OPPORTUNISTIC RELIGIOUS RIGHT BLAME-SHIFTING: THE REMIX

Whatever you think were the reasons that the Tucson shootings happened, your theory is almost certainly more plausible than this one:

Arizona GOPer: Roe v. Wade Contributed To Tucson Shootings

Arizona State Sen. Linda Gray (R) argued over the weekend that gun control is not the way to prevent another shooting like the one in Tucson. The real answer, she said when asked about preventing such a shooting in the future, is to better "respect the life of an unborn."

... Politico's Ben Smith reports that Gray did an interview Sunday on George Washington University Radio's "Political Pulse," and said:

So now we have this generation of people who have that idea and it continues on, that why respect life if we can kill an infant who can't defend themselves. It goes back to the value in the creation of life and the respect for that life and if your not trained and have that type of character in realizing that all human life deserves respect this is what our country has come to....

This is a bizarre theory, but it isn't an original one. Brian Rohrbough, the father of one of the victims of the Columbine massacre, became well known in anti-abortion circles for arguing that legal abortion helped make Columbine possible. He insisted that a memorial to his son near the site of the massacre bear the following inscription:

Dad, I have a question. Why?

My son in a Nation that legalized the killing of innocent children in the womb; in a County where authorities would lie and cover up what they knew and what they did; in a Godless school system your life was taken ... Dan I'm sorry.

I love you dad I'll see you tomorrow.

7:00 p.m., April 19, 1999.

There is no peace, says the Lord, for the wicked.

He subsequently became president of Colorado Right to Life and the founder of American Right to Life, as well as Alan Keyes's running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign. Oh, and Katie Couric turned to him for commentary for her evening news broadcast in October 2006, after a series of school shootings. He said:

This country is in a moral free-fall. For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences and life has no inherent value.

We teach there are no absolutes, no right or wrong. And I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including by abortion. Abortion has diminished the value of children.

Suicide has become an acceptable action and has further emboldened these criminals. And we are seeing an epidemic increase in murder-suicide attacks on our children.

Sadly, our schools are not safe. In fact, we now witness that within our schools. Our children have become a target of terrorists from within the United States.

So Linda Gray is just repurposing and remixing his argument that secular public schools, evolution, and legal abortion drive mass murderers to murder.