June 15, 2017 10:00 AM UTC

It's "Too Soon"--But Not To Fundraise!

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• by: Colorado Pols

THURSDAY UPDATE #2: New York Daily News:

A prominent Colorado politician decided to use Wednesday’s shooting on a GOP baseball practice as a fundraising opportunity.

“The left is out of control. Their violent actions are un-American, and it needs to stop!” reads an email signed by Colorado House Minority Leader Patrick Neville.

The fundraising note went out just hours after gunman James Hodgkinson opened fire on a baseball field in Alexandria, Va., where congressional lawmakers were practicing for Thursday’s Congressional Baseball Game.

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THURSDAY UPDATE: 9NEWS’ Kyle Clark reports:

Raw Story’s David Edwards:

Neville insisted to KUSA-TV that letter’s main purpose was not to raise funds even though it asks for contributions of at least $25.

“I wouldn’t consider it a pure fundraising email,” Neville said. [Pols emphasis] “The main purpose was to encourage people not to be silenced by fear.”

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Local Daily Beast contributor Dave Maney directs us to a fundraising email sent earlier today from GOP Colorado House Minority Leader Patrick Neville, invoking today’s shooting at a Republican congressional baseball team practice in Alexandria, Virginia today as the tragic situation was still more or less live news. Excerpted:

Unruly protesters trashing Civic Center Park and clashing with cops in the streets.

Mock beheadings of President Trump by Kathy Griffin.

And now an ASSASSINATION attempt on Republican lawmakers!

The hate-inspired violent rhetoric against conservatives and Republicans was already at an all-time fever pitch before today, but now it just got very real.

The left is out of control. Their violent actions are un-American, and it needs to stop!

Earlier today, a radical anti-trump protester opened fire on Republican staff and lawmakers at a practice for the congressional baseball game in Virginia…

Today’s attack is tantamount to political terrorism aimed at shutting up Conservatives, Republicans, and Americans like you.

Frankly, I lay the blame squarely at the feet of “tolerance-preaching progressives” and their accomplices in the media who allowed violent rhetoric to get so out of control. [Pols emphasis]

I’m talking about so-called “journalists” like Kathy Griffin and other hollywood-elites who incentivize violence against Republicans by staging beheadings and celebrate fictitious assassinations as “artistic expression.”

No wonder why the socialist piece of trash who tried to kill Republican lawmakers today thought his deranged actions were justified…

Here’s what you can do to help:

First, join me in praying for a speedy recovery for Congressman Scalise and the staff and law enforcement who were wounded in today’s attack.

Second, join me in calling on the media to denounce horrific attacks like this and to call for an end to the violent political rhetoric on the left that they’ve inspired.

Finally, if you can, please show us that you’re not backing down by chipping-in $50 or $25 to Colorado Liberty PAC today so we can retake the State House in 2018. [Pols emphasis]

Your contribution today will help us advance our conservative values through passionate and peaceful civil discourse that makes our country great.

For Freedom,

Patrick Neville
Republican Leader
Colorado House of Representatives

The aftermath of high-profile shooting incidents in the United States very quickly turns into a political debate, as gun rights supporters struggle with gun control proponents to cast the emerging details in terms favorable to their stand on the issue. A meta-debate almost always takes place alongside this discussion, arguing whether the timing is right to talk about the overarching political issues in the immediate aftermath of a tragic event–while survivors are still grieving, or even while the event is still unfolding. Activists on the issue joke that it’s always “too soon” to talk about guns, right up until it’s “too late.”

In both of these debates, Neville and Republicans he supports via the Colorado Liberty PAC have ceded the high ground. They have politicized this man’s horrific actions in exactly the way they refused to accept with countervailing examples–like the man who walked into a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs in November of 2015 and started shooting. We feel very confident that as many or more liberals are looking inward today at their own anger than conservatives re-examined their rhetorical excesses after the Planned Parenthood shooting.

And that rank hypocrisy still wasn’t enough. They tried to make money off it.

It’s too far. It’s too much. And we don’t want to hear how it’s “too soon” ever again.