Don’t Blame Criticism for Violence Against Police: New at Reason

After Jared Loughner killed six people and wounded 14 at a Tucson shopping center in 2011, talk radio titan Rush Limbaugh ridiculed attempts to blame the mass shooting on inflammatory right-wing rhetoric. But after Micah Johnson killed five police officers and wounded nine in downtown Dallas last week, Limbaugh did not hesitate to blame the violence on the Black Lives Matter movement.

Limbaugh was right then, and he’s wrong now. Tarring one’s political adversaries as accomplices to murder while calling for greater civility in public debate is a neat trick if you can pull it off, but it’s still a trick, Jacob Sullum explains.  

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