A University of Kansas professor who, in the wake of the Washington Navy Yard massacre, wished for the victims of the next mass shooting to be the children of NRA members was placed on administrative leave from the school, and now his Twitter account has disappeared as well. Did Professor David Guth delete his own account, or did Twitter do it for him?
Twitter’s grounds for proactively deleting accounts on its own appear to require an outside complaint from another person about “posting my private information,” “being abusive,” or “sending me violent threats.” So the default assumption has to be that Guth has deleted his entire account on his own, perhaps as a precondition to returning to KU’s good graces.
If his “Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters” tweet were truly an aberration, it seems that Guth could have arranged to delete only that entry and then block all Twitter messaging.
Newsbusters also notes that Guth, in an AP interview, spun his being put on leave as a condition of his safety, saying he received email threats for what was a harmless tweet meant to promote discussion. “It is in it the best interests and peace of mind of our students that I remove myself from the situation and let cooler heads prevail,” he told the AP. “It is unfortunate that my comments have been deliberately distorted. I know what I meant.”
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Shame on all of you for “distorting” what he said: “The blood is on the hands of the #NRA. Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters.”
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