Conservative activist: Weed and 'progressive' politics to blame for Vegas shootings

A conservative media watchdog blamed marijuana for the deadly shootings of two police officers and another man in Las Vegas – not the extreme right-wing politics the shooters supported.

Cliff Kincaid, director of the Accuracy in Media Center for Investigative Journalism, took aim at a Daily Beast column that suggested extremist rhetoric might have inspired Jerad and Amanda Miller, reported Right Wing Watch.

Although the column’s title calls the couple “The Bonnie and Clyde of Ultra-Right Hate,” Kincaid complained writer John Avlon described the shooters as conservative.

“The reference to the Gadsden flag being ‘the Tea Party’s favorite’ was an obvious effort to link the Tea Party to the murders,” Kincaid said. “The flag dates back to the American Revolution and is used by various groups and people to protest Big Government.”

He said – not inaccurately – that Jerad Miller’s “notion of ‘Big Government’ was a government that interfered with his marijuana smoking.”

Kincaid complained that Avlon and other liberals had politicized the shootings, and then described the Millers as “progressives” because they supported recreational drug legalization.

“Why do the ‘likes’ on his Facebook page include so many pro-marijuana groups?” Kincaid said. “Legal dope has been accepted by some libertarians, most notably at the Cato Institute, but it has been a left-wing cause for decades, mostly funded for the last decade or so by hedge-fund operator George Soros.”

Kincaid strongly disputed claims that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was a “right-wing radio host” – solely because he supports the decriminalization of marijuana.

“He is a marijuana enthusiast who promoted a movie called ‘Guns and Weed: The Road to Freedom,’” Kincaid said. “We noted in the past that this combustible combination of drugs and firearms, as preached by Jones, is dangerous for our country.”

He described Jerad Miller as a “classic case of a pothead, possibly with paranoid or psychotic tendencies,” and cited a newspaper account to back his assertion.

“Garry Frick, the owner of a bookstore, got caught in a short but dramatic debate with Jerad Miller, in which the pothead ‘covered everything from Bundy to the Declaration of Independence to the morality of pornography, guns and drugs in a span of less than 15 minutes,’” Kincaid said. “’He kept misquoting things and incorrectly using words, Frick said, all the while sounding very sure of himself.’”

“It sounds like marijuana took its psychological toll on him,” Kincaid said.