A seeming lone gun nut sends threatening, ricin-laced letters to New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and U.S. President Barack Obama.
“What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you” is a typical line. “. . . Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional God given right.”
Hmm. Perhaps one difference between the letter-sender and most Americans who support the right to bear arms is that the latter would never prepare threatening poison-laced letters?
That’s merely common sense, though; and some editorialists and other opinion-lock-and-loaders lurched to another “obvious” conclusion. Clearly, they intimated, we have a gun nut allied in his nuttiness with Americans who also cite the Second Amendment provided by the gun-nut Founding Fathers.
Guilt by association is a fallacy in any case. But there were at least two motives for writing such a letter. One, to assert a right to bear arms in so wacky and threatening a way that, presumably unbeknownst to one’s wacky self, one proves that one should be allowed nowhere near guns. Two, to frame an estranged, pro-gun-rights husband.
Shannon Richardson, an actress best known for playing a zombie on TV, told the FBI that her pro-gun-rights husband was probably the culprit. But mounting evidence soon pointed to her, not her husband. Uh oh . . .
My conclusion? Many opinion-bearers should be a little more thoughtful and a little less zombie-like when taking ideological aim.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.