The 2nd amendment allows you to purchase and own a firearm. That doesn’t give you the right to use that shoot at signs advocating for a political candidate you dislike intensely, in this case Barack Obama. From Lubbock Texas:
“Hundreds of Obama yard signs have been stolen from neighborhoods all across Lubbock,” Lubbock Democratic Party chairperson Kenny Ketner said at a press conference Sunday. “We have had over half a dozen of our large 4×4 and 4×8 signs stolen, vandalized, or shot. And as of about 1 a.m. this morning, we can add hate crime to the list, as two of our 4×4 signs at 26th and University Ave. were vandalized with the n-word written multiple times and mustard sprayed all over the signs.”
This is naked, raw terrorism. Because nothing sends a message that people shouldn’t exercise their first amendment rights of free speech, particularly political speech, than bullet holes through through their signs supporting a political candidate, any candidate. We’ve already seen a non-political business owner receive death threats for refusing to allow the Romney campaign to use his restaurant for a campaign event. We have seen bullets fired through the Denver office of the Obama campaign. How soon before someone is wounded or killed by someone for standing at on a street corner with an Obama sign or knocking on someone’s door distributing campaign literature? All I know is that we are getting awfully close to crossing the boundary into territory that no one with any conscience at all would find agreeable.
Daily, our airwaves and the internet are inundated with messages of hate, racism and even the advocacy of violence from conservative politicians, conservative media and anyone with a Twitter account, a Facebook page or the ability to post to a comment to a website who repeats the offensive propaganda that is now taken as holy writ by a not insignificant portion of our population. Don’t tell me that this mass of negative, demeaning, hateful and often inaccurate and false “speech” by partisans on the right does not stoke the fever of individuals who then take matters into their own hands. Don’t even try. When you, my conservative and Republican brethren persist in stoking the flames of hate and outrage, sooner or later, it has consequences. For life, for liberty, for the pursuit of happiness.
Stop going down this path.
And by god, stop brazenly lying about what’s happening:
In a separate post Monday morning, Ketner said Carl Tepper, head of the local Republican Party, accused the Democrats of vandalizing their own signs during an interview with a local radio station.
