Wow. Good grief. Looks like this went viral (which was kind of the point, although I wasn't expecting this much of a response, at least to the first Facebook post...)
I'm glad so many people are reposting it, although I'm also slightly embarrassed because I misspelled "Lanza" and "Tucson" on the original version above (I've since corrected this but it's too late for my original Facebook post...ah well...)
Anyway, one argument that some have made (as if it matters) is that the white Christian murderers I listed didn't commit their crimes for "religious" or "political" reasons. This may be true for some of them, but is utter bullshit for the last two.
Eric Rudolph most certainly WAS acting "based on his religious views"--
"Rudolph is responsible for a series of bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed two people and injured at least 150 others in the name of an anti-abortion and anti-gay agenda.
As a teenager Rudolph was taken by his mother to a Church of Israel compound in 1984; it is connected to the Christian Identity movement. Rudolph and his family were connected with the Christian Identity movement, a militant, racist and anti-Semitic organization that believes whites are God's chosen people. He has confirmed religious motivation, but denied racial motivation for his crimes. Rudolph's motive for the bombings, according to his April 13, 2005 statement, was political.
"Rudolph has also confessed to the bombings of an abortion clinic in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs on January 16, 1997; the Otherside Lounge of Atlanta lesbian bar on February 21, 1997, injuring five; and an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama on January 29, 1998, killing Birmingham police officer and part-time clinic security guard Robert Sanderson, and critically injuring nurse Emily Lyons. Rudolph's bombs were made of dynamite surrounded by nails which acted as shrapnel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
As for Timothy McVeigh, his terrorist attacks may not have been religious in nature, but they sure as hell were political.
The entry is far too long to repost, but here's a tiny snippet:
"Unable to pay back gambling debts, he took a cash advance and then defaulted on his repayments. He then began looking for a state without heavy government regulation or high taxes. He became enraged when the government informed him that he had been overpaid $1,058 while in the Army and he had to pay back the money. He wrote an angry letter to the government inviting them to “Go ahead, take everything I own; take my dignity. Feel good as you grow fat and rich at my expense; sucking my tax dollars and property.”
"McVeigh introduced his sister to anti-government literature, but his father had little interest in these views. He moved out of his father's house and into an apartment that had no telephone, which had the advantage of making it impossible for his employer to contact him for overtime assignments. He also quit the NRA, viewing its stance on gun rights as too weak.
"In 1993, he drove to Waco, Texas during the Waco Siege to show his support. At the scene, he distributed pro-gun rights literature and bumper stickers, such as "When guns are outlawed, I will become an outlaw." He told a student reporter:
"The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.
"For the five months following the Waco Siege, McVeigh worked at gun shows and handed out free cards printed up with Lon Horiuchi's name and address, "in the hope that somebody in the Patriot movement would assassinate the sharpshooter." (Horiuchi is an FBI sniper and some of his official actions have drawn controversy, specifically his shooting and killing of Randy Weaver's wife while she held an infant child.) He wrote hate mail to the sniper, suggesting that "what goes around, comes around," and he later considered putting aside his plan to target the Murrah Building to target Horiuchi, or a member of his family instead.
"McVeigh spent more time on the gun show circuit,[when?] traveling to 40 states and visiting about 80 gun shows. McVeigh found that the further west he went, the more anti-government sentiment he encountered, at least until he got to what he called "The People's Socialist Republic of California." McVeigh sold survival items and copies of The Turner Diaries. One author said:
“In the gun show culture, McVeigh found a home. Though he remained skeptical of some of the most extreme ideas being bandied around, he liked talking to people there about the United Nations, the federal government and possible threats to American liberty.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The others were all for the most part Christian--and while they may not have had religious motivations, that doesn't mean a damned thing to their victims. The fact remains that plenty of Christians are going around slaughtering people; does that mean that non-Christian nations should close their doors to Christian immigrants? Of course not.
And yes, as I even stated in the original post, you could easily put together a similar rogue's gallery featuring, say, Rudolph at the top with a bunch of Middle-Eastern Muslim terrorists below him to make the same point in reverse: That not all Christians should be lumped in with this one asshole, since there's plenty of non-Christian terrorists out there as well. Either way, the point is the same.