I'm sure most of you have heard about this by now. At a meet n' greet event in front of a grocery store in Tucson, congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head by a deranged asshole using a Glock 9mm. All in all, 6 people were killed (including a federal judge) and 13 others were wounded. Giffords is said to be in critical condition after neurosurgery, but responding to doctors' commands, which is a great sign that she may be able to lead a semi-normal life, even after surviving a gunshot through the brain.

The suspect is Jared Loughner, 22, of Tucson. Prior to the event, Loughner had posted some unintelligible gibberish about the government controlling people through grammar (all while using really horrible grammar himself), talked about our currency not being backed by gold and silver (great; makes me look good. Thanks), and was apparently pissed off that he was handed a Bible while joining the military, being that he was an outspoken Atheist.

So, right off the bat, he and I share some common bonds. He likes guns enough to own one, he doesn't like our current currency system, he thinks people are stupid and possess bad grammar, and he's an Atheist.

But that's the end of our similarities. I rant a lot about killing this guy and that guy, but that's either my really dark flavor of humor at play, or I'm just venting about my latest conspiracy. Loughner is deranged enough to think that killing any random agent of the government he hates would make any sort of difference.

Now, I consider my life to be pretty good. His probably was too, if he could avoid crying about stuff he can't control long enough to appreciate it. Whether or not he was planning to kill himself after getting his fill of murder yesterday is still up to speculation, but he apparently knew that his life was effectively ending as he knew it. Which it is, since he'll no doubt spend the rest of his life in prison, where the only currency he'll have to worry about is cigarettes, and he'll just have to be extra mindful about his prison tattoo artist misspelling "PROPERTY OF CLYDE" on his ass.

He was subdued during his rampage by two people, one of them being a 74 year old retired colonel, whom he had shot in the head seconds before. The colonel somehow wasn't gravely wounded by the injury, and almost immediately got back up and helped pin Loughner down until cops got to him.

And you figure, we spend all of this fucking money on security detail, so where the hell were they? Coffee break? How is it that this guy is able to shoot 19 people before two private citizens stepped in to take his whiny ass down? I'm usually not for stifling police presence, but you mean to tell me that not one of them was within a few feet to step in and take this fucker out before he could kill that 9 year old? The colonel himself said he shot Giffords first, so if a cop or some sort of armed security detail were, it should have ended there.

So, something is clearly wrong here.

Now, we'll have to deal with the consequences of this guy's actions. Calls for more gun control and more restricted access to our public officials will be hot topics now. People will also be asked to be on the look out for "lone wolves", and judging by my rhetoric here, I probably fit that description pretty good (though I don't consider myself to be a truly violent menace; only when I am directly threatened). I am critical of the US government, even more critical of the US citizenry, I like guns, and I don't fear God. I'd say I fit the general description pretty well.

Clearly, 2011 is off to a wonderful start. Thanks, asshole.

Get well soon, Gabby, and my thoughts are with the victims and their families.

Yeah, the guy seems very nutty. Dunno what exactly he was trying to accomplish either. If anything this'd make people MORE sympathetic to Giffords' polotics.

You're right about cops, though. I suppose she thought she was safe and didn't have them around. That'll probably change in the future.

I was really upset when I found this out the other night. I'd heard theories that suggested the gunman was mentally ill or even politically motivated, but I'm less concerned with motivations and more concerned with the fact that several people were killed and injured by this clown.

I work down the street from Safeway. Classi and I go to that plaza sometimes since there's an Stone Cold Creamery there, and a bank. There's also a small charter school that I graduated from that's right next to it too. It feels so weird that something like this happened so close to home. Violent crime has been on the rise here lately... Maybe I have to get myself some mace or a gun. It's ironic, Giffords advocated less gun control. She protected his freedom, and he used it against her.

Dad and I kept talking about it, and I studied this Jared guy for a bit. He complained about literacy rates. Last time I've checked, literacy rates in America is 97%, one of the highest in the world. He seemed to be an avid book fan, a pseudo-intellectual.

Have any of you read 1984? In the book, the government controlled people through their language. "Currency" became useless and is only used by people who aren't part of Big Brother. There's so many similarities to 1984 and his motives, it's really not hard to see. He loved books, but didn't list 1984 as his favorites, just Animal Farm, which is by the same author, George Orwell.

My guess is that he lived a fantasy fueled by this book. This 22 year old kid wasn't driven politically (except for in his head), making up a problem that wasn't real in the first place.

It says a lot about America's mental health among it's youth, and how families are beginning to become isolated towards their members.

I have to point out that Ms Giffords last received an NRA rating of D+, and a Gun Owners of America rating of D. Her pro-gun stance that is currently being circulated comes from her opposition to the blatantly illegal D.C. gun ban that was struck down with the famous "Heller decision" reached by the Supreme Court back in 2008.

Otherwise, she was in favor of limiting gun rights, including extended magazines and even auto-loaders like the one used in the attack. She has a voting record of going with the Democratic Party 90% of the time, which is famously anti-gun.

I think the media is either misreporting her stance by not researching the facts, or they're purposely misreporting this info in order to turn it around as a "see what she got for her pro-gun beliefs?!" kind of argument.

I do not wish to vilify her in any way, but to correct some misinformation that's being circulated.

If this Loughner guy was really a 2nd Amendment type of person, he would have known what kind of repercussions his vicious attack would have. All he's done is hurt America more than he's likely aware.


Its really trippy that this happened so close to you guys. I can't imagine how chaotic your area must be right now. Gotta be a circus.

I too have read about Loughner and watched some of his YouTube videos. One of them depicts him burning an American flag in the desert, and the other was a nonsensical text vid about "conscious dreaming" and creating a "3rd currency". The guy doesn't know up from down.

He also listed "Mein Kampf" by Adolf Hitler and "The Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx as some of his favorite books. Who knows what the hell was going through this maniac's head.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/11/arizona.funeral.westboro/

Saint Elizabeth is the Catholic church down the road. I *might* go if the family gives permission.

Those fucking monsters. Using a tragedy like this to whore out themselves for more attention.

I am completely serious when I say I wish someone would gun them down instead of innocent 9 year olds and elected officials.

Man, those guys are such jackasses. I can't believe they're still pulling this crap.

Shooting them would too merciful, Rich. I'd rather strap on a flamethrower and give them a little preview of what's waiting for them.

I am not that surprised by their willingness to pull this kind of crap on others.

I wouldn't wish death on them, but that doesn't mean I don't find them despicable examples of the worst of human nature.

Well, as I knew it would the minute the shooter was revealed to be a middle class white guy, the crooks in D.C. already have gun control "solutions" lined up.

The first comes from long-time gun control maven and old man who's just in it for the money at this point, New Jersey Senator Lautenburg, who is basically proposing a reinstatement of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which sunsetted in 2004. Aside from the ban being pretty much ineffective against gun violence in those ten years, it was extremely unpopular. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh cited it as one of his main motives. The law was so unpopular before the OK bombing that Republicans swept into Congress, using the hated law as a tool in their campaigns.

I'll point to the Middle East, where illegally produced full-auto AK-47s are common place. Despite having these things, the main modus operandi of the terrorists is IEDs ("roadside bombs"). You think banning AKs would help over there at all?

All you're going to do is amp up the game of potential murderers here, just as what happened in Oklahoma in 1995. its still not that hard to fill a U-Haul truck with just the right ingredients for a big ass bomb.

The second proposal comes from Representative Peter King of New York, who wants it to be illegal for any guns to be within 1,000 of an elected official.

Wow, that's some serious wisdom. How you gonna know that someone's packing heat at one of these rallies? Search every vistor? Who's gonna do that?

You mean the FUCKING SECURITY that should have been at Giffords's Congress on the Corner event? THAT security? Oh. Good idea.

Wouldn't this law effectively ban all firearms within city limits? What if the mayor shops at Wal-Mart at the same time I'm legally carrying concealed (which has actually happened to me)? Am I committing a federal offense? This law would directly come into conflict with the Heller decision of 2008, and would only waste the Supreme Court's time.

How about we ban all politicians of being within 1,000 feet of a legally obtained and carried gun? How do you like that proposal? Sit in your fucking office in the middle of nowhere and I'll call you occasionally when you fuck up or get caught with a hooker.

These two fucks are forgetting that there's already a law on the books that failed Ms Giffords and all of the victims that day. Y'know, the one about MURDER, and how its illegal. Yeah, that's an actual law, remember? How'd that work out for them again? You think a stupid law about being armed near a congressman or woman is going to stop a dude like Loughner?

One thing that should be worked on is our psychiatric care in this country, which is the real root of evil in this case. The gun was a tool. Loughner was the real agent of chaos, so let's grow up and face that reality.

But the bottom line is that politicians are feeling the heat with this shooting. They're getting the hint that they're going too far in all the wrong places, and not doing anything of true value. With a major debate on our debt ceiling coming within the next two months, their attention is best used on important matters with less selfish implications.

Loughner, though, appears to have little political stake in this. He was simply a nut job who was fixated on someone who happened to be a political figure. Its just going to boil down to that.

In the end, though, Loughner will be dismissed as a mental defective, a fluke who legally bought a gun and used it. Any new gun control proposals will likely be defeated or locked in limbo in the new Congress, and we'll teeter ever so much more closely to economic disaster due to them passing knee jerk laws and easy, feel good measures instead of doing anything worthwhile.

I feel very bad for Gabby Giffords, her family, and all of the victims involved, and even Loughner's parents (who didn't likely raise a sociopath on purpose), but fuck those assholes on Capitol Hill for putting themselves and their personal agendas ahead of We The People. How selfish and cowardly to use such a tragedy for their own devices.

"When the government fears The People, there is liberty. When The People fear the government, there is tyranny." ~Thomas Jefferson

Let them feel fear and shame, if anything. It builds character, so they tell me.

I find this article to be both irresponsible, and perhaps even illegal in that it completely invades an innocent couple's privacy for the sake of sensationalism.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110111/ap_on_...gresswoman_shot

Do we really need to know how much his mom makes an hour or how much their house is worth? Am I supposed to feel some sort of rage towards the parents? This kind of reporting is vile and sick, but Yahoo will justify it under the premise of journalistic integrity.

Imagine what it must be like to them. Their lives will never be the same, just as the parents of the Columbine shooters or any other mass murderers. Just because their kids turned out crazy as fuck doesn't mean we have the right to vilify the parents. If anything, they deserve support from the community. They won't get it, naturally, but that's what they deserve.

They're probably like my parents. Normal people who are just trying to get by, but can't always seem to find a way to connect with their own kids. What are they supposed to do, force their kid to be "normal"? He's an adult, and aside from a few quirks and some petty vandalism, he seemed to show few signs of the major internal strike he was dealing with.

Where do you draw the line? Were they supposed to spy on him? Invade his privacy? Are all parents supposed to do that? I know I wouldn't appreciate that as a son, and I wouldn't want to do it as a father, either.

I think the grim reality is that Flash's earlier diagnosis is correct. The Loughners are the victims of the very American trend of families mentally drifting away form one another, even as they're forced to be closer locally due to economic hardship. There's probably a lot of Jared Loughners out there and they just don't know it yet. They've all retreated inward or into cyberspace at the expense of any meaningful relationships in the real world, least of all with their families.

But, however much I object to this, its still not illegal, or even immoral.

Thus, Loughner is a reflection of our own backwards society. If you blame the parents, you must blame everyone else, since this is not an uncommon situation.


Well...At least the Hills Have Eyes Church was banned from protesting the funeral, at least where anyone can see 'em. Who knows? Maybe the cops will be too busy with security at the actual funeral to respond to a massive beating administered to these monsters, well outside of shouting range.

It's good that church was banned fron the funeral. Seriously, WTF is up with them? I don't think Jesus would protest many funerals myself.

Yeah, I was flabbergasted by the article. I, for one, find it immoral to post such details about people on the net in this context. Maybe not illegal, as such info may not be private, but certainly immoral to post.