NORTH CAROLINA BILLBOARD THREATENS FRESHMEN CONGRESSWOMEN

…The Western North Carolina Billboard

Gun Shop gives out bumper stickers for those that will be voting for Trump

Cherokee Guns, a Murphy, North Carolina, gun shop that is about a mile away from the above sign, they took responsibility for this giant billboard.  It was an image also shared on the shop’s Facebook page that went viral this week. The billboard obviously drew a sharp rebuke from the women known as “The Squad” that were  pictured, as well as many anti-gun-violence advocates.  The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence called the billboard “violent rhetoric.”

As people flocked to Cherokee Guns’ Facebook page, the store put out a statement indicating it had received “OVERWHELMING demand” for apparel with the billboard’s image.  “Alright my fellow Infidels for Trump . . . due to OVERWHELMING demand . . . you may come by the shop (next week) and get your very own FOUR HORSEMEN COMETH STICKER . . . simple . . . eat a piece of bacon . . . tell us you’re voting for Trump in 2020 . . . then get your limited edition bumper sticker! (While supplies last!) Snowflakes and Liberals are not eligible . . . sorry...”

The four pictured women who are duly elected US Congresswomen are: Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts

“Threats against members of Congress, particularly minority members are trending upward and it is driven by the president’s racial rhetoric,” the group wrote. “This is dangerous!!!”

For the congresswomen, the menacing billboard is just another high-profile threat, one of many they say they have faced since they took office in 2018.

“How the hell is this not inciting violence?” Rep. Tlaib asked in a tweet.  In her own tweet, Pressley called out Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), whose district, she noted, houses the gun shop. She implored Meadows to “do the right thing.”  Tlaib said: “Racist rhetoric from the occupant of the  @WhiteHouse has made hate our new normal. We are still vulnerable.  @RepMarkMeadows, Cherokee Guns is in your district & you and I serve on a committee together. Here’s your chance to finally do the right thing.“

The  warning of the “4 Horsemen” is a well-known reference to biblical imagery symbolizing the end of the earth, of: conquest, war, famine and death.

But the North Carolina billboard that went up over the weekend, instead of depicting the horsemen, it shows the photos of the freshman congresswomen known as “The Squad”.  The billboard calls these progressive Democratic members of Congress “idiots” and is signed by “the Deplorables.”

The gun shop in western North Carolina is facing a backlash for using the billboard to insult “The Squad,” as “idiots” and calling them, “The four horsemen of: thehill.com.”

This last April, a New York man was arrested and charged with threatening to kill Rep. Omar in a phone call to her Washington office. “Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood?” authorities say the man asked the staffer who answered the phone. “Why are you working for her, she’s a [expletive] terrorist. I’ll put a bullet in her [expletive] skull.”

Days later, good ole President Trump tweeted a video of Omar with footage of the twin towers falling on 9/11, a post that triggered a flood of threatening messages so severe that Democratic leaders increased the congresswoman’s security. 

Recently, two Louisiana police officers were fired for a Facebook post that suggested Ocasio-Cortez should be shot.

At the time, Ocasio-Cortez blamed Trump’s rhetoric for the mountain of threats she and her colleagues had received. “This is Trump’s goal when he uses targeted language & threatens elected officials who don’t agree w/ his political agenda,” she wrote on Twitter. “It’s authoritarian behavior. The President is sowing violence. He’s creating an environment where people can get hurt & he claims plausible deniability.”

As it is, Cherokee Guns has a rich history of controversial billboards, especially ones that are overtly Islamophobic.

In 2017, the store posted a picture of a different sign with “a great message.” “INFIDEL ARMAMENT” it read in block letters above Arabic script and an assault rifle.

Two years before that, the Asheville Citizen-Times wrote that the shop put up a billboard that said, “Give me your tired, your poor . . . Keep your Syrian refugees.”

This week, the Citizen-Times reported that it spoke to the store’s owner, Doc Wacholz, who downplayed his billboard’s implications and sought to justify its message.

“They’re socialists, from my point of view,” he told the local paper, before adding, “I also feel a couple of them, being Muslim, have ties to actual terrorists groups."

”I’m not inciting any violence or being racist,” he added. “It’s a statement. It’s an opinion.”

This is going to get a lot worse, before it gets better….and some people are going to get hurt…badly!

Copyright G. Ater 2019