Might as well invite Putin
Special guest: Kyle Rittenhouse.
Republicans in Idaho have been criticized for “glorifying political violence” after the party hosted Kyle Rittenhouse, the American who shot and killed two people at an anti-racism protest and injured another, as a celebrity guest at a fundraiser.
The 20-year-old was the guest of honor at a Bonneville county Republican party event, in Idaho Falls, Idaho, on 15 April, where an AR-15 style rifle signed by Rittenhouse was auctioned off as part of a fundraiser and people could buy tickets to “Trigger time”: a Rittenhouse-hosted shooting event at a gun range.
Ah that’s so attractive, so public-spirited, so benevolent.
The event, amid a prolonged spate of mass shootings – many conducted with AR-15s – suggests a further embrace by Republicans of the most extreme elements of the gun lobby in the US, despite polls showing a majority of Americans, across party affiliation, supporting some gun control laws.
It’s not an embrace of the gun lobby or its “extreme elements”; it’s an embrace of guns and violence and murder. It’s treating murder as a goal and a virtue. It’s a fucking death cult, a murder cult.
Rebecca Casper, the mayor of Idaho Falls, said Rittenhouse “does not represent the majority of the people in Idaho Falls”.
“Make no mistake, this unfortunate, distasteful and insensitive event was in no way supported by the City of Idaho Falls,” Casper said. “We are an inclusive and welcoming community and we join with so many others in voicing our dismay over such an insensitive and patently offensive event.”
But it’s not merely insensitive and offensive; it’s glorification of murder, which amounts to incitement of murder. Calling it “offensive” misses the point.
Rittenhouse’s appearance comes amid a series of high-profile shootings in the US. According to the Gun Violence Archive there have been 167 mass shootings – defined as incidents where four people were shot or killed – in the US through 21 April.
Through April 21 starting when? January 1?
After that the article for some reason lurches into talk of “violence against trans people and gender non-conforming people” and the point gets completely lost.
Yes. The press quotes mass shootings to date this year.
Part of the point is that we are only 114 days into the year. Mass shootings in this country are running at more that one per day.
According to the archive, yes, since Jan. 1.
The trans statistics come from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (which has apparently been captured by trans ideology like the ACLU and so many others).
Well, I figured that’s what it meant, my point was that the reporter should have said that. It’s silly and sloppy to omit it. I get annoyed by sloppy journalism.
And there was a pro-Trump rally on Jan 6.