Church shooter left letter citing 'hatred of liberals' as his motivation

[guruoo]

Police: Accused church shooter wanted to be killed
4-page letter outlines frustration, hatred of liberals

By Hayes Hickman (Contact), Don Jacobs (Contact)
Originally published 07:44 a.m., July 28, 2008
Updated 10:28 a.m., July 28, 2008

The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday's mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley
Unitarian Universalist Church planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville
Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.

Jim D. Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he described his
feelings and why he committed the shooting, Owen said.

Adkisson said he was frustrated about not being able to obtain a job and how much
he hated the liberal movement, Owen said.

The letter, recovered from Adkisson's 2004 Ford Escape parked in the church's parking
lot at 2931 Kingston Pike, indicates he had been planning the shooting for about a week.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jul/28/church-shooting-police-find-manifesto-suspects-car/

[ClassWarrior]

1. That was my first thought when I heard it was a UU church.

:deepsigh:

NGU.

[NightWatcher]

2. who's the president now? a liberal? who ruined the economy? a liberal? who cut food stamps?

[mmonk]

7. Hateful speech that incites coming across our airways

doesn't provide for critical thinking. Neither did it in Rwanda.

[Lorien]

55. A who was Jesus?

Only a first class bleeding heart liberal. I'm sure he would have blown him away to if he could.

:crazy:

[Paco Rabinowitz]

3. Naturally, this guy will never be branded a "terrorist."

Though he fits the criteria.

[LynnTheDem]

4. Yes, the current liberal government really fucked up the job situation.

The current liberal government really fucked up every damn thing.

Damn those fucking liberals.













Really. Seriously. How the fuck do rightwingnuts find their way out of the womb when they're this deeply stupid??!

[bdamomma]

26. mission accomplished for RW propaganda machine.

[Maestro]

33. Yep, Limpballs, O'Leilly and Opinion Media like Faux News

did an admirable job brainwashing this sick individual. I feel for the church and victims greatly.

[Lost4words]

5. all he needed to do was point the gun at himself and his problems would be over

but NO, we have to wittnes his temper tantrum and the whitnesses that had to see his handy work will live with that horror the rest of their lives, the ones that still have lives that is.

I respect the person that feels, believes, that it would be better to die than to kill an innocent person!

8643

[JerseygirlCT]

43. Sounds like he was hoping for suicide by cop. How horribly

selfish and violent.

It's hard to muster any empathy for him right now, to be honest. All those people - targeted because they would have welcomed him into their midst - no questions asked. Sickness.

[norepubsin08]

6. If this was a liberal who shot up a fundie church

the news would have been 24/7 and labeled a terrorist attack on America

[Brigid]

10. Oh, yes. Absolutely.

And * would use it as yet another excuse to grab more power. :grr:

[helderheid]

16. Yep. Welcome to DU

[lolly]

29. Well, in all fairness

That might ironically be more newsworthy as a "man bites dog" story.

Right wingers blowing up at liberals/minorities? Yawn. What else is new?

But how often do you hear about left wingers doing anything remotely similar anytime recently?

[Pacifist Patriot]

41. Those radical peacenik bombers. Kinda hard to come by.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

38. except liberals are sane, fundies are not.

therein lies the whole problem.

[tularetom]

8. Like it's the "liberals" fault this piece a shit can't get a job

Hang the c#*^@#*^er. I'll pull the rope.

[dbonds]

9. So RW talk radio has inpsired Conservative Terrorist.

With all their hate it was only a matter of time.

[guruoo]

13. My first thought too... Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, et. al. n/t

[FSogol]

27. 100% correct. RW radio is to blame. n/t

[jbane]

11. Limbaugh, Hannity, and the rest of the radio comedians will...

Either say nothing at all about this guy or say he's a misguided Patriot.
A hate crime if there ever was one. I'm suprised this does not happen more often.

[GreenPartyVoter]

23. Savage will praise him. Seems to me he's said things about killing all the liberals

or another because my BIL listens to him and once said something to that effect, while his very liberal in-laws were all in the room. He was young then, didn't think that killing off "the liberals" meant exterminating my half of the family.

[Alcibiades]

12. It's google bomb time

Conservative domestic terrorist Jim David Adkisson, a man trained to kill as a member of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne, was apparently filled with rage and hate at liberals when he committed his act of terrorism at a Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville.

[SammyWinstonJack]

22. !

:thumbsup:

[B Calm]

14. Hell they are still blaming Bill Clinton. . . . Go figure

[checks-n-balances]

34. Remember the small plane "suicide pilot" who aimed for the WH in the 90's?

He literally blamed Bill Clinton, and we had a good economy then.

I think RW hate talk figured into that one too.

[TheCowsCameHome]

15. I'll bet he loved Rush, Hannity and all the other hatemongering crackpots

on radio and TV.

I bet they found his house full of links to these troublemaking talking heads.

[Vickers]

17. Yup, them damned libruls, who helped put food on his table...

:eyes:

[no_hypocrisy]

18. This horrible incident is reminiscent of Dr. Baruch Goldman when he entered a mosque

in Hebron and opened fire on praying Muslims, killing 29. Dr. Goldman was a dentist who immigrated from Brooklyn, New York.

[K Gardner]

19. You see the ignorance in the South.... this is my lovely hometown. I'm disgusted and ashamed.. the

people who died were lovely, wonderful people, killed by hate and ignorance.

[nam78_two]

20. Yup-I have a friend in that church

The whole thing makes me sick.

[Clark2008]

46. It's my hometown, too.

But ignorance is NOT confined to the South.

[reflection]

21. Typical reactionary jackass.

Don't agree with something your church is doing? Shoot everyone. I weep for the future.

[raccoon]

24. And this asshole was getting food stamps. Duh, don't you think

Adkisson, food stamps was a LIBERAL idea?

What a dumb fuck, like so many others, looking for somebody to blame his problems on. Wonder if he is an addict/alcholic? It would fit!

[Bake]

25. Thanks, Rush. Thanks, Hannity, Savage, O'Reilly, et al.

Great fucking job. I hope your rotting corpses burn in hell for all eternity.

Bake

[bdamomma]

30. those you listed are only promoting hate

and prey upon those whose concepts are totally effed up and end up taking lives.

[Bake]

37. And take a look on any given day at freeperworld

The crazies over there, in their twisted little masturbatory fantasies, advocate lining up all the liberals and shooting them ...

Sick, sick, sick.

Bake

[bdamomma]

40. not wishing for this, but if anymore copy cats on this horrible situation

promoting hate and violence for liberals should be classified as a hate crime.

[Alcibiades]

47. "We're certainly investigating it as a hate crime."

No shit.

Bush will probably pardon this former member of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne, and will probably give this conservative terrorist a medal.

[Kazak]

56. "I hope your rotting corpses burn in hell for all eternity."

Irony alert! Look up "universalism."

[stranger81]

28. Shooter hated blacks, gays, everyone different than him . . . . .

Smallwood on Monday said she has known Adkisson for "25 to 30 years'' and helped Alexander move Adkisson's possessions out of the house in Powell after the incident with the gun.

"He always had the attitude the government was trying to get him,'' Smallwood said. "He disliked blacks, gays, anyone who was a different color or just different from him.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jul/28/woman-accused-shooter-hated-anyone-different-him/

[dbonds]

31. With an attitude like that are there that many people not different than him?

[BreweryYardRat]

32. Real charming.

Thank you, right-wing hate radio.

(And people wonder why I want to see Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, and the rest of their filthy ilk strung up for inciting violence.)

[KharmaTrain]

35. I Hope They Release His Letter...

Usually I don't favor giving a psychopath any satisfaction, but in this case, we may learn a bit from a rambling brainstem. I'd be curious to see if he uses the codewords and other linguistic devices that come directly from hate radio and rw talking points. Blaming "Libruls" is a start, but let's see what other words are used...and then match them to the source it came from.

As with other, I firmly agree this dude sounds like a product of hate radio and how it helped fester hatred that ended in a hate crime.

[JHB]

42. Quibble: I don't think he was a "product" of hate radio...

...so much as it fed and reinforced deeper problems.

[AtheistCrusader]

36. In a way, I'm glad he was captured alive.

I don't mind one bit seeing one of these 'murder suicide' terrorists going to jail, for as long as the law allows. It's a shame two innocent people died in the process though.

Anyone know how the church and community are holding up?

[Maat]

39. I'm in shock. We are a "TVUUC" UU org also.

We a small, growing UU "community," that calls itself the "Temecula Valley Unitarian Universalist Community." We are on the other side of the country (www.temeculauus.org).

I'm in shock, and sick to my stomach. We are also in the middle of a very conservative area. We also put a welcoming sign out. Oh, I am very distressed.

[HEyHEY]

44. Yes, unemployment is the fault of Liberals

Fuckin' moron.

[JHB]

45. One thing I noticed:

Compare:

and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.

and

“He fully expected to be killed by the responding police,” the police chief said.

with

The shooting began at 10:18 a.m. Adkisson was arrested minutes later after being restrained by church members.

While the better angels of my nature note that this guy has "mental breakdown" written all over him, I notice it didn't seem to occur to this dumbfuck that his targets would fight back and not give him the chance to play out his little "suicide by cop" fantasy.

[Alcibiades]

48. And he struck at a kids' play

Which is sicker: his planning to attack the congregation during the children's performance, or his showing up unaware that a kids' play would be going on, and going ahead with his plan anyway?

[stranger81]

49. New details confirming & amplifying the motive (hatred of liberals)

The search warrants indicate intense anger against liberal ideas.

"During the interview Adkisson stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were a ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets. Adkisson made statements that because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office. Adkisson stated that he had held these beliefs for about the last ten years. Adkisson made statements that he had pre-planned this shooting and had began writing the letter for the last week," the search warrant reads.

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=61374&catid=2

[Garbo 2004]

52. Interesting. His ex-wife was a former member of that church & left him, w. restraining order, 8 yrs

ago.

[BlooInBloo]

50. I guess that'll take care of jackass DUers talking about how this wasn't an act of terrorism.

[onenote]

51. actually, I think it makes it a hate crime

but not all hate crimes are acts of terror.

[BlooInBloo]

54. My mistake.

[Garbo 2004]

53. Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity on shooter's reading list...

Police found right-wing political books, brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes and a handgun in the Powell home of a man who said he attacked a church in order to kill liberals "who are ruining the country," court records show...

...Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jul/28/church-shooting-police-find-manifesto-suspects-car/