And when someone from the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners says “hunt”, we can safely assume he means “shoot”: hunting deer = hunting humans.

Dudley Brown, whose organization was at one time judged too bats*** crazy for the NRA , said and we quote: “there’s a time to hunt deer. And the next election is the time to hunt Democrats”. That, people, is a threat, plain and simple.

You can say “Awww, he doesn’t really mean it“, but that would be very foolish. One recent example tells us why:

A few years back, Sarah Palin (also a devotee of shooting metaphors) published a picture of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ district in the crosshairs of a telescopic sight.. And as we all know, Ms. Giffords was shot and nearly killed soon afterwards.

Ms. Palin tried to pretend that her threatening language and images had no connection to the violent crimes committed after she published them. But that is very hard to believe. Seriously, folks, if politicos didn’t think their words had an impact, would they bother saying them? Of course not. They say what they say in order to accomplish a goal, and they mean what they say. The only time such slimy weasels pretend otherwise is when they are called on their violent rhetoric, or if there are consequences to the hate speech they spew.

Like Palin, Mr. Brown used language that strongly suggests shooting and killing people. And also like her, he’ll strenuously deny that when if a Democrat gets murdered. But he’ll still have blood on his hands.

And like Palin (or Pilate) he can pretend to wash it away. But the stain of blood can never be removed from the hands of a killer, or one who urges others to kill.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky