Listening to Tucson Tea Party co-founder Trent Humphries complain to The Guardian about how his organization was being portrayed, I almost felt bad for him. He’s right that a lot of people jumped to conclusions about the motivations of the shooter and overstated the case against the Tea Party.
The local sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, quickly pointed the finger at the growing vitriol, hate and anger directed against the government on talk radio and by Tea Party supporters in Arizona, where Democrats and liberals from President Obama to Giffords are portrayed as enemies of the people, un-American or Nazis.
After the Sheriff made those comments, Humphries started receiving hate-mail. So, yeah, I could see where he was coming from when he pushed back a little. But now I see he chose to interject himself into a town hall meeting with the victims held by Christine Amanpour. And it wound up getting ugly with one of last week’s shooting victims [J. Eric Fuller] getting arrested for one count of threats and intimidation and probably one to be added for disorderly conduct.
The theme of the event was “An American Conversation Continued” — the idea being to continue the conversation that a madman’s brutal rampage had interrupted. So it was inevitable that the conversation would eventually turn to politics. It did, toward the end, with Amanpour leading a discussion on a very touchy but obvious topic: gun control.
That’s where the atmosphere turned tense. When Tucson Tea Party founder Trent Humphries rose to suggest that any conversation about gun control should be put off until after the funerals for all the victims, witnesses say Fuller became agitated. Two told KGUN9 News that Fuller finally rose, took a picture of Humphries, and said, “You’re dead.”
When State Rep. Terri Proud (R-Tucson) rose to explain and clarify current and proposed gun legislation in the state, several people groaned or booed her. One of those booing, according to several witnesses, was Fuller. Witnesses sitting near Fuller told KGUN9 News that Fuller was making them feel very uncomfortable.
The event wrapped up a short time later. Deputies then escorted Fuller from the room. As he was being led off, Fuller shouted loudly to the room at large. Several witnesses said that what they thought they heard him shout was, “You’re all whores!”
A Pima County Sheriff’s spokesman told KGUN9 News that they charged Fuller with one count of threats and intimidation, and said they plan to charge him with at least one count of disorderly conduct. Humphries told KGUN9 News that he does plan to press those charges.
Fuller can’t threaten people like that. It’s against the law. But if Humphries is really concerned about his reputation he should learn to shut his pie hole and stop inserting himself into the fault lines of the this debate.
