Hunting "liberals"

Absolutely sickening. Simple as that:

Police found right-wing political books, brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes and a handgun in the Powell home of a man who said he attacked a church in order to kill liberals "who are ruining the country," court records show.

Knoxville police Sunday evening searched the Levy Drive home of Jim David Adkisson after he allegedly entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two people and wounded six others during the presentation of a children's musical.

[...]

Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

Adkisson told Still that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."

Adkisson told officers he left the house unlocked for them because "he expected to be killed during the assault."

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

An earlier report said he was motivated by hatred of Christianity, though as Glenn Reynolds points out, the explanations aren't mutually exclusive.

Not surprisingly, some left-wing bloggers say conservatives, en masse, are responsible for the Knoxville shootings. (Fox News did it, says one guy at the Huffington Post, a site so intimidated by its own lefty readers that it closes the comment section when a well-known right-winger dies.) The reality is, while some ideologies and political movements are more violent than others, there are few that don't have someone motivated to do something like this.

One of the victims, Greg McKendry, died a hero:

Witnesses said Greg McKendry, 60, blocked others behind him at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church from being hit by a shotgun blast.

McKendry "took the blast to protect the rest of us," church member Barbara Kemper told The Associated Press.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at July 28, 2008 09:29 PM