Arizona Congresswoman Shot

[freemonkey]

Democrat Gabrielle Giffords shot while hostng an event in Arizona. Details are sketchy at the moment, but there are reports that others were shot as well.

[livius drusus]

The HuffPo is live blogging any updates to the story. This is some crazy shit.

eta I turned on CNN to follow the story and had to turn it off. Cable news is unwatchable for so many reasons.

[livius drusus]

NPR is reporting her dead.

[livius drusus]

[Sauron]

TPM is reporting that this same Congresswoman also had her offices vandalized during the national health care debate.

I smell a Tea Party crazy behind this....

[irukandji]

conflicting reports...

hoping she gets to say

the reports of my death were greatly exaggerated

hoping

[livius drusus]

MSNBC says she's in surgery right now.

[freemonkey]

....2nd amendment remedies....



Apparently the gunman is alive and in custody.

[vremya]

This makes me ill.

Did it ever enter anyone's mind that this would be the result of all the gun-related rhetoric out there?

[Demimonde]

Suspect is in his late teens to early twenties? This just gets more tragic.

[beyelzu]

I hope she is okay and I really do hope that this wasn't politically motivated. I don't want to jump to conclusions. I really wouldn't be surprised if it were, what with all the death panels and hitler rhetoric, but I don't want to jump to conclusions.

[Clutch Munny]

From TPM:

[yguy]

Originally Posted by livius drusus

<snip image>

Nice of you to give everybody such a clear signal to begin the rush to judgment.

[Qingdai]

"Richard J. Kastigar, the bureau chief for the Pima County Sheriff's Department, tells CNN that 18 individuals were shot and six are dead. He adds that Giffords is "gravely" wounded."

[irukandji]

one of the fatalities is being reported
by hospital spokesman as "a young child"

[livius drusus]

The surgeon says he expects Giffords to recover. He also just said the girl who died was 9 years old.

[Contrapposto]

Originally Posted by yguy

Nice of you to give everybody such a clear signal to begin the rush to judgment.

Nice of you to be ignorant of the fact that the hate rhetoric coming from that side is exactly what encourages unstable individuals like this to come out of the woodwork.

[lisarea]

This might be the shooter's YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Classitup10#p/a

Not surprisingly, the guy seems kind of unstable and obsessive.

[yguy]

Originally Posted by Contrapposto

Nice of you to be ignorant of the fact that the hate rhetoric coming from that side is exactly what encourages unstable individuals like this to come out of the woodwork.

There is no hate rhetoric coming from Palin. That she inspires hatred in people like yourself by merely calling it like she sees it is no fault of hers, obviously.

[ChuckF]

oh yguy, I miss you when you're not here.

[ChuckF]

Just to record some thoughts here, I don't yet see any evidence to tie this shooting to that particular official publication by Sarah Palin's Political Action Committee, placing gun sights over the districts of particular Congresspeople, mentioning Congresswoman Giffords by name, while calling on Palin's supporters to "take a stand." Nor do I see any evidence to tie this shooting to a similar publication, with the same gun sights and also naming Congresswoman Gifford, stating "We've diagnosed the problem..." and soliciting supporters to "help us prescribe the solution." I don't know of any evidence to suggest that this shooting was intended to "help" "prescribe" any of Sarah Palin's "solutions." I don't yet see any evidence to tie this shooting to comments from people like Sharron Angle, who said "if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out." No, I do not yet see any evidence that this shooting was one of the "Second Amendment remedies" that Sharron Angle contemplated immediately before talking about the need to "take out" a member of Congress. Nor do I presently see any evidence that this shooting has anything to do with a Republican campaign event inviting voters to fire an automatic weapon in order to help "remove Gabrielle Giffords from office." I don't see any evidence of that. I certainly don't see anything to connect this shooting to Glenn Beck's innocent joking about poisoning Nancy Pelosi, which was televised on a national news channel and, again, cannot be conclusively tied to this attempt to murder a Congresswoman on the basis of facts presently available. Again, to be absolutely clear, I see absolutely no evidence indicating a causal or operational relationship between that kind of rhetoric and imagery and this shooting of a Congresswoman who had been targeted by the Tea Party. Neither do I see any evidence of such a relationship between that kind of rhetoric and imagery and any prior security-related incidents involving this same Congresswoman.

I'm stating this because I don't want anyone to suggest that I am positing some kind of relationship between that kind of rhetoric and imagery and this shooting of a Congresswoman, who happened to have been explicitly targeted in an official publication by Sarah Palin's Political Action Committee, which happened to place gun sights over the districts of particular Congresspeople, and happened to mention the victim of this shooting by name while calling on supporters to "take a stand." Any suggestion that I am positing some kind of relationship like that, connecting that rhetoric and imagery to this shooting of a Congresswoman, would be wrong.

ETA: In a completely unrelated matter, I would like to state explicitly that I have at this time no opinion about the relative strictness or laxity of legislation governing the sale and purchase of handguns and semiautomatic weapons, the relative ease or difficult of obtaining handguns and/or semiautomatic weapons in the United States, and the political debate over the scope of the individual's rights to own handguns or semiautomatic weapons such as may have been used in this shooting of a Congresswoman and many others. Neither do I have at this time any opinion about the policy inclinations of various groups that favor more or less regulation of handguns and semiautomatic weapons. I consider these issues to be entirely unrelated to this shooting of a Congresswoman and many others, including a federal judge, with a handgun or semiautomatic weapon.

[Demimonde]

Ah, law school- the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

[D. Scarlatti]

Jesse Kelly's got to be feeling pretty good right about now.

[Stephen Maturin]

Jesus Christ. Dude put up some whackadoo homemade video featuring Drowning Pool's Let the Bodies Hit the Floor. 'Scuse me while I throw up.

[ChuckF]

Is anybody watching cable TV? Has anyone said that this tragedy could have been avoided if only the Congresswoman herself had been armed?