House of Reps. member Giffords shot in Arizona today

Bullshit!

The main response should be more guns?! Not a reduction in vitriol? Not a coming together against threatening language from the right?

Until we have more definitive information about the shooter, pointing fingers at who might bear responsibility for the Tucson, Arizona, massacre only contributes to what we must end in America: a toxic political environment.

Soon after the news broke, the internet lit up with accusations, even before we knew anything at all about the man who pulled the trigger. Much of the early commentary, especially from the left, blamed the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, etc. for employing a rhetoric of militarism and creating a climate of hate.

Commentators from the right soon retaliated, arguing that the left was just as guilty of rhetorical excess and through bad governance, had inspired a citizen revolt. As of this hour, we have a country that is not only deeply saddened but even more divided than we were before the shooting.

We can do better -- a lot better.

The main response should be more guns?!

Not a reduction in vitriol?

Not a coming together against threatening language from the right?

Let's not be coy.

The piousness atmosphere in today's level of discourse comes by far from the right. Ask Representative Michelle Bachman if she still believes her constituents should be "armed and dangerous". ?
Ask Representative Allen West of Arizona if he still believes his followers should "make his opponent be afraid to come out of his own home." ?

Both these people should repudiate their own remarks or by repudiated by their party.
There should be no more tolerance for such talk, it's the talk of gangs on the street,
not the talk of rational, thoughtful people.

The main response should most certainly not be more guns.

What is your vision of the kind of country America ought to be?

Full of free people

or full of people armed

dangerous and full of fear?

Joe(enough, I say, enough.)Nation

Joe Nation wrote:

The main response should be more guns?! Not a reduction in vitriol? Not a coming together against threatening language from the right?

No, not coming together against the "threatening language" from the right. That is just more political vitriol from the lefties who seize this crisis for political points. There is absolutely nothing yet to indicate that this has anything at all to do with the "threatening language from the right" regardless of how many times leftists unthinkingly repeat that.

The lefties trying to make the right own this nutbag are being knee-jerk idiots.

True threats encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals. The speaker need not actually intend to carry out the threat. Rather, a prohibition on true threats protect individuals from the fear of violence and from the disruption that fear engenders, in addition to protecting people from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur.
-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Virginia v. Black, Docket# 01-1107 (2003)

Nonsense. The left wants to see the right this way.

The lefties trying to make the right own this nutbag are being knee-jerk idiots.

One of the first to be dragged into this sickening ritual of guilt by association: Sarah Palin. Last March, the former Alaska governor posted a map on her Facebook page with crosshair targets representing 20 Democratic lawmakers she was singling out for defeat after they voted for President Obama's health care plan. One of them was Giffords. Palin, who touts her caribou-hunting heritage, also tweeted, "Don't retreat, RELOAD!"

This kind of rhetoric is highly unfortunate. The use of the crosshairs was dumb. But it's a long stretch from such excessive language and symbols to holding a public official accountable for a murderer who opens fire on a political gathering and kills a half-dozen people, including a 9-year-old girl.

And here we go again in Arizona, as people with political agendas unleash their attacks even before the victims of this senseless shooting have been buried. I find it depressing beyond belief.

This isn't about a nearly year-old Sarah Palin map; it's about a lone nutjob who doesn't value human life. It would be nice if we briefly put aside partisan differences and came together with sympathy and support for Gabby Giffords and the other victims, rather than opening rhetorical fire ourselves.

If Sarah Palin, whose website put and today scrubbed bullseye targets on 20 representatives including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics, she must be dismissed from politics.

There was ample evidence… that the Ft. Hood attack was an act of Islamist violence.

Nevertheless, public officials, journalists, and commentators were quick to caution that the public should not "jump to conclusions" about Hasan's motive. CNN, in particular, became a forum for repeated warnings that the subject should be discussed with particular care.

"The important thing is for everyone not to jump to conclusions," said retired Gen. Wesley Clark on CNN the night of the shootings.

"We cannot jump to conclusions," said CNN's Jane Velez-Mitchell that same evening. "We have to make sure that we do not jump to any conclusions whatsoever."

"I'm on Pentagon chat room," said former CIA operative Robert Baer on CNN, also the night of the shooting. "Right now, there's messages going back and forth, saying do not jump to the conclusion this had anything to do with Islam."

The next day, President Obama underscored the rapidly-forming conventional wisdom when he told the country, "I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts."

In the days that followed, CNN journalists and guests repeatedly echoed the president's remarks.

"We can't jump to conclusions," Army Gen. George Casey said on CNN November 8.

The next day, political analyst Mark Halperin urged a "transparent" investigation into the shootings "so the American people don't jump to conclusions." And when Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra, then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that the Ft. Hood attack was terrorism, CNN's John Roberts was quick to intervene. "Now, President Obama has asked people to be very cautious here and to not jump to conclusions," Roberts said to Hoekstra. "By saying that you believe this is an act of terror, are you jumping to a conclusion?"

Fast forward a little more than a year, to January 8, 2011. In Tucson, Arizona, a 22 year-old man named Jared Lee Loughner opened fire at a political event, gravely wounding Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, killing a federal judge and five others, and wounding 18. In the hours after the attack, little was known about Loughner beyond some bizarre and largely incomprehensible YouTube postings that, if anything, suggested he was mentally ill. Yet the network that had shown such caution in discussing the Ft. Hood shootings openly discussed the possibility that Loughner was inspired to violence by…Sarah Palin. Although there is no evidence that Loughner was in any way influenced by Palin, CNN was filled with speculation about the former Alaska governor.

But the question is, is there any evidence that the suspected shooter in this particular case was a Sarah Palin fan, read Sarah Palin's website, was a member on Facebook, watched her tweets, or anything like that?

None at all, and there is no evidence that this was even inspired by rage over health care, broadly. So there is no overt connection between Sarah Palin, health care, and the [shootings].