Senator Barbara Boxer holds up "Liberal Hunting Season" sticker at a press conference
A Pennsylvania man is raising an objection to the selling of a "Liberal Hunting Season" sticker out of Chattanooga following the mass shooting in Arizona in which Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded.
Skip Mendler, who has a communications firm in Honesdale, Pa., said he was told about the sale of a sticker that said, "Liberal hunting season has been declared. Get your permit today!"
He said it was being sold by The Patriot Shop with a Chattanooga post office box.
The sticker was first brought to the fore when California Senator Barbara Boxer held it up and condemned it at a press conference after the Giffords shooting.
Mark Caldwell of Lookout Mountain, publisher of Patriot Shop parent company Publius Press, said, "This 'liberal hunting license' is an item among 1,000s in our online catalogue that we have carried for years. It appears in the 'Humor Collection' among other items intended for novelty purposes.
"Frankly, I forgot long ago that this item was even in our inventory until a couple of leftwing blogs picked it up and have been promoting their objection to their readers. We have heard from a few of them directly, mostly by way of threats against us - no hypocrisy there."
Mr. Caldwell said the item was posted with this disclaimer, "For novelty purposes only. If this sticker inspires you to murder people, do not buy it. Instead, dial 911."
He said, "There are many similar items on other websites out in the ethernet, all of which are intended as humor, not to inspire violence. However, given the propensity of the Leftmedia and politicians to, in the words of Barack Obama's recently departed White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, 'never let a serious crisis to go to waste,' they are now endeavoring to make political fodder out of the tragic deaths and injuries in Tucson. And that is a much bigger sham and a shame than a sticker.
"At a Democrat fundraiser, Barack Obama had this to say about countering his Republican adversaries: 'If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.' I am quite sure he did not mean that literally, and I did not consider it hate speech.
"Last October, Joe Biden said in a public forum, 'If I hear one more Republican tell me about balancing the budget, I am going to strangle them.' I really do not think he meant it, though in Joe's case....
"If liberals did not have double standards, they would have none at all, which is why a sticker in a humor section is now a lightening rod for their 'hate speech' agenda.
"Liberals tend blameshift a lot, rather than address the core issues which contribute to social entropy, like the breakdown in families, government schools, etc. No doubt they will attempt to convert the Tucson crisis into an opportunity to enact gun control legislation, hate speech legislation, ad nauseum.
"However, there were more people killed last Saturday in alcohol-related car wrecks, yet no Democrats are calling for five-day waiting periods to buy beer, or a limit on how much beer you can buy at one time. And, not a single one of them can name any of the victims who were killed by drunk drivers last weekend.
"Ronald Reagan said, 'We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.'"
Mr. Caldwell said, "In connection with the Palin image using targets to identify congressional districts, Democrat Leadership posted this image with targets and a reference to "enemy lines" on a page referencing their "Heartland Strategy."
Mr. Mendler said, "I heard about this product when someone mentioned it on Twitter in the aftermath of the Tucson shootings.
He said, "I wrote to them Monday afternoon asking them - politely - to remove it. I also forwarded the information to various parts of my network, asking them to also request the same. A few hours later, someone wrote me to say it had been removed - so I figured the folks at the Patriot Shop had done the right thing. This gave me some hope. I sent them a followup email, thanking them for responding so quickly to my concern, but then I heard yesterday that the product had been put back up, with cosmetic changes to the copy but with no change to the product."
Mr. Mendler said, "It's only been a couple of years since the shootings at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. One would think that Tennesseans would be particularly sensitive to this kind of thing.
"I hasten to add that I recognize and respect the freedom-of-speech rights of the Patriot Shop. I am simply asking them to exercise those rights with some sense of responsibility.
"There are those who say 'Only a psychotic would take that kind of thing seriously' - but then we should not be surprised when some psychotic 'does' take it seriously, and takes deadly action as a result."
Mr. Mendler said he has also contacted Congressman Chuck Fleischmann's office about the sticker.
Democrat map using targets