That said, there is one thing that has been overlooked by many commentators on this shooting: The shooter (Richard Poplawski) had been dishonorably discharged from the Marines and was once subject to a protective order for abuse. Either of which alone is sufficient to disqualify him from being legally permitted to own firearms. This _can’t_ be a case where Poplawski was “afraid that Obama would take his guns” as some in the media have said. He can’t have been worried about Obama making firearms illegal because, for Poplawski, they were _already_ illegal. The portrayal of Poplawski in the media as someone who was afraid that guns would become illegal just doesn’t gel in light of these facts.

A hazard of blogging for me these days.

ed.

It is perhaps unfortunate that Obama’s minions sometimes speak in arrogant voices about regulation, control, and takeover of an ever widening band of private sector firms. Such talk has the effect of stoking the fears of the right.

Then too, there is little trust on the right for the Obama administration eventually backing out of these controls at some point and returning such firms fully to the owners and the free market. They may hand GM back only if GM cuts itself down to Cadillac and Chevrolet by direction or coersion of the government.

We have seem only the opening moves in this chess game, and the incremental signs are not encouraging at all. Let us fire people as a precondition of government support! We may eventually have to pry the government out of most major firms’ business to get back our partially mixed, but mainly free market economy.

That is, if we can.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09095/960750-53.stm

“Believing most media were covering up important events, Mr. Poplawski turned to a far-right conspiracy Web site run by Alex Jones, a self-described documentarian with roots going back to the extremist militia movement of the early 1990s.”