Pro Ecclesia * Pro Familia * Pro Civitate: Fr. Flakey in the News Again: Wants to "Snuff Out" K-Mart for Selling Easter Baskets with Nerf Guns

Ed Morrissey reports on Fr. Pfleger's latest left-wing, headline-seeking nonsense:

Remember Michael Pfleger, the radical priest in Chicago last heard from in the 2008 campaign, defending his friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright? The one who hung out with Barack Obama for decades, thinks that “America is the greatest sin against God,” and who wound up getting suspended by the Chicago diocese after making himself into a national spectacle? Well, Father Pfleger is back, baby, and he has a new eeeeeevil in his sights — guns. Or perhaps more accurately … gateway guns?
There was a time when kids wanting toy guns had limited media images of cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers to emulate. Today, not so.

So the Rev. Michael Pfleger said he is challenging the sale of the toys — in Easter baskets — to a generation plagued by more violent and rampant use of guns in their own neighborhoods.

“I am writing to express my concern and outrage that Kmart is selling Easter baskets, which are obviously for children, with toy guns in them,” Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church in Auburn-Gresham, wrote to officials at the big box retailer, in a Mar. 9 letter obtained by the Sun-Times.

“With the increasing gun violence in Chicago and across this country, I am amazed that you would choose to offer toy guns to our children to make them comfortable with playing with them. I am asking you to remove any baskets with toy guns in them from your store’s shelves immediately,” Pfleger wrote.
[...]

Pfleger then argues that Nerf is nothing more than a gateway to the harder stuff:
But equally important is that any psychiatrist will tell you a child who gets comfortable playing with toy guns and pointing them at people as a child becomes comfortable picking them up as an adult. In a nation that’s plagued with gun violence, neither Kmart nor any other store should be selling guns in Easter baskets to our kids.
[More]

My Comments:
Actually, Ed is mistaken in believing that guns are a "new evil" for Fr. Flakey (although targeting nerf guns seem to be a new twist in his opposition). In fact, it was a controversy over gun shops that first brought this pernicious priest to my attention:

On Saturday, as part of an Operation PUSH protest at Chuck's Gun Shop & Range, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina's Church, urged the crowd to "drag" shop owner John Riggio from his shop "like a rat" and "snuff" him, the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA) said.

[...]

"I want the NRA [National Rifle Association] to understand - you have a lot of money, but money can't buy moral authority and it can't buy justice or freedom, and we will fight you, NRA," he says.

"We will fight you on every angle [sic], no matter how much money you've got, we will embarrass you, and we will embarrass every legislator that takes money from you. We will call them out by name, by district. We will expose you, legislators."

Pfleger then turns his attention to Riggio. "He's the owner of Chuck's. John Riggio. R-i-g-g-i-o. We're going to find you and snuff you out … you know you're going to hide like a rat. You're going to hide but like a rat we're going to catch you and pull you out. We are not going to allow you to continue to hide when we're here …"

[...]

The day before the anti-gun protest, the church hosted former Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who was making a rare public appearance. Pfleger was quoted as describing the controversial Muslim activist as "a gift from God to a sick, sick world."