This afternoon outside a Safeway supermarket in the Catalina foothills of northwest Tucson, a 22-year-old man shot U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in the head at close range. The gunman then fired a dozen more rounds into the crowd that gathered at the public appearance, killing six—among them a U.S. district judge, a pastor, a nine-year-old girl and Giffords' director of community outreach.
Two decades ago I lived three short miles from this shopping center, nestled in the quiet Catalina Mountain foothills that frame the city's northern boundary. Few places in this country could draw less fear in the minds of its citizenry than the affluent Tucson foothills. Which makes today's rampage all the more senseless. Families of the killed and wounded are left grieving in the aftermath of this horrific act. Yet the rest of the nation is left grasping.
Since Rep. Giffords had been at the forefront of the past year's health care bill backlash, the initial response suggested that it may be a consequence of the escalating tone of political rhetoric over the new legislation. Giffords and other Democratic congressmen reported 42 threats and acts of violence in the three months following President Obama's ratification of the Health Care Overhaul in December 2009. Her office doors and windows were smashed last March, possibly an act fueled by the verbal and online attacks waged by right wing leaders. Much of the toxic rhetoric used gun metaphors and imagery to persuade "patriotic Americans" to take extreme yet necessary measures to let those responsible for the health care bill's passage know the err of their ways.
The heightened and hateful shots seemed to resonate the strongest with those on the fringe. We all remember the woman at John McCain's 2008 campaign stop who was convinced Obama was an Arab and therefore cannot be trusted. Whether scaring the gullible with talk of "death panels" or posting the home addresses of congressmen (as a Tea Party member had done) and urging the public to "pay them a visit", the freak speak left those on the left begging for a halt to the inciteful tone. In response to Sarah Palin's mystifying use of cross hairs to identify the congressional districts under attack, Giffords herself said in a March interview, "(Palin) has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district and when people do that, they’ve gotta realize there are consequences to that action."
Aware of the negative implications of any connection, the GOP acted quickly and launched another attack—this time against the sanity of the shooter. Within hours conservatives were painting a picture of a young man with a troubled past, struggling with mental illness and a history of homicidal ideation, schizophrenia and other possible psychoses. Even as the Pima County sheriff was suggesting the gunman may not have acted alone, Fox News was quoting a former high-school student who portrayed him as a "pot-smoking loner." If the gunman were merely gullible, easily swayed or mildly imbalanced, the blood would be on their hands for putting the ideas into his head. Yet if he has a proven history of psychotic or mentally ill behavior as they contend, or if he has a criminal past which kept him from joining the Army two years ago, they can create the "random act of a deranged individual" story.
The problem with this assertion is that the perpetrator legally purchased his murder weapon at the Sportsman's Warehouse in Tucson on November 30. So if the right-wing portrayal is to be believed, how on earth was this guy able to buy a handgun? In disassociating the killer from their potentially lethal outbursts, conservatives may be setting up an argument for stricter gun control measures in the state that's the poster child for GOP extremism. That's the danger in painting a prettier picture: you may paint yourself into a corner.
It always takes a traffic fatality for an intersection to get that much-needed traffic light. In a similar sense, it may take the shooting of a legislator, the killing of nine-year-old girl and a half dozen adult bystanders, and the injury of another dozen people to instill some much-needed restraint in the mouths and minds of those on Capitol Hill.
Then again, maybe a dose of self-preservation is all they need. After all, who knows when the laser sight will be on their foreheads.
