Why we need gun control — a man who sheltered some Sandy Hook elementary students on the day of the mass shootings is being harassed by Sandy Hook truthers.
don’t know what to do,” sighed Gene Rosen. “I’m getting hang-up calls, I’m getting some calls, I’m getting emails with, not direct threats, but accusations that I’m lying, that I’m a crisis actor, ‘how much am I being paid?’” Someone posted a photo of his house online. There have been phony Google+ and YouTube accounts created in his name, messages on white supremacist message boards ridiculing the “emotional Jewish guy,” and dozens of blog posts and videos “exposing” him as a fraud. One email purporting to be a business inquiry taunted: “How are all those little students doing? You know, the ones that showed up at your house after the ‘shooting’. What is the going rate for getting involved in a gov’t sponsored hoax anyway?”
On the day of the shooting, Mr. Rosen found six small children and a bus driver on his front lawn. The children said their teacher was dead. He took them in, talked to them, gave them snacks, and called their parents. He gave some interviews after, and the truther mob went after him.
Numerous YouTube videos have been upload that purport to ‘expose’ his ‘lies.’
One man, posting under the name Police State Radio, posted a 15-minute video in which he claimed at least one of the Sandy Hook victims was killed in Rosen’s basement.
‘She was sacrificed in the house, in gene’s house,’ the man says.
This mob is made up of the same people who think they must be allowed to carry concealed firearms anywhere they go and have unfettered access to military weapons. Oh, and in their minds they are “patriots” and “law abiding citizens” who believe they must be armed to defend themselves against “bad guys.”
The NRA likes to frame the gun rights debate in terms of “law-abiding citizens” versus “criminals.” And I’m saying it’s not the professional criminals who scare me. I’ve never in my life been threatened by a gun-toting mobster. But I’ve had a few run-ins with armed hotheads who considered themselves to be “law-abiding citizens” and in fact probably did not have criminal records. But they also lacked heads that were screwed on all the way or as much sense as God gave pop tarts.
There are news stories saying that the President is poised to move forward on a comprehensive gun control package. The package could include some executive orders, which could include such measures as actually prosecuting people who lie on their background checks. Naturally, the usual whackjobs think this is tyranny and want President Obama impeached.
Polls show that support for and opposition to gun control falls along demographic lines; basically, we’re looking at middle-aged and older white men without college degrees versus almost everybody else. Groups most supportive of gun control include younger people of all races, college-educated women, and racial minorities. Josh Marshall prints a letter from a reader —
I view gun control from the prism of the gender wars. It’s a last-gasp attempt by lower-income men to hold onto some shred of self-respect: at least a capacity for autonomous violence, if they are left with nothing else.
And they are being left with nothing else, since the job market is increasingly feminized on all but the highest levels, most remaining male-gendered work (except uniformed public service) is increasingly losing income and status, and patriarchy is no longer a particularly strong legal or cultural norm. This is responsible for many things: almost all bad. I call it the Scots-Irishization of lower-income white men.
If it’s respect they want, they might want to stop acting like a pack of rabid hyenas, or buggier than road kill in August.