Malkin, Krauthammer Inadvertently Make Textbook Case For Tighter Gun Control Laws

Written by Eric Boehlert

Published

The Tucson gun massacres continues to tie the right-wing media up in knots as they scramble to respond to allegations that their violent, anti-government rhetoric has led to a drastic coarsening of our public discourse.

The problem that pundits like Michelle Malkin and Charles Krauthammer have had this week as they defend their hate rhetoric is that they're inadvertently making a perfect case for tighter gun control laws in this country; gun controls that both Malkin and Krauthammer adamantly oppose.

For instance, in her New York Post column, Malkin attacks Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for not doing his job. According to Malkin, everyone knew the Tucson shooter, Jared Loughner, was nuts [emphasis added]:

As the sheriff himself has now admitted, Loughner leveled death threats against others that were investigated by law enforcement -- and then apparently shrugged off. Locals note that Loughner's mother worked for the county and may have had some pull.

Pima County College campus police reported five serious confrontations with the mentally unstable young man before he was kicked out of the school. Classmates said they feared for their lives.
Meanwhile, appearing on Fox News Monday night, Krauthammer also stressed that everyone knew the shooter was nuts:
In case of Loughner we had a classmate who was e-mailing contemporaneously at the time. She wrote [he] was unstable and dangerous and imagined he was a guy who would come in and shoot up a class.
She sat at the back of the class near the door so she would be the first one out. This guy had five encounters with campus police. But as the campus police told the instructor of the algebra class, we can't do anything until he does something.

Conservative pundits are anxious to stress it was common knowledge that the Tucson shooter was “mentally unstable” and that even his classmates feared he might turn violent. Conservatives stress that point as part of their argument about how Loughner was simply crazy, not political. (And to criticize Dupnik.)

Fine.

But would Malkin and Krauthammer, who are hardcore opponents of gun control in this country, now please explain how someone, in their words, as “mentally unstable” and obviously “dangerous” and “disturbed” as Jared Loughner was able to effortlessly purchase guns and ammo for his massacre?

Or have conservative pundits still not figured out the spin on that one?

UPDATED: An Andrew Breitbart blogger joins the inadvertent gun control crowd, dismissing the Tucson shooter as a “delusional lunatic.” No word from the Breitbart blogger how that “delusional lunatic” was able to purchase a semi-automatic pistol.