A bullet went through a window in Eric Cantor’s Richmond office over the weekend. Here’s the relevant part of the police report:
A preliminary investigation shows that a bullet was fired into the air and struck the window in a downward direction, landing on the floor about a foot from the window. The round struck with enough force to break the windowpane but did not penetrate the window blinds. There was no other damage to the room, which is used occasionally for meetings by the congressman.
If a Democratic Congressman made the same claim, his lack of knowledge of guns and ballistics would be roundly ridiculed by Republicans and his manhood, in general, would be questioned. Instead we’re going to see wall-to-wall “threats of violence affecting both parties” stories.
Bob L
Probably is threats against both parties, the problem is it is coming from the same wacked out Teabaggers the GOP and their media pals called up. Reap what you sow.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Sounds like a random falling bullet. Those are common in the south.
licensed to kill time
In the Out of the Loop thread below, I said this sounds like a case of
“I shot a round into the air, it fell to earth I know not where”
Chyron HR
Liberals get issued guns and jetpacks? Where do I sign up for mine?
Proton
The report failed to explain how Can’t-or’s right foot was hit.
Dreggas
Oh please, the bullet was obviously fired by someone who was celebrating the victory of the soshulist ‘Merkan hating president by firing their guns in the air after the vote. Of course since they were most likely some pointy headed liberal they probably had the skills to make sure the trajectory was such that the bullet would fall into Cantors office as a warning.
celticdragonchick
Already saw that at other sites.
Also, Democrats who say that tea baggers that use racial epithets are liars and that libruls through the bricks into the windows…and some guy named Ayers planned it all. Also. Too.
Steve
At least the air wasn’t thick with Oreos.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@licensed to kill time:
when I lived in Biloxi, almost every year someone would get killed in New Orleans from all the idiots firing their guns in the air to celebrate. I still remember one new years a young woman with several children was hit in the head by one.
Bobby Thomson
@Steve: They were like locusts, I tell you!
Omnes Omnibus
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
This is one of the reasons I live in the north.
some other guy
Surprised more people aren’t commenting on the ridiculously obvious attempt at ratfucking with regard to the “threatening” voicemail left for Jean Schmidt.
I’d link to and quote it, but apparently it triggers the filter here or something. Search google news for “Jean Schmidt.”
JGabriel
They’re gonna be so embarrassed when they find out it was just a Fox Partier shooting bullets in the air to emphasize his anti-HCR argument that, “Extremism in the Hunt for Red Democrats is no vice!”
.
James K. Polk, Esq.
Hippie Kristalnacht hat beginnen!
jharp
My folks had the same thing happen to them in rural Ohio.
Fern
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Seriously?! If so, that’s one strange country you folks have.
Osprey
Any takers on whether Cantor had some low-level flunky fire at the window with their pellet-gun just so they can claim “see, we’re victims too!”
Violet
This is exactly how they will cover it. This one incident, which does not appear to be directed at the Congressman personally, is NOT the equivalent of the multiple, PROVEN incidents that have happened to Democratic Representatives. Yet somehow the media will claim it’s all the same.
Our MSM is pathetic. Thank goodness for blogs.
licensed to kill time
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: It used to be a common occurrence on New Year’s when I lived in the San Diego area, too. Just so people know it’s not a North/South thing but a dismally estupido thing.
Fern
@James K. Polk, Esq.:
hat begonnen
/pedantry
mistermix
I grew up in the rural Dakotas and any asshole who fired a gun in the air would be considered, well, an asshole. I have never seen anyone do it, and never heard of anyone doing it.
Yet almost everyone has a gun, and most have many. We had two shotguns and a .22 rifle and none of us really cared for hunting.
I am constantly amazed by the South.
JGabriel
This is amusing: Mich. Governor directs AG to intervene against HIMSELF!
Summary: Michigan’s AG, Republican Porky’s joke Mike Cox — “We have a phone call for Mike Cox at the courtesy telephone! Has anyone seen Mike Cox?” — has decided to jump on the Fox Party / Al Teada gravy train, and join the Florida suit against the new HCR law.
Jennifer Granholm, in response, and in her capacity as the Democratic Governor of said state has ordered my cocks – sorry, I’m puerile, I mean Mike Cox — to intervene AGAINST the same case on behalf of the state of Michigan.
Surely, you can see the dilemma. And don’t call me Surely.
.
minachica
Except it wasn’t even his office, it was the office of the firm he uses for marketing/direct-mail (via Gawker)
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Fern: Here is link to woman I was talking about.
Doesn’t say anything about her having kids, but I remember seeing her pic on the teevee and how tragic and senseless it was.
burnspbesq
@James K. Polk, Esq.:
“Hippie Kristalnacht hat beginnen!”
We should be so lucky. Hippies rampaging through the streets, capturing people at water-balloon-point, and forcing them to eat hash brownies and listen to Phish. The horrah!!!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@licensed to kill time: I hear San Diego has a fair number of wingnuts living there, unless I am wrong about that.
gene
Already happening. I was running an errand around 2 pm and NPR’s Talk of the Nation came on. They said the topic was violence against Congressmen, aimed at Democrats and two Republicans.
I switched off the radio.
Unless someone gets put in the hospital or killed, I don’t think a large portion of people are going to take the violence against Democrats seriously, such as the MSM.
Zach
Have there been more fabricated instances of violence against Republican political operatives than real ones? We’ve got this and the dyslexic black “B” scrawler on one hand. On the other… hell, there might be more instances of violence by Republican political operatives: Jim Gibbons’ parking lot assault, the Tancredo staffer karate chopping a woman and calling her the n word, etc.
AB
k, I’m stupid, the first thing I thought of when I read that was, “Why would anyone want to shoot at sidewalks?”.
matoko_chan
i wonder…..can the feebs supoena these supposed threatening emails Cantor recieved?
i bet he deleted them…..but their ghosts live on his hard disc….IF he actually got any.
Svensker
@some other guy:
Don’t be so sure it is ratfucking. The comments over at TPM this morning on the winger who threw money at the Parkinson’s guy and then apologized were fairly appalling — including the town the guy lives in, suggestions on what should be done to his person, etc. We are not by definition the Good Guys. There are plenty of Dem. assholes out there.
The big difference I see is that the “liberal media” and Dem. office holders are not inciting violence.
freelancer
@James K. Polk, Esq.:
That sounds like a Lexicon candidate if I ever heard one.
Lisa K.
@some other guy:
I was just going to mention that. Hysterical that after so many bricks and death threats to Democrats, a menacing call just “happens” to come into the office of one of the wingiest nuts in the House. “I would shoot him if he spat on me.” Please! It was probably her grandson.
Fergus Wooster
@Fern: oder “ist angefangen worden”.
I’m with Mark Twain – never resist the opportunity to add a “haben worden gewesen sein”.
Persia
@gene: Are you kidding? They won’t take it seriously then. Just ask Patrick Leahy about the ‘zero’ number of terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Michael
It doesn’t suprise me that he led off with the “they’re picking on me because I’m a Jew” thing.
He should haul his ass on over to Israel, grab a rifle, join the IDF and get on with the important business of taunting Palestinian teenagers into violence so he can rough them up and show us all what a man he is.
The skeezy fucker is a shonda.
Rick Taylor
These days the Republican party to shock or surprise me, but they’ve managed to do it. Their colleagues are getting death threats and faxed images of nooses, and their response is to deplore them for politicizing it? Diogenes is going to have to go search for an honest Republican.
Redshift
Per Greg Sargent, David Frum now denies he was fired, says they just wanted him to work without pay. I wonder if they told him they’d respect him in the morning, too.
But if this is actually the beginning of wingnut welfare reform, who am I to argue?
dr. bloor
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Naive fool. A downward trajectory obviously means the shot was fired from a black helicopter.
FootnotesFaulkner
How long do you think it will be before Cantor calls a press conference stating that if Democrats use his own douchebaggery for political gain, it only encourages him to be a bigger douchebag?
gwangung
@Svensker: Agreed. We have our own assholes (which means we should ride herd on them if we find out).
Peter J
I’m not a gun nut, but can someone explain something. If the shooter was aiming at Cantor’s office, wouldn’t he shoot straight at it? And if you miss shooting straight at it, how come the bullet then succeeds to still hit the office on a downward trajectory, shouldn’t the velocity of the bullet make that impossible? Or maybe the shooter wasn’t just a gun nut, but also a math nut and he had calculated the trajectory just for fun?
Or perhaps the bullet was the cousin of the magic bullet?
jron
sounds more like someone threw a bullet at the window.
SpotWeld
I’m sure one of the war bloggers will proove how a well trained sniper would actually prefer to use a needlessly complicated parabolic trajectory with an underpowered rifle to deliver a threat…
…I’m assuming it will involve a sandbox and a whoooole lotta cheetoss and red bull
Joel
All kidding aside, this shit is getting serious.
The Republicans built a fucking wildfire, Texas A&M style.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@dr. bloor:
LOL, no doubt.
Fern
@Fergus Wooster: Viel besser!
Michael
Sadly, I think we’d all be in far better shape if we had some European style red anarchists to help keep lobbyists and industrialists more in check.
The notion of an asshole lobbyist who works on K street, some arrogant CEO or jerkoff wingnut welfare mouthpiece having to nervously wait while his driver sweeps the underside of his car with a mirror every morning makes my happy parts tingle.
Proton
@gwangung:
And therein lie 2 differences:
1) the relative distribution of assholes in the two populations and
b) we libs denounce our assholes, the wingnuts not so much.
licensed to kill time
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: You are not wrong about that :)
DougJ
In any case, I hope this wasn’t intentional and that Cantor is not in any danger.
Fergus Wooster
@Michael: I liked that German pensioner couple who kidnapped the portfolio manager who blew their pension on bad debts.
Still, if we had a Rotarmeefaktion here, can you imagine how bad the blowback would be on everyone to the left of Jack Welch?
scav
there’s a good proportion of the “A plague on both their houses” sheer anti-govt types in the tea parties, so I wouldn’t rule anything, anyone or anywhere out once they really get riled.
Paul L.
‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann’ for Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
some other guy
@Svensker:
Did you see the transcript of the voicemail, though?
“‘Cause if one of those little fucking Teabaggers would’ve spit on me, I would have socked them in the fucking face with my fucking .09 mm.”
Black people only talk like this in Republicans’ imaginations.
“Pass the iced tea, motherfucker!”
Morbo
@JGabriel: Sigh, Mike Cox is such an embarrassment. Oh, and Bob Somerby says stop that.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@DougJ:
I bet Eric would claim
that danger
is his middle name.
Michael D.
I am not a conspiracy theorist.
BUT.
Here is what I HONESTLY think…
The bullet shot at Cantor’s office was shot by a Republican to distract from the legitimate voilence being done to Democrats by REPUBLICANS for supporting the bill.
…and Cantor knows it. He probably arranged it.
Sentient Puddle
Just to be clear on this, I’m all for bringing the hammer of the law down on whoever the fuck did this (if they can figure it out). Shooting a gun into the air is an insanely irresponsible thing to do. If you pull that trigger, you are ruining someone’s day somewhere and some time.
But let’s not pretend that whoever did this shot the gun thinking “I’m going to vandalize Cantor’s office!” Because it’s pretty clear now that wasn’t the case.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sentient Puddle:
Was so because, shut up, that’s why!! eleventy-one!!!
/wingnut apologist
licensed to kill time
@Paul L.: “WTF? OVER.”
Way to pick a nut and miss the point, dude.
Svensker
@some other guy:
Did they say it sounded like a black person? I can imagine saying something like that myself if I were enraged. It doesn’t sound particularly phony to me — not saying it isn’t, but I don’t like the automatic “it couldn’t have been one of Us, it was one of Them pretending to be Us” reaction. The wingers resort to automatic denial all the time and I don’t like to see “our side” doing that.
Jon H
The bullet at Cantor’s office was probably still in the cartridge.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
GOP + Tea Party
This divorce will get messy.
Osprey
@Peter J: If the bullet broke the window but didn’t penetrate the blinds, as the report stated, then the bullet wasn’t traveling at its fired velocity-it’s almost guaranteed it was fired into the air at random, and once the bullet reaches its apex, wind and gravity are the only things controlling it.
A pellet-rifle would break the window but probably wouldn’t penetrate the blinds…a .22 from a distance might do the same, assuming somebody directly firing at the window with intent to do damage. Maybe a 9mm from a distance…but you’d hear the report most likely (or somebody in the immediate vicinity).
Almost guaranteed to be a random shot.
Puddinsmom
I have just one question, was Cheney’s Ohio hunting license up to date? After all, he’s gotten real good at shooting his fellow Republicans. What’s the matter, was Cantor too liberal or did he pinch Liz on the butt?
JGabriel
@SpotWeld:
Or, you know: “Stupid libs, don’t even know how to aim a gun!”
.
sukabi
@JGabriel: now THAT is FUNNY!!! think I’ll send the article over to my gov, and see if she’ll do the same thing here… (WA)
Andy
Shooting off guns in the air is very common in Texas on New Years, Fourth of July, etc. Pretty damned scary, although in my town the practice has dropped off quite a bit in recent years — only a few scattered shots to be heard, and not so many automatic weapons. This is a good thing.
My wife is from El Paso, where several years ago a kid was killed by a falling bullet on New Years. It was widely believed to have come from a group of police officers who were shooting into the air, but (curiously enough) the police investigation determined the origin was “inconclusive.” Imagine that.
mistermix
@Joel: @DougJ:
Yes. It is serious. I probably should have said that in the post.
JGabriel
@some other guy:
To be fair, I’m white, and I talk like that in my imagination to Republicans.
.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@JGabriel:
I would wonder if Cantor’s office had been hit by a spitball.
Punchy
Wait….I thought it was Mike Hunt….?
BTW, how great was the Atari 2600 video game of this movie, huh?!
JD Rhoades
@mistermix:
I’ve lived in various places in North Carolina for 48 years and practiced law for 20 of them. I have never seen a gun randomly fired in the air, nor have I ever heard of property damage or injury by falling bullets from guns randomly fired in the air.
We fire a gun around these parts, bubba, it’s on goddamn purpose.
Which is why I’m calling “bullshit” on Cantor’s story.
jenniebee
The gun-toting liberal physics-geek husband says that there’s not enough in the report to give definite measurements (he’d like to know the caliber of the gun, wind speed, etc) the shot described in the report would have had to have been fired into the air, a minimum of several hundred yards and up to a mile away – if it was a rifle round it could have been fired up to five miles away. He says that any closer and the angle of impact would have been oblique enough that if the bullet could even still hit a recessed pane, it would just bounce off. With absolute certainty, he says that the world’s best shot could not have made that shot on purpose.
The report didn’t say which side of the building was hit, but if it wasn’t the front, it’s even possible that the shot was fired across the James River from the building.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
While I don’t see a real motive for liberals to be directing violence at right wingers right now, due to the fact we actually won the HCR debate that is now law, at some point, and not that far off, if the crazy wingnut shit continues, then turnabout is fair play that will not upset me in the slightest. Just how I roll.
Peter J
The more I think about it, a master of 11th dimensional chess should have no problem with this kind of trajectory shot.
Where was Obama when the shot was fired?
Citizen Alan
Can someone please clarify a point for me? Because my reading of the linked article is that someone did not shoot into Eric Cantor’s office. Rather, someone shot (whether they meant to or not) into the first floor of the building in which Cantor’s office was located. The article does not actually say that the damaged window was Cantor’s office.
I don’t know one way or the other, but I would like some clarification because most posters here seem to assume that it was Cantor’s office specifically that was hit, and the article, as I read it, doesn’t say that.
jenniebee
@some other guy: And then a Texan stood up at the tea party and said “I got your back”…
batgirl
@Michael D.: It is apparent from the police report that a bullet wasn’t shot at Cantor’s office. First, the bullet was shot in the air. Two, Gawker points out that this isn’t his congressional office but the building that his direct-mail firm is located in.
A think this bullet had absolutely nothing to do with Cantor but, heck, if you can’t use a coincidence to avoid taking responsibility for your words and actions, then you wouldn’t be a stupid, Republican liar.
matoko_chan
the bullet was found in a conference room that Cantor “sometimes” used……not in his office.
i think it very suspicious that Cantor didnt hand over the emails for analysis.
doesnt he fear for his life?
some other guy
@Svensker:
Have a listen to the voicemail.
How many “thugs” that make threats to shoot people “in the fucking face with my fucking 9 millimeter” are out there that can name the house minority leader, the senate minority leader, follows the news enough to know of a spitting incident from Saturday and about a congressperson’s car accident from 2 years ago.
And this call conveniently comes just as Republicans are starting to get bad press in the media for inciting violence among their follows.
I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to be very skeptical of the authenticity of this.
ed
Lest we forget:
Overhyped indeed.
MattR
@ed: That just reminds me that if Bush was president we would be due for an increase in the terror alert level any day now.
MikeJ
Is it “his” junk mail firm or a junk mail firm that he employs? If a Starbucks gets held up anywhere in his district will he assume it’s an attack on him?
JGabriel
@Punchy:
Same joke structure, just different genitalia.
.
SiubhanDuinne
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Oh, I do hope so! Who’s bringing the popcorn?
celticdragonchick
@Peter J:
It’s a magic pony bullet, see? Snorted form the nostrils of a prancing unicorn. In a black helicopter.
*sigh* I give up.
OfFred
From Huffington Post:
“House Republican Eric Cantor said that someone had shot through the window of his Richmond, Virginia office sometime on Monday.’
_____
‘A possible gunshot was fired through the window of the downtown Richmond Main Street building that houses the offices of one of Rep. Eric Cantor’s top political consultants, a source says. There was no immediate confirmation that it was a gunshot. There were no injuries or other details immediately reported.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/25/republicans-condemn-viole_n_513211.html?page=57&show_comment_id=43146495#comment_43146495
How likely is it that some random left winger knows enough about Cantor’s consultants that he’d know where to go to shoot out a window. Why not shoot out a window at Cantor’s office of record? That would make a clear point. As it is, it’s a supposed random act of violence that’s not likely to be connected to Cantor at all.
Cantor is an opportunist with a convenient and self-serving grasp of the truth.
CalD
@dr. bloor:
FSM bless you, doctor. I just saw a post about this at Greg Sargent’s blog and out of 47 comments under it, not a single black helicopter joke. I was actually starting to worry. But I had a feeling I could count on Juicers not to let that one go by.
celticdragonchick
@JD Rhoades:
It does happen from time to time, and a few deaths have been attributed to random hits from bullets at the end of their ballistic trajectory. It was a pretty cool Mythbusters show awhile back.
When something like this happens in a city, it is usually the result of a gang shooting or some such where one or more rounds fired where waaaay off target.
MikeTheZ
@OfFred:
You could have shortened that to “Republican.”
Attaturk
BREAKING:
There’s an artist’s composite of the suspect now.
Mister Papercut
@MikeJ:It’s one he employs.
Also lulzy is that it’s not even located in his district — that’s what pinged my bullshit meter why when I saw it described as his “campaign office.”
MattR
@OfFred:
Well, if the shooter was a liberal then we know he is lazy, has no job and is on welfare. His wife had probably packed their six kids into the Cadillac to go shopping so he was forced to walk which means he has to live within three blocks of this building (remember he is lazy so he wont walk farther than that). Obviously.
ap sux
If you’d like to explain to the AP what a false equivalency is, the number is 212-621-1500. Ask for the Washington desk.
Tsulagi
@Citizen Alan:
You could stop right there. My reading is that easily likely the barrel of the rifle or handgun was pointed at a cloud when fired. But what goes up, always comes down. At least as far as a bullet is concerned. Some idiots think if they fire a weapon up into the sky the bullet somehow magically disappears at some point and doesn’t come back down. Shooter wouldn’t have known where it was going to land.
But speaking of idiots, in the comments of a Eric Cantor’s office shot up (no hyperbole in that title) post at RedState, some relatively sane and sentient person wandered in citing an AP story. Said maybe they should wait for more facts and not get suckered into a backwards B situation. That police were saying the bullet wasn’t fired at Cantor’s office. Undaunted, Moe, one of the top site enforcers for RS stupid responded…
You gotta hand it to Moe, he’s never distracted by facts.
Gus
@mistermix: Yeah, I grew up in a (Northern/Midwestern) gun culture too. The problem isn’t so much guns as idiots with guns.
MikeTheZ
@Attaturk: Ok, I totally lol’d at that. You win, good sir.
Fern
@Lisa K.: sounded to me like someone reading a script. Affect did not match the words. Totally a subjective impression on my part, but that’s how it struck me.
Buggy Ding Dong
Whic was precisely the point.
Dollared
I am deeply concerned about the Rainbow Shooter threatening Congressman Cantor.
Perhaps we should make sure that Congressman Cantor always finds a WW 1 Doughboy helmet (or at least a high school football helmet) waiting for him? In his seat in the chambers, at his public appearances, when he heads out for lunch?
A few presentations of a hardhat with a propeller sticking out the top would would certainly make for a fine photo op for our Serious Beltway Media.
Honus
@Osprey:”Almost guaranteed to be a random shot.”
I agree, especially in that part of Richmond. You can hear gunfire all night.
Robin G.
So… the bullet went down and to the left?
jsgaetano
Is it shocking that a conservative leader is revealed as a huge liar? Nah, it’s actually perfectly predictable- when a conservative’s lips start to move, the lying begins.
What IS shocking is how the media even treats these guys like people with one iota of credibility.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Robin G.: Nice.
Montana
This was staged by one of Cantor’s gun buddy, good try at being a victim but I don’t buy it, next.
Wile E. Quixote
If any of the liberals I hang with had been shooting at Cantor he’d be a dead man.
Wile E. Quixote
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Yeah, no kidding. If the wingnuts ever get the civil war they want they’re going to be in for a huge shock when they realize how many liberals served in the military and know how to use guns. Also who will lead the wingnut forces? It’s not as if there’s a huge surplus of personal courage or integrity on their side. Erick Erickson, Jonah Goldberg, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, et al talk real tough, but it’s telling how none of them ever got off their lazy asses and enlisted. Hell, Beck, Goldberg and Erickson probably wouldn’t even have gotten out of the reception station. And if they did they would have been sent home the first two weeks of basic for wetting the bed.
TenguPhule
Think bigger.
We have more chem majors and electronics experts.
We can certainly do a better job then Iraqis in their basements.