Des Moines Register publishes gun-ban column advocating deadly violence against NRA, GOP leaders

Jan 3, 2013
By Tim Graham

This December 2012 photo provided by The Newtown Bee shows a sign welcoming Sandy Hook Elementary School students, of Newtown, Conn., to the Chalk Hill School campus in neighboring Monroe, Conn. (AP Photo/The Newtown Bee, Andy Hutchison)

Donald Kaul retired earlier this year. Now he has decided to return to writing occasional opinion columns for OtherWords.org. The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn. brought out all his ugliness.

In a column that appeared after the shooting with the headline "Kaul: Nation needs a new agenda on guns," he proposed a new liberal agenda: repeal the Second Amendment, declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal, and well, make violent threats to Republican leaders and NRA members. The Des Moines Register published this junk on December 29.

"I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control," he wrote. Is that a threatening James Byrd reference? "And if that didn’t work, I’d adopt radical measures," he continued.

This was how he spelled out the other agenda items, which included killing NRA members who wouldn't surrender their arms:

"Here, then, is my “madder-than-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore” program for ending gun violence in America:

• Repeal the Second Amendment, the part about guns anyway. It’s badly written, confusing and more trouble than it’s worth. It offers an absolute right to gun ownership, but it puts it in the context of the need for a “well-regulated militia.” We don’t make our militia bring their own guns to battles. And surely the Founders couldn’t have envisioned weapons like those used in the Newtown shooting when they guaranteed gun rights. Owning a gun should be a privilege, not a right.

• Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. (I would also raze the organization’s headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth, but that’s optional.) Make ownership of unlicensed assault rifles a felony. If some people refused to give up their guns, that “prying the guns from their cold, dead hands” thing works for me."

The so-called "news" media love to blame conservatives for the declining civility of our democratic discourse, but the hateful venom spewed by supposedly enlightened liberals like Kaul is as vicious as it gets.

Publishing death threats is bad enough, but doing so in the name of promoting a more peaceful, compassionate society is beyond sick. But this clown will probably never realize the absurdity of his argument.


Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and senior editor of MRC’s blog NewsBusters.