The lengths to which some have gone to exploit the Giffords shooting have been well-documented elsewhere. Suffice it to say, it is beyond disturbing how quickly the left mobilizes in the face of any national event in an effort to twist the facts, demonize their opponents, and attempt to shut down legitimate political disagreements through disingenuous shame-mongering. This behavior is bad enough, but it’s usually just limited to political speech, which they are free to engage in, even when they do so dishonestly. Some, however, want to elevate the strategy to what amounts to limited more than tyranny.

Democratic Rep. Robert Brady has pledged to introduce legislation to extend the same level of protections the President receives to members of Congress. On its face, this seems reasonable, as political speech as not been systematically squashed in the enforcement of protections against threatening the President. Not if we count the years of death fantasies generate by the left when President Bush was in office, anyway.

But things get scarier, as they often do, when the Congressman opened his mouth:

Asked about the images of crosshairs used by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s (R) PAC in a map detailing its 20 targeted members, including Giffords, Brady said that the imagery was an example of how political rhetoric and discourse has taken a turn for the negative.

“I think we should make it that people cant do that,” Brady said. “There was a crosshair on Gabby Giffords, and where’s she at now? … I don’t know if we’re giving people ideas by doing something like that, but we’ve got to do something to make that criminal.”

He wants to make it criminal for crosshairs to be put on a map, even when it quite clearly has nothing to do with violence, and is entirely common from both political parties (like this DCCC map highlighting “targeted” Republicans with bullseyes), the media, and everyone else who uses the easy, albeit cliched, warfare metaphor for politics. Criminalizing metaphors is not smart policy, flirts dangerously close to instituting thought-crime, and will inevitably lead to yet more attempts to criminalize political disagreements.

It’s time to step back and reflect, not pass reactionary, heat-of-the-moment legislation. Tyranny rarely finds better comfort than such times.