Cal Thomas: Dark night, indeed

Within recent memory are tragedies like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1999 massacre at Columbine, the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings and the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tucson. Some politicians and liberal interest groups have sought to link these and other violent incidents to the far right. There also have been incidents when some conservatives have tried to blame other tragedies on “liberals” “secularists” and abortion.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote on his blog that the “hatemongers” Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck contributed to the Giffords shooting, despite later reports that the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, had never listened to their programs. The discovery that Loughner liked “The Communist Manifesto” and “Mein Kampf” forced media types to quickly abandon that smear, but not retract their comments. They're running the same play again.

Within hours of the massacre of 12 people and the wounding of dozens more in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., Brian Ross of ABC News rushed on the air to say that he had found a name similar to that of the alleged shooter and that the Jim Holmes he had discovered with a quick Internet search was (gasp!) listed as a member of the tea party movement. In Ross' mind, as well as that of other “journalists,” apparently tea party equals guns, equals extremist, end of discussion. ABC and Ross later issued a limp apology, but the bias was exposed.

The New York Times sought the opinion of film critic Roger Ebert, who predictably argued for more gun control laws even while diagnosing the alleged shooter as “insane.” How would more laws force an “insane” individual to act sanely and obey them, especially when that person is intent on committing murder? Ebert didn't say. Even if more gun laws could deter “insane” killers, there are other weapons to choose from — airplanes, homemade bombs containing fertilizer. Should fertilizer be outlawed?