Bobby Jindal Blames Oregon Shooting on Abortion and Single Mothers

In an attempt at relevancy, Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal published a blog post on his campaign website blaming the murder of nine people at an Oregon community college on abortion and single motherhood.

In the post (which we saw via ThinkProgress), titled “We Fill Our Culture With Garbage, And We Reap The Result,” Jindal “speak[s] the truth” about our “cultural rot.” A cultural rot apparently wrought on us, not by the easy availability of deadly weapons, but by violent television, video games, abortion, and single mothers. It’s like Republican Bingo and Jindal just hit the jackpot.

Jindal writes:

“We devalue human life, we have no regard for the sanctity of human life in any regard, from the unborn, to the old, and to every single person in between, we devalue it and act as if we have almost no regard for humanity.”

And apparently there’s a clear connection between legal abortion and the complete degradation of the American family:

“Our families are a complete mess, and we have raised tens of millions of young boys who will never become real men because they have no values whatsoever, they have no truth in their lives, and they have no regard for common decency.”

He keeps going (this is all in bullet points, by the way):

“And who is it that generally commits these evil acts of mass murder that are becoming routine? It’s almost always young men who have either no father figure in their lives, or a broken relationship with their father. Is this just a coincidence? Of course not.”

Jindal is clear to reject any reasonable or sane measures of gun control. He pivots to the Oregon shooter’s father, Ian Mercer who, in an interview with CNN, expressed his concern over the availability of firearms. “If [my son] had not been able to get hold of 13 guns, this wouldn’t have happened,” Mercer said. Mercer also acknowledged that he had not seen his son in the two years since he relocated to Oregon with his mother.

Jindal writes:

“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. 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.

[…]

He owes us all an apology.”

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.”

But that, of course, hardly matters in diatribes like this one.

It doesn’t matter that the shooter might have been motivated by misogyny or that his deep interest in guns was facilitated by family members. It simply matters that guns aren’t the problem. Ideology is confirmed, donations are made, and Jindal can continue his limping campaign.