Left-Wing Lunatics and Guns

Surprise, surprise. Karl Pierson, the 18-year-old mental case who shot two fellow students before killing himself at Arapahoe High School in Denver last Friday, turns out to be a leftist.

From the Denver Post:

"He had very strong beliefs about gun laws and stuff," said junior Abbey Skoda, who was in a class with Pierson during her freshman year.

Regarding gun laws, Pierson evidently felt we need more of them. If we had fewer, people would be in a better position to defend themselves against maniacs like him:

Thomas Conrad, who had an economics class with Pierson, described him as very opinionated.

Originally, that sentence read, “—described him as a very opinionated Socialist.” But the Post went back and scrubbed it:

In one Facebook post, Pierson attacks the philosophies of economist Adam Smith, who through his invisible-hand theory pushed the notion that the free market was self-regulating. In another post, he describes himself as "Keynesian."

That is, he opposed free market economics, and advocated the sort of ham-fisted statist intervention that has characterized the Obama Administration.

Pierson also appears to mock Republicans on another Facebook post, writing "you republicans are so cute" and posting an image that reads: "The Republican Party: Health Care: Let 'em Die, Climate Change: Let 'em Die, Gun Violence: Let 'em Die, Women's Rights: Let 'em Die, More War: Let 'em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?"

Carl Schmidt and Brendon Mendelson, both seniors at Arapahoe High, knew Pierson. They said he had political views that were "outside the mainstream," but they did not elaborate.

No need for elaboration; it is already clear that Pierson went off the rails on the left side of the tracks.

This does not fit with the narrative the liberal media would prefer to advance. Pierson even used a shotgun, the weapon famously endorsed by Joe Biden during the anti–AR-15 campaign launched after Sandy Hook. At least the media did not change Pierson’s shotgun to an AR-15 — as the New York Daily News did with Washington Navy Yard killer Aaron Alexis.

From the liberal establishment point of view, it would be nice to think of maniacs who go on shooting rampages as right-wingers. Inconveniently, they rarely are. Despite absurd attempts to blame Jared Loughner’s shooting spree on a graphic from a Sarah Palin fundraising effort that he almost certainly never saw, the Tucson shooter’s politics were decidedly left-wing.

The Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho wrote hate mail to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Floyd Corkins Jr tried to shoot up the offices of the Family Research Council because the ultra-left Southern Poverty Law Center had denounced it as a “hate group” for failing to endorse homosexuality.

James Jay Lee was fortunately shot by police before he could start killing the hostages he took at the Discovery Channel’s offices; he was motivated by doubts that the network was sufficiently committed to saving the planet.

Many maniacal killers are too crazy even to be liberals; their views are completely incomprehensible. But when their politics are a matter of record, they almost invariably turn out to be lefties. Unbalanced minds are naturally drawn to an unwholesome and irrational ideology, which in turns serves to unhinge them further.

If an NRA member ever shoots up a school on behalf of individual liberty, you will know it; the media certainly will not keep it a secret.