Arizona: Mass Shooting

[American Patriot]

Only in America: Putting a positive spin on assassination (video)


http://tucsoncitizen.com/tucson-prog...ination-video/

by Pamela Powers on Jan. 10, 2011, under Arizona, Arizona Legislature, Congress, Gabrielle Giffords, Jon Kyl, Tucson, gun control, hate crimes, lifestyle, media, racism
Glock semiautomatic handgun like the one used to shoot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and kill six innocent people in Tucson on January 8, 2010.



(Photo Credit: Stinsonarms.com)

Regardless of what Bill O’Rielly says, right-wingers are the masters of spin.
I knew that my anti-gun-violence article in Sunday’s Tucson Citizen would spark a plethora of the 2nd Amendment freedom comments, but I was really surprised at the level of denial regarding the link between gun ownership and violence.


I was particularly shocked that some commenters said if there had been armed citizens in the crowd at the Safeway that they could have stopped the gunman from shooting 18 people and killing six. (That’s the ticket– a re-enactment of Shootout at the OK Corral in suburban Tucson. People, just because you own a gun doesn’t mean you magically know how to shoot straight.)



Another person basically said, S**t happens and brushed off the assassination attempt and mass murder as something that happens in a country with so many people.


In today’s Arizona Daily Star, the article Suspect faced no legal barrier to buying gun at local store the co-founder of a gun rights group, Charles Heller, parroted some of my readers’ comments and appears ready for the Tombstone re-enactment. (Emphasis added.)

To Heller, Saturday’s shooting rampage, which killed six and injured 14 outside a northwest-side Safeway store, is evidence of the wisdom of liberal gun laws.

“This shows why it is so vital to have an armed citizenry,” Heller said. “If you can’t get the guns out of society, what can you do? You can have a well-prepared citizenry.”

Personally, I agree with Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who called out Arizona politicians for passing racist laws and fanning the flames of hatred and bigotry in our state.



Now Dupnik is coming under fire from wing-nut talk radio host Jon Justice and Senator Jon Kyl. As the right mobilizes against Dupnik for having the nerve to speak truth to power, the left is organizing a boycott of Justice’s advertisers.



CREDIT: FOX News


CAPTION: Clarence Dupnik, Pima County AZ Sheriff, Blames AZ Political Culture for Shooting



This entry was posted on Monday, January 10th, 2011 at 8:06 am and is filed under Arizona, Arizona Legislature, Congress, Gabrielle Giffords, Jon Kyl, Tucson, gun control, hate crimes, lifestyle, media, racism. Tags for this post: Clarence Dupnik, Gabrielle Giffords, gun control, gun violence, Jon Kyl, Tucson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.





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1 Comment for this entry


yayabrotherhood
January 10th, 2011 on 8:29 am

“regarding the link between gun ownership and violence.”


You mean the fact that lawful gun owners are far less likely to commit crimes and cities with lawful gun ownership show a proven decrease in violent crime whereas cities with restrictive laws against lawful gun ownership are war zones?


Thank you for publicizing these relationships. You are truly progressive.


It is amazing that liberals ignore the thousands of murders that happen in large gun-restrictive cities, yet get angry only when a liberal is shot. A perfect example of a county of men rather than a country of laws. Not too long before we turn into the gun-restrictive Socialist paradise of Mexico.

[American Patriot]

http://tucsoncitizen.com/tucson-prog.../#comment-8300

Check the link there and read the comments.

/chuckles

[American Patriot]

Tucson: A harbinger?


Has assassination taken a new turn?

http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2...1102011/599364


Date published: 1/10/2011


RUSH LIMBAUGH did not shoot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 17 other people outside a Tucson grocery store Saturday. Nor did Sarah Palin, nor did Moveon.org, nor did any of the other cultural brayers, right and left, who have done their level best to foul civil discourse in this country and turn the the zeitgeist into a gladiatorial pit. But political acts of violence exist in a context, and the wounding of the Arizona Democrat raises the grim possibility that a new fashion in political assassination is upon us. Congress members, be careful.


Older Americans will remember the sickening season of assassinations, accomplished and attempted, that marked the 1960s and early 1970s. John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., George Wallace, Gerald Ford to be a president or candidate for the presidency, or to lead a powerful political movement in King's case, was to run a high risk of stopping a fanatic's bullet. The '80s gave us world-headline shootings of a different nature, as bona fide madmen fired on highly public figures (John Lennon, Ronald Reagan) for reasons easily decipherable only by the devils inside their heads.


Congressmen and -women have largely escaped the assassin's attention. The dramatic exception was the wounding of five representatives in 1954 by Puerto Rican nationalists who blasted away in the Capitol itself. But the targeting of individual members in the public square? Ms. Giffords seems to be unique in that unlucky category.


But for how long? Now the emotional focus of domestic politics is very much on individual senators and representatives. We know lawmakers by name: They have become celebrities of the Everywhere Media and the blogosphere. To some zealots and loons, they may have become attractive targets of violence, too--much "softer" ones, because of the accessibility bound up in their job description, than presidents and presidential contenders.


The Tucson shooter may not only have pioneered a new style in assassination, but coupled it with a mass-murder "flourish" of the sort that broke Virginia's heart in Blacksburg in 2007.


It is time for precaution, and, unfortunately, a rethinking of how public 535 members ought to make themselves in a country with more than 535 lunatics.

[American Patriot]

A totally clueless twit speaks out.... GOP and their followers??????

http://www.memphisflyer.com/JacksonB...plaining-to-do

Monday, January 10, 2011

MAD AS HELL: After Tucson, the GOP Has Some 'Splaining to Do

It is their party which has a problem, and it is time for Republican leaders to denounce and repudiate the despicable antics of their followers.

Posted by Cheri DelBrocco on Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 8:21 AM

• Cheri DelBrocco

Last week’s transfer of power in Washington dominated the news for four days while the three-foot gavel selected by John Boehner epitomized the asinine immaturity of the Tea-publican movement.

Then the news broke that a mass shooting and attempted assassination of a member of Congress had occurred. Six dead in Tucson, Arizona. It is human nature to try to figure out why such an unspeakable tragedy like this one would happen in our country. We look for something or someone to blame. Since the day President Obama was sworn in, reasonable people have feared such a sickening event would actually happen. Although shocking, it is not surprising.


Over the next few weeks, we will see an aggressive attempt by Republicans and their lackeys in the right wing media to whitewash the Tucson shootings. Sarah Palin has already scrubbed her website of the infamous “crosshairs” map, with those infamous superimposed gun sights in tandem with her voter instructions to “reload and take aim” at Democratic candidates. The Fox News talking heads have already started repeating the meme that “both parties” have a problem with inflammatory, violent rhetoric and, oh yes, that the Tea Party may, just may have made impolitic remarks.



They just forget to identify which incendiary statements were made by Democrats or liberals. Probably because they cannot find any.


The Fox Tea-publicans will distort and lie until, before you know it, all the media will join into the malarkey that “Both parties are guilty of contributing to the climate of political hatred, etc., etc.” They are counting on the majority of Americans to fall for this phony false equivocation.


But what we know for sure is that the rhetoric and actions can be laid at the feet of the Grand Old Tea-publican Party.



In the recent elections it was the Republican Party that manufactured the kind of vitriol that caused a young woman holding a poster at a Rand Paul rally to get knocked to the ground and her head stomped by GOP-certified “freedom fighters.”



We know it was the Republican Party that fielded a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada who called for people to “exercise their Second Amendment rights” if the election didn’t turn out the way they wanted.



We know it to be the Republican Party that has a base calling for acts of violence against immigrants, Muslims, and everyone else who doesn’t fit their self-imposed guidelines for true Americanism.



It was Republicans for over two years attended public rallies and town hall meetings with guns strapped to their legs, promising to “take the country back”.



It was Republicans who sold “America’s Most Wanted” playing cards with pictures of Democratic leaders on them.



It was a Republican candidate who, running against Florida Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, stepped up at a shooting range to show his marksmanship skills by firing at a human silhouette with the letters "DWS" written next to the head.
.
It was a Republican Vice Presidential candidate who made unsubstantiated claims that the President had “palled around” with terrorists.



It was the Republican Speaker John Boehner who, when speaking of Democratic office-holders, blithely blew off threats against them by saying there were “always a couple of anarchists who want to kill all of us in public office.”.



We know that what happened in Tucson was a logical, predictable outcome to the growing, hyperbolic rhetoric that has become the stock and trade of the Republicans and the Tea Party. A nine-year- old girl is dead. A Federal judge is dead. A member of Congress is fighting for her life. Four other American families are planning funerals. Like a Kudzu vine that smothers trees with its fast growing tendrils, the politics of hate and fear is spreading. Ultimately, it will suffocate and snuff out democracy.

It is time for the charade to stop. As much as the GOP's talking heads attempt to cover their asses, it is their party which has a problem, and it is time for Republican leaders to denounce and repudiate the despicable antics of their followers.

[Toad]

From what I'm reading, the shooter seems to be truely phychologically ill. There were enough red flags up to family, friends, school personell he should have been forced into a 72 hour evaluation. He was disengaged from our reality. There was no politics to his shooting, it was purely delusional.

The political opportunists however are now taking their shots.

[Ryan Ruck]

A totally clueless twit speaks out.... GOP and their followers??????

Cheri, you ignorant slut...

And I mean that in the nicest way possible.

[Ryan Ruck]

By the way, this is reported to be some odd shrine setup in the shooter's backyard. Clearly it is a shrine dedicated to Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the NRA... Oh wait... Guess not.

[vector7]

We Don’t Know a Thing Yet About Jared Lee Loughner’s Politics, but Let’s Blame Him on the Right Anyway

Posted by David Franke on January 9, 2011 04:08 AM

The alleged assassin’s MySpace page has been taken down, but you can read the text in this Huffington Post article. It also provides the YouTube videos identified as being from a “Jared Lee Loughner.”
According to The Raw Story:

The postings describe no coherent political ideology, said Mark Potok, an investigator with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks violent extremists. Loughner was not in the Center’s database of hate groups and radicals.

“He certainly sounds like he’s gone off the deep end, but at the same time, he is mouthing some rhetoric that is quite reminiscent of the anti-government movement … It’s hard to know what to make of his ideology.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a leftist organization, of course, that does its best to tie racists and extremists to conservatives at every opportunity. If they cannot find Loughner in their database, that’s a pretty good indication that he’s not a conservative activist. But of course that doesn’t stop their spokesman from tying him to “the anti-government movement”—and we know who they are.

One of the first headlines from The New York Times—“Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics”—did its bit to make that connection, too, but in another Times article we read something more specific about Loughner’s political views:

“As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy,” [a] former classmate, Caitie Parker, wrote in a series of Twitter feeds Saturday.

Don’t expect to find that quote repeated too often in the days ahead.

[Ryan Ruck]

Also, one thing not getting a ton of press are the actions of a man named Joe Zamudio. Joe is a CCW holder and went into action when the shooting started. He and Roger Sulzgeber tackled the shooter.

Joe was in the store shopping and CCWing at the time. He heard the shots and ran toward the scene. He saw the shooter was in slide lock, chose not to draw his own CCW, and instead tackled Loughner.

Bill Badger and Patricia Maisch assisted Joe and Roger in subduing Loughner.

There is a video interview with Joe here - http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bes...ess.cnn?hpt=T1

Here is a transcript for anyone who can't view video:

[joining us now is Joe Zamudio, he's an eyewitness]
[tell us where you were when you came upon this meet and greet]

"It was just a normal Saturday, I woke up and had breakfast with my mom, I was planning on watching football, I didn't plan on this horrible thing, I walked out and went into the Walgreens to buy cigarettes and inside of the counter I heard the gunshots, it was like a fireworks almost it was pop pop pop like that, and I said to the girl behind the counter is that is that because i was going to say is that fireworks but I knew it was a gun I've been raised around guns my whole life and I knew it was a gun, and I carry a gun for my own protection and I had it with me so I ran back outside and there was a man with a camera who said 'shooter shooter get down' and I ran towards the noise and that was after the last gunshot, at that point the other gentleman you spoke with the other gentleman and a lady were wrestling with I don't know what his name is, the guy, the shooter"

[so you ran towards the suspect]

"yeah, they had already taken the gun form him and he was struggling with them, I went over there I pinned him down to the ground I waited with them until the police came, it was just ridiculous, the gun was empty, when you finish firing an semiautomatic like that the top stays back and it was cocked back, it was locked open and he was out of bullets, but he had another extended magazine that he was trying to load into the gun that the woman was able to wrestle away form him, and he was gonna keep shooting, he was not over he just ran out of bullets"

[how long were you on him]

"oh I don't know not more than five minutes, probably 'bout like three or four, it seemed like a really long time at first but I checked my phone afterwards 'cause I was calling 911 and it couldn't have been more than five minutes, three minutes, four minutes maybe, the first sheriff's department officer showed up and when he got there we said 'we got him he's right here he's the shooter' he came put him in cuffs, almost immediately there were two or three more deputies there, they searched him in my presence, I saw them pull two more magazines out of his pockets and a pocket knife, I mean he was ready for war, he was not playing around"

[did he say anything while you were holding him down]

"the only thing he said was 'my arm ow my arm' they had his arm wrenched back which I'm real glad I didn't know he had a knife in his pocket I mean I had a gun and if he had been reloaded or something I would have pulled it on him but I wasn't trying to go that place and scare anyone if it wasn't necessary, but I didn't know he had a knife on him I mean he could have hurt us there holding him down, it was just scary, and he said 'ow my arm' but we didn't care we just kept holding him there, and then his facial expression was expressionless, it was blank, it was callous almost."

Also just found out that Mark LaRue of LaRue Tactical is sending Joe a new rifle! Pretty awesome of him to do that!

[American Patriot]

By the way, this is reported to be some odd shrine setup in the shooter's backyard. Clearly it is a shrine dedicated to Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the NRA... Oh wait... Guess not.

Is THAT what all the fuss was about? That is not any sort of a "shrine" LOL

It's OBVIOUSLY a dead gnome decoration.

You know... just the head of the dead gnome.

[Ryan Ruck]

Speaking from experience Rick?

[vector7]

Double standard?

1. Journalists Urged Caution After Ft. Hood, Now Race to Blame Palin
2. Telegraph: Ft. Hood vs. Arizona, the Media’s Amazing Double Standard
3. U.K. Guardian Blames 'Rightwing Rhetoric'
4. CBS’ Schieffer: Tucson Shooter Inspired by ‘Dangerous, Inflammatory Words’
5. N.Y. Times' Krugman Blames Right-wing Climate of Hate
6. NY Daily News: 'Giffords' Blood Is on Sarah Palin's Hands'
7. CNN Reporter: Palin ‘Allowed This Kind of Instance to Happen’
8. CBS Report Paints Palin as Responsible
9. Politics Daily: Bloggers Blame Palin
10. Olbermann Calls for Calm, then Blames GOP, Beck, O’Reilly
11. Tucson Sheriff Blames Talk Radio
12. Sun Times: Right-wing Cable TV, Talk-Radio Incited Attack
13. Geraldo Connects Tea Party with Tucson Massacre
14. Flashback: Two Months Ago MSNBC Guest Calls for Violent Revolution from Left
15. Flashback: Media Matters Says Lay-Off Left-Wing Discovery Channel Hostage-Taker
16. Klavan: The Hateful Left: Where Incendiary Political Rhetoric Truly Resides in America
17. Instapundit: Those Who Rushed to Blame Palin Harming Civil Debate

Celebs Anti-Palin Rhetoric in Wake of Ariz. Shooting

1. Jane Fonda: Palin holds responsibility, as does violence-provoking rhetoric of the Tea Party
2. Michael Moore: Palin's crosshairs map to blame
3. Patton Oswald Associates Palin with Shootings
4. Josh Groban: Militaristic tone, rhetoric in conjunction with shootings
5. Gwyneth Paltrow, Sophia Bush Related to Arizona Victims
6. Actress Elizabeth Banks Piles on Palin...
7. ...And Roger Ebert...
8. ...And John Legend

[American Patriot]

Speaking from experience Rick?

Personally... I think all gnomes should die. I hate the little sneaky bastards. They pop up all over the place, and cast magic on people and are hateful little creepers.

(Of course, I'm referring to World of Warcraft here and I was murdered thrice last evening my a little Gnome Mage... with whom I was able to get even, several times later. LOL!)

[Ryan Ruck]

Yeah, what happened to all that "caution" that was urged after the Ft. Hood tragedy? Damn hypocrites.

[American Patriot]

Double standard?

Ya THINK, Vector?

LOL

[vector7]

Yeah, what happened to all that "caution" that was urged after the Ft. Hood tragedy? Damn hypocrites.

Pulled these headlines from just page 5-6 of the "Fort Hood Attack" thread:

• Obama: 'Dont' Jump to Conclusions' on Fort Hood Shooting
• Napolitano Warns Against Anti-Muslim Backlash
• Obama Urges Congress To Put Off Fort Hood Probe
• Why Obama Nixed the Ft. Hood Probe
• Obama ‘Reaches Out’ by Naming ‘Devout’ Muslims to more Security Posts

[American Patriot]

Anyone get a take on the weapon he had?

I'm hearing it was a RIFLE and not a handgun. He fired "31 rounds".

Sounds to me like an AR or something with a 30 round mag and one in the chamber.

[American Patriot]

First I heard a glock. NOW I am hearing he had "a rifle with a massive magazine" (whatever the fuck that means)

[American Patriot]

Here goes the FALLOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tucson Massacre: McCarthy Plans to Introduce Gun Legislation


— By Siddhartha Mahanta
| Mon Jan. 10, 2011 8:35 AM PST


Spurred on by Saturday's horrific attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), New York Democrat Rep. Carolyn McCarthy has promised to introduce new gun control legislation in the House, reports Politico.


The extended magazine on the Glock 19 Loughner used was illegal under the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. Gun control advocates hope the tragedy might provoke fresh discussion on the ban, and on the ability to buy weapons that appear designed for mass murder. "He had an additional magazine capability. That’s not what a hunter needs," Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) told Politico. "That’s not what someone needs to defend their home. That’s what you use to hunt people." Preventing people with mental health issues from buying guns could also be a focus of the legislation.


McCarthy and her staff hope to bring a bill to the floor as early as Monday that addresses the high-capacity ammunition clips used by alleged shooter Jared Lee Loughner (read Nick Baumann's exclusive interview with a close friend of Loughner's here). Pennsylvania Democrat Robert Brady also plans to introduce a bill that would make it a crime to use language or symbols that might be interpreted as a threat to any federal official.


For McCarthy, gun violence is deeply personal: her husband was killed in a 1993 shooting on a Long Island commuter train. Since then, she's been a fierce advocate for gun control. "Again, we need to look at how this is going to work, to protect people, certainly citizens, and we have to look at what I can pass," McCarthy told Politico. "I don’t want to give the NRA—excuse the pun—the ammunition to come at me either."

[vector7]

Ya THINK, Vector?

LOL

Yeah, I'm pretty sure.