Craziness all right.... Dem defends their target symbols

[bemused_leftist]

A person known to be mentally disturbed easily buys a gun that shoots 31 bullets -- and what is everyone talking about? Chain store logos vs viewfinder marks.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2011/01/gabrielle-giffords-tim-pawlenty-2012-presidential-race-/1
“The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for example, used red bull’s eyes on a map to show the GOP candidates in its sights. Ryan Rudominer, a spokesman for the DCCC, told the Palm Beach Post over the weekend that the Democratic map was not threatening since it used an image that is also associated with Target, the national retail chain.”

Comments

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

The lengths to which people are going in order to insist that when *their* side uses targeting imagery, it doesn't mean anything and is not threatening in the slightest, is intensely amusing and a bit scary.

In your own journal, the insistence that "that map didn't have a target over ARIZONA" is so shrilly insistent that it calls attention to its own mediocrity as an argument, and it of course begs the question of how (not whether, but HOW) the dodge would have come had it been a politician in a state that *was* targeted by the DNC map.

That said--the RNC has routinely been pushing the rhetoric to new levels. Of course warlike imagery and rhetoric is used in politics--they're called "campaigns" because the push to power used to be by means of military, not political, campaigns--but somewhere, I think, the RNC has gone beyond the use of generalized and common imagery to direct threats and incitements to violence.

Which is, of course, protected under the First Amendment, at least to the level where it's currently stayed. Still, I find it difficult to believe that a Democratic leader could call for "second amendment solutions" without being severely scolded, toned down, and possibly ostracized.

Having said that,

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I've been following these posts, and it has made me think about things.

Violence in America is complex and pervasive throughout our history and while I think the paranoid style in American right wing politics is toxic, dangerous, unethical and overused - but the idea casuality is subject to interpretation and agendas.

The gun this guy used, however, was heavily regulated for at least a decade until the legislation lapsed. Not that he might not have used another, but it seems like there's some concrete harm reduction to be had there.