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 Attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan (courtesy law3.umkc.edu)

TTAG reader JK emailed the following list to me. For all I know it’s an ancient internet meme but it’s the first time I’ve seen it. What’s your take? Are Democrats more deadly than Republicans?

In 1865 a Democrat shot and killed Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States ..

In 1881 a left wing radical Democrat shot James Garfield, President of the United States  who later died from the wound.

In 1963 a radical left wing socialist shot and killed John F. Kennedy, President of the United States.

In 1975 a left wing radical Democrat fired shots at Gerald Ford, President of the United States . . .

In 1983 a registered Democrat shot and wounded Ronald Reagan, President of the United States.

In 1984 James Hubert, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 22 people in a McDonalds restaurant.

In 1986 Patrick Sherrill, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 15 people in an Oklahoma post office.

In 1990 James Pough, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 10 people at a GMAC office.

In 1991 George Hennard, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 23 people in a Luby’s cafeteria.

In 1995 James Daniel Simpson, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 5 coworkers in a Texas laboratory.

In 1999 Larry Asbrook, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 8 people at a church service.

In 2001 a left wing radical Democrat fired shots at the White House in a failed attempt to kill George W. Bush, President of the US.

In 2003 Douglas Williams, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 7 people at a Lockheed Martin plant.

In 2007 a registered Democrat named Seung – Hui Cho, shot and killed 32 people in Virginia Tech.

In 2010 a mentally ill registered Democrat named Jared Lee Loughner, shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed 6 others.

In 2011 a registered Democrat named James Holmes, went into a movie theater and shot and killed 12 people.

In 2012 Andrew Engeldinger, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 7 people in Minneapolis.

In 2013 a registered Democrat named Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people, mostly children, in a school.

As recently as Sept 2013, an angry Democrat shot 12 at a Navy ship yard.

One could go on, but you get the point, even if the media does not.  Clearly, there is a problem with Democrats and guns. Not one NRA member, Tea Party member, nor Republican conservative was involved in these shootings and murders.

ONLY SOLUTION:  It should be illegal for Democrats to own guns.

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243 COMMENTS

  1. Even more pertinent, these were mostly Communists, of which Democrat is an interchangeable term.

    • That is a ridiculous statement.

      Until the early 20th century, Democrats were the party of small government, individual liberty, and states’ rights.
      In the South, supporters of small government and states’ rights stayed with the Democratic party for most of the 20th century, because the Republicans were the party of Lincoln.

      Statists are statists, whether they have an R or a D next to their names.

      • True, until the 1968 convention. What few realize is that the protests were meant to overthrow the Establishment Democrats and replace them with the communist running the party today.

        • In 1968, the establishment Democrats were the same CFR dominated blue bloods that have run the party since Wilson and run the party today.

          Communists don’t support massive subsidies to corporations with strong political connections. Those are fascists.

      • Your statement is ridiculous. Democrats have always been the party of slavery and oppression. Play all the semantics you want, the “statists” are Communists at their core.

        • You’re mistaking Democrats for fascists and totalitarians. And it’s true of either side of the aisle. They don’t write laws, their corporate sponsors do.

      • With an exception of the first two examples, all the following ones take place when demorats were firmly identified as statist scum championing big government, fewer checks and balances, and wealth redistribution. Don’t worry it’s not like the religious right hijacking the Republican party is anything worth commending but communists are far worse than religious morons. Their tyranny knows no bounds.

      • >> Until the early 20th century, Democrats were the party of small government, individual liberty, and states’ rights.

        You mean, like the Confederation? Which wrote slavery into its federal constitution, and required that all member states toe the line?

        States rights my ass.

        • Funny the Democrats were the ones that despite wanting slavery wanted the right to succeed from the union and be their own nations and I think we would have a lot less crap today if it were succeeded.

          The republicans have their factories and industry as their own nations and the Democrats have their own slave nations to the south with a *invisible* border in the middle.

      • Abraham Lincoln in general was one of the best Presidents but his big fault that fooked him was being pro Centralization which didn’t help our nation. He wanted a strong central gonvernment with strong government unions instead of strong state rights.

      • Not even close to true. Democrats have always been about taking freedoms away. Freedoms withheld during slavery which they supported to the point of cessation from the United States, withholding freedom to life for the pre-born. Withhold the freedom to pursue your dreams by over regulation of many industries.

    • Whichever side of the political spectrum you are on, it is illogical and foolish to argue the point about Democrats being left-leaning socialist/communist statists.

      Democrats unwilling to accept this fact are delusional.

      One needs only to read to stated goals of the Communist Manifesto and compare them to the official political platform of the Democrat party since the early 20th century and you will see that they are in almost every case identical.

      This cannot be a coincidence.

      • Funny thing is more terrorism has happened under Republicans. Both sides are corrupt as hell but Democrats use less violent techniques and prefer the shadows while Republicans *who want the Amero dollar and Petro Dollar* are like an open book which is why they are easily called out.

        Democrats have a lot of pull and are able to *cook the books* to hide their records which Republicans don’t do a good enough job of in my humble opinion making them paint targets on themselves.

        I refuse to vote Republican because they tend to hire the most violent wackos and make their party look bad on media which takes every chance to throw a jab at them.

        Personally I think they work together and we NEED to end cross voting. If you are a Republican you stick to the Elephant. If you are a Democrat you stick to the donkey. No cross breeding allowed! Genetic modifications just don’t look cool.

        • Wow you truly are delusional and divisive. Do you really believe that a republican cannot support ideas of a democrat or a democrat cannot support ideas of a republican? Your post has proven that, to you, it is the “Party” and not the ideas. You are the kind of person who votes for a party member instead of what that party member believes and will fight for. That mindset is extremely dangerous and the perfect way to lose the republic. The majority of Republicans are left leaning. Have you ever heard the term RINO (Republican in name only)? They are liberals dressed in conservative clothing because they know they can get your vote and then push their agenda as a Conservative idea. As to the Topic of this article. It is very disingenuous to list only democrat killers to prove your point. How about actually listing statistics for both Liberals and Conservatives. This article only proves the extreme bias of the writer. It is the equivalent of the conservative New York Times. When reading articles like this, it is important to remember that Correlation is not equal to Causation.

    • The man who killed Garfield was a registered Republican. He felt betrayed by Garfield after helping the republican nominee win the election

    • Indeed. And while there is no love lost on my part for Liberals specifically and Democrats in general, I would be interested in seeing the corresponding list for Republicans. Intellectual honesty demands it, otherwise this smacks of cherry picking.

      • As with lots of things, asking is cheap. An actually curious guy would go look it up himself.

        • He who makes the claims needs to back them up and that is only done by cross examination which this site fails strongly and should get a T grade for Troll.

          A court case that isn’t botched heavily uses cross examination to determine the next course of action or no action.

      • It smacks of total BS, frankly.

        There’s no evidence for quite a few of these.

        Seung Hui-Cho was a permanent resident alien, for example. In some jurisdictions they are allowed to vote in local or state elections, but not nationally. Is there evidence he was even registered to vote, let alone allowed to vote, or that he EVER voted, and if he did that he was a registered democrat?

        That RF would post this on what is ostensibly a news site makes me shake my head.

        • From Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/article/the-idea-that-recent-mass-shooters-are-mostly-registered-democrats-is-a-myth

          “Since Virginia does not have partisan registration there is also no way to tell whether Seung-Hui Cho was a Democrat, but again because there is no partisan registration in the state we can say that the claim that he is a registered Democrat is FALSE. (Update: A more obvious point is that Cho was a resident alien, not a US citizen, so he was not eligible to vote in the US)”

          And so on and so forth. I mean, I get it, but if I wanted to view click-bait as news I’d hang out on Gawker.

        • Good links, Jake- see now that is what good public discourse is all about- using the facts and reason to make your case. Still, a tiny quibble- remember what Robert posits above is going way back to Lincoln, while the Examiner article is about recent shootings- in rebuttal to the Roger Hedgecock meme being circulated.

          And this is not ONLY a news site- if you have been here long at all, its editorial, its educational, its just plain entertainment, and its political. So, to attempt to define the article according to your terms is a bit of a strawman.

          Actually- I sense a bit of anger, or frustration, maybe even, defensivness-
          you wouldnt be one a those steenkinggggg Demon-crats wouldja?
          Surely you know we dont put up with them kinds a folks here…*

          speaking of click bait- dude you totally fell for it…

          */sarc off …for those of you on the left who need help finding a clue…
          lighten up…:)

        • This is below TTAG. It looks like a chain email that was just copied and pasted. It’s already known that parts of it are false and a writer worried about integrity would have done the fact checking before posting it.

          Or better yet, not post it at all.

          It’s divisive. Don’t we have enough of that swirling around in the RKBA community?
          While we’re busy setting ourselves up with Republicans against Democrats, “sportsmen” against self-loading rifle owners, and so forth, the other side is busy uniting to infringe on the RKBA little by little with the goal of subverting it entirely.

          So stop the infighting.

        • Well JakeF; It mentions Loughner as not being a registered democrat; but they don’t mention the reason he targeted Giffords was because he volunteered for her campaign and didn’t like what he saw when he was around her; disingenuous at best, out right lies at worst.

          The rest of the list is in question because it is obvious it was meant as propaganda, not true reporting of the facts.

        • Liberals, Progressives are the institutional left. They are the Enemy plain and simple.

          The Examiner is no worthy news source; if you’re quoting it you’re obfuscating.

        • Examiner.com is an awful AWFUL experience causing freezes/crashes and bombarding with way 2 many ads and auto playing videos with obnoxious sound.

          It’s as bad or worse then The Blaze a mass web browser killer.

      • Well, I see one goof– Charles Guiteau was a Republican, a member of the so-called Stalwarts faction when he shot Garfield. On the other hand, it was a radical left-winger, Leon Czolgolsz, who assassinated McKinley, that one was left off the list. Don’t know that Loughner was technically a Dem, but to the extent he had any politics they were definitely of the statist persuasion. You pretty much have to go back to Timothy McVeigh to find an actual mass killer on the other side of the political spectrum. And seriously, if any of the spree killers of late were readily identifiable with the Republican party, you don’t think that fact would be trumpeted in the mass media until everyone in America knew it? I mean, even if they aren’t, the media tries to do so anyway until the facts catch up with them (see Loughner). And it is a matter of record that the democrats, not the republicans, are actively seeking the “felon vote”. Who do you reckon comprises a more “deadly” population than felons as a class?

      • I am sure there are some, though it seems as if the Dems have cornered the market on Presidential assasinations and attempted-assasinations.

        Also, most “right wing” whackos wouldn’t be caught dead in the GOP, since it is far too mainstream to them, whereas lefties seem happy to wear two hats, or maybe the mask of a legit Democrat to cover up a far more radical agenda. I mean, Obama is friends with a guy who was a extreme left-wing terrorist in the 1960s and only avoided jail because of the FBI’s unconstitutional information collection. Please someone show me the GOP/right-wing analogue to that.

    • Is this even reliable at all? It said that Sandy Hook occurred in 2013. it was Dec. 14, 2012.

  2. Hmmm, the only one I wouldn’t be sure of is the VA Tech shooter being a dhimmi. In Virginny (lived here for 18 years), we only register to vote, not with a party.

    But to answer the question: YES.

    Next question?

    • The next question is should we trust this list? It said that A**m L***a did the Sandy Hook shooting in 2013.

  3. Well let’s be honest here. There’s probably just as many crazies that follow a Republican political creed.

    More to the point the left is more deadly than the right because an active part of their platform involves stripping the tools of self defense from the masses. And that gets people killed daily.

    • Well, give some examples; the listed mass shooters; especially in the last forty years; have been of the statist/democrat/progressive crowd; or Muslim. Also, The Weather Underground- Marxist; Malvo and his teenage accomplice -Muslim; Fort Hood, Hasan-muslim; Boston Pressure cooker bombing-muslim.

      There was the Christian man that killed the abortion doctor; People talk about Timothy McVeigh being raised Roman catholic; but he wrote the Buffalo News a day before his execution that he was agnostic. Charles Whitman was an acknowledged Roman Catholic but had a brain tumor that the doctors of the time said probably helped explain his actions.

      Other than that; there hasn’t been mass murderers of the conservative, Christian, libertarian or constitutional variety that I am aware of. If you can list otherwise, please do.

      Maybe the constant drum beat by the Liberal/progressive/ statist bent that regular people will become mass murderers with a gun in hand is based on a better understanding of their own psychosis than we could ever truly understand.

      Maybe the saying that the liberal/progressive belief system is a mental disorder is closer to being true than we realize.

      • It IS a mental disorder. Their amydala are under developed.

        This is a fact proven by science and the Anonymous Conservative gives us all of the tools we need to leverage it to our advantage.

        If you are not reading the Anonymous Conservative or watching old Breitbart or current Ben Shapiro videos you are completely missing the boat on how to beat Liberals.

        Liberals ALWAYS point to us and accuse of things for which they are guilty. It’s called projection. They are the masters at this particular form of obfuscation and false premise creation.

    • It is interesting to me that this list only includes high-profile shootings perpetrated by persons known to be or suspected of being Democrat/Liberal.

      It is interesting enough in that light, but how about even an approximate census of the prison population. Does ANYONE really expect that a thorough listing of those persons in prison for violent crimes, including armed robbery, assault and/or murder, would not show a preponderance of Democrats?

      When a Republican commits a despicable violent crime it gets huge play in the media because, #1: they are mostly Liberals and seize every opportunity to make conservatives look evil, and #2: such crimes by Liberals are so common they are no longer considered news.

      I do not have the actual statistics on prisons, but I defy anybody to prove this is not the case. And please do not give me any crap about the Aryan Nation or White supremacists in general, they are most definitely NOT Conservatives, they are extremist radicals and imbecilic bigots.

  4. When you suffer from disorganized thinking, repressed feelings and thoughts, have pent up anger and resentment and conflicts and contradictions you fail to acknowledge and resolve – that’s fertile fodder for liberal ideology.
    That is my medical opinion.

  5. Maybe if you look at it piecemeal. I try not to paint with such broad strokes. Generally speaking most conservatives I know are mad that most democrats can’t seem to stop wanting to tax everybody to death. The democrats although young and idealistic, seem to be fine with the idea of clubbing “rich people” until they give up all there money. Whether they like it or not democrats are in favor of violence in that way, but most seem to establish a mental disconnect about it. Again, I don’t like to paint in broad strokes, but this has been my experience. I also don’t associate with either party.

    • You don’t need to hmmmm for very long — CLINTON did not have an organization of skilled assassins — if any/all on that list were “rub-outs” that would have been done by the people CLINTON answers to.

      Start from there.

      Old Spook saying: “Anyone can commit a murder — but only an expert can commit a suicide”.

  6. Yes. Also, two social surveys I’ve seen indicated that 70% of felons are Democrats. Disclosure, I was a Democrat until about 1998, although I’ve always voted GOP for president.

  7. At least one more. Governor Frank Steunenberg of Idaho was assinated December 30, 1905. By a “union organizer.”

  8. “In 1963 a radical left wing socialist shot and killed John F. Kennedy, President of the United States”

    REALLY?? While we do not know for certain who DID kill JFK — at this point — we know who DID NOT with 1000.00% certainty. The firearms/ballistic evidence alone is pretty striking. &BTW: Why would someone buy a rifle mail-order — sent to an address traceable to himself — when in TX in 1963 anyone could buy a rifle for cash at any hardware store (absurdity #4,567,324).

    Modern, legitimate ebooks on the subject can take you through all the data — link by link. National Archives, Warren Commission (beyond the summary), Mary Ferrell Foundation, JFK library, LBJ library etc. Obama recently decided to NOT declassify a significant amount of remaining data.

    • Not to get into a discussion that could go on all day, but there is a lot of evidence of Oswald’s guilt. I walked around Dealey plaza and visited the Sixth floor museum just a few weeks ago. I believe the little commie did it because of JFK’s efforts against Castro. There are some odd things about how the forensic evidence was handled though.

    • You are on the wrong site. Don’t you people have your own “I was abducted by an alien and we never landed on the moon” web site?

      • Ya know the FUNNY thing about conspiracy theories? There is usually insufficient evidence to back them up as pure fact, and insufficient evidence to destroy them as pure fiction.

        That said, there are those theories that are definitely way out there, and then there are theories that have later been proven to be factual. Also, what a better way to hide some truth, but to leak a small portion of it. Just enough to make it plausible, but not enough to make it a known fact or known fiction.

        I don’t know ALL the theories out there, but there are many. I also don’t know enough to say any particular one or a group of them hold the truth as to what really happened.

    • Well Emmanuel, I can definitely see where you’re going here. Unfortunately i think that we’ll never know. However, even if it WAS a government conspiracy that went all the way to Johnson’s office we can still say that the administration was staffed by Democrats.
      So it’s really just six of one, half dozen of the other.

  9. For whatever reason, there appear to be more unhinged nut jobs per capita on the left than the right. There is a long and storied history of violent leftists. (Possibly because left wing doctrines eschew the concept of personal responsibility?) the right’s wackos tend to just be harmless (with an exception or two) and embarrassing.

  10. Well, let’s see:
    More deadly to unborn children? Check
    More deadly to citizens who need protection from armed criminals? Check
    More likely to fly off the handle and start shooting up the place? Check
    Yes, I think I see a pattern…

    • You know at some point it is to the Right’s advantage to get behind abortion rights/right to choose.

      Think about it: Who are the people having abortions? Stop thinking about it as every fertilized egg as being sacred and think of it as thinning of the left leaning herd pre-birth and the whole concept becomes quite palatable.

      • I got no problem with abortion, as long as you pay for. That is not good enough for leftards. No, they have been on a 30 year jihad to force people who DO OPPOSE abortion to pay for it.

        As for genocide against children and women, seen that sh*t, and don’t think its funny. It is happening everyday in multiple locales around the world and you can tote yourself there and have at it.

        • I am just thinking to myself if they want to volunteer themselves for abortion and eliminate the next generation of welfare queens and poverty pimps, more power to ’em.

          Why should we care more about their babies than they do? Clearly they don’t value them. So what? If they pay for it, let them do as they please. I support their choice wholeheartedly!!

  11. Don’t forget Karl Pierson, dedicated socialist, Arapahoe High School; shot and killed a fellow student when looking to kill his debate coach.

    Also add in the Family Research Council hating guy that was stopped by the security guard. He wanted to kill everyone in the building and smear Chick-Fil-A on them. He volunteered for some liberal organization.

    • While we should not forget them, they didn’t actually kill anyone. So they’re not very deadly.

  12. It’s not just the crazed assassins; its the everyday murders. Look at the murder numbers. I doubt that the young gangbangers who commit the lion’s share of violence in the US voted for Romney.

    • > I doubt that the young gangbangers who
      > commit the lion’s share of violence in the US voted.

      Fixed it for you.

      Seriously, this whole thread is click-bait and does seem below TTAG and more like something I’d read about in Snopes.

      • Except, again, it is a fact that the Dems are actively seeking to give the vote back to convicted felons in places where it is taken from them. Seems Eric Holder thinks it is a form of racial discrimination, since such a disproportionate number of those felons could pass for Obama’s sons. So at least Eric Holder sees those gangbangers as potential Dem votes.

      • Of course most weren’t even old to enough to vote. You know they weren’t rooting for Romney though.

        • Not rooting for Romney… Neither was I.

          Romney was plenty bad for gun rights and signed an assault weapons ban into law when he was governor of Massachusetts.
          Trying to choose between him or our current president was like trying to choose which toilet to drown myself in. Neither option was particularly appealing.

  13. Replace the ‘crat’ in democrat with an ‘n’.
    I would ask that you cite the findings but I’ve been around enough people to know that the run-of-the-mill democrat is not only emotionally driven, but also quite violent.

  14. Jesus, what brand of desperate click-bait hell is this?

    Teamed up with Fox News on the “we got nothin so here’s some hysterical bullshit” train?

    • “we got nothin so here’s some hysterical bullshit”

      That applies to your comment as well.

    • Blogs live or die on “clicks” and so “clickbait” is the name of the game.

      That said, as a general rule Democrats are the political class that demonizes conservatives and is most active in attempting to repeal or otherwise deny our natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. On that criteria alone it is reasonable to ask the question whether Democrats or Republicans are more dangerous or deadly.

      To question the political aspect is Troll bait.

  15. IMO, this kind of unvetted crap undermines our cause and our credibility.

    I never, ever repost, perpetuate, regurgitate, repeat, or cite stuff like this… unless I can verify EVERY SINGLE bullet point. Just ONE fallacy is all it takes. (I suspect this OLD meme is full of fallacies.)

    • Well Racer88; you said it; prove by every bullet point that the list is wrong. Otherwise; you are just trolling.

      • Trolling? By what stretch of the definition??? LOL!

        I spend a LOT of time advocating for the 2A. I have a lot of people following me on various social media sites. My reputation is one for being flawlessly FACTUAL. I am VERY careful to have my facts straight. I do not argue from emotion nor anecdote (even if it tells a “great story”).

        I have had hundreds (if not more) of debates on this topic. And, I know my enemy. If you slip one fallacy (even unwittingly) into your argument, the antis will ferret it out and hold you accountable. It undermines your credibility. And it undermines our cause.

        Even one fib among a hundred truths makes you a LIAR when it comes to debate. And, finally, when one is making a statement, it is up to THAT person to prove it’s TRUE. You can’t win a debate by saying, “My facts are right until you prove them wrong.” That’s a VERY weak position.

        A strong debater will have his facts and references handy. A person who puts up internet memes suggesting they are true until proven wrong is no debater nor advocate. (BTW, I am not implying that Robert has done that. He has simply posted a meme that’s been circulating without suggesting there is any veracity to it.)

        So, again… I’m TROLLING? Pray tell how?

        • You’re not trolling. You’re right.

          Half a dozen others have already picked out several inaccuracies.

  16. VERY generally speaking, yes. But crazy is by no means exclusive to any particular political preference, either. My personal observation, as a pshrink/history major (but not graduate), is that liberals, Democrats, and to a lesser extent authoritarian statists, do indeed commit more assassinations, murders, and other political depredations than conservatives, Republicans and to a lesser extent…libertarians. The reasoning is fairly simple and obvious – the former group is largely motivated by emotions (jealously, hatred, anger, revenge, etc) and the latter group not so much.

    Certainly, people of all persuasions can be cold and calculating and extremely dangerous – I would say that of all the above-named demographics, authoritarian statists have furnished the most homicidal, tyrannical dictators and despots of the 20th and 21st centuries, and consequently the most genocides, as opposed to individual crimes.

    Be that as may be the case, there’s little reason to be wary of an average citizen regardless of their political persuasion – it’s when ANYONE becomes vested with power that citizens need to be more wary, because power corrupts, and absolutely power corrupts absolutely. That’s always held true as long as men have walked the earth.

    Tom

    • Generally? Yes, this is a generalization, but the headline reads, “Are Democrats MORE deadly…” From a statistical standpoint if they are even 51% to 49% more deadly then this article is correct. I don’t believe it would take very much research to prove that ratio.

      And how about we look at greater historical incidents than just individual killers? How many wars have been instigated by Republican and how many by Democrats?

      The War Between the States (Civil War to the unimformed) started by southern Democrat secessionists.
      The Spanish-American War started by Teddy Roosevelt, nominally a Republican, but in reality a statist and closet fascist.
      The War to End All Wars (WW I) Woodrow Wilson, a statist and avowed fascist who admired Mussolini.
      The Second World War (WW II) Franklin Roosevelt, a die hard Progressive Liberal Democrat.
      The Korean War Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, but a centrist moderate, not a conservative.
      The Viet Nam War John F Kennedy, Democrat.

      To be sure, since Viet Nam the smaller conflicts have been mostly under Republican presidents, but the casualty rate has been dramatically less than those other wars listed.

      And it was a Democrat, Truman, who gave the order to drop those two bombs on Japan. (A good call, IMO, but still…)

  17. I think there’s something to this – people on the “left” – marxist-leninists communists, socialists, progressives- whatever the politically correct term you like-

    generally believe in the power of the group over the individual. The problem is history shows that: Power corruupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Google how many killed by communism.

    People on the “right” as its expressed in the US, generally believe in the power of the individual, and that the purpose of the state to serve that individual, without tyrrany. Call it small R republican, or neo-reagan republicans, for limited state power.

    Thats how and why the Constitution was drafted, based on the Founders experience coming to America to escape state tyrrany, of one form or another.

    2A rights are simply about defending oneself against the bad guys, until the cops show up, and potentially- for citizens to protect ourselves against the state, if it ever came to that point.

    Now, some on the left become so deranged in their frustration that others dont share their belief in the “group” and their own moral superiority in being part of the group, that they become obsessed with proving it to themselves and the world they are right. John Wilkes Booth is the perfect example.

    footnote- Robert you do like to stir the pot in this “culture war” as Ralph notes it.

    Here’s an interesting example of the the left’s thought police, and a factual response, that proves the point of defending against tyrrany comes in many forms, by another very astute observer of the culture in America, Virginia Postrel:

    http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-17/michaelangelo-s-david-has-a-right-to-bear-arms

    (h/t Instapundit)

  18. “ONLY SOLUTION: It should be illegal for Democrats to own guns.”

    No, democrats should be illegal

    • I disagree. It’s quite handy to have most of your opponents self-identify as idiots and non-critical thinkers.

      If there were no Democratic party, then they would be much harder to ID at a glance, and they would contaminate the other parties. Messy.

  19. Lefties are more emotional than conservatives, so it makes sense that they would be more likely to loose control of their emotions.

    • someone here noted “female solipsism”…

      maybe a form of that en masse is the nonsense foisted upon the college kids for the last couple of decades by leftist professors enarmored of the post-modern, transnational focaultian nonsense-

      where one expression of it is simply because I feel it, it must be so-

      you know, the politics of meaning, the narrative-

      read the article about the UC Santa Barbara prof who justified her attack on some kids protesting on the quad by saying she was “triggered” into the assault, vandalism, and other charges brought against her.

      We are dealing with some mildly unstable people on a mass scale thanks to the victim and dependency culture foisted upon the masses by the prog-tard elites – “Those Who Know Whats Best For All Of Us Little Folk” ™

      • Not only are lefties more emotional, but they believe that they can change the world and can get very frustrated when they find out just how powerless they are to do so. It always breaks down because it’s human nature to look out for your own interests. The left view human nature as something that needs to be fixed. Where the far left has succeeded they have had to force their will on an unwilling public, usually at the barrel of a gun. When the most important aspect of looking out for your own interest is staying out of the gulags, the human nature obstacle is greatly diminished. But even then it’s impossible to control every aspect of human nature. Communism failed because without motivation people will be lazy and when people are lazy they will be poor, and when you do that to an entire society the entire population will be poor. You can’t throw every lazy person in the gulags and if hard work and industriousness aren’t rewarded they won’t exist.

        Reality can be very frustrating for leftists. Conservatives are much more willing to accept their role in this world.

        • “Why do people adopt different political ideologies? How can seemingly equal intellects, presented with the same facts and circumstances disagree so vehemently over how society should be structured? What psychological undercurrents guide people to adopt Conservative or Liberal political beliefs, and where did they come from?

          The answer lies in a well known concept in biology, termed r/K Selection Theory. r/K Theory examines how all populations tend to adopt one of two psychologies as a means of adapting their behavior to the presence or absence of environmental resources. The two strategies, termed r and K, each correlate perfectly with the psychologies underlying Liberalism and Conservatism.”

          http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/sample-page/

  20. I think it also points to the intolerance of the left as well as “a “the ends justify the means” mentality. Kind of like the “We can’t wait position” of the EOs flying around for the past 5 years.

    • This. Since they dont deal in facts, they have to just keep doubling down in desperation, to prove they are right when reality and everyone around them is smacking them in the face otherwise.

      Reminds me of old whats his name, in Germany in WW2.

  21. Two glaring errors in that list: Reagan was shot in 1981, not 1983. And Lynette Fromme pointed a gun at Ford but never fired any shots.

    • Jack, Fromme did pull the trigger but she did not realize that you have to rack the slide to put a bullet in the chamber. The magazine was full. I think she had a 1911. There was plenty of video of her action. President Ford looked like he crapped hs pants when she put the gun in his face and pulled the trigger. She must have pulled the hammer back, everyone around the President heard the hammer fall on an empty chamber.

    • @Jack, I think the reference was to Sara Jane Moore, who also tried to shoot Pres. Ford. She was a notorious leftist radical who was on an FBI watch list before the shooting.

      Moore got off a shot from her revolver, which missed. She was grabbed as she attempted a second shot.

      One of her explanations for the attempt was: “The government had declared war on the left. Nixon’s appointment of Ford as vice president and his resignation making Ford president seemed to be a continuing assault on America.”

  22. Absolutely ridiculousness, this list could be easily made of r Republicans just go get the info its out there.

    i like how you “not a single republican or Tea party member was involved in these shooting”. that because they have their own list that dems are not in. and most of those people were mentally unstable, so a gun in the hands of anyone unstable will be bad dem or rep. when you start a list for Rep, dont forget to put, Dick Cheney, known Rep, vice pres and shot the face of his friend in a “hunting accident”

    • Comparing a hunting accident to a mass shooting or a presidential assassination is pretty thin gruel. And if there is such a big list of conservative/Republican shooters, find it. You surely don’t think the major media are hiding it, do you? I’ve already given you a start–McVeigh and Guiteau. Fill in the rest if you can.

      • Eric Rudolph. Still a short list. Socialists are the biggest mass murderers in history though. Hitler, Stalin, Mao. And they love that maniac piece of shit garbage Che Guevara.

  23. Well, we do know that 75% of all murders and violent crimes are committed by Americans with dark skin, and that they vote Democrat over 90% of the time, so we could say that most violent crimes are committed by Democrats. Also, I doubt they go to church on a weekly basis, so I’d say most crimes are committed by non-religious Democrats.

    Still, I’m an atheist, and I haven’t killed anybody. Yet. 😉

  24. What do you expect from the side that drives their positions and policies via emotion; “if it feels good, do ti!”, “ends justify the means”, etc.

  25. I look at it this way:

    The left says: You need to be/act/think like us or else.

    The right says: You need to leave us alone.

    One infers an attack, the other defense. It’s easy to see who is going to have a higher propensity for hate and violence. The left is fueled by conformity, hatred and bigotry.

  26. Democrats are more deadly the Republicans but it has nothing to do with this list of shooters. The Democratic Party as it is constituted today has deliberately engineered the conditions in the inner city that are responsible for the breakdown of civil society. The resulting rise in gang culture is responsible for a majority of crime and violence in the Untied States.

  27. Sounds like right wing nonsense. the democrats of the 1800’s were also considered conservative btw

    • Democrats of the 1800’s supported slavery all the way to the 1960’s. The Republican party in the 1854 was formed to fight the extension of slave owning states into new territories. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.

      Democrats have always supported the disempowerment and slavery of various peoples; blacks in the past, now, everybody else today; except for the elites in alliance with government enforcement.

  28. This left vs right bullshit is why I’m removing this site from my favorites.

    P.S. Registered Republican.

    Fuck this click-bait bullshit.

      • Will you miss him the next time a push for gun control comes to the forefront? Will you miss his voice, his vote, and the money he could add to the fight?

        Go ahead… do all you can to drive potential allies away.
        But if you do that, don’t whine when you end up all alone.

      • Communicating via comments to the authors of articles about dissatisfaction with site content is not something that should be discouraged.

  29. Doing a little journalistic slumming this morning, huh TTAG…

    Couldn’t this be construed as ad hominem attack?

    • AFAIK, not one of those shooters was a hominem. They were all heteros. Except maybe the guy with the orange hair. I’m not too sure about him.

  30. I would say both are generally weak. But the ones who try to oppress others generally snap more explosively.

  31. You can quibble over some of the examples, but not with the overall theme. Why do you think the MFM always get out in front of these news stories by trying to blame it on the TEA party or the NRA? To blunt the news they always fear is coming. And it usually does. It’s a neat little trick they learned when JFK was shot. By a socialist. A fellow true believer.

    • JFK was not socialist. Even if the Democrat party today could be called socialist, that would be an anachronism

      I do think “social liberalism” (i.e. Democrat’s liberalism as opposed to classical liberalism or conservative liberalism, e.g. GOP) leads to a disordered society and hence things like this. But Don’t tell me the guy who shot up Luby was a registered Democrat when TEXAS HAS NO PARTISAN REGISTRATION.

      • You are not quite right about that. Texas has closed primaries, in order to vote in the statewide primaries you have to register with one party or the other. In fact, that was long the excuse for a lot of conservatives who were embarrassed to be associated with the Dem party at the national level: “Oh, I’m only a Democrat so I can have a say in the local elections.”

      • JFK would have been denounced by modern Dems as being to the right of Atilla the Hun. He’s be to the right of many blue-state Republicans.

  32. The list is fake. Virginia, for example, does nnot have partisan registration. And Cho was a resident, not a citizen, and so would not be a voter, let alone a registered Democrat

    James Holmes was not registered to vote, let alone as a Democrat.

    No evidence that Lanza was a Democrat. His mother was Republican. Newtown leans Republican as well.

    I could go on. One must also observe the huge difference ideologically from the Democrat party of Booth and that of say Clinton. No real connection other than name there.

    This list is shameless garbage, and is just one big lie. What happened to the truth about guns here?

    • Josh,
      The agenda of booths democrats and Clintons and Obama is the same “the permanent enslavement of the blacks and poor in America to the gov’t plantation to enrich the democrat elite” The democrat party is still the party of racism and always will be.

      • Tell that to Lee Atwater.

        “You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

        Guess which party he’s in?

  33. Sounds like democrats and progressive liberals – silence opposing views rather than competing in the marketplace of ideas

  34. Yeah, because the republican and democratic parties of 1865 are the same as they are today…

  35. Never thought the day would come when I have to stop following TTAG.

    I remember when I first started reading this site a year and a half ago how good the content was. Lots of good education, good stories, very little bias — a real shining example of good journalism.

    Now it’s taken over by this kind of crap, the same crap that you’d hear from Alex Jones or Howard Stern. Shock-jock stuff, designed to incite and garner views.

    It doesn’t surprise me that it’s written by Robert Farago. I’ve seen the journalistic integrity drop, and challenges to it go unanswered. Whether that’s due to malice or apathy I don’t know.

    And now it’s replaced by the same sort of moderation that you’d see on CNN, MSNBC, or FOX.

    • How the mighty have fallen.
      You were great but now you are burning like you did once, a couple of thousands of years ago.

      That, is how you sound all philosophical and deep. With that out of the way I will say that I agree with you, things like this are silly and so-called “flame-bait”.

      • Flame Bait? Why would you say that. Democrats have been behind every politically motivated assassination since Lincolns murder. Democrats have a proven long term track record of violence and murder.

    • David, The Truth About Guns cannot be just about guns as tools, soul-less pieces of machinery, it has to be about the philosophy and politics of guns, their purpose, and their uses. Otherwise, what’s the point?

      Statistically and historically the political left, world-wide, not just Democrats in America, have sought to deny the natural and civil right to keep and bear arms and have frequently seen the purpose of weapons as a means of controlling the population and imposing their political will. Rather the opposite of what is implied by the term “democratic.” wouldn’t you say?

      I am strongly of the opinion that anyone who truly believes they are strongly pro-Second Amendment while supporting the political party most closely associated with efforts to repeal the 2A and/or deny the exercise of the RKBA to law-abiding Americans is either delusional or politically ignorant. If the Democrat/Liberal/Progressive faction ever realizes its political goals in this country your faith that your Second Amendment rights will survive even briefly is pure fantasy.

      • If that’s the case, then the blog should properly be called “The Truth about Liberals” or something like that – and then we’ll know that we are not welcome here in any way, shape or form, regardless of our gun politics.

  36. Your list is a bunch of people who did their own killing. Democrats Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson are much better examples if you want to talk about the deadliness of Democrats.

  37. +1000000 R.F. Let the trolls leave. May I add I believe most Democrats have a God shaped vacuum in their hearts. The Truth about Evil. Feel free to flame me.

    • The funny thing is, the last Christian to hold the office of President was a Democrat, Jimmy Carter. By their fruits you shall know them and no president since Carter has shown any Fruits of the Spirit.

      • I seem to recall a whole lot of angst in the liberal media about GW Bush being too religious, and if I’m not mistaken, he was a self-proclaimed born-again Christian.

      • George W. Bush was/is a Christian. My suspicion is that the Iraqi war was his attempt to prevent the necessity of killing millions of Muslims. It almost worked. Where we will end up after this administration remains to be seen.

    • You can’t have vacuum in your heart, the surrounding tissue would immediately collapse on it. ~

      That’s the problem with you fundies. You use the big words that come from science, but you never put much thought into what they actually mean or imply.

      Anyway, as a God-hating liberal, I can assure you that the “god-shaped hole” in my heart is filled entirely with burning hatred for unborn babies and rich white men.

  38. The big question is when are we going to deal with the mental health debacle? Seriously though, there are just as many radical nut jobs on the right side.

    • Someone already touched on this. Right-wing nut jobs decide the country has gone to hell and go off to the boonies to hole up in a tar-paper shack with their families (see Randy Weaver); left-wing nutjobs decide the world has gone to hell, go off the deep end and shoot up the place (see Jared Loughner or the nihilist kids who shot up Columbine ). That or get appointed to high positions in the obama administration (see Van Jones)There are some exceptions on both sides, but at least recently, that seems to be the “rule”.

  39. Some of that “meme” is almost certainly factually inaccurate. But…. but… let’s not forget about Christopher Dorner. Surprised he wasn’t mentioned here.

    • Dorner self-identified as a moderate Republican in his manifesto, saying John Huntsman was his choice for the 2012 presidential election.

      • He self-identified as a raging narcissist with delusions of adequacy, a fulminating hatred of “assault weapons,” and a deep fear of whites, Asians and “Uncle Toms.”

        In other words, he was the perfect Democrat.

  40. It just goes to prove that Michael Savage was right…liberalism IS a mental disorder

    • It wasn’t Michael Savage who said that liberalism is a mental disease. It was Sigmund Freud.

  41. As far as mass shooters go, one has to remember that the “Conservative” label switched parties a few decades ago.
    Are Dems dangerous? In the worst way. The progressive wing (which controls the White House and media) contains all of the “We know whats good for you, give us your money and we will tell you how to live” liberals.
    Nearly all the anti freedom-anti American-Anti Gun folks come from that group. Mostly rich or affluent white people like Bloomberg, Pelosi, Feinstien, Mcarthy and the rest. THEY don’t want to pay taxes, but they want YOU to. THEY don’t want you to own a gun, But THEIR guards have them. Etc and so forth…
    The tree huggers and PETA are also in this group.
    The other democrats….the “Moderates” are split on gun control, but they will nearly always vote with the progressives.
    SO…YES..they are dangerous….to the american way of life.

  42. I don’t know if someone already caught it but Adam Lanza was 2012 not 2013. Other than that the list seems accurate. Amazing!

  43. Hmmm…Jimmy Carter’s a Christian? Pro baby murder,antisemitic,socialist,etc. By the way Chris it’s FRUIT singular, not fruits. Until 2009 the worst president ever. Replaced by a self proclaimed “Christian”. Fruit indeed.

  44. You missed the democrats that shot Martin Luther King, George Wallace, and that Gay mayor of San Fran back in 78. And the Fascist that shot Bobby Kennedy.

    • A democrat shooting both a civil rights advocate and a segregationist, oh the irony. Im gonna need to see your sources on that also…. unless you’re one of those conservative type that don’t really believe in factual evidence, etc

  45. What about the ding bat Obama obsessed,ok, I repeat myself, from Louisiana? Amy somebody or other. She apparently killed her brother in Boston as a teen and her family had enough stroke to get her a pass. She ended up teaching the humanities on a college level when she went on her shooting spree.

    • Not to mention Angela Davis, murder, who also went on to be a professor somewhere, and Obama’s ghost writer and admitted terrorist bomber, Bill Ayers.

  46. Sure are a lot of broad brushes painting in here. I happen to agree with some of this but let me give it a try. All republicans are low crawling, elitist, scumbag, predatory child molesters that had their empathy, conscience, sympathy for the lesser among us and anything resembling a moral compass surgically removed at birth. Yeah, I guess that about sums it up.

    • “The best way to help the poor is to make them uncomfortable in their poverty” – Benjamin Franklin

      Other than that, your screed against conservatives is nothing but Internet bigotry and hyperbole bearing little or no resemblance to the real world.

      That is all.

    • Explain how demorats are moral? They think they have a right to tell you what to eat, what to drink, how much of either you can do, what you can say, what you can eat, tell you you can’t defend yourself, tell you you’re bad for striving to improve yourself ahead of the others, tell you wealth you earned doesn’t belong to you and force you to give it to someone else who has no interest in work or thinks society owes them for their personal failures. Demorats aren’t moral at all. They thrive on having people be poor and dependent, it’s what gets them elected since they can keep on peddling lies about how they will help out until they’ve taxed all the money out of existence and lowered the pay grade of a top notch engineer to about the same as some shithead who cleans toilets and doesn’t even do a good job at it. Only a spineless dick, living in an ivory tower and pontificating utopia from their isolated enclave of liberal bullshit, protected by armed guards and walled off from society espouses such crap as MORALITY. Get a clue Eugene.

    • With a high capacity mechanical pencil. Liberals are all mentally unstable, which is why they shouldn’t be allowed near firearms. Because they are such insane narcissists they project their insanity onto everyone else and then seek to make policies based on such projections of their own psychotic behavior.

  47. I used to go to TTAG to avoid this kind of crap. But if this is just another Grover Norquist apologist forum more concerned with aligning with right wing doctrinaire, I’m out. I’m pro gun, not taking ridiculous out of context nonsense to inform a circle jerk of hate. Tongue in cheek or not , this post and comment thread is proof positive why a black democrat like myself cannot dismiss antigunners’ skepticism with my 2A absolutism when this element is so pervasive with people who I share at least one common core belief with.

  48. I’m looking forward to other exciting discoveries the TTAG editorial board might make. If I may suggest a few venues for inquiry, and I’m sure the readership will gladly chime in:

    – Do Democrats drink blood of slaughtered unborn children?
    – Do Democrats secretly plot to kill all white people?
    – Should voting Democrat make one automatically considered mentally incompetent, and as such, disqualified from future voting? Should we treat it as a dangerous disease, and if so, is ECT or lobotomy the preferred treatment?
    – How many bullets does it take to put down a rabid Democrat on a murder rampage? are there caliber preferences?
    – Is Obama the Antichrist? and if so, is Ted Cruz or Rand Paul the new incarnation of Christ?

  49. All the benefits. None of the responsibility. Black Democrat? Now that’s an oxymoron. I live in Cook County,Illinois. Dominated by black Democrats. And it sucks. Yeah Obama’s not THE AntiChrist. Only a type. From an evil old white man married to a beautiful black woman…with 2 large caramel colored sons.

    • On gun issues at least, I think I’d be more inclined trust a Democrat from the rural south or Montana than I’d be to trust a Republican from Massachusetts or New Jersey. At least to whatever extent a citizen of this nation can ever really “trust” government.

      D or R doesn’t mean as much sometimes as some seem to think it means.

      For example, Mitt Romney. The man signed an assault weapons ban into law as governor of Massachusetts, yet he was the Republican presidential candidate. All the sudden, all of that was forgotten by Republicans as they lined up to cast their votes for that character. If he’d been elected and thought it would have been politically beneficial to him, he’d have thrown gun owners under the short bus that some of us seem to be trapped on in half a second.

      Aside from that, gun owners have got to get past the small thinking displayed in a lot of posts in this discussion.

      It looks like this – when we’re voting, are you with me on guns or aren’t you? Push comes to shove, anything else I believe in is getting put on the back burner if the RKBA is being threatened (and it nearly always is). So I’m with you (and everyone else on here, I assume) on guns and I’ll vote that way. I ALWAYS vote that way, always have and always will. I figure without the RKBA, ain’t long before the Constitution and the rest of the Bill of Rights starts getting dismantled, and that’s not a country I want to live in.

      With the Constitution and BOR as our guide, people who disagree can still figure out how to govern. And we’ve always disagreed in this country… even about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Even about whether to start our own nation or remain subjects of the Crown. We’ve never been one unanimous voice. Our system of government was designed by people who couldn’t get along for people who couldn’t get along.

  50. Hey int 19th…here’s a quote for you. ” The FOOL has said in his heart there is no God”. When I refer to “heart” I’m talking about the “inner man”. Not a pump. I make NO apologies for being a Christian. Sorry you’re upset by something you don’t believe in.

  51. Hey TTAG I miss the REPLY BUTTON. I only post on a mobile phone & since I don’t live on this site it makes it a mite harder to direct comments.

  52. “In 2007 a registered Democrat named Seung – Hui Cho, shot and killed 32 people in Virginia Tech.”

    Cho was a U.S. permanent resident alien as a South Korean national; he didn’t have the right to vote, so why was he registered as a Democrat? SOURCE?

    If TTAG wants to discuss how Democrat DISARMAMENT policies lead to more people dying, I’m fine with that. This ancient meme implies anybody who’s a Democrat is a latent, murderous killer… are we going to start posting more ancient memes about all registered Republicans being crypto-Fascists too?

    This brand of politics is tiresome, TTAG. You disappoint me by choosing to engage in them… =/

  53. Using the word “Democrat” was a mistake. That implies that all Democrats are bad and all Republicans are good.

    I don’t like to use “isms” either because people are forever debating whether Fascism is a right or left ideology (It’s way left by the way). I prefer simpler truths.

    “Isms”, parties etc. are all made up of individuals that band together in coalition. SO, I label individual tendencies rather than coalitions. And I see them as this:

    Socialist—————Centrist—————Anarchist

    Keep it simple…..

  54. First, you keep using the wrong word. The name of the party is Democrat Party. Democratic is a term descriptive of a particular political process.

    And for all the whiners claiming this list is bullsh*t. No problem, simply prove your point. We Americans will be waiting, though you have totally refused to do so in the past and I am quite certain you will continue to refuse to do so now.

    RF? You got the leftards screeching&wailing. Good work.

    • “And for all the whiners claiming this list is bullsh*t. No problem, simply prove your point.”

      Argument from ignorance (Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance stands for “lack of evidence to the contrary”), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false.

      I’m a staunch defender of the 2A (and the rest of the Constitution). I take my position in the realm of this debate quite seriously. To maintain my credibility, I MUST never resort to hyperbole, exaggeration, speculation, or any other fallacious argument. If I do… and getting caught is inevitable… then I’ve lost all credibility.

      If I dared use this OLD meme to make my point, I’d be RIGHTFULLY excoriated by our opposition.

      I should point out that my comments on this post are not intended as a criticism of Robert, as I do not believe his purpose was to post this as any sort of “fact.” Rather… I interpreted it as little more than a, “Have you guys seen this circulating?”

      If you’re going to make a point in a debate of this magnitude, you should do it from a position of verified facts. You can’t say, “Well… it might be true, and it’s up to you to prove it wrong.”

      Demanding proof of a negative is not an effective argument for an implied positive. Again… that’s called, an “Argument from Ignorance.”

      • So, can’t prove its wrong. OK. Or is that won’t prove its wrong?

        Fact is you have to use the tactics of your enemies against them, if you don’t you lose.

        • Stooping to the level of the irrational “antis” will not win over the hearts of those “on the fence.” I know this from personal experience. Like I said… I’ve been “fighting this battle” for many years. And, with the help of social media, I’ve been successful in winning over “fence-sitters” by using facts and ONLY facts. My reputation is based on not being a “bullshitter.” I’m telling you… It works. It really does.

          I contend that we need the fence-sitters to step over to our side, if we want to win this one.

          • Again, the verified fact is the political left is violent. Does not matter if you said it or not, it is still a fact. You are claiming that the list in the post is wrong, so it is no stretch at all for you to claim the political left is all sunshine and rainbows.

            And another fact is death with honor is still dead. We are in our current situation because people just like you have folded, surrendered, refused to engage, for decades. Five of which I have been alive, with 37 years fighting against America’s enemy, the political left. And during all those years I have heard your exact argument thrown out there again and again. Go along to get along. Look where that has gotten us.

        • Having facts and data are essential but using the tactics of the Left against them is key to winning against them in debate.

          Lefties talk and think differently from us. That is a fact. They are won by different criteria than what we consider “winning”. Therefore the delivery of the facts and data is critical.

          It is not necessary to get down into the mud with them, but it is necessary to point out to everyone in the room that they are down in the mud and why that makes you a better person than him. Personal humiliation is all they understand because their one and only play against you, 100% of the time is “you’re nasty”. So your goal is ensure that he gets all the rope he needs to convince everyone in the room that he is nasty and then point it out with great fanfare.

          Watch “How to Debate Liberals” by Ben Shapiro for more, or if you want more of the background why his techniques work, and why his techniques are the only ones that are useful, read the Anonymous Conservative’s r/K selection theory of evolutionary biology and how it relates to our two party political system.

          If you won over Liberals using facts/data they were either 1. very young or 2. not “true” Leftists

        • We’re where we are now because people like me refuse to engage?

          Let’s see… we’ve got CCW in Illinois (something I never thought I’d see) because the courts have ruled several times over the past few years that the Second Amendment enumerates an individual right to keep and bear arms. We all knew that, but the courts have ruled in our favor (not as strongly as I’d have liked, but they did) and that’s an improvement. The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in the country with something like two million of them sold last year. The hated black rifle is more common now than it has ever been. The thought of more gun control sent this nation into such a frenzy that my fellow citizens bought up just about every single round of ammunition they could afford. New gun control passed in Colorado but it’s practically unenforceable and the residents of that state rallied to kick two anti-gun politicians out of office and force a third to resign (I’ve never been to CO, but I was proud to be able to make a donation to help hasten Evie Hudak’s departure). And after five years in office, the administration has had so little success that Democratic candidates for upcoming congressional elections are asking the commander in chief to stay home rather than campaign with them.

          It could be better. I’m thinking that when we start making a push for some more wins, we should push for SBR/SBS/suppressors to be removed from the NFA. We should push for something other than just the status quo. I don’t just want to keep what we have, I want to win something back.

          The meme above doesn’t help me do that. It’s nothing more than spam email material and anyone with any critical thinking skills can see that. It was never meant to do anything other than be passed around among Republicans so they could have a good chuckle and marvel at their own superiority. People have forwarded it to me several times, assuming that I must be a democrat-hater because I’m often seen purchasing ammunition or reloading components in bulk.
          It was B.S. the first time it showed up in my inbox, it was B.S. the fifth time it showed up in my spam folder, and it’s still B.S.

          • 3 out of 18 is 1/3. That statement pretty much eliminates your standing on accurate and factual, wouldn’t you say?

    • Racer88, you have made a very valid point and I agree with it.
      However, ever since this meme has surfaced I have heard grumblings from the left and flat out dismissals.
      Yet no one has EVER discredited it.
      Mostly, because this information is/was public record and is/was verifiable.
      So, in a way it’s not a form of speculation or fallacious argument.
      Besides, while I truly admire and applaud your integrity in this matter, the old adage of “perception is reality” is the case. The gun control side has been very adept at using fallacious arguments and speculation to prove it’s case and many states have bought their bull-puckey hook, line and sinker. While we can always point to our reliance on cold, hard facts to make our case, in the eyes of the lawmakers in these areas it’s easier, and more politically advantageous, to overlook those facts for more convenient conjecture. We have appeared before committees in New York, New Jersey and California and emphatically stated those facts.
      Then we watched as the rights of those residents were taken away.
      Lawmakers don’t care about who’s the most truthful or how the “facts” stack up. They are all about protecting their “phoney baloney jobs, hrumph” and that means pandering to their constituents, right or wrong.
      The gun control side was even caught with their proverbial pants around their ankles when the “playbook” was released advocating using emotional tearjerkers to counter facts.
      While we can be happy about the fact that when you look at the scoreboard we are winning in this campaign, the antis are not giving up and are sticking to their speculation and fallacious arguments. For the most part, this has worked out for us but there will be times when they can carry the election and will go right to work with their old ways to push through their draconian measures.
      Bottom line, while your integrity is noble we can’t continue to rely on a “the facts will speak for themselves” platform because as I said before perception is reality. Taking the moral high road is noble but only really works out in fairy tales and afterschool specials. Even if this meme wasn’t completely true, when was the last time you saw MDA or CSGV run a meme that was based on facts over conjecture?!
      If we want to keep our rights we have to be willing to sling a little mud their way too.

      • Oops… duplicate post. See my previous reply to 2hotel9.

        Website was acting wonky there for a moment.

      • The years for the attempt on Reagan’s life and the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School are wrong. Not just by a few days – the writer didn’t even get the year right. That makes someone look like an idiot, and it’s not who so many of you seem to think it is.

        As others have stated, other states where some of these shooters acted don’t have partisan registration so there’s no way to know how they were registered to vote.

        The meme lists a White House shooting in 2001 but doesn’t even bother to name the shooter. Apparently that would have been too much work. The guy’s name was Robert W. Pickett, BTW. He was deemed mentally ill. It took me all of fifty seconds to find that info. Fact checking and maybe even a touch of critical thinking… it’ll do ya’ good.

        Using lies and conjecture to support our cause doesn’t do us any good. It injures our credibility.
        If you don’t believe that, consider how you feel about the statement “If you like your healthcare, you can keep it.” How did that false promise work out for the credibility of the person who made it?

        • Two wrong dates and one name not listed. Yep all lies and conjecture. RF stated that the list came to him right in his first sentence. I have seen different versions over the years.

          And Barri has not been effected by “If you like your healthcare, you can keep it.” and he won’t be, he got what he wanted and he does not give a sh*t how many people’s lives are ruined. The left has this down to a science. And they are using it to defeat America, one piece at a time.

        • Two dates wrong.
          One name not listed… when it took me less than a minute to find it. Shows that we’re very concerned with all the facts… which is why we didn’t bother to look that up.
          A couple people who were “registered Democrats” in states where that’s not possible. And one of those people was a foreign national, making it even more difficult for him to be a “registered Democrat.”

          Then we roll it back to the 1800’s… because it’s not like Republicans and Democrats have traded places since then. Everyone knows that John Wilkes Booth lamented being killed not because it meant the end of his life, but because he didn’t get to live long enough to vote for our nation’s first African American president. That’s really why he shot Lincoln… he was mad that Obama hadn’t been given the chance to run against him in the 1864 election. Maybe we should add that to the meme and repeat it until people think it’s the truth.

          How many free passes do you expect the opposition to give us before they start pointing out our inability to do even the simplest research? There are plenty of facts to use against them and we gain nothing by repeating a bunch of stuff that isn’t true.

          • Look, I been at this for years, and no matter how thoroughly documented and detailed your “facts” are the left calls them lies and ridicules you. Every. Single. Time. No “free passes”, not ever. And that is how they keep winning.

            Take ovomitcare, I have spent the last 6 years documenting this abomination, printed out multiple copies of each iteration DIRECTLY from the Thomas Law Library data base. Did anyone on the left accept that? F**k no.

            You are deeply concerned with facts and truth and integrity. The enemy is not. Period. Full stop.

        • Ah… but, I contend that we are not trying to win over the anti-liberty gun grabbers AT ALL. Our target is the fence-sitters…. The middle-of-the-roaders…. The undecideds.

          If you were an undecided with a modicum of intellect, would you be more convinced by emotional diatribes? Or with logical presentations liberally seasoned with facts?

          • You do understand that doing the same thing, over and over and over, and failing every time is not how you win, right? People who hate guns do so out of emotion. Facts are irrelevant to them.

        • 2hotel9 is right, you are wrong. Sorry.

          Watch Ben Shapiro or Andrew Breitbart on the topic of engaging Liberals. They are the experts.

        • Confronted with clear evidence that there are factual inaccuracies with about a third of the statements in this meme, and still you cling to the idea that you are right.

          If you spent half as much time checking your facts as you did pretending to be right, you actually could be right.

        • I don’t care about the meme I only care about the fact that we are finally making an effort to go after them at their own game.

          Yes we will fumble at times. Yes we will do it wrong. But we will learn. And learn we must.

          The attitude and direction is what I care about. I dont give a crap what the meme thing says. The important thing is the thought is there, now just tighten it up.

  55. Oh, and the verified fact is the political left is violent. Or are you going to deny that, too?

    • That’s a Straw Man argument. I’ve never made any such claim, as it was not the original premise.

      • Oh, and yes, that is the original premise. That is the point of the list, whoever created it, to begin with. The political left is violent. Has there been violence from the political right? Yes. In response to attacks from the left. Does that absolve the left of its guilt?

        • Saying that everyone on the political left is like that is like saying everyone on the political right is just like Timothy McVeigh. It’s factually inaccurate, malicious, and divisive. It does no good and it doesn’t further our cause.

          Having said that, this site is called “The Truth About Guns.” And this discussion has shown that the truth is that there are a lot of pro-gun people who can’t be bothered with the facts just as long as they get the chance to hoot and holler and pretend like they’re sticking it to the other guy. Meanwhile, the outside world looks at something like the list of angry homicidal Democrats with the scrutiny it deserves. You won’t be winning them over with that – you just make yourself look bad.

          In this case, maybe the truth about guns ain’t so pretty.

          I will give Robert Farago and the other writers of TTAG credit for not stifling opposing points of view though. I haven’t seen anything scrubbed out of this discussion over the past two days, even though a lot of us don’t agree. That definitely does separate them from the anti-gun side.

  56. HR? No they don’t. The political left is not a party or specific group, and they do not “looks at something like the list of angry homicidal Democrats with the scrutiny it deserves”, they don’t care about reality or facts or truth. Lie, cheat, steal and kill, whatever it takes to win.

    • The problem is that it is not only the hardcore left versus the hardcore right. A whole lot of people fall somewhere in the middle and some of us, like myself, have a hard time deciding where we fall depending on the issue.

      So you can’t convince the far left you’re right on most issues. You don’t have to.

      You should be trying to win over the people somewhere in the middle who may be receptive to your message. And there are people like that who call themselves “Democrats.” Maybe they only side with the left because they are homosexual or concerned with the environment or for some other reason. That doesn’t make them evil. Pretending that they are just so we can pat ourselves on the back, especially when doing so requires us to repeat lies, only drives potential allies away and makes us look like a bunch of crazy loons.

      The outside world – those not engaged in the gun control debate – does look at something like this meme (which I have had forwarded to my email several times by my friends) with scrutiny. Not realizing that there is a whole world beyond both extremes in the gun control debate is myopic thinking that will only hurt us.

      • I have no problem deciding where I “fall” on issues. I have seen, and smelled, the results of leftist ideology on 2 continents. So no, I will not compromise with it, I will not bow down to it, and I f**king well will not submit to it.

        Standing in the middle is not a good idea. And worrying about “fence sitters” leads to defeat. Good luck with that.

        • The million or so new members that the NRA gained during the 2012/2013 push for gun control came from somewhere. Some of them were on the fence before, now they’re not.
          Some day all the old dudes who have been stalwart defenders of the Second Amendment for the last twenty or so years are going to die. Or at least enough of them will. If we don’t gain new people to replace those losses, we will lose by attrition.

          How do we bring new people to our cause? By being responsible and telling the truth, or by repeating internet “truths” that make some Republicans feel better?

          And I know where I stand on issues too. Unfortunately, neither party really represents me. Registered as a Libertarian these days because I’m tired of throwing my vote away.

          Anyhow, it’s been a lively conversation but I’ve tired of beating this dead horse.
          Take care amigo. I’ll see you on the next one.

      • Don’t bother. Several people have already pretty much openly said that liberals (and local denizens use this word very liberally, pardon the pun – basically it’s anyone who doesn’t agree on every single point of their long list) are the Enemy, and that no meaningful communication is possible. Facing such response, I’m inclined to agree. I think it’s the gradual but still obvious marginalization of extreme conservative politics that forces them to go into “sky is falling” mode, and adopt the us-versus-the-world mentality, whereby everyone on the outside of a small (and shrinking) bubble is a determined enemy out to get them by any means. It’s the road down to tinfoil hats and chemtrail nuttery.

        The good part is that marginalization is real, and so these people will be booted out of mainstream politics soon. The bad part is that they will tar the gun rights cause, associating it with borderline clinical insanity buttery on their way down.

        We really need a liberal/libertarian, true single issue, gun rights org that is not tainted by right wing legacy like NRA.

        • One also wonders, to whom are they directing their message?

          It’s not the “liberals” because the liberals won’t listen to reason and accuse them of lying at every turn. There’s no reasoning with liberals or Democrats (paraphrasing).

          And it also apparently isn’t the people who are either on the fence or who point-blank don’t have an opinion on gun rights at all. There’s no room in the middle, so apparently the people who are in the middle, even just because they’ve never thought about it or heard a persuasive argument to get out of the middle, just don’t exist (again, paraphrasing).

          So if you’re not talking to the people you disagree with, and you’re not talking to the people who don’t have an opinion yet, who are you talking to?
          Talking to each other? What’s the point of that? You already think like each other and vote the same way.

          Or are you just venting? Therapeutic perhaps, but does it accomplish anything?

  57. I am amazed at the rhetoric of this thread. I have learned that liberals/Democrats only base their points of view on feelings and illogical beliefs. I have many friends who are self-identified liberals and who have degrees in science, an area that measurable, testable, verifiable facts are the basis of perspective. Please, people, Democrats/liberals do not want to destroy America. They may not see an idealized America in the same way conservatives do, but their goals are not to destroy a nation they love every bit as much as conservatives do.

    Also, in what way did FDR start a war? I sort of thought that Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and then southern China in 1937. Even if he did start a war, I think most American think that the US involvement in it was a good thing.

  58. To those who believe perpetuating silly and easily refuted memes is a viable strategy, good luck with that. I surely don’t want you on my team. I have not only a lot of experience, I’ve had success with it. You’re on your own with the low brow tactics.

  59. For all of you patting yourselves on the back I have 2 words: Timothy McVeigh a registered republican. 168 people. And that is just one name because I’m lazy and can’t be bothered to look for more.

    • OK, expand on your list! Show us all that Americans are evil and deserve to die. We will be waiting, sweety.

      • I never claimed that Americans are evil or that anyone deserves to die.
        The point of the post was to prove that the left in the US is more violent than the right, and lists approximately 180 people killed starting with Lincoln in 1865…
        A claim easily refuted by almost matching that number with a single person. I could copy a bunch of names of people convicted of killing abortion provides in the last 20 years and look into right wing violence to add to that.
        However the point is easily made by now that there is violent behavior in the fringes of either end of the political spectrum. It is not only the “democrats” or the “republicans” it is every violent fanatic out there with a chip on their shoulder and they come from all over the political spectrum.

        • George – the problem with your logical argument is that you are presenting it to people who have already decided that they’re right. They accuse “liberals” of not being willing to listen to reason, but here they are right now doing the exact same thing.

          Sad thing is that they can’t even see how they look to the rest of the world.

          The readership of TTAG is kind of an insular group. You’ve got quite a few conservatives around here, so sometimes people forget that not everyone thinks like they do (even when they’re reminded by the liberals and libertarians who post here too). I call a lot of conservatives friends and I do think that they sincerely believe that their intentions and goals are in the best interests of our country. But the gun owning community has to pull its head out of the sand occasionally and look around and realize that the hardcore 2A people are a fraction of gun owners, and the people who post here are a fraction of that fraction, and the hardcore 2A conservatives are an even smaller fraction yet.

          So they think something like this that smears Democrats with an untrue claim while tacitly patting Republicans on the back for their good behavior somehow makes them look good. It just makes them look like fools to everyone who doesn’t think like them. But no amount of gentle persuasion seems to be able to convince them of that.

        • “The point of the post was to prove that the left in the US is more violent than the right”

          No. The point is the political left, worldwide, is violent. And its adherents glomm on to the violent elements in any given society and use them in advancing their political agenda. Period. Full stop.

          When anyone considered to be on the “right” side of the political spectrum defends themselves from the violence perpetrated by the left and its fellow travelers those on the left jump up and declare that ALL politics is violent and only they have the solution to the “problem”.

          Simply put, the political left in America is violent. Those on the “right” just want to be left the f**k alone, those on the “left” want to f**k everyone else. Get it?

          • So you are right and everyone else is wrong , just because you say so.
            There is never anything wrong with the part of the political spectrum that you more closely identify with and those whose opinions you disagree with can do no right and are pure evil. (on a global scale might I add !!) OK got it.
            I never saw the point of debating fanatics so I will stop here. I would however suggest that you pay closer attention to the written text you reply to, since it is apparent that you are responding to arguments that I never made and that you missed the point of the original post

  60. hey, james earl ray; the democrat who shot Martin Luther King Jr.(a republican), didn’t make the list…

  61. Democrats were able to get a head start due to having Apple computers in schools right a way and payed 2 grand for them so were able to quickly crowd source the web before the Republicans got on board the train.

    Most Republicans at least the ones I know don’t know the difference between RAM and ROM and are a bunch of old farts who have the same views of America from 1962 that slave labor cannot ever compete with America so let’s do *free trade*!!!.

    Slave labor has been allowed because the same view by the Republicans that it can never compete with real wages still hold today despite 30 odd years going by and the Liberals hide to the shadows better so are able to cover up their tracks and just go right along.

    Republicans are like an open book wanting their own one world banking system using the Amero to make the USA became like the EU which will put us further in debt and use violent false flag techniques to get the job done.

    Democrats also want a one world communist system but prefer non violent techniques which is why we use political subsidies to corporations to cover their tracks as we have no choice but to buy stuff form these corporations which uses slave labor to make cell phones and that in turn guarantees more votes to help the *poor* and *needy* that was created by the Republicans shipping jobs overseas and the Liberals standing by doing nothing.

    Did you know one person does your entire smart phone at Fox Con? They don’t even use f’ing assembly lines! *not sure if swearing is allowed* They have one person such as yourself to put together the cell phone you use and they are literally locked there 12 hours a day,7 days a week with little to no pay plus a bowl of rice.

    People have jumped to their death from windows so suicide nets were installed around them to prevent that.

    I don’t vote in the elections because it’s all one sided and planned ahead of time who will win and lose but I do vote in state and smaller issues where there is much more of a choice in things.

  62. The name of the McDonald shooter is James Huberty. Also left off is Charles Whitman from Texas A&M Tower.

  63. Having a degree in Advertising/Public Relations and Political Science, I can see how the media frames both sides of this argument. If you disagree or agree, we can all say that there is bias in all writing. I personally disagree so you can SEE my bias. This website was probably financed with thousands or millions of dollars. It is either powered by the NRA through dark money or some “disgruntled right wing” “author”. Find a REAL media outlet, or at least “Hello From The Other Side” yes, pun intended.

  64. Are they kidding? I knew both Charles (Chuck) and Kathy Whitman and Charles (the U of TX tower sniper) was a huge militant right winger! He subscribed to “Soldier of Fortune’ magazine, he was a gun worshiper and hunter, once shooting a deer out of season and hiding it in his dorm’s shower, and a Marine on a Marine college scholarship, Charles was a radical Right WInger before any of us knew what that was! Where did they get this ridiculous stuff about Whitman being a Democrat?

    • The same place they got most of this Bullshit. John Wilkes Booth wasn’t a Democrat – he was a member of the Know-Nothing party. More than half of the people on this list have no known political affiliation, one was a resident alien and couldn’t vote, two are from states which don’t have partisan registration. One was a registered independent. Lee Harvey Oswald doesn’t appear to have voted in the US.

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