No connections

Famously, from a Tea Party rally. But I’m sure he wasn’t really suggesting that if Democrats in our government continue to do things he didn’t like, he’d try to implement a “Second Amendment” remedy.

You know - a “Second Amendment remedy,” as Nevada Tea Party Republican Senatorial Candidate Sharron Angle defined it:

And you know, I’m hoping that we’re not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.

Clearly she was not suggesting that if Reid wanted to crack down on guns she’d show him the business end of a firearm. Not in the least.. ...

And it’s not like these folks draw their inspiration from their media stars, like Rush Limbaugh:

I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - s­o we we’ll never forget what these people stood for.

I mean clearly, he didn’t mean that literally.

And neither did Ann Coulter:

We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.

It was just hyperbole! Actually, we could go on in this vein all day - your right-wing media stars have employed a lot of “hyperbole” in recent years.

But none of it could plausibly be connected to what happened Saturday.

Clearly, all of this - and the infinite number of additional examples we could cite - have had nothing to do with establishing a rhetorical political culture where violence is the continual subtext. Certainly, none of the people in these pictures, or making these statements, really mean that they want to go get guns and do violence. No, they’re just making a point.

That point being … what, exactly?