One Left-Wing Gunman Doesnt Make a Movement

[babylonsister]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/one-left-wing-gunman-doesnt-make-a-movement

One Left-Wing Gunman Doesn’t Make a Movement
There have been many left-wing assassins in U.S. history—and right-wing ones, and no-wing ones. What matters is that he had a military-style assault rifle.
Michael Tomasky
06.15.17 12:01 AM ET


snip//

But it’s my hunch that Hodgkinson was not part of any broader movement. If he went to any Occupy Wall Street rallies, I’d be surprised. He seems to have been a lone, and lonely, man, stewing in his juices, fuming about the world, developing a worldview, when Bernie Sanders came along and seemed to be speaking directly and only to him.

I saw that many right-wingers on Twitter and Facebook were really enjoying this yesterday. It was all right, you see, because no one died (though Congressman Steve Scalise's remained in critical condition Wednesday night). Now, the next eight times some right-wing nut goes on a shooting spree, they’ll have “but James Hodgkinson!” at the ready.

So be it. I abhor this shooting, and I abhor all such shootings. And while I would agree that it was a damn good thing that the police were there, I would not agree that that just proves that more people should have guns so that more Hodgkinsons can be stopped before inflicting the maximum damage. Teachers and regular citizens aren’t cops. They don’t do repeated drills on taking down perps, and they shouldn’t.

Instead, I think it’s insane that James Hodgkinson had a military-style assault rifle in the first place (described as “like a Colt M4,” which you can see here). That’s still the real fight. Anything else is smoke.

[jmg257]

1. I thought it was an SKS? Which is little like a Colt M4. Maybe he customized it?

And I heard on the news he did go to local Occupy rallies.

[gratuitous]

2. Curious

Hodgkinson is the leading edge of a violent radical leftist movement. On the other hand, Jared Loughner, Dylan Roof, Jeremy Christian, and a host of others are all lone wolves, and nobody can figure out where these horrible murderers learned lethal hatred of women, blacks, Muslims, immigrants, sexual minorities, and any other enemy du jour (including the French).

It's a curious phenomenon.

[Lee-Lee]

3. An SKS is nothing "like a colt M4"

The author loses all credibility right there. Even if he's not a gun person a responsible journalist can do 30 seconds of research instead of making stuff up.

It's a nearly 75 year old design that has a standard type wood stock and 10 round fixed magazine and can only take a removable magazine if it's swapped in with unwieldy, hard to change ones that generally don't even work well. You could buy them all over in the 1980's for $75-150 and they were and still are very common on farms as ranch rifles and popular as a deer rifle with lower income people who were on a limited budget.

It has zero in common with a Colt M4 other than being semi-automatic.

[QC]

4. Some people right here at DU think he does,

and they are very, very concerned indeed!

(And also very naive if they don't think that Hodgkinson will be used to smear all Democrats, even Sensible Pragmatic Centrists™.)