It’s easy to look at Wednesday night’s horrific violence in Florence, South Carolina—where suspect Fred Hopkins allegedly killed one officer and injured six others during a standoff involving multiple children—and wonder how it’s possible that police always manage to apprehend white men alive, while frequently failing to do so with black and brown people. It’s especially easy to muse about that when considering that the dead police officer, Sergeant Terrence Carraway, a 30-year veteran of his police department, happens to have been a black man.
It’s easy to wonder why an affluent 74-year-old would rain bullets upon law enforcement who were there to execute a search warrant on suspicion that a 27-year-old had sexually abused a foster child at his home. It’s easy to wonder what the situation was at the home of Hopkins, a former lawyer, disbarred for bad billing practices, and why he would hold foster children hostage in a standoff that lasted over two hours.
It’s easy to look at his unearthed Facebook page and note that he presents himself as a Vietnam veteran and gun enthusiast, as well as a longtime member of the NRA, who enjoys “shooting sports.” It’s easy to take that information, digest it, and write the Florence standoff off as another gun nut gone mad; perhaps Hopkins is an anti-government type, who believed he must protect his homestead from the overreach of a government he likely helped elect.
All of those would be easy, logical paths of reason. But the NRA doesn’t do logic, and they sure don’t do reason. So they’re blaming the Left, and they’re blaming the media.
Thus was the focus of Thursday’s episode of Stinchfield, an hourly nightmare of nonsense found exclusively on second-rate yell-network NRAtv, hosted by former NBC reporter, failed congressional candidate, and aspiring car wash mogul Grant Stinchfield. The good folks at Media Matters for America watched Stinchfield rant like a tired Alex Jones so we don’t have to, and, well, let’s just let the man’s words speak for themselves.
Putting on a badge is like putting on a target. The rich tradition of serving as a law officer has been tarnished by the media and the left. Worse than officers being shamed by leftists raging against authority, they are now all often being targeted. Brave officers in Florence, South Carolina, faced a shooter hellbent on killing them all.
Again, it would be easy to say that the “rich tradition” of working in law enforcement has been “tarnished” by an endless history of police brutality, racial profiling, and corruption, but you do you, Grantypants.
You can watch the mind-bending clip below, if you really feel you haven’t suffered enough this week.