tweeting and emailing their hate filled asses off today. A GOP congress woman in NY, whose son is on his second tour in Iraq, received an email saying “1 down, 216 to go” and still another, tweeted “I hope your son comes home in a bag”. She didn’t say whether or not she asked the FBI to go have a little chat with these ignorant fucktards.

  25. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    Is the SLPC going to label MSNBC as a hate group?

    What? Why is everyone laughing?

  26. mnbubba Avatar
    mnbubba

    Maybe its time to start playing by the Chicago Rules
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qQ17UnJk_Y

  27. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Every time somebody makes the profoundly ignorant point that Emery made, I make the same offer. Buy this book. Read it. I will reimburse you for the cost, out of my own pocket. If you don’t understand mental health law in the United States, then you cannot comment intelligently on gun control. I’m looking at you, Emery. Buy the book.

    https://www.amazon.com/My-Brother-Ron-Personal-Deinstitutionalization-ebook/dp/B008E0LRQE

  28. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Scott Adams says the shooter was radicalized by the mainstream media.
    I think he is on to something. The so-called “unbiased” media, using the public airwaves, is driving the Left to frothing, violent madness. I have never in my life seen mainstream journalists so eagerly and openly incite hatred for a president and a political party — and I am old enough to remember Nixon (barely).
    The WaPo, owned by a billionaire who makes Trump look like a welfare case, is the worst, likely because Trump criticized Bezos by name.

  29. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Looking at the snippets of the perp’s (former) Facebook page, it strikes me that if we simply figure out where he’s getting his bile, we’ve got some hate groups–though I’d be pleasantly surprised if the SPLC listed them. They are distinctly to the left of CNN and MSNBC, as scary as the mass media are.

  30. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    JD, Clayton’s My Brother Ron book resonates with me, having seen a close friend go into that cycle in his teenage years. His family could keep things mostly under control with close supervision until he became “an adult” and was allowed to (not) manage his symptoms as he desired. The results were tragic: he knifed his mother badly, and while she recovered he was criminally committed when he should have been in an institution well before that.

  31. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    Dana Milbank, in his latest column, throws the DSM at Trump

    In the 60s and 70s that was a serious manual. But in the 80s it became a political statement, controlled by a radical political element. My father, who taught counseling psych, gave up on it before he retired. He basically threw his hands up and said that the PC connected folks had made a mockery of what was once a valuable standard.

  32. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    When legislators refuse to change gun control laws, the counterargument that they’re ignoring victims of gun violence because it does not affect the legislators will be harder to make.

    Americans choose to live with guns and gun violence. It is not an ignorant policy decision; I think most Americans are aware of the ramifications of that policy. This is the status quo that the majority of Americans choose to have. To understand why is to understand much of the American psyche.

  33. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    “Americans choose to live with guns and gun violence”

    Well, no – violence of all types chooses to live with us, in our fractious, heterogenous society. We choose guns because they are a prudent response to some of that violence.

    “This is the status quo that the majority of Americans choose to have. To understand why is to understand much of the American psyche.”

    It’s not that complicated. People act in their best interests. Guns in the hands of the law-abiding citizen help deter crime. They contribute to the sense that one has taken prudent measures to see to one’s own safety – which itself is an important thing.

    They are told otherwise – but who are they going to believe, the Violence Policy Center or their own lying eyes?

    It’s a conceit of Big State (left or right being irrelevant) that the peasants are too stupid to make such decisions for themselves. Understanding why we peasants reject that helps one understand The American Psyche.

  34. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Emery, that’s silly. When it comes to crime, you’ve got two Americas, really; suburbs and rural America, and urban centers and a few pockets of meth. The former has murder rates about as low as those of Japan or anywhere in Europe.

    The latter has been suffering under state-supported illegitimacy, and hence those doing most of the killing and dying are precisely those whose fathers (a) were not around to teach them how to use a gun safely (hence the John Woo grip) and (b) were not around to teach them the consequences of using one unsafely.

  35. Troy Avatar
    Troy

    “Gun Control” groups are the people responsible for ignoring victims of gun violence.
    Their focus is removing the power of every citizen to defend themselves.
    They do so by exploiting victims, so more victims is not a downside in their eyes.

  36. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Emery, Hodgkinson attempted the political assassination of a group of GOP congressmen because he has been instructed by the elite of society that they were as good as murderers themselves, and the future of the nation was in peril. You can’t dispute this — you have never actually disputed any of my arguments against the anti-Trump hysteria.

  37. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Emery – I checked my records. I haven’t sent you any money. I conclude you haven’t read the book and therefore do not understand the subject you’re talking about.

    A person who insists on maintaining his own ignorance in defiance of all offers to educate him is an idiot.

  38. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    If you are into the correlation equals causation game, the most readily identifiable correlation with gun violence isn’t the availability of guns, it is the age, sex, and race of the sample population. Most gun violence offenders (and victims) are members of an identifiable underclass. 60+ years old white men going on a shooting spree is as rare a thing in the US as it is in places with draconian gun control laws.
    Gee, you never see that in the papers. Maybe they are working with “alternative facts”?

  39. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    MP; I’ll give you age and sex, but it actually turns out that “marital status of parents at birth” is a better proxy for criminality than race. Poor b**tards without dads in the house grow up to be criminal b**tards, sad to say.

  40. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    MBerg: You imply that the current state of affairs is the natural outcome of sensible decisions by free citizens, yet the American system of gun control is unlike that of any other advanced democracy. You may claim that is because those other countries lack sensible voters, but I lean more towards the idea that Americans differ in their attitudes and priorities, in ways that other countries’ citizens don’t find sensible at all, but which most Americans are comfortable with.

    I’ve lived in other countries. I’ve had some experience trying to bridge the cognitive gap for non-Americans who don’t understand why Americans don’t want strict gun controls. Most non-Americans find it hard to grasp.

  41. Ian in Iowa Avatar
    Ian in Iowa

    I’ve had some experience trying to bridge the cognitive gap for non-Americans who don’t understand why Americans don’t want strict gun controls. Most non-Americans find it hard to grasp.

    Proving what? That you can’t explain it? Could your own biases make you pitch an unpersuasive argument? Were the non-Americans receptive a different point of view?

    My best friend and her husband live in Germany, and a couple of years ago, he attacked the Second Amendment and the NRA for the actions of someone who murdered others in cold blood, someone who, by legal definition, could not stand behind the 2A– their free exercise of constitutional rights only extends so far as they do not deprive someone else of their constitutional rights. But I knew how much success I was going to have with my counter-argument the moment he called me a “cowboy.”

    In my experience, tribalism is an issue the world over. In Europe, for instance, many are hanging on to centuries-old grudges, so the inability to persuade them of the merits of a different approach to solving problems is not surprising.

  42. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Most non-Americans find it hard to grasp.
    Which “advanced democracies” are you speaking of? The ones that endorsed fascism or Stalinism 80 years ago?
    The idea that other nations have something to teach the US about how to run a democracy is ludicrous. They are tossing out democracy and turning over their nations to be ruled by a non-Democratic aristocracy called the EU. You, Emery, were appalled when the Brits voted to get out of the EU.

  43. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Here’s the reality: Brexit was a fantasy sold by shameless chancers who had no problem lying to the British public because they believed, right up until the result was announced, that the British wouldn’t collectively be stupid enough to vote to leave.

    Not only has May destabilized the current situation, laughably undermined her own position, demonstrated a total denial of the outcome, and demonstrated a lust for power unmatched by any personal capacity to deploy it usefully but she’s also taken the UK one large step down the path towards Trumpdom. The big question now is: when will May start tweeting incoherent lies at 3:00 am? Apparently that’s the mark of a truly great leader and May is desperate for any illusion she can cling to.

  44. TheFedSucks Avatar
    TheFedSucks

    “Brexit was a fantasy…”

    Emery, why are you so enamored of the no-account bloated political superstructures over there? There are plenty of thoughtful people that think they do more harm than good.

    “The EU is just a banana republic with nukes at this point.” LOL

  45. TheFedSucks Avatar
    TheFedSucks

    Also, May sucks. She’s unprincipled.

  46. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Why did Booth assassinate Lincoln?
    Inadequate gun control laws.
    Sounds stupid when you put it that way, but this is the argument many on the Left are making after a loony Lefty tried to assassinate the entire GOP congressional leadership.

  47. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Woolly: Why does Trump keep referring to himself as a “witch”?

    MBerg: Good one! Enjoy the rest of your summer and continued success with your blog.

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