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Unitarian Church Shootings Investigated as Hate Crime
Monday, July 28, 2008 at 1:21 pm
During a press conference in Knoxville today, police revealed troubling new details about the Sunday morning shootings at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.
Jim David Adkisson, the alleged shooter, apparently hated liberals. In a letter found after his arrest, he pledged to strike out against the "liberal movement." The Unitarian Universalists are about as liberal as you can get, as churches go.
According to Knoxville police, Adkisson entered Tennessee Valley Unitarian intending to kill just as many people as he possibly could. The congregants who tackled Adkisson and held him until the police arrived saved a good number of lives.
What was one of Adkissons supposed triggers, aside from TVUUC's perceived liberalism? What could have caused this military veteran to strike out in authorities are now investigating as a hate crime?
According to Knoxville authorities, this unemployed hater of religion and staunch political conservative was also angry because his allotted number of food stamps was about to be reduced.
That's right, a man whom police say professed to loathe liberals enough to kill them en masse was also angry because one of the U.S. Govt's most classically liberal social welfare programs was no longer going to be much help to him.
Adkisson planned the assault for some time, police say. He allegedly bought the shotgun used to kill two and injure several more over a month ago.
Naturally, since extreme views from both ends of the political spectrum seem to invite such things, Adkisson may have been a bit of a troll on the Web as well. The following is a brief letter to the editor written to the Columbus Free Press in October, 2003. If it wasn't from the same Adkisson accused of shooting up the church in Knoxville yesterday, it certainly could have been. The letter was titled, "Your Nazi comments about Arnold, GW and Rove....." and read as follows: "I absolutely love your work. I link and or put it on all the sites I can cause it causes such a revulson and backlash on those middle american type sites that it in effect advances the conservative causes I believe in. Keep up the 'good' work."
Adkisson's views were ultimately reflective only of what was going on inside his mind. Ideology was a convenient mask. Public records in Florida and Tennessee reveal that a man with the same full name and age had two failed marriages, first to a woman named Joyce then to a Liza. Police say that he had a peripatetic work history, perhaps evidence of an inability to hold a job. Adkisson could just as easily have targeted any number of other places out of hatred -- a gay bar, even a campaign office. In the end it still would have been about taking out his own self-loathing and misplaced aggression on someone else, not about political views or religious beliefs.
[WBIR]
Tags: church shooting, Greg McKendry, hate crime, Jim Adkisson, Linda Kraeger, random shooting, Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church
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