No sane person does something like this. His political leanings are irrelevant, regardless of what they are. And I would urge ALL people to refrain from trying to condemn any entire group because of the horrible actions of an insane individual. Respect the victims and their families in this time of tragedy, allow them the dignity of not turning this into some kind of political gotcha. If you can't keep yourself from this, then shame on you.
any word on how this guy was subdued? arizona has/had open carry (someone earlier in this thread said they recently passed concealed carry w/out a permit). i'm surprised he was taken alive.
<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/R7046bo92a4?version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/R7046bo92a4?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></object> Creepy. Giffords mentions the dangerous precedence such things as the crosshairs sets.
If the the bullet went in and out she is probably OK. The brain is pretty amazing in its ability to compensate.
I sort of disagree on this. It's not that when a Palin talks about putting crosshairs on people, she's actually suggesting that people go out and shoot them. But the reality is that there are crazies out there - on both sides. When people they listen to say those things, they are going to interpret it differently. And we know that will happen. To be clear - we have no idea the motivations or political ideology of this guy, so we can't make any judgments now. But if it turns out he's a tea party type, then we know that both Palin and Giffords' Congressional opponent used gun-related rhetoric referencing her. We know she was threatened in the past because of her health care votes. We know her office was attacked based on her health care vote. We know a concealed gun was dropped in an early town hall meeting of hers. Until the last 2 years when the rhetoric ratcheted up, we haven't had a history of violence against Congresspeople in this country. Given all that, it's not hard to infer that crazies are reading tea party rhetoric as a justification to commit violence. When you say things that you know could stir up the crazy in people, then you are partially responsible when those people commit those actions. That seems like common sense to me. That doesn't mean that the tea party attacked her or is directly responsible. But it does mean that their actions helped create an environment that stirs up the emotions in crazy people that lead to things like this. There's a reason people have been saying for the last 2 years that this type of rhetoric is dangerous.
Whoa, calm down cowboy. I'm sorry I went off and didn't read the thread properly. My apologies, I didn't mean to smear like that. Also, that negative rep was definitely not from me. I don't use Internet lingo all too much and I would hope my posting history shows I don't blanket "racist" insult.
In this case, I apologize for the dumbassbarton comment. The rep was actually positive, just the comment was negative...somewhat .
Actually you are both right as per one of the two men who tackled him: Link: http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/08/several-people-shot-at-arizona-store-police-official-says/?hpt=T1
I know it's pointless because da Whopper will not accept any fault from, or place blame on, Republican imagery, but a target is not the same as cross-hairs. A target is an innocuous image (although a dumb one in this context) that is generally regarded as a term and image that you aim for. You don't have cross hairs when you play darts or archery. You don't use cross-hairs for much of anything other than aiming down the barrel of a gun.
