Our Toxic Culture: Bobby Jindal Goes from Bad to Worst with Statement on Oregon Shooting

Bobby Jindal posing with an assault rifle: He was stupid before stupid was cool.

Okay, he was a Rhodes Scholar. That doesn't seem to stop him from him from breaking the bounds of common decency by blaming in the Umpqua Community College shooting on the shooter's anti-gun father:

In the blog post -- titled "We fill Our Culture With Garbage, And We Reap The Result" -- Jindal blamed the prevalence of mass shootings in America on "deep and serious cultural decay in our society," jumping from a condemnation of violence in media and a reference to abortion to a discussion of the reported absence of the father of the Harper Mercer in the young man's life.

"This killer’s father is now lecturing us on the need for gun control and he says he has no idea how or where his son got the guns," Jindal wrote. "Of course he doesn’t know. You know why he doesn’t know? Because he is not, and has never been in his son’s life. He’s a complete failure as a father, he should be embarrassed to even show his face in public. He’s the problem here."

Of course Jindal ignores the part of the problem where the shooter, Christopher Harper Mercer, lived with his mother, who was a certified, paranoid gun nut. Now, I'm making a "value judgment" like Jindal, but it is based on the following Facebook posting by the mother:

“When the mood strikes,” Harper reportedly wrote on Facebook, “I sling an AR, Tek-9 or AK over my shoulder, or holster a Glock 21 (not 22), or one of my other handguns, like the Sig Sauer P226, and walk out the door.” Shotguns, she said, “are a little too cumbersome to open carry.”

Compassionate brainiac Bobby Jindal based his condemnation on Mercer's dislike of guns:

"He brags that he has never held a gun in his life and that he had no idea that his son had any guns. Why didn’t he know? Because he failed to raise his son. He should be ashamed of himself, and he owes us all an apology," Jindal wrote. "When he was asked what his relationship was with his son, he said he hadn’t seen him in a while because he lived with his mother. Case Closed."

Jindal went on to call out "shallow and simple minded liberals" for blaming "pieces of hardware for the problem."

As Jezebel points out:

It’s a bit of an embellishment on what Mercer actually said, his son was 24 when he relocated to Oregon, and there’s no evidence to suggest that he “has never been in his son’s life.”

The killer was, indeed, 26 and living with his mother, an assault-rifle packin' mamma, when he went ballistic at the college. But of course it was the non-gun-loving father who was at fault.

Is this how far Republicans have to go to blame gun deaths on something other than guns? Maybe not, but Bobby Jindal has now gone there, and he's a "presidential candidate," albeit with 0.6% in the polls.

Not to let Jindal off the hook, but not a single GOP candidate will blame guns for a mass shooting by someone with fourteen guns in his household. Can't be guns, though.

Hmm. Jindal's Louisiana has the highest rate of gun deaths.

Louisiana was number one in gun-death rate in 2007, still is today under Jindal. Heckuva job, Bobby. How did he put it, again?

Jindal went on to call out "shallow and simple minded liberals" for blaming "pieces of hardware for the problem."

Sheesh.