Online Comic retailer from Heavy Ink drawing criticism for comments
On Saturday morning, a gunman shot Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords while she was meeting with constituents outside a Safeway store in Tucson, Arizona, and then apparently kept on shooting, leaving six people (including a nine-year-old girl) dead and Rep. Giffords in critical condition.
While the rest of the world was wishing Gifford well, mourning the dead, and denouncing the vitriol that encourages such violence, Travis Corcoran, the president of online comics retailer Heavy Ink, put up a post on his personal blog titled “1 down, 534 to go.” Corcoran was, of course, referring to the 535 members of Congress.
It is absolutely, absolutely unacceptable to shoot “indiscriminately”.
Target only politicians and their staff, and leave regular citizens alone.
The post drew swift reaction after Rich Johnston picked it up at Bleeding Cool, along with the first round of outrage on Twitter. While some of Corcoran’s longtime readers gave him high fives in the comments of his blog posts, the rest of the world wasn’t so sanguine, and Morning Glories creator Nick Spencer specifically asked that Heavy Ink stop carrying his work, saying, “I respect your right to an opinion, but am not personally comfortable doing business with someone who advocates violence against people they disagree with.” Gail Simone Tweeted, “@tjic, you have my pity. May you grow a soul someday, because you desperately are in need of one.”
Corcoran, who describes himself as an “anarcho-capitalist,” confirmed in this thread on the HeavyInk forums that he is indeed the author of the post. He then followed up with a fuller explanation of his politics, including his distaste for laws and government, and why he thinks the U.S. government has overstepped the bounds of the Constitution. While he disavowed armed revolution, he defended his blog post, saying,
I don’t retract my callousness. I dislike Representatives and Senators, and I think that each and every one of them is doing grave harm to the United States, and to the freedoms of the citizens of the US.
As long as they continue to be callous by the laws they pass (and to do massive harm to real people – senior citizens, mothers, fathers, children), I reserve the right to use harsh language towards them.
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