By Robert Emmett Murphy Jr.
I hereby refute all political grandstanding regarding the Charlie Hebdo terror attack in the shortest version possible:
(1.) Islamophobia.
Two simple to understand facts should kill all anti-Muslim bigotries, but they don’t:
• One third of the human race is Muslim
• The religion is as diverse as Christianity
I can safely generalize about Westborough Baptist, there’s only 200 of them and they are mostly blood relatives. You cannot safely generalize about 1.6 billion people, nor assume the Catholics are no different than Westborough Baptists.
(2.) American Gun Cultists’ dog-whistle applauding of the mass shooting.
This is, without doubt, the most disgusting trend in politicizing the tragedy this week. The American gun cult is whooping in triumph over the terrorist attack in Paris. No less than nine times in various places, including on a discussion thread on my own page and Fox News, I’ve seen a variation of Jeffrey Morin’s statement, “Am I the only one who noticed France’s gun control laws did nothing in preventing criminals from acquiring serious automatic weapons for the killing spree?”
It’s not only disgusting, it flies in the face of reality.
Though it hasn’t been established yet, I’m 100% sure that the guns in this crime were walked in from another country. Here in the US they don’t have to work so hard as the gun-walking does not require crossing international borders; America arms criminals internationally, not the other way around. The strong gun laws in New York State are undermined by the lax gun laws in other states, usually Virginia, and a large percentage of our illegal guns are initially bought legally by interstate gun-walkers who are notoriously difficult to prosecute because of our weak gun regulations.
Expanding beyond this tragedy, France saw 1,736 gun deaths in 2010; that comes out to 3.01 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people. The same year, the U.S. had 10.30. France has its criminal gangs, but because of strong gun regulation, most conventional criminals in France do not have fire arms; consistent with that, most French police do not carry firearms. Meanwhile, American criminals are the best armed in the Western world; in reaction to that, American police have been radically militarizing since the 1980s.
Gun and gun violence stats, US vs France, 2011 figures:
Country………………………………………………..US……………..France
Homicide rate per 100,000: ……………………..4.7………………1.0
Total homicides: …………………………………..14,827…………665
% of homicides by firearm………………………60………………9.6
Homicide by firearm rate per 100,000………2.97……………0.06
Total number of homicides by firearm……..9,146………….35
Rank by rate of gun ownership………………..1………………..12
Average firearms per 100 people……………..88.8…………..31.2
Average total all civilian firearms…………270,000,000….19,000,000
(3.) Apologists for the killers.
In the wake of this I think it’s time, once and for all, for all Americans to acknowledge something that’s really hard to accept – assholes have rights too.
I’m not saying that the people at Charlie Hebdo were assholes. I can’t read French, so even with the offending cartoons in front of me, I can’t be certain of the legitimacy of the charge of “racist magazine; vulgar, violent and offensive.”
Here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter. A similar attack on this nation’s shameful StormFront Magazine (America’s number one White Supremacist “news” source) would be unacceptable (I so need a stronger word than “unacceptable”).
What they said is not an issue. What was done to them is the only concern. Mitigating this 
savagery with complaints over the victims’ speech is absolutely no different than saying to a girl, “You asked to be raped because of how you dressed.”
If you are a bigot and a fool within my line-of-sight, I will not give you a moment’s peace. That being said, I will also do whatever I can to assure you sleep soundly in you comfortable bed.
Hell, if you’re dead, you won’t be there to hear me when I call you a bigot and a fool.