The Grotesque Politicization of the Colorado Springs Gay Bar Shooting | Opinion

Americans are once again reeling in the face of unspeakable tragedy, after a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs gay bar left five dead and at least 25 injured. But while we collectively mourn, some cynical actors on the Left are grotesquely exploiting this unspeakable horror to take partisan cheap shots.

Because the shooting occurred at a gay bar, some have leapt to assume that it was a targeted anti-gay hate crime. They went on to then cast blame on Republicans for supposedly fomenting anti-LGBT sentiment—saying this makes them culpable in the shooting.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered perhaps the most prominent example of this partisan blame-casting in her response to the condolences offered by Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert.

"You have played a major role in elevating anti-LGBT+ hate rhetoric and anti-trans lies while spending your time in Congress blocking even the most common sense gun safety laws," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "You don't get to 'thoughts and prayers' your way out of this. Look inward and change."

Similar sentiments were shared by countless progressives on social media.

There are so many problems with this narrative it's hard to know where to start.

For one, it's completely unfounded to blame people who allegedly foment anti-gay hate for this shooting when we don't even know yet if it was motivated by anti-gay hate. While that could well be the case, it could also not be; sometimes mass shootings are random acts of violence or driven by motivations sane people struggle to immediately make sense of.

For example, the tragic 2016 massacre at the gay nightclub Pulse was (and is still) widely assumed to be an anti-gay hate crime. But we later learned that the shooter was actually motivated by U.S. bombings of the Middle East. In fact, the FBI's investigation found no evidence that the shooter intentionally targeted gay people.

So we cannot assume that Colorado Springs shooting was an anti-gay hate crime simply because it affected the gay community. Reality can be more complicated than that.

This is why it's beyond grotesque to throw blame about, accusing people of having "blood on their hands" for supposedly fueling the shooter's motivation when we don't even know what that motivation was!

Yet even if it was an act of anti-gay hatred, it's still unreasonable and actually insulting to turn this tragedy into a partisan blame-game. You cannot tie a direct line from act of hatred to comments made by certain elected officials or thought leaders.

Are we really supposed to believe that this shooting wouldn't have occured if Congresswoman Boebert hadn't tweeted about transgender people? Or that some segment on some right-wing media outlet caused something like this happen?

This is deeply unfair, in part because it is so nebulous and impossible to disprove. Moreover, almost no one in the U.S.—even the most far-right, anti-gay commentators—advocates for or condones this type of horrific violence.

Shifting blame to those who have certain viewpoints is not only unjust; it's actually insulting to the victims, because it takes away responsibility for the atrocity from the actual criminal. It paints the evil killer as almost a helpless actor without agency who was brainwashed to commit the crime by all the Mean Words from Team Red. In reality, the murderer had agency and chose to commit this atrocity, meaning 100 percent of the blame lies with him and him alone.

Progressive partisan attacks that, intentionally or unintentionally, spread around the blame actually serve to partially let the killer off the hook for his crimes. That's an absolute disgrace and an insult to the victims' families.

And, if we're being honest, it's often done with openly cynical motivations. By conflating speech they dislike with violence, they seek to advance the censorship of this speech. Some are really not being at all subtle about this.

But, as even toddlers are taught, words are not violence. If we cede this dangerous ground, then free speech itself will quickly be eroded as each side casts the other's expression as "violent" or "fomenting hate."

All these partisan attacks distract from the healing our country needs in the aftermath of such a heinous tragedy.

Leaders should be remembering the victims, honoring the heroes who took down the shooter, and waiting for the facts—not exploiting this horrific killing to attack their political opponents.

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and the co-founder of BASEDPolitics.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.