Tucson – The surgeon who operated on Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords said he was "optimistic" she would recover from being shot in the head by a man with a semi-automatic weapon outside a grocery store. Six others at the congressional outreach event did not.
Federal law enforcement sources said that John M. Roll, the senior U.S. District judge in Arizona, was shot and killed in the incident. The Pima County Sheriff’s office said that five others including a nine-year-old child had died, and a total of 18 people were injured. In brief public remarks, President Obama said he had dispatched F.B.I. director Robert Mueller to the scene.
A 22-year old man was taken into custody after being tackled by people in the small crowd after the shooting. One pistol was recovered and it had what police described as "an extended clip." The man was identified as Jared Loughner, who appears to have left a trail of Internet postings, including some that express convoluted observations about government. Law enforcement officials said they believed he was a military veteran.
Giffords, who in November narrowly won reelection to a third term, was hosting her first "Congress on Your Corner" event when a gunman ran up and began shooting her and others in her entourage with a Glock handgun, according to law enforcement sources…
I doubt that most of the public officials who fanned the flames of racism here in the South in the late 1950s and 1960s wanted people to kill the kids in Philadelphia Mississippi, or assasinate Medger Evers in Jackson, or blow up those little girls in the 16th Street Church in Birmingham. I expect they were even sorry those things happened [primarily because of the reaction]. But they were as much a part of those deaths as the people who pulled the trigger – at least that’s the way they remain in my mind.
What happened today was inevitable. We’ve all known that since the 2008 election. We can hear it in things like the comments I posted last night, see it in Ms. Palin’s Map and Giffords’ opponent’s ad, smell it in the talk show rhetoric. When the call comes from above, there’s always someone sick enough to hear it in the audience. It’s sounding like Jared Laughner is just such a disturbed person.
It’s not a time to make political mileage against the people who stir up this kind of insanity. It’s time to hope they have the decency to put their weight behind stopping it.
Ralph comments on my last post, speaking about today’s shooting, "
‘Ideological rage’ in spades. Whether it had anything to do with the case the judge decided or just anti-government in general — we’re in for a good siege of it." I hope he’s wrong, but I’m also afraid he’s right.
Good News: State Sen. Linda Lopez, a close friend of Giffords’, told Fox News that the three-term congresswoman was shot in the temple and the bullet exited through her forehead. Lopez said
Giffords was responding to commands…
Maybe it’s coincidence, and this was just one paranoid young man.
But Gabrille Giffords was one of 20 House Democrats who was named on Sarah Palin’s map — a map of the U.S. with gunsight crosshairs targeting their districts for defeat. Her name and House District are listed in a column along with other Dems who won in districts that the McCain/Palin ticket carried in 2008 — and who voted for health care reform.
They were “targeted” for defeat in 2010. Sarah Palin didn’t mean someone should kill her — but did it add to the motivation of this crazy young man? It certainly didn’t help.
Everyone is wondering what “wing” this guy was from. Sounds like any wing would do for him – Adolph Hitler, Karl Marx, Ayn Rand.
Psychosis, Extremist Type.
It’s not a good political climate for such people…
It doesn’t seem a tremendous leap to pose that the unhinged mind and impressionable temperament of the 22 year old apprehended at the murder scene today were in some sense fertile ground for the “leadership” messages he had to have been taking in over the past couple of years. He is, by the news accounts, a “currency conspiracy” subscriber – a crowd that runs closely with those who believe the U.S. Government used a controlled “false flag” demolition to bring down the World Trade Center, hijacked and replaced the commercial airliners on 9/11 and then murdered and disposed of all the passengers. They believe the President was born in Kenya and that the CIA employs aliens who live deep underground in New Mexico etc..
Ms. Palin’s twittering last March about how conservatives “don’t retreat, they reload”, followed up by her gun cross-hairs map…the bile and venom spewed all over the capital from balconies and everywhere else by actual members of the political establishment and so on.
Ms. Palin explained at the time that she didn’t mean anyone should actually kill politicians at odds with her views and she is dim-witted enough to give her that much in the same way that the alleged murderer is probably imbalanced enough that his court appointed attorneys will seek a “not guilty by reason of insanity” defense. The lunatic fringe has arrived and they are kicking ass and taking names.
Doubtless the NRA will be out Monday morning defending whatever gun rights were associated with what appears to be a thoroughly incompetent individual being able to acquire an assault weapon for no more consideration than possession of a MasterCard and a driver’s license.
Good Grief.