Shooting at Family Research Council headquarters
Will media rush to judgment?
At approximately 11:35 a.m. eastern Casey Mattox of the Family Research Council tweeted that there had been a shooting at their headquarters in downtown DC. While few details are known, Mattox reports that a guard was shot.
Mattox reported that they were “on lockdown” on the 5th floor, and later made it outside. Mattox tweeted a photo a few minutes later, at 10:48 a.m. eastern:
A statement was released on the FRC Blog:
Incident at FRC Headquarters
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins made the following comments after an FRC security guard was shot this morning:
“The police are investigating this incident. Our first concern is with our colleague who was shot today. Our concern is for him and his family.”
The Family Research Council, a pro-Christian nonprofit, was named a hate group in 2010 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, along with such groups at the Ku Klux Klan, for its “anti-gay” positions. Professor Jacobson reported on SPLC’s exaggerations and false accusations in November 2010.
From the Family Research Council website:
Since 1983, Family Research Council (FRC) has advanced faith, family and freedom in public policy and public opinion. FRC’s team of seasoned experts promotes these core values through policy research, public education on Capitol Hill and in the media, and grassroots mobilization. We review legislation, meet with policymakers, publish books and pamphlets, build coalitions, testify before Congress, and maintain a powerful presence in print and broadcast media. Through our outreach to pastors, we equip churches to transform the culture.
The FRC also has been targeted by groups like the Human Rights Campaign. From the Human Rights Campaign website:
The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the Family Research Council (FRC) as a hate group because of their “propagation of known falsehoods — claims about [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated.”
It is possible this is a random act, and at this stage given that we do know the motive for the crime, we certainly do not want to jump to false conclusions.
We will update as more details are known.
Update: At 12:17 p.m. eastern, Mattox reported that a bomb squad was entering the building. ABC reports that a suspect is in custody and the guard who was shot in the arm is conscious and breathing.
Fox News is reporting the suspect disagreed with the Family Research Council’s policies:
The suspect “made statements regarding their policies, and then opened fire with a gun striking a security guard,” a source told Fox News. WJLA-TV7 reported the suspect was also shot.
Authorities were treating the attack as a case of domestic terrorism.
Neither the Human Rights Campaign nor the Southern Poverty Law Center responded to my requests for comment.
Update 5:42 p.m.: The Human Rights Campaign posted a joint statement, signed by the leaders of several LGBT groups, condemning the shooting.
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Comments
Interesting that this comes so soon after the Democrats declare they’re taking up an anti-traditional marriage plank for their little communist rally being held in North Carolina.
An easy prediction: if politically motivated, the media will suddenly discover the meaning of “lone crazed gunman.”
I think the media already knows the gunman’s leanings – they are surprisingly silent.
First: This is terrible and I pray for the two who were shot and their families.
Second:
Let’s see how this supposed to go: spoken breathlessly and hyperventilating: It was an Occupier who did it! It’s all Obama’s fault! It’s Axelrod’s fault! Democrats should denounce everyone in their party! ….. did I get it right Media? Oh wait….
I’m betting they discover the crazy gunman theory or it doesn’t get reported any further.
Wait and see, wait and see.
Someone just used a gun in an attempt to destroy someone’s equal right to life.
You mean to tell me there is hypocrisy on the left? Say it ain’t so!
I guess the shooter just loved too much, i.e. his justifiable hatred of hate overwhelmed him. /sarc
A better question might be: will the media report it at all? I just checked the Yahoo main web page a moment ago, and it was not one of the headlined stories.
It is on the headlines now, but oddly enough appearing 4 or 5 spaces down, after much older stories (says its been up an hour, at about 1:30 Eastern)
Yahoo had it headlined for about an hour, and now it is gone again. Meanwhile, a headline about a Scrabble player who was caught cheating has been there most of today.
No doubt a gun-clinging Tea Partier, who fully agrees with the hate-filled anti-inclusive agenda of the hate-troup FRC, but disgruntled that their hateful hate-mongering (adequate use of the word “hate,” MSM?) refuse to employ his more radical hate-methods for expanding the right-wing, anti-gay, anti-inclusive hate-agenda (one more “hate,” just for good measure) advancement.
/MAJOR satire, off/
I am NOT holding my breath for this to be a major story in the Collaborationist Media.
Me neither. However, yesterday it was considered news that Obama made another joke about Romney putting a dog on the roof of his car once about 30 years ago.
They have priorities, ya know?
It’s all part of “elevating the dialogue.”
Vichy Media? Quisling Media? Kapo Media?
Like all of them.
A report is saying he had multiple weapons … but he made the mistake of not going to a gun free zone.
I’ve spent a couple days going back a forth with a Facebook person that insists on spreading the lie that FRC supports killing gays in Uganda. The left deliberately incites their base, then shrugs when someone decides to go shoot ’em up at FRC HQ.
Also in 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center was named a hate group for its “anti-Christian” positions.
On the bright side, it’s a good thing proggs can’t shoot.
[…] YET ANOTHER UPDATE: More from Prof. Jacobson. […]
I am becoming increasingly concerned with this instant “domestic terrorism” stamp. Slippery slope. Perhaps we could start with another look at the Ft. Hood “work place” accident/incident and go from there.
Well, they can’t blame Palin for this shooting … for once.
“Will media rush to judgment?”
I think you mean, “Will media be able to stifle yawn?”
[…] can be found at Hot Air, Instapundit, and Legal Insurrection. Is this because the Chick-Fil-A protest was such a dismal […]
The Southern Poverty Law Center is the hate group, and they’ve proved it over and over again. Can you say “projection”? >:-(
Spot on.
But this is an earmark of the Leftist mindset. A commentator, psychologist, Sarah Thompson, M.D., wrote about the Leftist projection of hates, weaknesses and fears in her article ‘Raging Against Self Defense.’
But, tyrants also have long used the pretext of a faked attack to justify their own aggression. Hitler faked an attack on the German frontier to justify their attack on Poland, and also set up, or exploited, the burning of the Reichstag to declare a state of emergency and seize dictatorial powers in Germany.
Similarly, Leftists justify their own attacks on Christians and traditional values supporters by labeling eternal truths and morals as ‘hate’ and ‘bigotry.’
The big secret is that the vast majority of political violence in the last decade has been coming from the Left.
[…] Via Legal Insurrection: […]
It is my prediction that antipathy and the spirit of lawlessness would grow exponentially under an Obama/Biden/Holder second term.
A shooting? In downtown DC? I thought that it was illegal to have a gun in DC. How did that happen? How could an otherwise law abiding citizen have a gun in DC? This must be a made up story. We must hold these otherwise law abiding citizens accountable. Get Holder on this right away and have him move as fast on this as he is on Fast and Furious.
Holder could have given him a better deal on the gun.
To the extent that ABC, NBC, and CBS covers this story tonight, I suspect they will briefly talk (for 30 seconds or less) of about a shooting in the office of the “controversial” FRC, and claim that no one knows the motive. Then they story will never be mentioned again.
However, it is also possible they will play up the need for gun control, or perhaps even talk about political violence in general while showing pictures of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh (hoping viewers will get the impression that something they said or did caused shooting).
It’s those evil guns. And Sarah Palin. And George Bush
[…] Legal Insurrection wonders, will the media rush to judgement? […]
“Neither the Human Rights Commission nor the Southern Poverty Law Center responded to my requests for comments.”
Of course…
You know, for a group that espouses their loathing for firearm ownership, these leftists sure do love to use them.
This might not have happened had Romney released his tax returns.
Did you hear the statement condemning the violence, with a plea for reconciliation and unity from the president? Me neither.
More here:
“Unconfirmed reports: Family Research Council shooter carried Chick-fil-A bag, posed as intern; Update: NBC confirming”
How much do you want to bet that some of those whackos are, as we speak, planning terrorist attacks on Chick-fil-A franchises across the country, similar to that horrible shooting at a Luby’s decades ago?
Get ready: this is going to get much, much worse.
I have searched quite a few sites and not much of mention on them and if there is a mention the lefties in the media are describing FRC as a CONSERVATIVE lobby group. I think ABC had a couple wrong facts about the FRC as well – Dr. Dobson’s group – which he has not been with in over 3 years. This won’t make the Big 3 newscasts tonight. No liberal agenda – it is not news.
[…] […]
The FRC shooting in Washington DC just made CNN — it is on in my lunch room — and the FBI is involved.
The Feebs don’t show up for something like this unless there is a Domestic Terrorism angle.
DC cops had jurisdiction off of Federal property.
If you go way down to the “other news” section of the NYT website (below such breaking wish-casting as “increasing AMTRAC use”) you’ll find the article about the apparently (to the NYT) non-ideological gunman. And “The motive of the shooting was unclear.” Perhaps only to those lefty editors with their eyes closed, fingers in ears, loudly yelling “Lalalalalalala! I can’t hear you!”
Don’t hold your breath that Obama will comment on this or call the security guard and thank him. Likely, a sudden investigation into the guard’s life is likely underway to determine the best spin on the shooting of that left-wing “victim.”
I hold obama personally responsible because his inflammatory rhetoric, “get in their face”, “reward your friends, punish your enemies”. Standing by trumka as he exhorted the union thugs “lets go get the bastards”. That is much more evidence than the left had as they tried to blame Palin for the Tucson shooting. That is only from memory, a google search of his “inspirational” speeches would fill a portfolio.
I found a couple articles which did at least a partial tally of Leftist violence, which, oddly enough, never really seems to get acknowledged by the Leftstream Media. The articles are longer and give nods to the violence and baseness of the poo-throwing, defecating-on-the-US-Flag_and-Police-Cruisers OWS, ultra violent OWS, the beat-downs of the wheelchair-bound by SEIU thugs, as well as others, and these:
Of Massacres & Media Myths, NY POST
and from the ACE OF SPADES blog: Why Not Just Call the Holocaust Museum Shooter a “White Supremacist” and “Anti-Semite”?
“Media assumptions that violence is right-wing are routine — and routinely wrong.”
On Friday morning, Brian Ross of ABC News speculated on live TV that James Holmes, the accused killer in Aurora, Colo., was a member of the Tea Party. A few hours later, Ross posted a short apology online; Holmes had no Tea Party connection.
Ross’ unfounded speculation wasn’t unusual (although the speed of his apology was). This was merely the latest case of media commentators jumping to the conclusion that violent attrocities should be attributed to members of the political right. Let’s look back at how often the media has falsely invoked Tea Partiers and other “right-wing nut jobs” in the past few years.
* December 2007 Matthew Murray. planned attacks on Christians at the Colorado New Life Church and Youth with a Mission (hated Christians)
* February 2010: Joe Stack flew his small plane into an IRS building … Stack’s suicide note quoted the Communist Manifesto.
* February 2010: University of Alabama professor Amy Bishop shot and killed three colleagues. Bishop was a lifelong Democrat and Obama donor.
* March 2010: John Patrick Bedell shot two Pentagon security officers at close range. Bedell was a registered Democrat and 9/11 Truther.
* May 2010: New York authorities disarmed a massive car bomb in Times Square. The perp was Faisal Shahzad, an Islamic extremist.
* August 2010: Michael Enright stabbed a Muslim cab driver in the neck. But Enright was a left-leaning art student who had worked with a firm that produced a pro-mosque statement.
* September 2010: James Lee, 43, took three hostages at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters in Maryland. Turns out that Lee was an environmentalist who viewed humans as parasites on the Earth.
* January 2011: Jared Lee Loughner went on a rampage in Tucson, Ariz. Turns out that Loughner was mostly apolitical — a conspiracy theorist who, to date, has been judged too mentally incompetent to stand trial.
“The trouble with this is that the media never calls anti-globalism thugs and rioters members of the “far left.” Nor do they deem animal rights extremists so. Nor gun-toting Black Panthers and black supremacists. Nor, of course, the murderer of William Long. Note that in all these cases where the malefactors would be categorized as somewhere on the left if we attempted to categorize them in a conventional system of politics at all.
But we don’t so categorize them, or rather the media doesn’t so categorize them.
Who burns car lots to the ground to protest industrialization and energy use? Members of the “far left” or “environmental extremists”? The latter, of course who, in the media’s telling, are entirely unrelated to the conventional spectrum of politics. Who throws stones through businesses’ windows and attack cops whenever the G8 or G20 is in town? Members of the “far left” or “anti-globalism protesters”? Again, the latter, standing wholly apart from mainstream political movements. And Al Qaeda…? Well, look: It’s a third-world “empowerment” movement that hates “zionism” and US hegemony. And further, the far left has supported or made excuses for a lot of such terrorist movements. (They still do, of course. Even with Al Qaeda.)”