Sen. Blunt takes a---deserved---written beating

 Show Me Progress of Missouri wrote a good, true and fair piece on our own Senator Roy Blunt so The Daily Kos couldn't help but reprint:

Remember after Sandy Hook when Roy Blunt was adamant that he would not support legislation that might restrict Second Amendment rights? By which he meant the right of citizens to amass stockpiles of just about any type of weapon. Which was, incidentally, the right of the same folks to enrich organizations that sponsor the NRA, which, in turn, offers tangible aid to politicians like Roy Blunt. Instead he sought to blame government for failing to keep those pesky mentally ill folks under control:

Blunt said in an interview that federal funds have been handed to some communities in states that move people from mental institutions, where federal dollars were used to help them, "and put them back into the community without much monitoring whether people are ready to be in the community or not."

So guess who he blames when a mentally troubled individual shot two policemen in New York?  His constituents, Missourians who exercised their 1st amendment rights to free speech in Ferguson this summer. Evidently the 2nd amendment trumps just about every concern, including public safety. First amendment? Not so much - at least when it involves issues that get old white guys, the only constituency that matters to Blunt, all itchy and bothered. God forbid that police should be accountable.

And, of course, there's the mental health dodge that was trotted out in the wake of Sandy Hook, but not so much in the case of the NYPD shooter. When a NRA-loving, gun enthusiast shoots a school full of little children, we blame the shooting on his mental problems, not his collection of lethal weapons. But when a troubled and violent man, angered by one more miscarriage of justice, goes off the deep end and the innocent suffer, Blunt wants to blame the folks who expose the bigger, original problem and demand that it be addressed. Nice distraction.

Links:

Roy Blunt: Confusing the symptoms with the disease.

This week at progressive state blogs: weak coal ash rules, war on secularism, RoyBlunt confused