Joe The Plumber – ‘Your Dead Kids Don’t Trump My Constitutional Rights’ (VIDEO)

Samuel Wurzelbacher
Photo by Rona Proudfoot via Flickr CC by-SA 2.0.

According to “Joe the Plumber,” who isn’t a Joe and isn’t a plumber, his “right” to own guns without restrictions trumps the lives of the three young people shot to death by Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista, California. After a few platitudes of hollow sympathy, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (aka Joe The Plumber) goes for the gut:

“As harsh as this sounds ? your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.”

At this point, it’s game on for Sam the Not-Plumber. He focuses on the horror and rage of Richard Martinez, who lost his son Christopher in Rodger’s shooting frenzy to make the remainder of his argument. While he avoids openly mocking Martinez — not bad for someone on the far-right fringe — Wurzelbacher writes that while Martinez “can say whatever he wants and blame whoever he’d like”:

“[T]he words and images of Mr. Martinez blaming ‘the proliferation of guns’, lobbyists, politicians, etc.; will be exploited by gun-grab extremists as are all tragedies involving gun violence and the mentally ill by the anti-Second Amendment Left.”

It’s all about the Second Amendment, Wurzelbacher intones, and his right “to protect my family.” He does promise to pray for Martinez, presumably not while driving to the nearest gun show to load up on military-grade hardware.


Wurzelbacher manages to paint Rodger as a “sad and insane individual” who is almost certainly “an Obama voter,” though he coyly notes that he’ll wait for that “to be official.” This goes with the current far-right claptrap that claims most mass murders are committed by Democrats. He even writes:

“I noticed the mainstream media have stopped the practice of immediately reporting the psycho maniac is a conservative Tea Party Republican Christian. Guess they’re sick of having to hide being wrong every time when it comes out the whacko votes Democrat?”

He ends by calling Martinez “and anyone calling for more restrictions on American’s [sic] rights” mere tools of whatever Liberal Conspiracy is afoot to take away our rights and destroy democracy. And of course, as with everything from Medicare and water fluoridation to solar energy and mass transit:

“The future of our very liberty lies in the balance of this fight.”

Cue the dramatic music.

Wurzelbacher ends with a gut punch to the center of Martinez’s grief:

“In conclusion, I cannot begin to imagine the pain you are going through, having had your child taken away from you. However, any feelings you have toward my rights being taken away from me, lose those.”

And just to pile on the callous, cruel irony of it all, the following link is embedded in the center of Wurzelbacher’s missive:

Enter to win the Family Gun Package Giveaway!

Edited by D.H.