Do words fire bullets?

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins speaks during a news conference to discuss Wednesday’s shooting, Thursday, Aug. 16, 2012, in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Floyd Lee Corkins II, age 28, the gunman who shot an unarmed employee at the Family Research Council in Washington this week, might be crazy or he might just be angry. But based on what he said, he had a beef with the group’s conservative politics.

The FRC opposes gay marriage, and Corkins was active with a gay rights group.

But what actually set him off? Tony Perkins, President of the FRC speculates it was his organization’s presence on a hate groupe list posted by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“I believe the Southern Poverty Law Center should be held accountable for the reckless use of terminology that is leading to what the FBI here has categorized as an act of domestic terrorism,” said Perkins.

He says that hate group list gave the gunman a “license to shoot an unarmed man.”

We can’t yet be sure what motivated this guy. But I think the Southern Poverty Law center is setting itself up when they call it a “hate list.”

Because it’s clear there are people in this country who will open fire just because of the thoughts racing around in their heads. And if their thoughts match something on your group’s web page, it’s going to pop onto the screen and suddenly you’re in the news in a bad way.

The Southern Poverty Law Center might want to rethink this, but so might conservative groups that might list bible verses. Especially Leviticus 20:13: “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman… they are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

In a country where the angry and insane have as much right to a gun as anybody else, both sides of the moral debate have to worry about how someone might justify his decision to shoot himself into the news.

Listen to today’s Dave Ross Commentary: