Although neither side can claim to have all the facts at this early stage in the investigation of yesterday’s massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas, the rumor mill has begun cranking out grist for the warring factions in our ideologically divided nation.
The Left, whose collective mindset provides the dictionary definition of one-track, has been spewing the usual venom toward the “known” culprits whenever there is a mass shooting: guns, the NRA, Donald Trump, Republicans, and prayer (yes, prayer).
Here are some examples of the mindless prattle lefties are hurling via social media:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Innocent people go to church on Sunday to honor their God, and while doing so, get shot in killed. What country? America. Why? Republicans.
— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) November 5, 2017
I’m sick & tired of “thoughts and prayers” for mass shooting victims. What we need: legislation & regulation. Start with assault-weapon ban.
— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) November 5, 2017
Can you sleep tonight, colleagues, when the price of gun lobby goodwill is this – blood soaked church and school floors, city streets?
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 5, 2017
There are also the rejoinders from the Right, including this response to the last tweet:
Can you sleep knowing the killer was already banned from owning guns
&
All you would do is disarm the citizen whose legal gun stopped him? https://t.co/1LWLVIx08d— Jim Hanson (@Uncle_Jimbo) November 6, 2017
On the conservative side, a number of websites are reporting that the shooter, Devin Patrick Kelley, was a member of antifa and that his actions on Nov. 5 were a day late: Nov. 4 had been set aside for the group’s all-out war on the Trump administration and Americans who stood behind it.
It’s tempting to make that connection, especially since the formation of antifa has once and for all stripped liberals of their claims to “non-violence” and “civility.” It may in fact turn out to be the case, but for now it’s pure idle speculation.
Accordingly, the mainstream media’s truth-gathering arm, Snopes, has been called upon to render a verdict — which, unsurprisingly, is “false.” But if you read Snopes’s “evidence,” which is also speculative — “Preliminary news reports suggest … that Kelley might have had a personal connection to one or more persons at the church he targeted” — you come away with the realization that there is nothing to substantiate the site’s classification of the antifa story as false [emphasis added]. So far, the antifa story hasn’t been proved true, but neither has it been proved false.
One “fact” about the shooting that you can pretty much take to the bank is this: The stringent gun control laws that Democrats crave may not have stopped Devin Kelley from amassing the arsenal police found in his car, but they might have prevented the allegedly armed good Samaritan who chased Kelley from owning his weapons.
One more rumor worth chewing on:
????BREAKING!???? Citizen gun owner engaged shooter with a rifle and may have killed him.
Thank GOD a citizen HERO was armed and stopped the carnage from being worse! God bless Texas and their great people.
Sutherland Springs is in our prayers…#GunControlNow #MAGA #tcot #FoxNews pic.twitter.com/OXd2KRifTW— M A Nöthem (@mikandynothem) November 6, 2017
