THE GUN CONTROL PAST OF THE GUN ABSOLUTISTS' NEWEST HERO

Evan Todd, who was threatened with death at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, but escaped with minor injuries, is the latest hero of the gun absolutists because he's published an open letter at Glenn Beck's Blaze denouncing any and all new restrictions on firearms (he's against universal background checks, magazine limits, and the assault weapons ban, and is very angry about the Fast & Furious program).

Mr. President, in theory, your initiatives and proposals sound warm and fuzzy -- but in reality they are far from what we need. Your initiatives seem to punish law-abiding American citizens and enable the murderers, thugs, and other lowlifes who wish to do harm to others.

Let me be clear: These ideas are the worst possible initiatives if you seriously care about saving lives and also upholding your oath of office. There is no dictate, law, or regulation that will stop bad things from happening -- and you know that. Yet you continue to push the rhetoric. Why?

But apparently Todd didn't always feel this way:





In 2001, he was part of a group that believed in "reasonable gun-control laws"? Don't tell his new fans.

But maybe he's had a change of heart because of the company he keeps. The guy who wrote up his open letter for Beck's site is Billy Hallowell -- a right-wing journalist who writes regularly for the Blaze and has written for the Breitbart sites and David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine. Hallowell's speakers' bureau, Pathufind Media, has Todd as a client, and Hallowell and Todd do a joint faith-based speaking program called the ReGeneration Tour.

Hmmm ... do you think if your partner is a wingnut journalist who writes for a number of pro-NRA sites, maybe you could be persuaded to go all Wayne LaPierre on the president in public?

This may be a sort of second act for Todd (and, presumably, for Hallowell); up till now, Todd's lectures have largely focused on bullying:

Recently, Evan Todd, a Columbine school shooting survivor, gave a presentation in Fox Creek about bullying....

One strong message from Todd ... was that the children who are the victims of bullying need to know it's not their fault. They aren't being picked on because they are bad people. They don't suffer hallway taunts and physical pain because they did anything to deserve it.

Bullies are people who have their own issues to resolve. Instead of taking a deep look at the pain they feel, a bully lashes that pain out at others. Perhaps it makes them feel better to know they aren't the only ones suffering but in order to know that they have to inflict pain on others.

It's interesting that Todd now speaks out against bullying, because in the immediate aftermath of Columbine he said something rather memorable to a Time magazine reporter:

Evan Todd, the 255-lb. defensive lineman who was wounded in the library, describes the climate this way: "Columbine is a clean, good place except for those rejects," Todd says of Klebold, Harris and their friends. "Most kids didn't want them there. They were into witchcraft. They were into voodoo dolls. Sure, we teased them. But what do you expect with kids who come to school with weird hairdos and horns on their hats? It's not just jocks; the whole school's disgusted with them. They're a bunch of homos, grabbing each other's private parts. If you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease 'em. So the whole school would call them homos, and when they did something sick, we'd tell them, 'You're sick and that's wrong.'"

He was only fifteen when he said that about the "bunch of homos," and his message is different now that he's an adult, so I guess I'll cut him a break on that. On the gun stuff, not so much.

Oh, and for what it's worth, he's one of the people who's claimed that Cassie Bernall was shot because she professed her faith in Jesus. (It's not true.)