Joe The Plumber: 'Your Dead Kids Don't Trump My Constitutional Rights' To Have Guns

[moonbladem]

Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, insisted the deaths of innocent people "don't trump" his constitutional rights in an open letter to the families of victims in Friday's shooting rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Wurzelbacher's letter was published on Barbwire Monday, days after one shooting victim's

Comments

[mastadge]

This is not a new refrain, unfortunately. This clip of Army vet Aaron Weiss made the rounds last year, after Sandy Hook: http://youtu.be/Lh1zornUVv8... )

[synekdokee]

What a class act...

Is this man actually relevant as anything but a trashy tabloid celeb in the States anymore?

[vulturoso]

Oh heavens no. Losers of this type (Palin, Cheney, etc) are only relevant when they make stupid, horrible statements like this. They're just trying to remind us they exist.

[screamingintune]

not even a trashy tabloid celeb tbh. maybe he's still relevant in weird internet tea party circles, MAYBE

[that_which]

He's pretty much Sarah Palin for folks who think of Sarah Palin as a credible figure - he was always a joke, but the press loved him, he injected the wingnut tropes the professionals couldn't touch in public into the national dialogue, and apparently nobody showed him how far around the big hand goes during fifteen minutes.

[mickeym]

How gross can a person be? Wait, don't answer that. I'm afraid of the answer.

How long is it going to take the gun nuts to realize that no one actually wants to "take their guns away"? I just--does holding a gun in your hand do something weird to your brain chemistry, or what? Because unless I suddenly fail at reading and comprehension, NO ONE has said "let's get rid of ALL the guns" (though I desperately wish they would).

Ugh.

[nesmith]

It's rampant, pathological paranoia. They are convinced that they are under attack by socialist forces that want to disarm them and turn them into slaves to . . . something.

Frankly the very people who spew this disgusting bile are the exact people who should have their guns taken away. They shouldn't own anything more dangerous than a shoulder blade.

[moonshaz]

Nope.

For one thing, I think they get off on their paranoia way too much to ever want to give it up. Imagining themselves as a tormented, besieged, and persecuted group makes them feel incredibly important and significant. No matter HOW many actual facts they may ever be presented with, they are not going to want to relinquish that view of themselves and the heady feelings it engenders.

Idiots.

[hammersxstrings]

here come the gun rights activists, full force, with just as much sensitivity as always.

[tabaqui]

If i had the power, frankly, I'd vanish every single gun, bomb, armed rocket and land mine on this planet, and any made after that - they vanish, too. Just so fucking *sick* of this shite.

[deadsong]

I'm with you. Last Thursday night I heard a 14-year-old boy die less than 300 feet from my front stoop. I didn't know it at the time. I heard six gunshots go off and tried to just...ignore it, because it's not that uncommon around my neighborhood for people to pop off at nothing to try to be badass, plus a lot of times illegal fireworks sound like gunshots, and if I panicked every time I'd never leave the apartment; it's usually nothing to worry about unless you hear shouting or sirens, and calling the cops is pointless because they won't come just for "I heard gunshots but didn't see anything." I only found out later when the mayor was talking about it that this kid--barely a teenager--died with three bullets in him, in a spot I walk over every day on my way to get the mail or run to the corner store or head to the laundromat. 14, and someone felt he needed to die enough to put not one, but three bullets in him. And the entire neighborhood is so desensitized that they're just retreating behind closed doors and hoping the next time it

[tabaqui]

No, no sorries. What you say is 100 percent right. It's sickening that a relative few in our millions of citizens can and are allowed to terrorize us all to the point where *anyone* with a gun is a threat. I wouldn't stay in a business if some random Joe walked in with a gun on his hip, and I would never return if it were allowed, but that would really on inconvenience *me*, not the gun-toting wannabe who thinks he needs to be ARMED AT ALL TIMES OMG!!!

I am so sick of the caterwauling from the gun fetishists that insist that we're only safe if we're festooned with weapons, and that their right to own as many penis-extenders as possible is more important than the right of citizens to be fucking *safe*.

We've sold our collective souls, over the years, to the military-industrial complex and this is, pretty much, the 'natural' outgrowth of that. Fear creates profit.

And, lest I forget the *most important thing* - how absolutely horrifying and awful for this poor boy and for his family.

[ladycyndra]

Also agreed with you 100%.