After yesterday’s shooting at a video game tournament in Florida, anti-gun narratives started coming out of the woodwork only to crumble under the merest of scrutiny. As they are wont to do, many were quick to blame Dana Loesch, as though the NRA spokeswoman herself was running around shooting people rather than advocating for firearm safety. Unfortunately, one user didn’t only come after Ms. Loesch, they also came after her children.

It is the last phrase “I guess that’s what needs to happen,” which makes this especially vile. It would be an ugly tweet regardless. It is never appropriate to bring a person’s children into a political argument, especially when you’re talking about them being murdered. To say that they need to be murdered? How is that not a direct threat against the lives of those children?

Her husband, Chris, reported the tweet to Twitter. Here was their response.

The salient portion reads:

Hello,

Thank you for your recent report. We have reviewed your report carefully and found that there was no violation of the Twitter Rules against abusive behavior (https.//www.twitter.com/rules).

I understand that “imagine if a conservative did it” grows tiresome but, still- imagine if a conservative did that. Imagine if a conservative said that very thing to a prominent liberal. Told them their children had to be murdered. I’m pretty sure Twitter would have something to say about that. Heck, a conservative woman recently had her account suspended for sharing one mainstream personal opinion and one unarguable fact. She’s not the only conservative to have her account suspended for minimal “infractions,” as Dana noted.

Apparently this doesn’t violate @TwitterSupport TOS. I know several conservatives who have been suspended for far less. cc @jack pic.twitter.com/xwKVFxtx8x

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) August 27, 2018

Twitter is a private company, and they can run their business as they see fit. When “threats of murder against children” is what they deem to be  fit, however, one really has to question what on earth is going on over there, though.