One thing that remains surprising about this election — although perhaps it shouldn’t be — is the number of people who fantasize openly and quite joyfully about someone violently harming Hillary Clinton. The latest entrant is North Carolina GOP Senator Richard Burr, who is sorry for joking about gun owners shooting Clinton.
CNN reports that Burr made this particular funny to a crowd of GOP volunteers over the weekend. The audio was then leaked to CNN:
The North Carolina Republican, locked in a tight race for reelection, quipped that as he walked into a gun shop “nothing made me feel better” than seeing a magazine about rifles “with a picture of Hillary Clinton on the front of it.”
“I was a little bit shocked at that — it didn’t have a bullseye on it,” he said Saturday to GOP volunteers, prompting laughter from the crowd in Mooresville, North Carolina. “But on the bottom right (of the magazine), it had everybody for federal office in this particular state that they should vote for. So let me assure you, there’s an army of support out there right now for our candidates.”
That doesn’t even work particularly well as a joke, but I guess you have to know your audience. Burr joins an illustrious panel of dudes fantasizing about Hillary Clinton’s death, including New Hampshire State Representative Al Baldasaro and Donald Trump’s advisor on veterans issues, who’s said repeatedly that Clinton should be tried and “shot for treason.” Over the weekend, Trump mega fan and conservative commentator Wayne Allyn Root dreamed aloud about a time when Clinton and Huma Abedin die like Thelma and Louise. And then there is of course the big orange man himself, who suggested Second Amendment people “do something” about Clinton.
Burr tells CNN, “The comment I made was inappropriate and I apologize for it.” A Democratic group sent out a press release saying they’d reported him to the Secret Service, which will go nowhere but does underline the unwiseness of being a sitting Senator and fantasizing, however vaguely, about the death of a presidential candidate.
It’s hard to see how this election could get any more uplifting in the next week, but there’ll be a way.
