Rush Limbaugh in Favor of Black People Shooting Police Officers

Rush Limbaugh has once again said something totally repugnant, morally indefensible, and plain old stupid that requires everyone to acknowledge his existence with an exasperated sigh and a shaking of the head for a short period of time until we go back to discussing more important things, such as Manti Te’o’s fake dead girlfriend.

What was it this time? Let me quote the bloated horse carcass himself:

If a lot of African-Americans back in the ’60s had guns and the legal right to use them for self-defense, you think they would have needed Selma? If John Lewis, who says he was beat upside the head, if John Lewis had had a gun, would he have been beat upside the head on the bridge?

So let’s review some history for a second. John Lewis is Representative John Lewis who was one of the leaders of the 600 nonviolent civil rights workers who attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7, 1965, to prove the need for voting rights in Alabama. Alabama state troopers stopped the marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by beating them mercilessly. John Lewis suffered a concussion and still has a scar on his head.

John Lewis responded to Rush Limbaugh in a typically intelligent and classy manner, discussing the importance of nonviolence and all that those peaceful methods achieved.

But that’s not important right now. What is important is that Rush Limbaugh announced that he thinks black people fighting for civil rights in the 1960s should have shot police officers. It shows you how deranged some people have become in the discussion around gun control.

Really, Rush? The Marchers at Selma should have shot the police? That’s what you’re urging? What about the way the Occupy protests were forcibly cleared out by police with batons … should they have been armed and firing? What about every person of color who is subjected to ill treatment and brutality by police today? Should they fire guns at those offers?

One can only imagine what Rush would be saying about the honorable John Lewis today had he shot Alabama state troopers in March 1965.

Nevermind that it would have been counterproductive and set the Civil Rights Movement back. That civil rights could only be achieved through massive nonviolence. Nevermind that it runs contrary to the very point of a what the Civil Rights Movement was about.

So there you have it. Rush Limbaugh: in favor of racially charged violence against the police.

(h/t Media Matters)