It’s been amply established that CJ Grisham, the founder and president of Open Carry Texas, is a loathsome man.? But he may have outdone himself on Thursday, when he claimed that a gun found at a Target in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina last weekend had been planted by a gun control advocate.
For those who missed it, last Friday night a Target loss prevention employee was walking through the toy section when he found a 9mm Luger pistol sitting in an unwrapped Playskool Marvel Superhero box. He thought it was a toy–until he discovered it was loaded with very real ammunition.
Police have offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever is responsible for this. They want to talk to a man whom the LP employee said was acting suspiciously that night in the vicinity where the gun was found; he was seen going up and down every aisle of the department, including the one where the gun was found.
They also want to talk to the last known owner of the gun.
When Grisham learned about this, he sent a breathtaking email to Buzzfeed:
“I wouldn’t doubt if a gun control extremist planted the gun there to further his agenda of blaming gun owners for deaths of children. Whoever did it is a despicable excuse for a human being and should be charged with attempted murder and fried in in a chair.”
Grisham doubled down on this claim in a post on Facebook. While he initially said that “who did this isn’t important,” he then claimed that only someone with “an anti-gun agenda” would leave a loaded gun in a toy section.
We already had reason to question where Grisham’s moral compass was. According to Mother Jones, this is a guy who said that it “warm(ed) the cockles of my heart” to see several of his compatriots hold target practice on a female mannequin.
That same story reported that he only ended a campaign to release the names of anyone who called 911 about Open Carry Texas demonstrations after public outcry. But suggesting that a gun control supporter actually planted a loaded gun in a toy aisle? I don’t think there’s a store anywhere in Texas where you can buy guns that big.
The most benign interpretation of this is that Grisham is trying to ramp up his group’s civil war with Moms Demand Action, the grassroots group formed after the Sandy Hook shooting which has since merged with Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns to form Everytown for Gun Safety.
Target came under fire for allowing people to carry rifles through its stores after Moms Demand Action found several pictures of Open Carry Texas members carrying their guns through Texas Target stores in late 2013 and early 2014. Grisham only called a halt to this after being told that Texas law doesn’t allow firearms in places that sell alcohol.
It says a lot about him that he’s actually trying to get that provision repealed. And when the legislative director of the National Rifle Association’s Texas branch and a longtime NRA board member told Grisham that they were taking heat from lawmakers about his group’s demonstrations, Grisham actually suggested that they were “siding with Moms Demand Action.”
For its part, Moms Demand Action was remarkably restrained in its response. Spokeswoman Erika Soto Lamb called it “ridiculous” to even suggest that any gun-control organization would stoop to planting a loaded gun anywhere in a crowded store.
Believe it or not, the claim that this was a “false flag” incident is actually spreading around in the Second Amendment absolutist world. As evidence, check out what a search for “Target false flag” yields on Twitter. It’s pretty telling how far removed from reality–and basic decency–these people are for this idea to even have been suggested.
Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
edited by tw
