For what it's worth, here's the thread on the incident more immediately after it happened and before the additional attention was drawn to it by the NYTimes article:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2352343
Mostly discussion on gun rights/control rather than the actions taken against the author. It doesn't look like anyone really found the article unreasonable, but not a lot of outrage over him being fired either. A lot of "he should have known better." At least one post justifying the firing as a reasonable business decision.
The circumstances are quite a bit different here - in this case the magazine, which internally backed the article, buckled and rescinded under overwhelming pressure from its target audience and sponsors. In the Robertson case they suspended him in
spite of his target audience largely being in support of his views or at least his right to say them, and took back the suspension because of this. Although they too were at least pressured by some external organization there executive who decided on the suspension probably did want it.