Why are Conservative Pundits/Websites Inciting Violence with Lies on Gun Control?

UPDATE - 3:13 p.m., 1/12/13:  Looks like we were not the only ones questioning the comments of Yeager about going out shooting people if gun control was passed according to Raw Story:

The CEO of a weapons and tactical training company has had his gun permit suspended by the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security after he published a video on YouTube in which he threatened to “start killing people” if President Obama pushes forward with increased gun control, reported News Channel 5. 

James Yeager, who heads the Tennessee-based company Tactical Response, issued a video Thursday in which he said, “I was mad when I said it” and “probably allowed my mouth to overrun my logic” but does not retract his statements. He admits he cut his controversial video by eliminating the part where he says he will “start killing people.” He claims he does not “condone anybody doing anything rash” or “committing any kind of felonies, up to and including aggravated assaults and murders, unless its necessary. Right now, it’s not necessary.”

Could this be the beginning of sanity and common sense returning to the discussion of gun control?


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On the weekend of the President's Inauguration and the celebration of Martin Luther King, along comes the hard right gun extremist with their "Gun Appreciation Day" which could not be more inappropriate, but it shows how the statement 'clinging to guns' is appropriate.  The hard right is going to celebrate "Gun Appreciation Day" on January 19th while some of them are calling for a revolution if there are any changes to gun laws?  NRA at work?

“The Obama administration has shown that it is more than willing to trample the Constitution to impose its dictates upon the American people,” said Gun Appreciation Day chairman Larry Ward in a press release.  (My Note:  Is 'dictates' a code word from the hard right?)

Some of these people believe they have the right to own and use any type of gun or firearm including having a tank or bazooka in their backyard.  How do I know?  Been in heated discussions with them for years on sites and even in person here in Oklahoma at a GOP meeting.  Some on a website I used to belong wanted to set up machine guns on the border and gun down anyone coming across which even was too much for the owner of the site who took down the thread -- afraid of law enforcement was my guess.

I imagine the gun toting hard right will be up early on the 19th to celebrate "Gun Appreciation Day" and probably shoot off a few shots into the air.  Never figured out shooting bullets into the air to celebrate because what goes up, come down.  I wouldn't be caught outside on New Year's Eve for any reason at midnight and neither would my dog.

The language of revolution that we are hearing out of talk show hosts like Hannity and others is mind boggling:

Hannity Says States May Secede If "Radicalized, Abusive Federal Government" Continues On Its Path 

Hannity: "If [Secession] Is So Radical, Then Read The Declaration Of Independence. It's A Radical Document"

A little background is in order on secession which Hannity seems to have missed:


Why all the revolutionary language talk when the Supreme Court ruled with a majority opinion in an 1869 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Texas v. White, to consider. The ruling in essence declared that a state can’t secede. following the Civil War that states cannot secede from the United States.

Found this article from the Business Insider very interesting on ability of states to secede:

In the wake of President Obama's reelection, residents in a host of states have expressed a desire to "secede" from the United States.
You can find petitions for the idea on the White House's website.
The concept crops up after most U.S. elections — you'll recall some Vermonters asked to secede after President Bush's reelection in 2004.
But can states actually secede?
Not without a fight.
And we all know how that ended. 

(snip)

Are there any modern examples of states attempting to forcefully ignore federal law? Say, failing to implement school integration? Arkansas tried that in 1957, and failed. 

What about Texas, which according to legend retains its own special secession clause? Supreme Court Justice Salmon P. Chase settled that question all the way back in 1869:

When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.

The White House shot down these petitions to secede this week according to CBS:

The White House politely shot down the secession petitions circulating on the White House petition website late Friday, dashing the hopes of malcontents who have submitted petitions to allow their states to withdraw from the union in the wake of President Obama's reelection last November. 

"Democracy can be noisy and controversial. And that's a good thing," wrote Jon Carson, director of the White House's Office of Public Engagement. "Free and open debate is what makes this country work...But as much as we value a healthy debate, we don't let that debate tear us apart." 

Carson offered the would-be secessionists a history lesson, explaining that the Constitution guarantees "the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot - a right that generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not provide a right to walk away from it."

He also invoked the sad history of the Civil War as a cautionary tale for those who would so casually seek a repeat of our bloodiest conflict, writing, "More than 600,000 Americans died in a long and bloody civil war that vindicated the principle that the Constitution establishes a permanent union between the States." 

"So let's be clear," Carson wrote, "No one disputes that our country faces big challenges, and the recent election followed a vigorous debate about how they should be addressed."
"We will need to work together - and hear from one another - in order to find the best way to move forward."

People like Hannity are inflaming the hard right who by all accounts have some people who wouldn't think twice of taking to the streets with armed insurrection.  He is feeding that fear among some unbalanced people who frankly are scary to regular citizens of both parties.  Talk about unbalanced, here is one for you from none other than the NRA's Wayne LaPierre:

NRA's Wayne LaPierre Used Right-Wing Media's Nazi Comparison To Warn Of "Mass Executions Of Gun Owners" 

Conservatives in media have been quick to draw comparisons between the Obama administration's reported proposals to crack down on gun violence and the actions of Adolf Hitler to suggest that President Obama will engage in firearm confiscation. These historically inaccurate comparisons owe part of their genesis to the National Rifle Association, which has compared proposals to regulate firearms to orders during the Holocaust. 

In his book, America Disarmed: Inside the U.N. & Obama's Scheme to Destroy the Second Amendment, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre likened the United Nations Small Arms and Light Weapons Destruction Day, held on July 9, 2001, to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels' order that books authored by Jews be publicly burned.

LaPierre then suggested that the burning of guns could "help set the stage for mass executions of gun owners" just as Goebbels' order precipitated the mass killing of Jews. 

My first take was that LaPierre is psycho but then a friend said "crazy like a fox" and on a second look, she is probably right.  He is a lobbyist for the manufacturers of guns and ammo at $1M a year so what better way to sell more weapons and ammo then play the Joseph Goebbel's card along with just like Hitler and Nazi Germany, the Federal Government is coming to take your guns.  What a load of Bravo Sierra when you can equate, enforcing background checks on all gun/ammo sales with taking your guns.  Now that is a reach and a flat out lie.

If the gun show here today at the Fairgrounds is any indication, plenty of gun/ammo sales are being transacted with no background checks or I was told even a verification of ID.  That is freaky!  Why is the NRA opposed to background checks of any guns bought at gun shows?  Right now private owners can sell with no ID/background checks.  That gun show loophole needs closed like yesterday.

The New York Times' Charles M. Blow gives more information on the Revolutionary Language being used in the United States today.  Why all the hate rhetoric?  Is it because the Republican white southern males lost another election to a black for President?  That is the way it seems as southern Senators like Lindsey Graham and now Jeff Sessions don't like anyone that Obama nominates for his cabinet with Graham's attacks on Hagel for DoD and now Sessions attacks on Lew for Treasury Secretary. What is going on with the southern white males who are against anything that Obama is for?

When President George W Bush was nominating people to be in his cabinet, Democrats were told by some of the same people to sit down and shut up as the President has a right to nominate who he wants including the wife of the Majority Leader at the time Mitch McConnell.  The word went out that you don't filibuster cabinet appointees -- now with the shoe is on the other foot, the GOP won't hesitate to filibuster.  The word Hypocrites comes to mind.

This article from the NY Times says it all about all the rhetoric wanting people to take to the streets and my biggest question is why advocating this is not being a traitor?

Revolutionary Language 

By CHARLES M. BLOW 

Published: January 11, 2013 

Listen closely.  

That sound you hear is the sound of a cultural paranoia by people who have lost their grip on the reins of power, and on reality, and who fear the worst is coming.

And they are preparing for it, whatever it may be — a war, a revolution, an apocalypse.
These extremists make sensible, reasonable gun control hard to discuss, let alone achieve in this country, because they skew the conversations away from common-sense solutions on which both rational gun owners and non-gun owners can agree.

These people, a vocal minority, have extreme fears — gun confiscation, widespread civil instability, a tyrannical government — from which they are preparing to defend themselves with arsenals of weapons and stockpiles of ammunition.

If you pay attention to the right-wing’s rhetoric, you can hear a string of code words that feed the fears of these people and paralyze progress.

A collection of conservative groups have declared Jan. 19, during the weekend celebrating President Obama’s inauguration and Martin Luther King’s Birthday, as Gun Appreciation Day.

(snip) 

Andrew P. Napolitano, a Fox News analyst, said in a video posted Thursday on the network’s GretaWire blog: “Here’s the dirty little secret about the Second Amendment, the Second Amendment was not written in order to protect your right to shoot deer, it was written to protect your right to shoot tyrants if they take over the government. How about chewing on that one.” 

He went even further in a piece in The Washington Times, saying that the Second Amendment “protects the right to shoot tyrants, and it protects the right to shoot at them effectively, with the same instruments they would use upon us.” 

Who are Napolitano’s tyrants here? Is this government takeover theoretical, imminent, in progress or a fait accompli?

(snip) 

As the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a Spring 2012 report, the number of so-called patriot groups surged after Barack Obama was first elected president. 

“The swelling of the Patriot movement since that time has been astounding,” the report said. “From 149 groups in 2008, the number of Patriot organizations skyrocketed to 512 in 2009, shot up again in 2010 to 824, and then, last year, jumped to 1,274.” 

(According to the center, “Generally, Patriot groups define themselves as opposed to the ‘New World Order,’ engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines.”)  

The center also points out: “Fears of impending gun control or weapons confiscations, either by the government or international agencies, also run rampant in antigovernment circles. As a result, many antigovernment activists believe that being well armed is a must. The militia movement engages in paramilitary training aimed at protecting citizens from this feared impending government crackdown.”

That’s why it is both shocking and predictable that James Yeager, the C.E.O. of a Tennessee company that trains civilians in weapons and tactical skills, posted a video online Wednesday (since removed but still viewable at rawstory.com) saying he was going to start killing people if gun control efforts moved forward. He said, and I quote: 

“I’m telling you that if that happens, it’s going to spark a civil war, and I’ll be glad to fire the first shot. I’m not putting up with it. You shouldn’t put up with it. And I need all you patriots to start thinking about what you’re going to do, load your damn mags, make sure your rifle’s clean, pack a backpack with some food in it and get ready to fight.” 

Again, calling the “patriots” to arms is, I think, no accident. 

Chew on that.

Excerpt:  Read More at NY Times 

James Yeager comments on killing people sent chills up my spine after looking at his eyes which are cold.  Taking to the streets to shoot people seems to be something he would be happy to do from his comments.  What makes these people tick?  Are they so far gone that they cannot reason and believe anything they are told by the right wing media even when it is lies?  Could it be they this racist because we have a black President who they don't consider to be legitimate and the far right pundits play off of this hate to get them stirred up even more to make more money?

Whatever is causing this hate needs to stop now before something tragic happens in this Country and more people are killed.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with background/ID checks on sale of guns/ammo.  Might want to look at anyone who declares that the 2nd amendment guarantees them the right to buy any weapon with no checks.  Even Conservative Justice Scalia doesn't agree a person has the right to buy any weapon they want and the Government has no right to enact gun control laws:

Congress arguably screwed up when it let a ban on many semiautomatic weapons expire back in 2004. 

But in a 2008 opinion that struck down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban, Justice Antonin Scalia suggested the Second Amendment shouldn't stop the U.S. from barring certain weapons.
Scalia, a strict interpreter of the Constitution, said there's an "important limitation" on the right to bear arms. 

"We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of 'dangerous and unusual weapons'," Scalia wrote, in an opinion first cited by UPI over the weekend. 

Scalia reiterated that sentiment in July of this year when he told Fox News Sunday that the Second Amendment leaves room for federal gun control legislation.

Read more:  Business Insider

When you get statements like this from Justice Scalia who is very conservative, you know the likes of the NRA leaders, Hannity, and Patriot groups are on the wrong side of history.