Mr. Poplawski's view of guns and personal freedom took a turn toward the fringes of American politics. With Mr. Perkovic, he appeared to share a belief that the government was controlled from unseen forces, that troops were being shipped home from the Mideast to police the citizenry here, and that Jews secretly ran the country.
"We recently discovered that 30 states had declared sovereignty," said Mr. Perkovic, who lives in Lawrenceville. "One of his concerns was why were these major events in America not being reported to the public."
Believing most media were covering up important events, Mr. Poplawski turned to a far-right conspiracy Web site run by Alex Jones, a self-described documentarian with roots going back to the extremist militia movement of the early 1990s.
Around the same time, he joined Florida-based Stormfront, which has long been a clearinghouse Web site for far-right groups. He posted photographs of his tattoo, an eagle spread across his chest.
"I was considering gettin' life runes on the outside of my calfs," he wrote. Life runes are a common symbol among white supremacists, notably followers of The National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group linked to an array of violent organizations.
I basically agree with Hilzoy--I don't have any strong gun control politics. But that said, it's amazing to me that these guys are allowed to stockpile this sort of heat.
UPDATE: Link fixt. Sorry guys.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Any thoughts on race and the Binghamton shooter? It seems that when a perpetrator is neither white nor black people don't talk about race as much.
Pittsburgh was in a state of shock about the shooting this weekend, and is going into mourning this week, with a mayoral campaign debate cancelled as the city tries to derive some understanding of the situation. We talked about the shooting for a good half-hour at work this morning when we all came in. There will be large, well-attended memorial services for the fallen officers this week, and they will lie in state at the city hall tomorrow. There will be a fund established for the families, I'm sure. Pittsburghers are not wealthy, but they are generous with their money.
What will not happen, and which should be the focal point of this whole tragedy, is a real debate over gun control laws. it's ok to kill 3 of our finest citizens, as long as you can have your AK-47 to mow them down with. What does the NRA have to say about this today?
Are you bothered by his stockpile or having guns at all? If you're saying his nutty political views are grounds for limiting his access to guns, I disagree. Threats or mental illness, as Hilzoy said, should be grounds for concern. Political paranoia, by itself, shouldn't be.
Sorry my blockquotes didn't work as I thought they would...
They may be scary, but I remember the late 1960's, when the left was arming (remember the famous picture of black students walking out of the student union at Cornell). One man's "paranoia" is another man's patriotism, or liberation. I can't come up with a principle that would disarm the "militias" that wouldn't also have disarmed the nuts on the left. And that's a slippery slope. I believe most psych professions think they can distinguish between paranoia as a psychological illness, and paranoia as a political style.
Unfortunately,
We'll probably have many more incidents like this occur as rabble rousing demagogues like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, and Michelle Malkin continue referring to Obama as a socialist, a Marxist, an Islamist, and a fascist.
Beck and company have blood on their hands and they have a lot to answer for.
Eh, I think you put yourself on the losing side of an argument when you make claims about the cultural and political temperature of the nation by referencing the radical fringe and nutcases. I can find for you people who advocate the enslavement of women, the enslavement of men, sex with children, a return to feudalism, the reconstitution of government by Pharaoh, and the annihilation of the human race. Using Stormfront as a basis for deciding that we aren't in an essentially different mode of dealing with race than we were 30-odd years ago (which is what I think "post-racial" really means) is really moving the goalposts overseas. I'm more interested in what you come up with when you stick within a couple standard deviations from the center.