Suspect in church shooting "hated liberals"

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Shooting suspect hated liberals

The man accused of shooting and killing two people in a Knoxville church Sunday wrote that he hated liberals and was bitter he couldn't find a job, police said Monday.

Authorities added he may also have been angry about possibly losing his food stamps.

Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen said investigators discovered a four-page letter in suspect Jim David Adkisson's vehicle outside the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, where the shooting occurred.

In the letter, Adkisson, 58, of Powell, Tenn., "repeatedly included disgust for what he perceived to be the liberals in our country," Owen said. "And he repeatedly said how frustrated he was he could not get a job."

Adkisson, charged with one count of first-degree murder, is scheduled to appear at a preliminary court hearing next Tuesday.

Police and witnesses said Adkisson pulled a 12-gauge shotgun out of a guitar case and opened fire while children performed Annie Jr. Sunday morning. He fired three times before members of the congregation tackled him. Seven adults were injured. Two had been released from the hospital, and the others remained in serious or critical condition Monday, Owen said.

"The intention was to shoot as many people as he could with the expectation he would be killed by the police," Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam said.

Other potential motives include the loss of public benefits, Owen said.

When searching Adkisson's residence, police found a letter from the state informing him he would be receiving fewer food stamps or none at all, Owen said.

"That might have been a trigger," Owen said.

Police said they don't believe Adkisson ever attended the church. His ex-wife, Liza Alexander, may have attended at some point, said Ted Jones, 56, president of the congregation. She was not there Sunday, he said.

Alexander received a restraining order against Adkisson in March 2000. She wrote in court records that she feared him. "Jim David Adkisson told a friend of mine that one of his options is to blow my brains out and then blow his own brains out," Alexander wrote. "I am in fear for my life and what he might do."

Owen said police are investigating the shooting as a hate crime. Because of that, the FBI has joined the investigation, said Stacie Bohanan, spokeswoman for the FBI's Knoxville division.

"Anytime someone uses force to obstruct another person in the free exercise of their religious beliefs, that becomes a violation of the federal civil rights statutes," she said.

Jones said Unitarians advocate for civil rights and social justice. It was unclear whether Adkisson intentionally targeted the church.

The shooting won't change the church's mission, Jones said.

"We're not going to install metal detectors, we're not going to lock our doors," Jones said. "We're still going to be welcome to everyone."

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It's the predictable result of the constant stream of hate which pours out of the mouths of the Right wing's most popular personas.

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

It's the predictable result of the constant stream of hate which pours out of the mouths of the Right wing's most popular personas.

Cycloptichorn

But they constantly call liberals "haters."

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Hi Nimh,

I posted a reference to this tragedy yesterday on the homophobic thread here.

I've always had conflict with categorizing people as belonging to a liberal bucket or a conservative bucket and agree with Finn's response that crazy individuals don't represent the over-generalizations that we tend to associate with labels.

This is a true tragedy. There are no other words to describe it. I will be attending the gathering at our own UU church tomorrow night to try to make some sense of this thing.

Thank you for starting this thread and bringing attention to this very painful situation.

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Hmm JPB. Obviously a hateful loon like this does not represent "conservatives", or any such belabelled group. That should be obvious.

However, I have to say I wasn't surprised to read this story. At all. I felt that it had been a question of time really. I'm not sure there's much of a mystery "to make some sense of".

There's always crazy, violent people, who out of some mix of resentment and psychosis want or need to go kill them some people. The victims will usually be random people - see all the school shootings.

But on top of that, if there's a rhetorical/ideological frame at hand that can clad the psychosis in political terms, or that can focus the fury at some ideologically identified enemy group rather than at just random people, then that will happen, sooner or later.

I wasn't surprised because I waste too much time reading comments on news pages or blogs etc, 99% of the time never responding. And among all the regular fierce partisanship and anger that's just to be expected, you just too often come across some seriously violent-sounding kook, who seems to be about ready to do what this guy did; go shoot them some damned liberals. And if it's 1 in every 100 posters, that's a lot of people sounding like they're about to go off on a rampage.

And I was joking about A2Kers, really; unbelievably enough, this is an oasis of sanity and reason compared with the comments on, say, The Caucus (the bigger the media, the more angry crazy people flock to the comment box) -- or fringe political sites of course.

Now such deranged minds, like this actual murderer, dont represent conservatives, even the most radical conservatives, at large. Obviously. That goes without saying. I mean, they're obviously simply insane.

But the hateful speech that's blasted on talk radio etc does provide the insane with the words and frames to channel their mad resentment into political hatred. And framing the insanity in political terms can in turn serve the madman to rationalise that urge to go and kill; the threshold for murdering those bastards who are destroying the country is just that little lower than the one for murdering completely random people.

(Nothing new or surprising - the same happened with militant communism in the 60s-70s and before that in the 30s etc, which served as the perfect foil for the already deranged and psychopathic to murder under the guise of ideology. And with facism, of course, and now with Islamism.)

It just felt like sooner or later, someone was bound to get hurt.

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Oh, sorry, I wanted to add -- do you have the same on the left? Thats just a wholly different can of worms again. I have this fleeting impression that the hatred is the same among the explicitly deranged there, but the focus is different. Like, I've seen people consistently ranting in such violent incoherence that I really believe that if they ever had the opportunity, they would murder George Bush. Or Dick Cheney. Or even Donald Rumsfeld. Or the whole lot, and would believe they were a hero for doing it. But it's all personalised, like it was with Clinton for extremist rightwingers. I've never seen someone sounding like they'd seriously be liable to go out and shoot some random conservatives.

But yeah, people will totally disagree with me about that, and that's OK - that isn't my real point here. What I'm really saying for now is just that after reading too many seriously deranged tirades against liberals at large, I'm just not surprised someone put his gun where his mouth was. It seemed like a matter of time.

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It's only been for the past several years or so though that I think this hate between liberals and conservatives has become such a big thing. I find it sickening that I can't even have a conversation that even mentions Obama with certain people because they will get so upset at the mere mention of anyone who has been put in their little liberal-hate box. These are people I've known most of mylife, and they were never such douchebags before Bush got into office. I think the conservative radio guys are part of the problem, but it's also the Bush administration that has indirectly (and maybe even directly and purposely) fostered this kind of intolerance.

AND THAT IS WHY I HATE THOSE SONS OF BITCHES!!! :wink:

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oh please. That's like saying Ozzy is responsible when people say his music make them do things or like how Dr. Phil blames video games for things like the Virginia Tech shootings.

Crazy people do crazy ****.

Trying to lay the blame on something as innocuous as talk radio for what this idiot did is silly. He was a loon.

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McGentrix wrote:

That's like saying Ozzy is responsible when people say his music make them do things

fair point...

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I wouldnt call talk radio innocuous really, and I get nimhs point. (Sorry, my apostrophe key is not working) Nobody is blaming Rush or Savage specifically. Rather, the point appears to be that a narrative has been set up whereby you can blame all the bad that happens on the liberals. In the nineties, you had Clinton to project all of this on. But what we have seen over the last 8 years or so is a sort of redirection on people, not leaders, who hold certain political beliefs.

The irony of all this is that those liberals in that church probably could have helped this guy. Clearly he had issues not related to politics, but its people like him that this narrative is for.

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nimh wrote:

McGentrix wrote:
That's like saying Ozzy is responsible when people say his music make them do things

fair point...

On the other hand, when it comes to, say, radical Islamist preachers, I'm sure you'd agree that a steady enough stream of hateful speech has consequences. I mean, not even the preachers that outright call for murder, I'm talking just ones that simply keep preaching that Infidels are dangerous, and worthless. If someone listening to their tapes every day would go out and kill some Westerners some day, I'm sure you would make the connection.

And yet, I agree that all that talk of how listening to the wrong music or playing the wrong games makes kids violent or suicidal was always a crock of ****.

So there's a... space in between.

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nimh wrote:

nimh wrote:
McGentrix wrote:
That's like saying Ozzy is responsible when people say his music make them do things

fair point...

On the other hand, when it comes to, say, radical Islamist preachers, I'm sure you'd agree that a steady enough stream of hateful speech has consequences. I mean, not even the preachers that outright call for murder, I'm talking just ones that simply keep preaching that Infidels are dangerous, and worthless. If someone listening to their tapes every day would go out and kill some Westerners some day, I'm sure you would make the connection.

And yet, I agree that all that talk of how listening to the wrong music or playing the wrong games makes kids violent or suicidal was always a crock of ****.

So there's a... space in between.

Religion is a bit different then listening to the radio though, right? It goes far deeper into the psyche when your religious leader speaks then when a radio host does. Obviously this guy had issues and wanted attention and was crazy enough to do some horrible act.

To lay this on the shoulders of conservative radio hosts seems to be quite a reach.

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Not on the shoulders of the conservative or now (I've never listened to Air America except when I can't really hear it, in someone else's car from the back seat with poor hearing, even though I'm a liberal) other side talkblab hosts,

as opposed to many other froth makers.

It's the general fulminating with small attention to the nuances of agreement and credenza piling re disagreement, across the globe, that seems from here to glorify storm making for its own sake or for money sake or power sake. Not, eh, good for the general welfare in the long run. And tv and radio promote it all.

On the this fellow in the church, yes, a tragedy.

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I don't think it is such a reach.

- Hispanic civil rights groups are an "Invasion".
- "Illegal" immigrants are murderous thugs.
- Gays are destroying marriage and society.
- Doctors are killing babies in a holocaust.
- Liberals are taking guns to leave you defenseless against rapists.
- Blacks are keeping whites out of colleges.

This narrative; invasion of murderous, marriage-destroying, baby-killing, white oppressing, gun-stealing rapists...

It is designed to justify an extreme response.

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I'm saying the shoulders are wide, not to say one side's strong radio is without effect.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

It's the predictable result of the constant stream of hate which pours out of the mouths of the Right wing's most popular personas.

Cycloptichorn

And Bill Ayers, Obama's friend, set bombs to kill people and has never been held accountable.

Instead he has been rewarded with a high paying and cushy job as a college prof.

In fact, on 9/11/01 an interview of Ayers appeared in print where he lamented he didn't do enough.

You wanna compare lists?

The list on the left is gonna be a lot longer.

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The difference is that on the left... the hate comes from the extreme fringe.

On the right, the hate and defamation are mainstream conservatism.

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Really? I know conservatives who aren't crazies at all. Sure, some loud ones are, or seem to me to be. And some of that breeds discontent, just as any spew does.

Speaking of froth, the slamming on a2k re libs and conservatives is, first of all, retrograde re political reality, even in the US, and second, just more sophomoric spew.
Hard to wade through.

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William Ayers is not a mainstream figure. He is not turned to in the press, nor is he held in any regard.

Compare this to Pat Buchanan, the Minutemen, Jesse Helms, Peter King (member of Congress), etc. etc. etc. all of whom spout hateful, inflammatory rhetoric to a large, appreciative audience.

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Wandering off on my own, as at this point I don't care about Ayers, though I didn't agree with his early actions -

Speech matters. That's why we remember at least some speeches in history. Let me not quote the many and the ways. From tv spot moments and radio shockshit from whatever seeming sides, perhaps a complicated matter re money in itself, we have lessening of logical discourse. This is the crime.

As a sixteen year old girl, I was, seemed to me, forced to undergo the Catalinian orations in Latin. Frankly, I didn't give a damn, so it was hard. But I got the main idea, that speech can matter.

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Suspect in church shooting "hated liberals"

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