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[Norondor]

I'm just going to ignore the "Let's get angrier" people.

When people are calling for the assassination of the opposing party's candidates as a way to plunge the free world into a new dark age, you oughta stay calm for sure

but when they start shooting nine-year-olds, that's when it's time for you to really get calm

[Mongrel]

I don't need to get irrationally angry, there are plenty of people on the internet who'll do it for me for free.

It's the open-source model of anger.

[Bal]

I'm pretty sure this is the time for actual, rational anger because someone killed six people and tried to kill a sitting Congresswoman. So go fuck yourself, I get to be angry about this and I don't have to feel bad about it.

[Royal☭]

If condemning violent rhetoric is wrong, I don't want to be right.

[Mongrel]

"It was probably not the best idea to run toward the gunshots," he told the Arizona Republic. "But people needed help."

This is one of the raddest things anybody has ever said.

The Congressional Gold medal would probably be appropriate.

[Thad]

Have been away from civilization for a few days; just heard this on the radio on my way out of town.  Jesus Christ.

Will post more later, but...holy fuck this state has become just an awful place.

Brewer gives State of the State tonight.  Was on radio weaseling about how we need to blame the shooter and nobody else.  I agree to a point, but this is the end result of a toxic environment she has helped to create.

[Thad]

He is going to be burned at the fucking stake

Only way he dies of natural causes is an insanity plea.

I still oppose the death penalty on principle -- because I'm not one of those guys who changes his moral convictions because he's angry or scared -- but I won't shed any tears when they stick the needle in him.

Public defender's got his work cut out for him.

Good story about Daniel Hernandez, an intern for only five days who may have helped saved Giffords' life.

No "maybe" about it.  Thank God he was there.

I've noticed a lot of people have been talking about gun control. The people on the right have been saying that, you know, if there had been somebody else there who had a gun maybe they could've saved a few lives. But, obviously, there wasn't.

In fact, the only person there who had a legally acquired gun was the madman who was firing randomly into a crowd.

Haven't heard much discussion yet of our recent "you can carry a concealed handgun wherever the fuck you want" law and its role in this -- brief mention on NPR as one of the Arizona laws that has caused controversy in the past year.

[Thad]

Both sides need to chill out with the blaming.  Partially because the guy clearly has no political affiliation other than "nutcase", and mostly because that sort of bullshit is what got us here in the first place.

I don't see a lot of liberals ranting about the gold standard.  Or, you know, shooting Democrats.

I'm not going to blame the Fox News entertainers for this situation, but I'm not going to completely absolve them either.  They literally put a target on this woman -- and, as you acknowledge, that's pretty fucking irresponsible.

They've got the right to say whatever the fuck they want -- this is America, and I'm reluctant to say that even the crosshairs graphic qualifies as threat speech -- but words affect people.  And as I believe Shinra was trying to say, this is a lot more of a straight-line connection than "Taxi Driver made Hinckley shoot Reagan."

My first thought on hearing about it was that it was about her stance on immigration.  Because that is straight-up the nastiest, most toxic issue in the state right now.  (She's also one of the people Olbermann got in trouble for contributing to IIRC.)

[Disposable Ninja]

I keep trying to split this but I can't come up with a title less offensive than "A judge, a priest and a little girl walk into a grocery store..."

Well, you could hunt down posts regarding the suicide plane crash on that Austin IRS building from just barely under a year ago, and split/merge them into a general Homegrown Terrorism thread.

[Pacobird]

I am totally 100% willing to disregard any tentative argument that political rhetoric drove this kid to commit this atrocity, because the overwhelming wall of evidence here says Textbook Schizophrenia and imo to say "X Outside Influence Made Y Schizophrenic Commit Violence" is to completely misunderstand schizophrenia.

So yeah, I don't consider this to be a political issue, unless you consider

1) the extreme stigma/"under-the-rug"ism with which the mentally ill are treated in a country where a man showing clear signs of schizophrenia can circle the drain for years in front of family, friends, and teachers and nobody does anything

2) the ease with which an individual can acquire guns, wherein such an individual can buy a gun via an instant background check and while we all may cluck our tongues about it there isn't any legal reason why he shouldn't have been able to

3) the vicious tone of our cutural dialogue, which most people are capable of taking with a grain of salt but those with actual mental illness are apt to see as a green light for a Reckoning (see #1)

to be political issues!  But who thinks that?

[Mongrel]

Yeah, Starr looked at this kid's material for all of two seconds before bluntly stating he's textbook schizophrenic. Pretty much what you just said.

I'm afraid though that Mental Issues will probably not see an improvement for two reasons:

1 - The modern hands-off approach is rooted in the dismantling of most formal institutions for the insane. This was done with the noble intent of ending a model that was basically life imprisonment for people regarded as sub-human (with conditions of incarceration to match). As a result, it is very difficult to institutionalize someone without their consent (not that I'm saying this is inappropriate). In many places, the laws would have to be significantly changed to once again allow a useful level of involuntary commitment, but I doubt this will happen due to the bogeyman of such laws being abused to lock up undesirables (be it by family or the state).

2 - By dismantling the old structure of asylums etc., Governments essentially eliminated an entire secondary prison system. On paper, it looks like this was an incredible cost savings, so governments are loath to spend that money again. Of course, thirty years of dumping the mentally ill on the regular prison system, their families, or the community at large have proved the costs were simply transferred elsewhere (and increased), but we're not yet at the point where governments really "get it" and will spend money to save money.

[A²]

When I was in Texas, the school district tried to have me thrown in jail, rather than let me ride on the short bus to avoid the problems with crowds I was having.

[Mongrel]

[Bal]

WBC makes their usual insane response to every form of stimuli

[Thad]

So yeah, I don't consider this to be a political issue, unless you consider the ways in which it is.

I'm being glib but I agree with your points, in general.  Though I don't really consider myself qualified to make any damn clinical diagnoses of the kid.

That said, I think the media have a responsibility not to stoke the crazy fires.  Using the Taxi Driver analogy again, nobody involved in making the movie could have reasonably assumed that a crazy person might see it and decide to shoot the President.  On the other hand, anybody could have reasonably assumed that a crazy person might see a picture with a crosshair on it and decide to shoot the person it was trained on.

But I see Brent's point (I think) -- we need to draw a distinction here between liberal versus conservative and reasonable debate versus fearmongering and hate.  I'm not a better person than Sarah Palin because I'm a liberal, I'm a better person than Sarah Palin because I don't put fucking crosshairs on people I disagree with politically.  (Though I admit I'm sorely tempted after reading the WBC flyer.)

Bill Buckley and George Will, to the best of my knowledge, never dealt in the kind of destructive rhetoric that the likes of Beck and Palin do.  And I just heard a beautiful speech from the Speaker of the Arizona House.  There are plenty of reasonable conservatives out there.

But I DO think people need to focus on the kind of shit that Beck and Palin say and put some pressure on them to knock it the hell off.

[Büge]

That said, I think the media have a responsibility not to stoke the crazy fires.  Using the Taxi Driver analogy again, nobody involved in making the movie could have reasonably assumed that a crazy person might see it and decide to shoot the President.  On the other hand, anybody could have reasonably assumed that a crazy person might see a picture with a crosshair on it and decide to shoot the person it was trained on.

[TA]

Bah, it's just marking his head as a principal point in a surveyor's map.

[McDohl]

Hey, Thad.  Seeing as, you know, the congresswoman is physically incapable of carrying out the duties of her office, what happens?  Does Jan Brewer appoint someone to go in her place?  Is there going to be a special election in the district?  Will we just have to wait and see if she recovers to the point where she can execute her duties?  Or does the seat just remain vacant until 2012?  I figure either the US constitution or the state constitution has a contingency for such a thing.

[Brentai]

I'm a better person than Sarah Palin because I don't put fucking crosshairs on people I disagree with politically.  (Though I admit I'm sorely tempted after reading the WBC flyer.)

You do realize they damned themselves irrevocably by any standard in doing that, right?

I mean, yeah, the deadly sin of Wrath is an obvious one for sane people, but for them it's the deadly sin of Idolatry.  They just praised, in the highest terms, a man who pointedly and repeatedly denounced God.

It's worth keeping them alive just to see if they ever figure that out, and count how many bricks are shat.  They probably won't though, so

I don't really care, in fact I wish them well,
'Cause I'll be laughing my head off when they're burning in Hell.

[Bal]

The WBC guys are so completely offensive to basically every single person on Earth that I sometimes wonder if it isn't some kind of Andy Kaufman sleeper gag that's gone terribly off the rails.