Two days after Thanksgiving, a gunman opened fire at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic killing three people and wounded nine others. This, after incendiary lies about Planned Parenthood were featured during the Republican Primary Debates, based on videos taken at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic that falsely portrayed the clinic selling fetal organs for profit.

The Republican presidential field, which for much of the year has been full-throated in its denunciations of Planned Parenthood, has been nearly silent about a mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, that left a police officer and two others dead, and nine others injured.

In contrast, all three of the leading Democratic contenders quickly issued statements in support of Planned Parenthood.

The 57-year-old shooter, Robert Lewis Dear, had recently moved to Colorado from South Carolina, where he had lived part of the time in a remote mountain cabin with no electricity or running water.

At other times, he lived in a trailer in the small town of Walterboro about 50 miles west of Charleston. His neighbor said Dear made money by selling prints of paintings of Southern plantations. Dear rarely talked to neighbors, and when he did, he impulsively offered unsolicited advice, including recommending they put a metal roofs on their homes so the U.S. government couldn't spy on them.

“He complained about everything,” said another neighbor who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying that he feared for his security. “He said he worked with the government, and everybody was out to get him, and he knew the secrets of the U.S.A. He said, ‘Nobody touchs me, because I’ve got enough information to put the whole U.S. of A in danger.’ It was very crazy.”

While living in Walterboro, S.C., Dear was arrested on charges of breaking the state’s “Peeping Tom” law after a neighbor told the police that he had hidden in the bushes in an attempt to peer into her house.

It was not the first time a woman had complained about him to police. Five years earlier, his wife at the time, Pam Dear, accused him of locking her out of their home in Walterboro. When Ms. Dear climbed in through a window, she told the police, her husband “hit her and pushed her back out the window,” leaving her with bruises. She didn't come back.

About a year ago, Robert Dear, pulled his trailer from South Carolina to to a five-acre patch of treeless land in the remote town of Hartsel, Colorado. Hartsell is 40 miles west of Colorado Springs, which happens to be a national hub for conservative Christian groups such as Focus on the Family.

Colorado neighbors say they barely knew him, beyond one man’s memory of his handing out political pamphlets. Zigmond Post, who lives about a half-mile from Robert Dear, said that he had only met him a few times, once when his dogs had gotten loose on Dear’s property. When he went to fetch them, Dear handed him a few political pamphlets strongly critical of President Obama.

“He gave us these pamphlets and said, ‘Hey, if you ever want to talk about this stuff, look this over,’ ” Post said in a telephone interview. “I think we threw them into the campfire that night.”

Described by police as an reclusive loner, Robert Dear had registered to vote when he arrived in Colorado. His party designation was unaffiliated. We do not yet know what Dear told the gun shop where he purchased his assault rifle and ammo.

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Invariably in ideological violence, dogmatic religions are somewhere nearby, pushing their agenda. They almost always factor into hate crimes — both in the US and in other religion-obsessed nations around the world.

The Bible Spice in Colorado Springs is a Roman Catholic priest, who participates in anti-abortion demonstrations at the Planned Parenthood clinic. He has held a Mass in front of clinic for the past 20 years. Typically, 15 to 20 people take part in the weekly service. But the priest insists the Robert Dear was not part of his group that day, which left the area about an hour before the gunfire began.

He said, "We missed all the action."

Dear claimed to have read the Bible "from cover to cover." But since there' is nothing in the Bible forbidding abortion, we must assume he developed his violent views from contemporary preachers of hate, who plague both politics and religion in the US..

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Robert Lewis Dear made statements to police Friday after the shootings at the Colorado Springs clinic. Law enforcement sources described them as rantings about politics and abortion.

In one statement, made after he was taken in for questioning, Dear exclaimed "no more baby parts" in reference to the Planned Parenthood attack, according to law enforcement sources. He also mentioned President Barack Obama in his rants. Police are examining his computer.

Sources said there would have been nothing in Dear's background — including a felony conviction or previous mental health issue — that would have disqualified him from buying the AK-47 style, high-powered rifle he used in the shootings. Except that he looks, talks, and acts like a raving lunatic who was inspired by watching the Republican Primary Debates.