Another Radical Left Hate Crime?

Yesterday, 26 year-old Chris Harper Mercer, walked onto the campus of Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, and murdered nine people. Seven more individuals were injured during his shooting rampage. Our prayers go out to the victims and their families.

President Obama wasted no time in exploiting this tragedy. Before Obama knew anything about how the shooter got his guns, the president demanded more gun control laws -- restrictions on our Second Amendment rights that likely would not have prevented this tragedy. I'll have more thoughts on the president's remarks below.

But, first, here are some crucial details that Big Media are largely ignoring:
 

• Mercer was adamantly anti-Christian. He frequented multiple anti-religion websites. Mercer reportedly asked his victims what their religion was. If they said they were Christians, he shot them in the head. If they refused to answer, he shot them in the leg.

  One can only imagine what President Obama would have said last night if Mercer had gone through the classroom asking people what their religion was and shot Muslims in the head. There would be "jihad" against anyone who has dared to question the growing threat of radical Islam in America.
   

• On one online dating site, Mercer indicated that his preferred mate would be "Pagan, Wiccan, Not Religious, but Spiritual." Mercer was into conspiracy theories, the occult and was an admirer of Adolf Hitler.
   
• Mercer committed this atrocity at a community college. But virtually every media report has failed to note that this college has been in the news lately. Alek Skarlatos, one of the heroes who stopped a jihadist on a Paris train, attends this college. Shouldn't this strange coincidence raise eyebrows about whether there is something else going on here?

  By the way, there was another military hero at the college yesterday. Chris Mintz, an Army veteran, was shot at least five times trying to protect other students. Yesterday was also his son's sixth birthday. Like Skarlatos, who rushed the jihadist in Paris, Mintz showed the courage that is so common among our men and women in uniform.
   

• Mercer had two friends on social media. Several sites that follow radical Islam are reporting that one of the two was Mahmoud Ali Ehsani, who is clearly a radical Islamist.
   
• In various postings, Mercer expressed sympathy for Vester Flanagan, a left-wing extremist who gunned down two Virginia reporters in August.

  Nothing To See Here

  Here's my prediction: Other than the anti-gun part of this story, it will be forgotten by Monday because the rest of the narrative fits nothing that Obama and the left want to talk about it.

  You won't hear the president question gun free zones or the insanity of "security guards" who are unarmed. If the shooter had known that there were armed security guards on campus, this terrible event might not have happened.

  If we want to have a national conversation about something, why aren't we talking about the fact that these mass shootings, going all the way back to Columbine, increasingly appear to involve a hatred of Christianity? Somehow I doubt the president will question whether the left should temper its radical rhetoric against Christians.

  Is elite hostility toward Christianity contributing to these left-wing hate crimes? What about ripping Judeo-Christian morality out of our schools? The only thing that drives leftists more nuts than guns is posting the Ten Commandments where schoolchildren might see them.

  It is doubtful that the shooter's friendship with a radical Islamist will get much attention. It was briefly mentioned during a Fox News broadcast this morning, but the interviewer did not pursue it.

  By the way, do you remember the shootings at the Tennessee military recruiting center? They happened just as ISIS was encouraging lone wolves in the U.S. to attack our servicemen.

  The one thing authorities repeated over and over again was that they were confused about the shooter's motive. Then we had a debate about arming military personnel on base. Then we didn't hear anything else. Why not?

  Here's something else to consider: The terrible toll at Umpqua Community College is generally equivalent to what happens every weekend in Chicago. But I don't recall Obama ever showing much anger about that carnage. What explains Obama's over-the-top reaction to yesterday's attack versus his relatively subdued response to the routine mayhem in his hometown?

  Speaking Of Routine. . .

  During his remarks last night, President Obama said he was going to politicize yesterday's shootings, "Well, this is something we should politicize." At least he's being honest.

  Nine people had just been gunned down in cold blood and the president was already promoting his own agenda. I suspect most Americans strongly objected to the president's crass political ploy.

  Obama also lamented how such deaths have become "routine." I have often spoken and written about the growing culture of death in America that cheapens the value of life. It permeates music, movies, the hip-hop culture and video games.

  On top of that, innocent unborn babies are routinely destroyed in America. Nearly 3,000 lives are lost each and every day, sacrificed on the altar of "choice." We are told that this destruction of the innocent is actually one of our great constitutional "rights."

  President Obama and his allies are so committed to this "choice" that he is willing to veto the entire budget of the United States and shut down the government unless taxpayers continue to subsidize Planned Parenthood to the tune of half a billion dollars a year.

  Chag Same'ach

  Carol and I wish all of our Jewish friends and supporters celebrating Simchat Torah next week a happy and joyous holiday!