Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists are, of course, horrible people

I'm not sure I would say Sandy Hook conspiracy theories are "edging towards the mainstream," as this article suggests (as much or more of the recent interest can be attributed to normal people gawking at them, not true believers, I think), but it's true that they are surprisingly commonplace among, well, morons. And make no mistake, we're talking about grade-A level morons here. Huge morons:

The evidence on which these budding theories are based is, even by the standards of fringe conspiracy theory, remarkably thin, and demand massive collusion between hundreds of private citizens, the federal government, local authorities, and the news media.

The theorists claim some of the parents and witnesses are paid actors who, because they don't shed tears on camera, are pretending their children died. The "Sandy Hook Shooting - Fully Exposed" video shows a photo of children hugging Obama during a visit to Newtown. The theorists claim one of the little girls is Emilie Parker, who was killed in the shooting. The little girl, who shares many of Emilie's features, is her sister.

If that right there doesn't make you want to run out and pass a new law saying it's alright to slap some of these folks with a 2-by-4, well, maybe you need to have your assault-with-imaginary-lumber instincts recalibrated.

So why, aside from America's great and wide collection of stupid people, are people inventing conspiracy theories about a horrific mass murder? It's important to remember that for the most part these people were already spectacularly stupid conspiracy theorists before the Sandy Hook shootings ever happened. The wider Sandy Hook "conspiracy" is, supposedly, that the federal government faked the whole thing in order to finally, at long last, get around to confiscating all the guns that they've been supposed to be confiscating for, hell, decades now but never quite managed. It's not particularly surprising that the particular band of loons and misfits who already believed the earlier conspiracies are just as eager to believe that the conspiracy now goes "even deeper," or whatever the hell they believe.

(Continue reading below the fold.)