From TPM Reader ZC …
It’s a truism that people in the west are accustomed to seeing firearms carried around. Having spent all of my life in the west and the majority in rural Arizona, I can say that yes, it’s a common site to see trucks and ATVs with gun racks. However, the fact that most of the people I knew growing up owned and used hunting rifles is a very different thing to walking around the downtown area of a major city carrying a sidearm or an assault rifle. An AR-15 is a symbol, for gun advocates as well as opponents. I remember during the 2006 election there were people in Tucson hanging out at polling places in hispanic communities carrying visible sidearms and asking voters about their immigration status. Make no mistake, this isn’t about “gun culture” or being comfortable with firearms. This is about intimidation – visibly carrying a firearm – especially one designed specifically for killing human beings is a not-at-all veiled threat, and is meant to silence opposition. Yes, Arizona’s outdated laws technically allow them to do it, but laws on the books also prohibit unmarried couples from cohabiting and define a group of women living together as a brothel.
It’s important point. There’s a big difference between gun enthusiasts who use them for hunting, target practice or just self-defense and these kooks who think it’s a good idea to show up at political rallies or protests with firearms. Read More
We’re getting more background on that guy with the AR-15 assault rifle outside the Obama event in Phoenix. Turns out it was two guys who knew each other from working on the Ron Paul campaign — small world, right? And they told the local police ahead of time what they were going to do because they wanted to avoid what happened the last time they did something like this back in their 90s era militia days. There’s also a right wing talk radio angle. Read the whole story.
Late Update: One fun extra detail: the guy who planned the whole says he was motivated in part by William Kostric, the guy who brought the gun to event last week in New Hampshire.
Slideshow: Behind the Scenes, Summer at the White House, Part II
[ed.note: Be sure to see ‘Latter Update’ below.]
We’ve still got the on-going questions about whether NJ Gov candidate Chris Christie pushed political prosecutions as US Attorney to keep on Karl Rove’s good side and pave the way for his run for governor. Now comes word that the hold-over acting US Attorney who took for Christie (a Bush era appointee for the ‘acting’ slot) is himself now facing an internal investigation into whether he politicized a recent corruption investigation to aide Christie’s campaign and hurt Gov. Corzine.
Late Update: A further detail. According to the notification at the time of his appointment, Marra, the Acting US Attorney, is actually a registered Democrat. He was, however, Christie’s top aide since 2002.
Latter Update: I was not clear enough on this in my initial post. According to the report from the AP, the investigation is not into the conduct of the investigation itself but rather into public comments Marra made at the news conference announcing the investigation. The question being whether his comments (you can see the precise words here) were aimed at or had the effect of spinning the indictments as a rationale for Christie’s campaign against Corzine. That’s plenty worth investigating but is certainly qualitatively different, if true, from politicizing and thus tainting the investigation itself.
It was only a matter of time.
While “Chris” was the guy who carried around the assault rifle at the Obama event in Phoenix yesterday, it appears to have been another guy, Ernest Hancock, who organized the whole thing. And Hancock, who was also on the scene with a holstered handgun, turns out to have had very close ties to a 90s-era Arizona militia group called the ‘Viper Militia’ most of whose members were eventually sent to federal prison on various weapons and explosives charges tied to plans to bomb federal buildings.
Sound familiar.
In other words, the Viper Militia folks were sort of Tim McVeigh also-rans from back in the glory days. Hancock, though not indicted himself, was their main public advocate. He was clearly close to these folks while they were plotting. And now he’s the guy coming up with the idea to send a bunch of guys with guns to greet President Obama. Feel better now?
Justin Elliott has the full story.
TPM Reader MG:
You were right on … in your post “Troubled History.” I thought you were especially sharp to draw a loose comparison between substance addiction behavior and the American right’s relationship to violence because it really does seem that there is an element of “they know not what they do” involved in this. It is compulsive, but not entirely self-aware.
You have to be pretty warped to see a straight line from Waco through Oklahoma City and 9/11 to … health care reform.