Rep. Bell stirs up hornet’s nest

Boston gun comment on Twitter raises ire of thousands

It took 132 characters and a send button for Republican state Rep. Nate Bell (shown) to rile thousands across the nation Friday, sparking a furious online backlash that had Bell backtracking by midday.
It took 132 characters and a send button for Republican state Rep. Nate Bell (shown) to rile thousands across the nation Friday, sparking a furious online backlash that had Bell backtracking by midday.

It took 132 characters and a send button for Republican state Rep. Nate Bell to rile thousands across the nation Friday, sparking a furious online backlash that had Bell backtracking by midday.

“I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine? #2A,” Bell wrote at 8:25 a.m. on the micro-blogging website Twitter.

Bell’s comment hit the Internet hours after the killing of a police officer and a shootout that left one terrorism suspect dead and an entire city on edge.

Bostonians were ordered to remain in their homes Friday morning while thousands of police searched for a second gunman who authorities say helped to trigger two blasts near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday. The blasts killed three people and injured more than 180.

On Friday, many of those Bostonians and thousands of others from around the world greeted Bell’s comment with anger. Many suggested contacting Bell directly and posted his cellphone number and e-mail addresses on the site.

Among those who responded was Matt O’Malley, a Boston city councilor, who told Bell, “You are a moron.”

After Bell’s post received thousands of mentions and re-Tweets and was reported on by national media outlets, the Mena lawmaker returned to the social-networking site at 12:17 p.m. to issue an apology for the “timing” but not the contents of his message. He cross-posted the message to his Facebook page.

“I would like to apologize to the people of Boston & Massachusetts for the poor timing of my tweet earlier this morning. As a staunch and unwavering supporter of the individual right to self defense, I expressed my point of view without thinking of its effect on those still in time of crisis. In hindsight, given the ongoing tragedy that is still unfolding, I regret the poor choice of timing,” Bell wrote, adding: “Please know that my thoughts and prayers were with the people of Boston overnight and will continue as they recover from this tragedy.”

The apology for the timing of his comments only stoked the Internet response. Midday, Bell’s website was hacked and replaced by what appeared to be a Japanese-language blog site with a pink background and photos of cherries. And thousands dismissed Bell’s apology by posting angry comments on his Facebook page.

By midafternoon Friday,more than 28,000 Tweets had mentioned or responded to Bell since his original post, according to Topsy analytics, a website that tracks responses on social media.

For comparison, Wal-Mart garnered only half as many mentions on Twitter over the same time. Razorback appeared in about 970 posts. Gov. Mike Beebe appeared in 42.

The reach of the response was most clearly shown in Bell’s Twitter “exposure,” a measure that tracks “impressions” or how many times a particular user’s comments appear on the computer, iPad and cell-phone home screens of other users.

In the first few minutes after Bell posted his comment, the Tweet made a small ripple, appearing about 560 times across the intertwined social hubs of Twitter as people mentioned him, followed him, shared his original Tweet or followed comments by people who mentioned him, according to Topsy estimates.

After that, Bell’s exposure exploded.

At 10 a.m., the number was nearly 100,000 appearances somewhere on Twitter. An hour later, it hit 3 million. By Friday evening, Bell’s Twitter user name - NateBell4AR - had shown up more than 28 million times in some form on users’ home screens, according to the analytics website.

Nearly all the Tweets about Bell were negative, according to the analytics site.

And on his Facebook page, more than 6,500 comments had been posted - also generally unflattering.

At the Capitol, Bell remained at his desk for most of the time the House was in recess and did not respond to written requests delivered by House staff, phone calls or e-mails seeking comment.

Bell left the chamber before the House adjourned and did not return.

“I don’t regret the content as much as I regret the timing,” Bell told The Associated Press. “I really didn’t think about it going to Boston and was generally expressing my personal view of how I would have felt in that situation myself.”

Fellow House members saw the Tweet before the House met at 10 a.m. and followed along with the uproar from the House floor. Shortly after the chamber recessed, House Speaker Davy Carter, R-Cabot, released a statement apologizing for Bell’s post without mentioning him by name.

“On behalf of the Arkansas House of Representatives and the state of Arkansas, I want to extend my deepest apologies to the people of the City of Boston and the state of Massachusetts for the inappropriate and insensitive comment made this morning by an Arkansas House member. I can assure the people of Boston and the people of Massachusetts that Arkansans have them in their thoughts and prayers during this tragic time,” Carter wrote.

Carter told reporters after the House adjourned that he had met with Bell earlier in the day but had not read the representative’s later posts.

Rep. Bruce Westerman, the House Republican leader from Hot Springs, said Bell’s post did “not reflect our caucus’s position” and that “politics shouldn’t be the focus of the terror attack in Boston.”

“There is a time to debate the Second Amendment rights guaranteed to our citizens. Now is not the time. As members, we should remember the bipartisan moment of silence for the victims of Boston the House observed just days ago at the request of myself and the minority leader. Politics and posturing about Boston have no place inside the Arkansas House of Representatives,” Westerman said.

House Democratic leader Greg Leding of Fayetteville called Bell’s post “tasteless and uncaring.”

“The people of Boston are not cowards. They are patriots. No one, including Rep. Bell, should ever infer that the American people are anything other than courageous, and the only words we should be offering to the people of Boston are those of support and of prayer,” Leding said in a statement.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/20/2013

Upcoming Events