Based
on the assertions of Roger Hedgecock, a right-wing radio show host, the
meme that the five worst recent mass shootings were committed by
registered Democrats is making its way through e-mail chains and social
media. Hedgecock asserts, without providing any evidence or sources,
that the Ft. Hood shooter, the Virginia Tech shooter, the Aurora Theater
shooter and
Adam Lanza
of Sandy Hook infamy were all “registered Democrats”. He acknowledges
that Klebold and Harris (the Columbine Colorado shooters) were too young
to be registered voters but asserts, again without providing any
evidence, that Harris and Klebold’s parents were progressives or liberal
Democrats.
All of these charges are utterly baseless and perhaps do not
even deserve a response. However, given the effectiveness of right-wing
lies in saturating social media and duping the incurious (a far too
numerous segment of the population), some more detailed debunking is in
order.
To the best of my ability, I have attempted to research these claims
with as much rigor as possible. If there is any evidence for or against
my debunking, I welcome that evidence in the spirit of free inquiry. Let
me also state that given that neither major political party condones
mass shooter violence in any way, shape or form, and that all these acts
are individual acts of violence that are not sanctioned by either
elected Democrats or Republicans (at least not mainstream leaders in
either party), the very notion that they are acting on behalf of a
political party is itself problematic. This is not to say that mass
shootings are apolitical acts, but rather it is to say that as political
acts they may express an ideology (racism, misogyny, entitlement,
psychosis, etc) but they do not in general express alignment with a
political party or if they do it is not an association that the
Democrats or Republicans would accept as legitimate (neither party wants
to claim
James Holmes
or Adam Lanza as a member in good standing, no matter what Holmes or
Lanza feels about them). In any case, we can categorically REJECT the
notion that any of the shooters in question has been shown to be a
registered Democrat on a case by case basis.
1. Nidal Hasan (the Ft. Hood shooter) lived in either Virginia (his
state of residence prior to being sent to Ft. Hood) or Texas, neither of
which has partisan registration. Therefore the claim that he was a
"registered Democrat" is false. I do not know if he voted or how he
voted, but I do know that unless he was registered in a state in which
he did not reside, that the claim that he is a registered Democrat is
FALSE.
2. Since Virginia does not have partisan registration there is also
no way to tell whether Seung-Hui Cho was a Democrat, but again because
there is no partisan registration in the state we can say that the claim
that he is a registered Democrat is
FALSE.
(Update: A more obvious point is that Cho was a resident alien, not a US citizen, so he was not eligible to vote in the US)
3. The false allegation that James Holmes was a registered Democrat
was based on a Breitbart blogger named Joel Pollack, who found voter
registration records for a DIFFERENT James Holmes who was approximately
the same age as the shooter James Holmes. Alex Jones’ Infowars and other
right-wing websites then incredulously repeated the false information
without verifying it. It was later determined that the Colorado Theater
Shooter James Holmes was NOT registered to vote, as evidenced by
this retraction:
{Newly-released information on the suspect’s birthdate (which, as
indicated in our initial report, was a slight mismatch), combined with
new details Breitbart News has obtained about the suspect’s likely
addresses, together suggest that the suspect may, in fact, not have been
registered to vote.}. However, most conservative bloggers continued to
promote the lie without printing the Breitbart site's retraction. The
claim that James Holmes was a registered Democrat is
FALSE.
4. The claim that Adama Lanza is a registered Democrat has been
suggested based not on any evidence that he was registered as one, but
on the rather dubious claim that because Connecticut has almost 2 to 1
Democratic registration over Republicans, he was probably a Democrat.
(Claim: "Adam Lanza, NewtownConn murderer. Registered Democrats
outnumber Republicans by about a 2-1 ratio in Connecticut. The odds are
therefore that the Lanza family are (sic) Democrats.") This of course is
a bogus argument to begin with, but even if we were to make the claim
that a mass shooter’s political affiliation must be the same as the
majority of the people in his area, we can debunk this foolish idea by
taking this shoddy analysis down to the local level. Yes, Connecticut
voted for Barack Obama, BUT the city of
Newtown voted for Mitt Romney.
If we look at the results we find that Mitt Romney defeated Barack
Obama in Newtown by 7451-6784 votes or 51.7 percent to 47 percent.
Republican Senate candidate and Tea Party favorite Linda McMahon carried
the city over Democrat Chris Murphy by an even larger margin. Add in
the other information we have that Lanza’s mother was a “doomsday
prepper” and a home schooler in a Republican-leaning city and we can
pretty well dispense with the erroneous assumption that Lanza must have
been a Democrat
(UPDATE: According to at least one media source,
Nancy Lanza was a registered Republican. The source does not provide a
link, but the author of this article is seeking further confirmation).
We can therefore claim that with no evidence to support the claim, the
assertion that Lanza was a Democrat is not demonstrated and that in the
absence of any evidence it is likely
FALSE.
5. Klebold and Harris of course were not old enough to vote and they
had no apparent political affiliation. Allegations that they came from
families of Democrats or liberal progressives appear to have no sources
to substantiate those claims. What little ideology the boys demonstrated
owed mostly to an
admiration for Timothy McVeigh
not Ted Kennedy. Harris’ father was a retired Air Force pilot and Eric
Harris wanted to join the Marine Corps. The boys lived in Littleton,
Colorado a relatively conservative and affluent suburb of Denver. The
claim that their parents were Democrats is UNSUBSTANTIATED. Any
suggestion that the two boys were Democrats is demonstrably
FALSE.
Interestingly, Hedgecock and those on the far right have conveniently
overlooked a number of cases where ideology is clearly right-wing. The
acts below are instances of right-wing violence that are unequivocally
committed by people who are openly hostile to liberalism. While this
does not mean these killers are Republicans, it is quite clear that they
are RIGHT-WINGERS and that they have far more in common with Mr.
Hedgecock, Alex Jones and the other gun-toting conspiracy nuts on the
right than with any evils associated with the Democratic Party or
liberalism. In addition, to the list below is the obvious case of
Timothy McVeigh, who I have not included because his crime was not
committed with firearms. It was however, committed by a right-winger and
the carnage was on a massive scale.
For example, on July 18, 1984 James Oliver Huberty, who told his wife
he hated “children, Mexicans and the United States”
opened fire inside the McDonald’s Restaurant in San Ysidro, CA using a
Browning P-35 Hi-Power 9mm pistol, Winchester 1200 pump-action 12-gauge
shotgun, and an Israeli Military Industries 9mm Carbine (Uzi) – all
legally acquired. He killed 21 and injured 19 before he was shot dead by
police.
On Aug. 10, 1999
White supremacist Buford O. Furrow,
Jr., fired 70 rounds with an Uzi-type submachine-gun inside the lobby
of the Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, CA wounding three
children, a teenage counselor and an office worker. He then carjacked a
woman’s Toyota at gunpoint, dumped it behind a motel and murdered US
Postal Worker Joseph Santos with a Glock 9mm handgun.
On July 27, 2008 Former U.S. Army private, Jim David Atkinsson,
who hated Democrats, liberals, African Americans and homosexuals,
using a Remington Model 48 12-gauge shotgun, murdered two people and
injured seven others inside the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist
Church in Knoxville, TN.
The day after Obama’s inauguration,
white supremacist
Keith Luke went on a killing spree in Brockton, Massachusetts. His goal
was to kill as many Jews, blacks and Hispanics as possible. When
questioned by investigators, the deranged gunman who had stockpiled
hundreds of rounds of ammunition, proclaimed that he was fighting the
extinction of the white race.
A little over a month later, Dannie Baker,
a former Republican campaign volunteer
shot five Chilean immigrants in Florida. Those who knew him said he was
obsessed with the fear that illegal immigrants were taking over the
country.
In April of 2009, Richard Popalowski, a
white supremacist
in Pittsburgh, shot and killed three police officers following a
domestic disturbance call. He apparently thought that Obama was part of a
government conspiracy to seize all guns, and he feared the government
would take his guns away.
Later the same month, a Fort Walton Beach Florida man
who thought the Obama administration was conspiring against him, shot and murdered two sheriff’s deputies.
On May 31, 2009 Dr. George Tiller was murdered in his own church by a
right-wing “pro- life” gun man who decided to express his belief in the sanctity of human life by executing a medical doctor.
Eleven days later a
right-wing white supremacist and Holocaust denier
walked into the National Holocaust Museum and killed an
African-American security guard. Two weeks later, three Neo-Nazis were
arrested for bombing a diversity office in Scottsdale, Arizona.
On April 20, 2010 a member of the
Sovereign Citizen movement was arrested after a failed attempt to take over a Tennessee county courthouse.
Exactly one month later, in West Memphis Arkansas,
Sovereign citizens
Jerry and Joe Kane murdered two police officers before they themselves
were shot and killed in the ensuing shoot out with police.
On July 18, 2010 Byron Williams, an angry unemployed man, was
arrested by police after they discovered a car full of weapons and
ammunition that he had
planned to use to kill progressives. He was on his way to the non-profit Tides Foundation Center, a favorite target of vitriol from Glenn Beck’s radio show.
On Jan. 8, 2011 22-year old Jared Lee Loughner killed six people,
including a judge and a nine-year old child, and wounded 13 others,
including
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), using a 9mm Glock 19 pistol during a public meeting in a supermarket parking lot near Tuscon, AZ.
On Aug. 5, 2012 Wade Michael Page, a 40-year old
white supremacist
and U.S. Army veteran murdered six people and wounded four others
inside a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, WI with a Springfield XD(M)
semi-automatic pistol.
