Before Barack Obama, We Did Not Have Shootings Like This

Two weeks ago, a man began firing shots in a parking lot in Colorado Springs. He moved into a Planned Parenthood facility. Eventually captured, it turns out the man is a lunatic. He lived in a trailer with no running water or electricity. He had a history of violent behavior and crazy theories about the world. But according to the American political left, the man was clearly a Christian pro-life activist.

A few days ago in California, Islamic radicals shot up a Christmas party. Armed with long barrel rifles — not handguns — and an assortment of other instruments of death, they killed more than a dozen people. The American political left, before the facts became clear, immediately started blaming Republicans, the National Rifle Association and Christians. Once it was clear that Muslims were involved, the political left looked the other way.

When Bryce Williams killed two reporter colleagues live on air in Virginia, the American left immediately blamed Republicans and the National Rifle Association, and demanded new laws for background checks. When it was pointed out that Williams had a background check before buying his gun and that he was gay, the story disappeared.

The party that booed the addition of God to the Democrats’ political platform in 2012 last week began attacking anyone on social media who dared offer up prayers for the victims of the California shooting. In fact, at the very time victims and families were gathered together praying, the left engaged in “prayer shaming” on social media, mocking and ridiculing anyone who offered up prayers.

The reaction is rather stunning. A writer for the U.K. Guardian openly suggested that perhaps NRA board members should be assassinated. A leftwing political commentator viewed the destruction in last week’s California shooting and declared it the work of a Republican.

We are seeing both a rise in these sorts of shootings and also a rise in political blame from the left directed at their opponents. But things were not always this way. Yes, there have been mass shootings in the past. Bill Clinton, even after signing the assault weapons ban into law, saw Columbine. George W. Bush saw the Virginia Tech shooting. Though gun violence continues to decline in this country, these sorts of events seem to be happening more and more often.

In fact, the pace does seem to have quickened in Barack Obama’s America. The man who tells his fellow Americans that incendiary rhetoric can cause violence once told his supporters to take guns to knife fights. He told supporters to get in the faces of their neighbors. He told Hispanic voters to punish Republicans who, Obama said, were their enemies.

Barack Obama’s White House set up a website in which citizens could report other citizens for daring to speak critically of Obamacare. Just last week, President Obama’s Organizing for Action group put up a website encouraging Americans to root out “climate deniers” and “call them out.”

If it seems like we are in a more violent age, we just might be. The violent rhetoric of America’s own president suggests it. He lectures Christians on the crusades and thinks we need to understand why Islamic radicals want to kill us. When a lunatic kills three people outside a Planned Parenthood facility, the President and his political allies blame pro-life Christians. When an Islamic radical kills soldiers at Fort Hood, the President considers it workplace violence.

The political left in this country has decided, in the name of constantly advancing their agenda, to politicize everything. You are either with them or against them. The left gives a pass to our actual enemies, and treats their neighbor as the enemy because their neighbor can cast a vote, but ISIS cannot.

It used to not be so. But then Barack Obama stood up and literally told people to start taking guns to knife fights. Now we are dealing with the consequences.

To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.