In what I think was understatement, Glenn Reynolds observed that the 88-year-old nutjob who murdered a guard at the Holocaust Museum doesn't fit the narrative. That is certainly true. (Rand Simberg explains why in far more detail.)

But like many nuts who are out there, the shooter's views are inevitably going to overlap with convenient political targets who do fit The Narrative.

Like Mr. Big Bad Right Wing Narrative himself, Rush Limbaugh. Regular readers know I don't especially like him. But I have to say something about the hatchet job that's going on right now of linking Limbaugh and other prominent conservatives to the Holocaust Museum shooter, because by using similar "narrative logic," the Holocaust Museum shooter can be linked to almost anyone whose opinions he may have heard. Or read. (Now there's an unsettling thought. Considering the man's unconventional views about the Fall of Rome, what if he read my blog? Could I be considered a terrorist suspect?)

In what has become a numbingly familiar pattern over the decades, when deranged killers strike, people with political axes to grind will invoke their favorite demons for blame. In what I'll call the "Columbine tradition," the Columbine killers were said by leftists to be a product of "the gun culture," and by rightists to be a product of the "climate" of the 1960s. (And, of course, "depravity on the Internet.")

Why people don't focus on the individuals themselves, I don't know. It would be one thing if a killer were acting on behalf of (or with the approval of) someone else, or an actual identifiable organization. But when a murder is committed by a single individual, it makes about as much sense to blame "the right" or "the left" (much less a "climate" created by either) as it would to blame the Republican or Democratic Party if he happened to belong to one of them. (In that regard, it wouldn't matter if the sum total of the man's political views consisted of an exact laundry list ticking off every last item in the GOP platform; that still wouldn't make the Republicans in any way responsible for his outrageous crime.)

It makes even less sense to blame a man talking on the radio, but quite predictably, a climate allegedly created by Rush Limbaugh is being blamed for the actions of the suspect in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting.

When I clicked on Glenn Reynolds' link to the Newsbusters piece ("Journalist Links Rush Limbaugh to Holocaust Museum Shooting"), I expected more in the grand Columbine tradition, and I was not disappointed.

Newsbusters links a piece by Salon's Joan Walsh with the provocative title of "Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder?") She clearly thinks that "right-wing hate talk"

Then came Rush Limbaugh with his sexual fears about having to "bend over and grab the ankles" for a black president. Soon Limbaugh was saying he hoped Obama fails; last week he said Obama was more dangerous to our country than al-Qaida, our terrorist enemy who has killed thousands of Americans. Could that conceivably inflame someone marginal and isolated to act against a president who's more dangerous than terrorists?

"If al Qaeda wants to demolish the America we know and love, they better hurry, because Obama's beating them to it..."

Anyway, I'm not impressed with her argument. This doesn't even rise to the level of guilt by association.

However, I was especially intrigued by a statement Ms. Walsh made towards the end of her piece:

How von Brunn, a felon who'd used a gun in his earlier crime, still had the right to carry a gun, I'll never understand.

Come on!

Surely she has read enough about the story and is versed enough in the legal system to know that the above is just a flat-out misstatement of fact. And even if she wrote it before von Brunn's criminal past was made known (very unlikely), then why is there no correction?

I think she is either deliberately lying or else she is ignorant beyond belief. (Joan Walsh, bear in mind, is Editor in Chief of Salon. The head honcho, the one they put on TV.)

The fact is that the shooter had multiple felony convictions, and was thus legally barred from possessing firearms:

WASHINGTON - A frustrated artist and an angry man, the suspect in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting once tried to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve board, a "caper" thwarted when a guard captured him outside a board meeting carrying a bag stuffed with weapons.

James Von Brunn, 88, a white supremacist and Holocaust denier, describes the assault with apparent pride on his Web site, the source of fulmination against Jews and races other than his own.

Von Brunn was sentenced in 1983 to more than four years in prison for attempted armed kidnapping and other charges in his Fed assault. He was released in 1989.

"The subject resides in my memory like old road-kill," he wrote. "What could have been a slam-bang victory turned into ignoble failure. Recalling all of this presents an onerous task. I am getting near the end of the diving board."

Convicted felons aren't allowed to possess guns, and it is a serious crime in itself if they do. One of my pet peeves is that this is not pointed out as often as it should be in news stories about crimes committed by convicted criminals. I suspect that it doesn't fit the standard gun control narrative, which is that criminals have guns because society "allows" them to. To its credit, the article points out that von Brunn was barred from buying (although it should have also said "possessing") firearms:

Two law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said investigators are trying to better understand time he spent in Idaho, and how he acquired the .22-caliber rifle used in Wednesday's attack. At the request of the U.S. Park Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is tracing the weapon. Under federal law, convicted felons cannot purchase firearms.

In his account of his "Federal Reserve caper," the St. Louis native relates his "character shapers" -- among them a schoolyard bully who beat him up, vacation days on the Mississippi River, his service on a PT boat in World War II, and what he said was his first trouble with the law -- a year in jail for tussling with a sheriff on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1968, the year he moved to the area from New York City.

Von Brunn applied to have his art shown at the Troika Gallery in Easton, Md., around the time the gallery opened about 12 years ago, two of the owners, Laura Era and Jennifer Wharton, told The Associated Press. They said they turned him down because it was not up to their quality and that made Von Brunn angry.

Hmmm...

Shouldn't Homeland Security immediately start rifling through the admissions files of all art schools, and checking all gallery records so they can follow up on the individuals who didn't make the cut? How long will it be before another rejected artist lashes out and subjects the world to a murderous artistic tantrum?

But since some people are insistent on making the Limbaugh connection, I guess we need to look more closely at the man's, um, politics:

A self-described artist, advertising man and author living in Annapolis, Md., Von Brunn wrote an anti-Semitic treatise, "Kill the Best Gentiles," that he said no one would publish. He decries "the browning of America" and claims to expose a Jewish conspiracy "to destroy the White gene-pool."

Von Brunn also wrote, "The 'Holocaust' Religion is destroying Western Civilization. The Aryan gene-pool dies, 'unwept, unhonored and unsung.'"

Sorry, but while I'm no fan of Rush Limbaugh, I think I can safely stick my neck out here and say that the above just isn't the sort of thing which would appeal to even the most manically "Megaditto" of Rush's legions of Megadittodom. To compare this loon with Rush Limbaugh and to say that Rush Limbaugh helped inspire him because they maybe share vaguely similar views on something is just beyond the pale.

We might just as well blame the Aryan gene-pool.

After all, aren't we're all swimming in the same MegaNarrative?