Stop blaming the Tea Party for the psycho in Arizona

How can you tell me this tea party is responsible
for anything beyond being ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE????

Maybe it’s because I find myself siding with the Tea Party on most topics … maybe it’s because the whole Arizona thing was a psycho with a gun … maybe it’s because I am the only rational person in the world, but I am seriously angry, irritated, and generally disappointed in the general media (and reader comments on said media stories) for blaming the whole Arizona shooting on the Tea Party.

Before you ask, I have not delved into the facts of this any more than the basic couple of stories I read give me simply because, the few stories I read were repetitive, but also because I’m very tired of hearing “It’s the Tea Party, it’s the Tea Party.”

I have a friend who is Muslim. Does she take part in political issues? Absolutely. (She’s a lawyer, I would hope she’d take an interest) Does she go to political protests? Yep. But here’s the thing. She’s not psychotic about it. In fact, the one protest I know she went to was actually a peaceful protest to prove that not all Muslims in the United States are psychotic terrorists who are out to cause the demise of America. I personally, and perhaps with a hint of disillusionment, believe she’s in the majority when it comes to Muslims in our country. I really think the minority have given the majority a bad image to which everyone in that group has become stereotyped.

What’s my point here?

The same thing has happened with the Tea Party. I have a friend who attends Tea Party rallies. He carries a gun. Would he ever use said gun in the parking lot of a Safeway on a U.S. Representative, Federal judge and other innocent people? Not on your ever-loving life. In fact, he routinely tells me that the whole purpose of carrying a gun is in the hopes that he never has to use it – but should the stuff hit the fan, he’s got it. If you take a survey of most people who carry guns, you’ll get the same response. It’s for “what if,” as opposed to being used to start something.

So, perhaps hearing everyone go, “It’s the Tea Party’s fault,” for this shooting in Arizona is a little more than insulting to myself and my friends, especially those of us who think the Tea Party actually has some very valid points. (That is for another time, and another place.)

The fact is this: killing people is wrong. Even the Bible says so – Exodus and the Ten Commandments, anyone? (And yes, this is where someone, I know exactly who it is too, will go, “But God kills mercilessly in the Bible.” Yeah, yeah, different debate for a different time.)

Was this guy acting out in response to Tea Party rhetoric? Perhaps. From one report I saw, he’s also a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. Could he just be crazy as a result of the PTSD? Perhaps. Could he have just snapped? Perhaps.

Even if he comes out and says that he was acting on behalf of the Tea Party, you cannot go blaming the entire party for it. No one held a gun to his head and said, “You must promote what we believe by shooting up a parking lot full of people.” He acted on his own volition, politics notwithstanding. Sure, his politics may or may not have played a role in his decision to pull the trigger over and over again, but his politics did not, in fact, “make” him do so. That was all him. Translation: He was just a psycho with a gun.

Furthermore, let’s back up to that infamous graphic from the Sarah Palin PAC website for a moment. You know the one I’m talking about – the one to which I WILL NOT put on my blog, nor will I link to, because I do not, in any way, want to be affiliated with any sort of death threats. I may not agree with the healthcare reform, and I may want it repealed, and I may want the people who voted for it out of office … however, I would never, EVER put them in gun sights. Plain and simple.

I’m waiting on the lawsuit to come over that graphic. In fact, the graphic has been floating around since March of 2010. I’m entirely surprised it didn’t happen sooner. (It’s very similar to the “Wanted” poster that did spark a lawsuit years ago.) Regardless – is it right to publish such malicious information? One would argue no, because although we do have free speech, the line has been legally drawn (over and over again) to not cover speech that was designed with the malicious intent to incite people to cause harm.

My opinion on that aside, just like I said before, the Tea Party didn’t force this guy to do anything (nor did anything else, for that matter), a graphic didn’t make him do it either. He simply said, “hey, I’m going to do this.” Maybe he did it in the name of whatever he believed, or because he thought he was doing the country a favor because of the SarahPAC graphic, but in the end, the only one who is really responsible for the actions that went down Saturday in Arizona is the guy who pulled the trigger.

Countless peoples’ lives, including the triggerman’s, will never be the same after that incident. May God have mercy on them all.