The shooter appears to be insane. Completely crazy. Psychotic. Nutso.
It doesn’t have to be someone’s fault.
Here’s the kind of man he is:
"A former classmate of Loughner at Pima Community College said he was “obviously very disturbed.”
“He disrupted class frequently with nonsensical outbursts,” said Lynda Sorenson, who took a math class with Loughner last summer at Pima Community College’s Northwest campus.
She doesn’t recall if he ever made any threats or uttered political statements but he was very disruptive, she said. He was asked to leave the pre-algebra class several times and eventually was barred from class, said Sorenson, a Tucson resident."
"He lists among his favorite books “Mein Kampf” and “The Communist Manifesto”. But he also includes a broad variety of other titles, including: “Animal Farm,” "Brave New World,“To Kill a Mockingbird,” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.
In a rambling YouTube message referring to a new currency, Loughner said: “I know who’s listening: Government Officials, and the People. Nearly all the people, who don’t know this accurate information of a new currency, aren’t aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn’t have happen.”"
I saw the part about “mind control” and thought “yet that won’t stop people from saying the guy was a tea party scion.” Thanks though, you beat me to the cite on his apparent unhingedness.
Predicted what? We still don’t know what happened, nor why.
It’s entirely possible that the shooter was someone stirred up by right-wing rhetoric, I’ll grant. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen someone go out, as a long gunman, based on that but it is a theoretical possibility.
Nidal Hasan went out and shot a bunch of people because he didn’t want to be deployed. Should I go and ask, “How many of us predicted this? Has all of this anti-Afghanistan War rhetoric on the part of the Liberal Media finally inspired violence on the home front?”
Clearly a Republican…
People see what they want to see.
When the Ft. Hood shooting happened, I heard a lot of left-wing leaning people flatly insisting that the shooting was in no way motivated by Hasan’s Islamic religion, that he was just “a nutjob” who went on a random killing spree. As if they could read the guy’s mind.
When that census taker was found hanged, somewhere in rural South, I remember hearing and reading people falling all over themselves to say that he was lynched by evil anti-government right-wing militia people. Then it turned out that he had committed suicide.
I wish people would just wait a little while after this stuff happens to find out the real facts, instead of right away blaming it on some political issue.
Is it possible Salinger escapes here? Weren’t both Hinckley and Chapman obsessed with him?
Someone on another site probably isn’t a lawyer. “Substantial” and “imminent” are going to doom any attempt someone might make to say that anti-government speeches on talk radio, whether they extol the Second Amendment as a tripwire for stopping incursions against liberty or not, endangers “another person,” which I’m almost certain would further need to be read as an identifiable, specific person or persons, not “anyone associated with the government is at risk.” Oh, and then there’s the state of mind requirement. Because the great majority if not all of the country would not hear “government sucks and we need to keep our powder dry in case things get worse” as an incitement to shoot someone, right now, Palin would have a whole additional defense based on the nature of the scienter requirement here. “Reckless” is fairly high.
Not that I’m advocating the “right wing activist” theory before all the info on this guy is in (and it does appear to be a mental illness issue, not necessarily political) but, hyperbolically, her opponent did.
That seems to be the case.
But it doesn’t make him immune to influence. I would think it would make him more susceptible to it, but I am not a mental health professional.
That attacks on Democratic politicians would continue to escalate. And whether this is directly related or not, it happened, and thus is worth discussing.
And furthermore, I don’t necessarily think we should be assuming that this attack was apolitical, considering two notable politicians were shot. I think the default assumption should be that it was (even with the understanding that the kid is nuts), and what we should be waiting for is good evidence that it wasn’t, before making that assumption.
Being political doesn’t mean that it’s affiliated with a political party. It’s likely that Miss Giffords was attacked for no greater reason than because she was someplace near to where he lived. As best can be told by his YouTube rants, he was suspicious of all government. If she had been a Republican, he would have shot her still.
It’d be fun to witness the right’s reaction to a Soros sponsored billboard campaign suggesting the ouster, with prejudice, of certain of the Supremes.
Although it’d just be innocent hijinx, I expect some Republicans might get bent a tad out of shape.
The Republicans are the fellow travelers. They have called for second amendment remedies (Sharon Angle), “reloading” (Sarah Palin), blowing up the New York Times (Ann Coulter) and in general have been vilifying people like the murdered Dr. Tiller. It is no wonder that people like the creep that shot Gifford, Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols and right wing death squads all over the world kill their political opponents, be they doctors, politicians or government employees.
When the talking heads on the right like Coulter, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Beck and others dehumanize people, there are going to be radicals willing to take action.
The terror that the right-wingers foment unsurprisingly leads to violence. And then they deny that there is any connection. Although they are more than comfortable connecting 99 percent of the world’s Muslims (who are peaceful and peace promoting) with the violent actions of a few inspired by a few hateful leaders willing to make the world a hateful and dangerous place because that kind of hysteria benefits either or both their sick world-view or their personal ambitions.
I’m tired of apologists of this right wing violence saying it is too soon to conclude it was about hate because we don’t yet know the motives of the lunatic who did it. We can infer the motives from his targets: liberal Americans meeting to discuss politics. This is as logical as connecting the murder of Dr. Tiller to the right wing hysteria we assumed he believed before we caught him and he confirmed it. It is as logical as connecting Eric Rudolph and his bombings and murders with right wing views before we caught him and confirmed it. It is as logical as assuming the Oklahoma City bombers were government hating whack jobs before we identified Timothy McVeigh and confirmed it.
Republicans have too long embraced the rhetoric of paranoid hysteria and violence. It is time for all responsible Republicans to denounce violence as a means to an end.
Republican revolutionary rhetoric is a clear and present danger to our way of life. We do not want to turn into anything like Rome during the last decades of its Republic.
The issue to me is not that he was crazy, the issue is why was such a crazy man allowed to have guns?
The government isn’t allowed to declare people crazy due to O’Connor v. Donaldson. Particularly if a person can operate functionally in daily life, there’s no way to declare him insane.
Because there are plenty of sources beyond a gun shop and background check.
Private sale, black market, stolen, possibly gun show( may vary with local laws), borrowed, pawn shop.
Not sure what that has to do with guns, in Arizona if the courts have declared you mentally ill you can not have guns. What I would expect, but I have very little faith that it would take place, is to see an investigation why this guy was not noticed before as a danger to others and why he had access to guns.
The point here is that unfortunately for many right wingers that want to avoid any responsibility because the guy was clearly a nut, have to explain why it is also the case that many right wing republicans also oppose new laws that would make it harder for people with mental issues to get or posses guns, or also to oppose giving more free access to mental health help or treatments.
*(And I do not blame them for the crime, but for the negligence many do show with their actions against any new controls)
There is still the matter that with a better planned health care system people like him would be easier to spot and kept under surveillance if they can not be removed from society. What I would expect to see is that once the condition of the individual has been confirmed by doctors then a check to see if they have guns in their possession would lead to the individuals to be removed from society.
That I’m aware of, this thread doesn’t have anything to do with Gun Law. The OP said that the guy was a rabid Republican gunning down Democrats because of Sarah Palin. He offered no evidence on that part and what evidence filtered in, instead painted the shooter as a crazy who’d shoot anything with ties to the government regardless of what side of the fence they are on. I never said that the OP was wrong, nor that it was impossible for him to be right. I said simply that he had no reason to say what he was saying yet.
And the same to you. Yes, it’s possible that the guy was declared crazy and due to Republican voting in Arizona he was still able to purchase a gun. As of yet, I have no reason to believe that, though, and I doubt that you have any reason to believe it either. It’s possible that the guns were illegally attained. It’s possible that the man only recently started to short circuit and has never been declared insane. It’s possible that he’s been nutsoid for many a year but that no court is allowed to declare him so due to laws passed by Democrats. Putting down blame when you don’t know what you’re talking about is silly; that’s my only point. It’s perfectly possible that either, both, or neither party is to blame. But you certainly haven’t given me any evidence to vote in one direction or the other.
In Illinois too. My ex-wife is officially disabled due to mental illness. She isn’t allowed to get a gun. While I was living with her, I think I could not legally get one either. Although I never cared or investigated, so I might be wrong on that part.
It depends on how he got them. It’s entirely possible they were not legally obtained. Many mass shootings are done with illegally obtained guns.
It also depends on if he has ever been diagnosed with a mental illness. Random people going ‘wow, what a wacko’ isn’t grounds to remove a right from someone.
Although really, if he was known to be a dangerous violent crazy person, my concern is more why was he allowed to roam the streets at all. A court can, and should, institutionalize mentally ill with violent tendencies.