Does anyone else see that a congresswoman was shot and killed, along with others, in Arizona?

People are crazy. The fear and hatred mongering by certain Republican leadership against Democrats can’t have helped.

US Rep. Gabby Gifford was shot at point blank range according to reports. She was holding a public event outside a Safeway grocery store in Tucson this morning. Early reports are saying that at least six others were killed and maybe nine others injured. A lone gunman has been apprehended.

They are saying now she is alive, in critical condition and in surgery. We haven’t had any official statements by law enforcement yet.

@noelleptc When someone tells an unstable person that people are out to get them, they’re going to respond to the threat. Sometimes in an awful way like this. We don’t know the details of this tragic situation yet, but we do know the political atmosphere of the country and the fact that she was targeted at a political event performing her job as a Democratic representative.

This is one of several reports of her death. Then again, who knows just yet.

Rep. Giffords was on Sarah Palin’s “target list.”

@klutzaroo She is known for cracking down on illegal immigration. Let’s not assume this has anything to do with the Republicans just yet.

This is a horrific crime committed by a crazed person. I believe it has nothing to do with partisan politics.

@klutzaroo I noticed that you brought up Sarah Palin. Just like the nydailynews did. If this turns out to be an illegal that shot her, will you make a public apology for even insinuating that she “was on Sarah Palin’s ‘target list’”? What you have done is just as bad as they are.

@missingbite Palin had a map up on her website with cross-hairs on this district and this woman’s name as a target. Her people removed it today because of this incident because the connection was clear enough to them. Want to try and turn that into something rosy? Even if this nutter turns out to be pissed about and motivated by something else, its time to get real about the incitement to violence that its clear that some people are trying to stir up. Threats are threats and they’re wrong. Period.

Another Fox News viewer crazed about Death Panels and Socialism.

@klutzaroo Take a read and try to sell your crap some place else.

Both the Tea Party and Sarah Palin had an either direct or indirect effect in inciting this kind of violence. The local Tea Party chapter for Arizona’s 8th district posted this on their website, while Dimwitted Palin (as was already mentioned) actually had Giffords on her target list.

While there is a chance that this wasn’t politically motivated, it seems rather unlikely.

@Dr_C It could very well be politically motivated. Mrs. Giffords was very vocal about stopping illegal immigration and she was shot in one of our most violent areas with a huge problem of illegal immigration. If it turns out she was shot because she is against illegal immigration, how will you spin that to be the Tea party or Sarah Palin’s fault? We don’t know what happened yet we KNOW the Tea Party had their hand it it? Give me a break and wake up. What you are doing is instigating hatred toward the Tea Party. The exact same thing you are accusing them of doing.

@noelleptc The latest reports say that the Congresswoman is in surgery and that only one aide has been confirmed as dead (though there are multiple injured). Let’s hope it doesn’t get any worse than that.

@missingbite well said.

The target map that has since been removed from Sarah Palin’s website: map

@missingbite You only think its “crap” because you chose to believe the opposite is true. Perhaps you should try to justify their unjustifiable crap somewhere else, it doesn’t work with people who use logic. Individual threats against a politician happen. They always have. When people get organized about it and have a figurehead inciting violence and hatred, its a problem. Why should I ever “make an apology” for calling someone on crap that she has done constantly and without regard for the consequences of her actions? This woman was on Sarah Palin’s target list. That much is true, verifiable, and I will never apologize for revealing the simple truth. Your idea that I might have a need to do so reveals your residency in fantasy land.

@noelleptc I am also worried about her welfare and her family, as well as the other things that you’re worried about. However, I’m also worried about the effect that this has on the country and the safety of a lot of other people who have been similarly targeted.

I think blaming politics is a little immature at this point. From the story I read, the gunman was white and in his early 20s and they had him in custody, so hopefully we’ll get more information soon enough. I hope the congresswoman pulls through, as well as all of the other victims that are fighting for their lives at the moment. I’m sorry for the lives lost and I hope their families can find some comfort in this sad time.

Any person who puts crosshairs on a map with people’s names is obviously not one I want in any sort of leadership role. That is poor taste and bad example and could incite an already sick human into further action.

I awoke to the news on the Skye news channel in Australia. It was the british feed and it spoke of the “American gun culture” which makes acts such as this possible. I know, I know, guns don’t kill people do, but it couldn’t hurt to make hand guns a tad more difficult to acquire. Some day even the NRA might realize that, but how many will be killed in the meantime.

White and in his 20’s, gee, he probably thought he was playing a video game or was spanked as a child.

OMG… has this just happened? You guys… this has repercussions…..a shot heard around the world.

Federal Judge John Roll was at the event and it has been confirmed that he was shot by the gunman.

If, and I haven’t seen confirmation, Judge John Roll was shot and killed, how are we going to link that to the Tea Party? He is/was a GWB appointed Federal Judge.

My point to all of this is we have no idea what this idiot gunman was thinking. We as internet bystanders can’t possibly link this shooting to anything. All we have are assumptions and we know what those can make us.

@bkcunningham From what I just read, he was also killed. :( I also just read that they expect the congresswoman to pull through it. I also read that they arrested a second person suspected to be connected to the shooting and are looking for a third person. They’ve identified the shooter as Jared Laughner.

They are doing a press conference from the Medical Center. Only one person, a 9 year old child has died at this facility, according to the surgeon. He said they have to give Giffords 24 hours to give a prognosis on Giffords.

This should should not be a Democrat vrs. Republican fight! Leave that garbage to the political flakes. She is not dead yet from what I have seen on the news. She is however in critical condition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHoaZaLbqB4

Video from the shooter posted on Dec 15. This was planned.

We don’t know for sure that’s the shooter’s YouTube page, we don’t know for sure why the shooting was done. Those are the facts at the moment. The blame can wait until tomorrow.

The latest is… Press conference from University Medical Center regarding the patients received at their hospital: 1 child (9 yrs) dead, five in surgery, five stable after surgery. The congresswoman is in critical condition after a through-and-through shot to the head. Doctors are optimistic about her recovery; she’s responding to commands.

@SavoirFaire – We know his name, Jared Lee Loughner. The video says “My Final Thoughts” and was posted three weeks ago. He shot her point blank in the head and then just started shooting randomly.

As far as I have heard she is still alive and the only confirmed death is of a child. In the video I link to above towards the end it sounds like a episode of Glenn Beck’s show.

Not the video type, but someone could save the alleged shooter’s YT video… I feel like it’s something could be taken down before it gets to a larger audience…

@Not_the_CIA Glenn Beck? What the heck does that video have to do with Glenn Beck. That sounds like some kind of Media Matters crap.

and before his YT entire page is shut down, worthing noting he’s got a diverse, yet normal favorite book list:

Books:I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno.

@noelleptc Some people never learn. they are biased and ignorant and like to point fingers at those who disagree with them.

All the people bringing up party politics during such a tragedy – I mean a 9 year old was shot – reflects how pervasive the polemics have infested peoples brains.

Fuck demagogues and the ignorant minds that provide them such fertile soil

I’m with @noelleptc and @missingbite and @Mikewlf337 on this one.

This whole “ITS THE TEA PARTY I KNOW IT THEY EVIL FAUX NEWS REPUBLICANS DID IT” thing is really presumptuous. Flame me all to hell if you want, but that’s how I see it.

Also

“Giffords worked to secure passage of the August 2010 bill to to fund more Border Patrol agents and surveillance technology for Arizona’s border with Mexico”

“Targeted” by Sarah Palin or whatever or not, I really doubt an “evil baby killing rightwinger” would kill someone who was fighting for something they likely supported, Dem or not.

@ftc68, well fucking said. Welcome to Fluther.

Anyway, I’m out of this thread before it turns into an even more ginormous shitstorm.

Bis später

Here is a story that says one of her aides was killed, along with the judge, and the 9-year-old. I hope the guy says why he did it (I’m always curious why people do things like this). Some of the facts in this particular story seem to be inaccurate though (such as mentioning it was a town hall meeting), so I’d take them with a grain of salt.

From what I’ve been able to find about the shooter, he’s a 22-year-old. Was a marine at some point (not sure if he got out or was still in) and he had been to Afghanistan. There are reports that his MySpace was already taken down, not sure if he had done it previously or if it was just something done recently. It does seem as though that was his YouTube page (at least I’ve seen several different sources posting that it is his).

@Not_the_CIA At the time I responded, the media hadn’t even gotten the spelling of the suspected shooter’s name correct yet. They were still unsure whether or not it was “Laughner” or “Loughner.” I’m not saying it’s not his YouTube account, and I wasn’t saying it then. I was suggesting we wait for confirmed information and that some people calm down with the rhetoric. Tomorrow is a whole new day for opportunism.

@rooeytoo “he probably thought he was playing a video game”.

Really? Seriously?

Hey, all you who are giving flippant remarks….. do you actually live in the US? Do you live in the US and really care that little for what is going on? I don’t think this has to do with party lines. I think this had to do with the fact that a person can take a concealed PISTOL into a public place. Come on! What are you people doing about the use of guns in your society? Wise up.

Latest report looks like 6 dead, 12 wounded. Tragic.

@cazzie Arizona is an open carry state. Reports and eyewitensses said the gunman was actually brought down by someone in the crowd carrying a weapon.

@cazzie Plenty of Americans have problems with our gun laws.

As an NRA member I support gun ownership. This however could be saved for another thread. The guy was a disturbed individual and these trying times have brought the worst out of people. The country is more divided than ever.

@SavoirFaire – Actually they had. That is how I knew it.

And I find it funny/sad that Palin is scrubbing her sites/facebook/twitter of the map. Here is her facebook page

Shit… Yes, I love Top Chef.

@bkcunningham and that makes it OK? ‘Wild West’ style?

@DrasticDreamer Plenty perhaps, but not enough to match the money pouring in to the pro-gun lobbiests.

@cazzie you said concealed. I was just saying it didn’t have anything to do with a concealed weapon.

@Not_the_CIA Some were reporting it one way, some were reporting it another. It had not been confirmed. Perhaps you read one of the sources that had it correct, but that’s not the point. If nothing else, it hadn’t been confirmed that the YouTube site was his. But I don’t really care. My main concern is not with you but the partisans.

The situation is that someone decided they should’‘play God’’.It’s a messed up world we live in.

We can all make guesses and speculate. We don’t have all of the facts. The only thing we know for sure is that human life was lost at the hands of another. Families that I don’t know are grieving and making plans for the remains of peopls they love. Very, very sad on many levels. I’m not marginalizing it in any way, shape or form. But it happens everyday all over the world. What makes this different is the people involved and the ripple effects that every special interest group in the country will make of this.

The American public’s relationship with their representatives on all levels of government may be forever changed. I hope not. I really hope it doesn’t stop our representatives from meeting and talking face-to-face with the people who they work for. I hope there aren’t a bunch of knee jerk reactions that ripple from this as well.

@bkcunningham “I really hope it doesn’t stop our representatives from meeting and talking face-to-face with the people who they work for.” Unfortunately, I can see just that happening from this.

@Seaofclouds I’ve really been thinking about just that. I think it may result in more security and sort of a TSA type result after 9/11. Did you see the shooting a couple of weeks ago in Panama City, Florida at a board of supervisors’ meeting? The one where the guy shot at close range and didn’t kill anyone and a security guard exchanged shots with the man and he was eventually killed. (He let the women leave the room and one came back and hit him with her purse, bless her heart.) Imagine having to conduct open meetings after that little nightmare. I wonder what they’ve done to try and prevent another incident?

The Guy, Jared Loughner, is legitimately insane, and was a radical left winger fyi.

Jared Loughner is mentally unbalanced and had easy access to a gun. There is something wrong with that surely.

@Winters -Yes.

@flutherother – you hit the nail on the head. GA x 100 if I could.

@DrasticDreamer – you know someone will defend the guy by saying something like that.

@cazzie – I am a US citizen living in Australia where gun control is in place. The NRA does not rule here.

This is interesting.

@flutherother What is more disturbing to me is that someone as apparently mentally ill as he was could go so long with virtually no support group. Our society has abandoned face to face interaction. It seems, and this is me guessing, that he has had a mental problem for quite some time. At least 77 days. Has no one stepped in to get him some help? It was reported that he was a veteran. PTSD? That is more disturbing to me than his ability to get a gun.

Switzerland doesn’t have too much of a gun problem either. What is their secret? I’m pretty sure they have more guns per household than in the US. Guns are not the problem.

@missingbite he’s shown symptoms throughout his life apparently of someone possibly psychotic but what most people passed off as eccentric. Also he’s not a veteran, he claimed to be a recruit. He’s also known to have held a grudge towards the congresswoman since 2007 when he had met her and deemed her to be “stupid and unintelligent.”

He’s what one would call an anarchist perhaps but at the least very anti American.

@missingbite what is Switzerland’s secret? IMHO, attitude. They don’t treat guns with the same attitude that our media and others in America do. Shooting is a sport like golf here in America. People grow up with a respect and appreciation of shooting and guns. It is big pastime in the country. Many people in Switzerland shoot for sport, but all males aged 20 to 42 are required by militia system regulation to keep rifles and/or pistols at home.Gun shops are everywhere. Yet firearms are rarely used in crime. Why? Firearms symbolize a wholesome family activity. Murder is connected to a willingness to resort to violence, not the mere presence of guns

Folks, there are actually safeguards preventing mentally ill people from getting handguns or any other firearms. It’s part of the screening process. It’s not perfect, obviously, and people on the street will sell to anyone (whether or not guns are legal or outright banned, by the way, look at all the handgun related violence in cities with bans on them). If you want to complain about the U.S. gun laws, maybe read them?

And also, the fact that that a legally armed bystander did dispatch the shooter means that a legally armed person prevented further violence with a quick act of violence. It doesn’t “make it better”, it makes due. If this person hadn’t been there with their handgun, the death toll could be higher.

@Winters No, actually an anarchist is a person who subscribes to the belief that humans are capable of functioning in local voluntary societies free of hierarchal institutions. But people often make that mistake. :)

@incendiary_dan I thought it also was anti government which he is.

@incendiary_dan According to the vast majority of reports, he was tackled to stop his spree. Not shot.

@klutzaroo yes he was tackled but it was a shot that prevented him from fleeing the scene.

@Winters An anarchist believes that the best form of government is no government at all, but this does not require being anti-government in the way that people who are openly hostile to government are anti-government.

Just a technical point. Not a big deal.

@SavoirFaire @incendiary_dan thanks for contributing to my edumacation. =)

Yea, what @SavoirFaire said. :)

@bkcunningham You are exactly correct. My point was to show that guns are not the problem. Our society is. People have hinted on this thread that we need more gun control and that the NRA is bad. I disagree. We need less political correctness!

@missingbite What does “political correctness” (whatever that means this week) have to do with it? I’m with you on the fact that our societal mores are the issue; we certainly need to stop encouraging sociopathic levels of competition, actually try to feed as many people as possible regardless of profit, and stop glorifying violence and war. Maybe, you know, have a sane society that doesn’t cause so much mental illness, and gives proper community-based help to people when it does occur instead of throwing potentially dangerous people out into the world without support. Maybe we could encourage a society in which people look at root causes of problems rather than superficial issues (like seeing poverty and income disparity as major factors in gun violence rather than blame the weapons themselves). All of these things could really contribute to lowering the rates of violence.

None of that has to do with “political correctness”.

Oh yea, and how the hell could I forget the influence of the War on People of Color Drugs. Huge influence on drug-trade related violence, not to mention the effect of mass disenfranchisement of much of a generation of black and Latino males, causing ripples of poverty, family disfunction, and general social problems linked with violence. A great book on the subject recently came out.

Nobody makes some idiot pick up an illegal gun and shoot people dead with it. Nobody makes some idiot pick up drugs and take them. This Country was founded, and still at least partially believes in individual responsibility, despite all the recent attempts to make people believe that governement is the source of all that’s good. Government cannot create anything, it is a major part of the PROBLEM not the solution. People are the solution, people who choose to rise above their backgrounds, people who choose to not hate, people who choose to build and develop and create and hire.

I was always taught that when you point your finger at someone, there are three fingers pointing back at you. Let that sink in before you choose to blame your problems on someone else.

@CaptainHarley I believe a Tea Party favorite has a saying lately: “How’s that workin’ for ya?”

If income disparity were the cause of violence and unrest, most everyone trying to live on the social security they paid in for their entire working lives would be out shooting everyone in sight.

If the government provided everything for everyone, there are college students in here who want free food, free housing, free water, free college education, free everything, who the hell is going to pay? Those folks who are out working their butts off to meet car payments and mortgage commitments and pay their own health insurance can’t manage much more?

I am now 66 so I can work and collect social security and I will do just that. And I hope those people who could be working but choose not to enjoy the fruits of my labor via my taxes.

In the meantime 6 dead and so many injured and still the gun advocates do not want more stringent hand gun control and hail the NRA as a lovely institution. As Sky News said, America has a gun culture and it is killing us.

This guy was a nutter. His political rantings were beside the point. He managed to carry a gun and shoot a Congresswoman at almost point blank range. I said ‘concealed’ because I’m sure he wasn’t carrying it around in plain sight while making his way close to the VIPs. If someone made me mad here in Norway, I could NEVER get my hands on a handgun in 24 hours and take out my anger. In the US it’s not a problem. You have to ask yourselves… ‘Why so many guns?’ ‘Why so simple to obtain?’.... I ask, ‘How much money do gun makers earn by keeping this market wide open?’

@CaptainHarley ‘Personal responsibility’? Really? You think all the founding fathers were Conservative Republicans? Read some history books, or at least watch a good PBS documentary.

@cazzie, what does “personal responsibility” have to do with Republicans? @CaptainHarley never said anything about the Founders of the US being Republicans.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard that mantra of ‘personal responsibility’ is dragged out by the Right when they don’t want their taxes to go to social services. He stated that the US was ‘founded on personal responsibility’... now, that is one of the most simplistic, de-constructed points made by Republicans and Libertarians a like and I’m tired of hearing it. What is that phrase in latin? When something is simplified and argued down to a point of making no sense at all? reductio ad absurdum

@cazzie, I think reductio ad absurdum is the phrase you are looking for.

Also, If you have followed @CaptainHarley at all here on Fluther, you’d know that he’s hardly a Republican or even what you would probably call a “right winger.”

Violence against public figures isn’t restricted to America. It happens in Scotland too, only people here don’t carry guns

@flutherother I’m sure those families would wish that the crazy man had a pie and not a pistol.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I’m not saying @CaptainHarley is a Repbulican what ever.. but those comments are common fodder for Republicans and Libertarians. They are not historically accurate. They are misleading. They point fingers while telling other people that pointing fingers is bad. It is not a good argument and I’m calling shenanigans.

Basically Europeans don’t understand American Gun Culture and that includes the Swiss, who have a pretty rational relationship with the Gun. I’d like to see stricter gun control in America, or even abolition, apart from leisure and sporting use, but i don’t see it as practically enforceable, it is completely unrealistic, people across the political spectrum are just used to the status quo and are either against stricter gun control or indifferent, this is a deeply ingrained tradition, that is difficult to root out, i don’t really want to go into the socio-historical, political, psychological dependence upon the gun, too much, needless to say, it proved more effective than the Bow and the Tomahawk, not to mention as a means to provide easy meat, dissuade predators and to protect the isolated homestead from hostiles. It afforded the individual, the family or small group a greater opportunity for survival and livelihood, enforced and protected his sense of possession and ownership and so forth, where as the Tribe depended on each other and hand me down traditions and methods, the European relied on the Gun for his very existence, so it was the equalizer. The gun is celebrated and totemic within the American pysche, probably even comforting, who knows.

To a contemporary European, and to me personally, a gun, particularly a handgun, feels cold to the touch, it’s grip should feel comfortable and easy according to the evolution of it’s design, but it feels awkward and uncomfortable to me, no matter how saturated we are with movies that feature casual gun use. A rife is different however, for some reason, it’s purpose feels different, don’t know why. Bit of a digression, But there you have it, .

@mammal Thanks for that answer, it does help explain America’s fascination with guns, something I do not like or understand. It is a legacy of the Wild West and the lawless frontier days but really guns have no place in a civilised society.

@cazzie I’ve already pointed out that the repeated claims that guns are SO easy/simple to get in the U.S. is false. I’m a handgun owner. It isn’t simple, and the wait time in my home state is a week. It required special permits. The state I just moved to is longer on the wait. There’s a lot of paperwork.

@mammal Actually, early guns were far less effective than longbows, even during the times when European invaders were using them to drive off or murder indigenous folks. The main difference is that a longbow takes a lot of practice, a musket is relatively easy to learn to use.

The whole gun culture thing in this country is definitely weird. Even as a gun owner and supporter of defense rights, it freaks me the fuck out. Just saying.

@rooeytoo Are you familiar with the term Straw Man?

I knew this question would bring in all the political and anti-gun flakes on fluther.

I am an American and I think the gun culture is outdated and needs an overhaul.

@incendiary_dan – I have no straw in my shoes and no practice dummies and really don’t have a clue what you are going on about???

@incendiary_dan the gun as a weapon is significantly different in tone, to the longbow, or the sword, the effort and technique involved in it’s use and manifacture etc is culturally abstract, it is devoid of any appreciation through mastery, to me it represents alienation and subjugation. Despite the American film industry best efforts at presenting things differently and priming the audience toward a normative attitude toward firearm use and violence. It isn’t normal despite the worlds most effective and seductive propaganda machine, viz Hollywood, notwithstanding the last Samurai which explored the themes i have just been highlighting, but like all those types of movies they always arrive too late enough in the day to actually affect attitudes and oppinions.

@incendiary_dan right, and illegal guns? With a saturated market for weapons? How hard are they to come by? And ‘difficult’ is a relative term. As are the rules for where they are kept and how they are used and how offences with weapons are categorised and prosecuted. Anecdotal evidence, (‘It was difficult for me to get one.’) does not prove that the gun control system in the US needs an overhaul.

I have only caught a little bit about the shooting, but saw that there were 14 injured and 6 killed. How did one person do that much damage? Or did he have an accomplice? I haven’t heard anything on this, has anyone else?

This is the last post I will make on this subject.

It disgusts me that so many are trying to point fingers at those they hate: “the far right,” “Sara Palin,” “the Republicans,” etc, ad nauseum. You’re just trying to use a tragedy to justify your own prejudices, and as a result are little better than the Ku Klux Klan or Neo-Nazis. Get over yourself!

@chyna They were looking for an accomplice for a while, not sure if they found one. There was a guy standing near the shooter that they’re looking for but they don’t know if he was involved or not.

By the way, the gunman was never shot by someone else in the crowd like some of you are insisting. He was indeed wrestled to the ground by people who were unarmed as I have said all along and the news outlets have said all along. He had no opportunity to “flee the scene” because he was taken out by people who didn’t depend on weapons to take care of someone endangering their lives.

On another note… the 9 year old girl, Christina Taylor Green, was born on September 11, 2001. How sad that she started life on the day terrorism hit home for us and that her life was ended with a terroristic act.

@incendiary_dan I stated political correctness because anytime we have a tragedy like this someone calls for more laws to make this never happen again. That is the beginning of PC. Hell, my kids can’t even ride a bike without a helmet because some kid got hurt and the parents lobbied politicians to make it more safe for everyone. NO ONE take responsibility for themselves. THIS WAS NOT A GUNS FAULT! IT WAS A SOCIETIES FAULT. LAWS AND GUN CONTROL WON’T FIX IT.

@missingbite

Exactly! There is no way to make life safe. Humans, are by their very nature, inquisitive, emotional, and violent. The best we can hope for is the opportunity to defend ourselves.

If you keep making new laws everytime someone is hurt or killed then it won’t take long before we have nothing and everything is padded in rubber so you won’t get a bruise. It will become a police state where so many strict laws that you can’t get angry without getting a hefty fine. Everyone wants. This is life. Life is not bunnies, sugarplums, lolipops and dolphins jumping over rainbows. You are going to have a psycho show up every now and then and kill a bunch of people. Punishing good people because of the action of a nutcase is not a way to keep you safe. Like I said before. That nutcase could have gotten his gun to shoot up the place even if all guns were banned.

Yeah, well, I guess the rest of the world just doesn’t know what it’s on about with the gun thing.

(and I still can’t believe the KKK and NeoNazi argument came out here… low low lower. lowest.)

I hate wearing a bicycle helmet, I hate wearing a motorcycle helmet, I hate wearing seat belts in my car, I hate not being able to smoke a cigarette where and when I please (well I would if I smoked) because someone may die from secondhand smoke (apparently this will happen more assuredly than being shot with a gun).

But I think control of hand guns is a different story altogether. Let’s just imagine now if everyone at that rally would have had a gun and pulled it out to protect themselves from the shooter. People with guns running everywhere, so other people with guns shooting at them because they think that is the shooter. How many more would have been shot in that scenario.

The bottom line is guns will never be eliminated, I agree with that, but it is a fact that when hand guns are controlled, crimes with guns lessen. I also hate statistics because they can be so easily manipulated to suit whomever is paying for the statistics to be compliled, but they seem to lean towards that fact. And it is an undeniable fact that it is easier to subdue a nutter with a machete before he hurts too many than it is a nutter with a gun.

Just about anyone can still purchase a handgun at a gun show, is that not correct?

And of course, the Westboro Church (I use the term loosely as it is not a church), claims the 9 year old girl that died deserved it and they will protest at her funeral. Ashats.

@rooeytoo You can only purchase a handgun at a gun show after you pass a background check. As far as your theory about more guns at this rally leading to more shooting, I would disagree. I have never heard of a gunman walking into a shooting range and shooting people. Gun stores are rarely if ever held up at gunpoint. They don’t do this because they know they themselves will get shot. Lots of shootings at “gun free zone” schools though! Gun free zone = no defense zone! IMHO

Godwin’s Law‘s_law has become manifest, therefore my interest in the discussion is done.

Okay, just a little more, because what else will I do at work?.

@cazzie Yes, illegal guns exist and make it easier to get them whether or not laws are changed (and some would argue tighter restrictions makes black market weapons easier to get). The real thing which increases black markets for guns is the illegal drug trade, which itself is so violent and predatory because of the aforementioned War on Drugs, same as prohibition bringing power to gangsters and increasing their violent episodes. So we see a pattern of dealing with problems through legislation failing. So it appears we agree more than I realized.

@missingbite I see. You don’t actually know what political correctness means. But anyway, I agree about the presence of armed citizens generally deterring violent crime.

@mammal That is a great analysis of gun culture in the U.S. I disagree on some small points, but very good.

@rooeytoo I point out the logical fallacy because your apparent attempt to refute one of my arguments failed due to this, since you clearly read it but didn’t understand the nuance, and therefore formulated an argument that sounded like it was a proper response but didn’t actually address mine..

@incendiary_dan Unfortunately I know very well what PC means and what it was supposed to mean. My example may have not been to your liking but it is all connected. I would be willing to bet that somewhere in this 22 year olds life, someone was afraid of getting in trouble and didn’t “call a spade a spade” on his actions soon enough to get him help. They masked over the problem…him… and he has ended up where he is. BTW, did you read the link in the other thread about his algebra classmate and teacher that was scared of him. It took them over three weeks of him being disruptive in class before they could get rid of him. I wonder why it took so long? His classmates where literally scared of him yet the school had trouble getting rid of him. Interesting.

The business with the crosshairs was an imagery thing, not an actual hit list.

@mammal There are many sizes and shapes to gun grips. You probably just haven’t tried on one that fits.
Believe it or not, there is a remarkable degree of craftsmanship involved in gun design. It’s a delicate balance of pressures and strengths, fed by ingenious mechanisms. It all works together, smoothly, to transform a cold bit of metal into a lifesaving tool. It is practically the embodiment of the branch of physics known as mechanics.
The use of these firearms also requires skill. Point-and-shoot only really happens in video games and movies; in real life, effectiveness requires good technique and hours of practice. You must control your stance, you must control your breathing. You need to consider windage and elevation. You need to consider how the rounds in your gun will behave once you’ve fired them.
No, there aren’t any flashy moves as with swashbuckling. It’s all about precision and efficiency

Still in very poor taste, especially for a woman who goes around toting her firearms and shooting critters for dinner. And are you sure it was just an imagery thing??? After her dancing with the stars performance and some of her other attention grabbing antics, one must really wonder about her sanity???

@rooeytoo You are right. Sarah Palin wants all Democrats to be shot. Are you kidding? Did the DNC want all the ‘targeted” republicans shot? Get real!

@rooeytoo I am positive that it was imagery. I followed the campaign on the right side of the aisle. It fits.
We are told from the time that we’re young that we’re special, unique individuals. While this has some merit, we’re not all that unique; most people aren’t all that different from you. Would you want to see the assassination of your political opposites?

Hell no and that is my point. There are unfortunately many who unstable types who take the utterings of the power people literally. It matters not who put them there, I would think crosshairs on opponents would be in poor taste and a sign of someone whose thinking is not what I would want in a leader. So imagery or not, it is not a good thing! If she should ever get into the oval office, can’t you just see her sitting there with the photos of other world leaders with whom she has difficulties and shooting darts at them with her pop gun. Just the sort of fodder for the likes of Julian Assange to have a heyday with and expose to the public in the guise of transparency in government.

@noelleptc – she was on a reality or dancing show of some sort, was she not? I never saw it but I remember reading about it and thinking to myself how desperate she must be for media attention to lower herself to that level.

I just can’t believe how many of you find crosshairs on your enemies, even as imagery, to be appropriate behavior for a presidential wannabee.

I don’t know… I think the whole thing needs looking at. Violent hate talk… violent imagery. It’s really ugly. I can’t remember so much hate talk being accepted as ‘freedom of speech’ since…. well, I wasn’t born yet, but I’ve read books.

@noelleptc I believe the show that @rooeytoo is talking about is Sarah Palin’s Alaska. It is a show about life in the Last Frontier.

@rooeytoo Please be careful of wanting to limit the “freedom of speech.” Who do you propose decides what should and should not be free? No matter if you call it vitriol or hate speech or not. Do we outlaw the use of the N word in rap music because it degrades people and leads to hate or is that art and not the same?

We had the Fairness Doctrine from 1949 until it was abolished in 1987. During that time we had the attempted assassination of Harry Truman, the JFK assassination, the RFK assassination, the attempted assassination of Reagan, and I am sure there were a couple of others. Crazy killer exist with or without true free speech.

IMHO limiting free speech, even vitriol, will lead us down the same path that political correctness has.

@missingbite hear, hear!

@noelleptc I think we are going to find out quite a few interesting things about this guy. For instance, his mother worked for Pima County and her son has several arrests with no convictions. I am praying that she did not have connections that kept him out of trouble. It is also reported alleged that his mother and the Congresswoman attended the same Jewish Synagogue. This is all just to bizarre.

@cazzie Might you describe the ‘violent hate talk’? Angry talk I’ve heard (and rightfully so; there are unhappy people, and unhappy people tend to be angry; can’t very well outlaw that, can we?), but no calls to arms, no mistreatments. @missingbite posted a link to some real hatred, up there towards the top.

@rooeytoo In fact, I can’t see Palin lobbing darts at pictures of world leaders. That crosshair poster, applied to other fields, wouldn’t blip on anybody’s radar.
You’ve been led to believe that Palin is some kind of thuggish monster. She’s not. She may not be Presidential material – she doesn’t seem to do well under stress, for instance – but she’s still a normal human bean.

I guess normal is in the eyes of the beholder. I think she is a certifiable nutter and it makes me nervous that she has the following she has. I never thought Dubya could get in a second time and he did so who knows what she might get into, terrifying!

@Nullo
this is a person in the public posting on Sarah Palin’s Facebook account that was being very very heavily edited because there were negative comments about her and even some really stupid personal attacks… but THIS comment made it through the edits and was kept on the site:

A commenter posted the following at 18:12:

“It’s ok. Christina Taylor Green was probably going to end up a left wing bleeding heart liberal anyway. Hey, as ‘they’ say, what would you do if you had the chance to kill Hitler as a kid? Exactly.”

That was left up, when some one was working hard on taking other detracting negative comments off.

I’m not saying Palin is a monster. G W Bush wasn’t a monster either. They are people, like you and me and should be accountable for their actions and words, like you and me, not held up on pedestals.

Hate Speech:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL5tjGK-x-g

Oh… sorry.. my source for the Sarah Palin facebook story was here for those who want to read it in full. http://obamalondon.blogspot.com/2011/01/inexplicable-edits-on-sarah-palins.html

@cazzie
Insensitive, but not exactly hateful. Its permanence is most curious.

Gun metaphors are pretty old, and fairly common. Accountability is good. But a person ought to only be accountable for what they have done, not for what other people think that they did. Which is, AFAIK, the entire basis of Western criminal justice systems.

Wiki sez, “Hate speech is, outside the law, any communication which disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic…” and goes on to provide a thematically-unconnected and inexhaustive list of such characteristics. Based on this, literally anything negative could be hate speech. So I don’t think that it’s fair to make laws deciding what gets to be hate speech.

Oh, so if I stand up in a bar and say, ‘All faggots should be shot.’ That should be ok?
And you class that comment left on her facebook as ‘insensitive’? hmmm.

Y’all might be interested to hear that the gunman was very probably Palin’s political opposite.

@cazzie Provided that you don’t match words to action, then it’s pretty much okay. Think of it this way: by making it illegal to talk about, you won’t be able to find the people who need convincing via rational debate.
Yes, it is insensitive. It ignores the basic humanity and relative innocence of the little girl, but does not sound terribly hateful.

@cazzie I had a thought earlier: Why would Sarah Palin hire someone to sit at her Facebook account all day and delete unsavory wall posts when she could buy a bot that would filter for her? If this were the case, it would be the best explanation for the faux pas that I’ve yet heard.

I regret my earlier answer, because I jumped on a bandwagon before it became a bandwagon (in terms of the nation, not necessarily Fluther).

I think semi violent rhetoric is fine relative to the powerlessness of a person.

But once a person starts gaining power of some sort, it becomes their responsibility to be more rhetorically accurate, rather than rhetorically aggressive. I don’t think Sarah Palin should be the focus of anyone’s ire on this, but Fox News sure should be. They shouldn’t be blamed for the shooter, since the shooter made a choice. But they should be blamed for inciting anger using false news. If one wants to incite anger, they at least should use real news. Fox doesn’t advocate political violence, but the lies they allow in the form of “news” are enough to make semi-good people violently angry…. and unfortunately they are angry at things that do not exist. (That’s why I mentioned “death panels and socialism” in my earlier response).

@Kraigmo I agree, deliberately spreading false news is wrong. So long as one can demonstrate that Fox News’ news was actually false and not just covering an unreported facet.
Beware, Kraigmo. Both sides have their agendas , both are steeped in bias. It’s good to make the news outlets prove themselves, but that means that you need to question all of them.

@Nullo Faux News reporting faux news without journalistic integrity or fact checking. Something that makes them a sad joke in the journalistic community. They ran with something untrue and ruined this poor woman’s life, then want to turn around and blame it on other people. Stay classy, Fox News… But wait, that would imply that there was some class in to begin with. My mistake.

@klutzaroo I’m confused how you are using the Shirey Sherrod case to show that Fox News “ruined this poor woman’s life.” Could you explain please?

@bkcunningham They took a nonevent and made a huge deal of it. They created a public uproar over nothing and basically influenced her higher ups into firing her. They called her all kinds of things she didn’t deserve to be called… If you seriously think that they did nothing wrong, you’ve got issues.

@klutzaroo Context abuse and blowing things out of proportion are bad habits common to all news media, which is why so many high-profile people prefer to have their PR and legal teams release statements to the press rather than address the reporters directly. Savvy spokesmen have PR people on staff in order to try to anticipate the interviewer’s questions, and come up with media-safe responses; these are then incorporated into a pre-interview coaching.
Reporters, my notes tell me, are vicious. They are not your friends, even if they act friendly. They have their own goals, and those usually have to do with getting more people to read or watch their stories.

@klutzaroo lol. I suppose by your definition I have issues. You’ll have to show me proof of any of the things you are accusing Fox News of doing with the Shirley Sherrod case. I’m interested to see what you find. I happened to have followed that case very closely and had a personal interest in the case. Nothing you said is true regarding Fox News and this case. Sherrod was fired before Fox did the first news story about her remarks. Do your homework.