Gunman Assassinates U.S. Congresswoman

[MikeH]

I understand: "criminal element will always be able to get guns."

I don't understand: "so we should make it as easy as possible for them! Those poor working criminals don't have time to waste sourcing hardware!"

why not: "criminal element will always be able to get guns, but it'd be good if we made it AS HARD AS POSSIBLE FOR THEM."

[Aeson]

To actually make it as hard as possible you would need to exterminate humanity. Genocidal maniac

[MOBIUS]

With guns!

[MOBIUS]

Here's an interesting piece on why AZ and the US as a whole is a ****ed up basket case of a country:

Arizona is on the brink

Since my first visit seven years ago, I have watched as Arizona has drowned in a sea of extremism

Max Blumenthal The Guardian, Tuesday 11 January 2011

The social fabric of Arizona seems to be deteriorating as fast as the state's population grows, driving it to the brink of dysfunction. The shooting of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, US district court judge John Roll and several other innocent bystanders by a lone gunman have brought the state's crisis to the fore, prompting Pima County sheriff Clarence Dupnik to declare it "the mecca for prejudice and bigotry".

Since I first travelled to Arizona more than seven years ago to interview rightwingers participating in armed anti-immigrant vigilante patrols along the border, I have watched as it drowned in a sea of extremism, signing away its future in the form of racist ballot measures and budget-busting tax cuts. In this climate, the assassination attempt on Giffords was not terribly surprising.

My experience began in early 2003 at a propane delivery shop in Sierra Vista, a rural town along the US-Mexican border. I met Roger Barnett, a lumbering 60-year-old former deputy sheriff popular with the burgeoning national anti-immigration movement. Barnett boasted that he had personally captured 12,000 migrants traversing his ranch, held them at the point of a rifle, and turned them over to the border patrol.

Arizona had demonstrated leadership in the field of bigotry as early as 1990, when state lawmakers (including John McCain) refused to honour Martin Luther King Jr with a federal holiday, prompting the National Football League to move the Super Bowl from Phoenix to another city. But as migrant trials shifted from newly walled-off border cities to Arizona's desert, the state became a hotbed of anti-immigrant sentiment. Discriminatory bills aimed at Latino immigrants flew through the Republican-dominated legislature, while extremists from around the country poured into the state to join the Minutemen, a far-right vigilante group inspired by Barnett.

Led by lawmakers such as Russell Pearce, a fanatically anti-immigrant senator who has proudly palled around with local neo-Nazis, the Republican-controlled state legislature refuses to stop cutting taxes on businesses and the wealthy. To plug its whopping $4.5bn deficit, Arizona has auctioned off all its state buildings, including the Capitol and state hospital, to the highest bidder.

A bizarre federal programme, Operation Streamline, helps to pump federal money into the local economy: desperate migrants serve as commodities; 75 of them are marched in chains into a federal courtroom in Tucson each day, compelled to plead guilty en masse to entering the country, then transported to a corporate-owned prison in rural Pinal County before being deported on private charter flights. Several prisoners have died in the jail, including one who was apparently refused treatment while writhing in pain with testicular cancer. But incarcerating Mexican migrants has brought 1,500 new jobs to the previously depressed area, making it one of Money Magazine's top employment growth sites. (The programme costs American taxpayers $11m a month.)

When President Obama took office, Arizona's anti-immigrant right fused with extreme elements of the religious right under the Tea Party banner. In August 2009, a young man called Chris Broughton openly carried an AR-15 assault rifle and a handgun to an Obama rally in Phoenix. The night before, Broughton had attended a sermon called "Why I hate Barack Obama" given by the Rev Steven Anderson, a local Tea Party activist. Anderson declared that that night he was going to "pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell".

I was summoned back to Arizona in February 2009 to testify as a prosecution witness in a civil trial against Barnett, who was being sued by a group of migrants for physically attacking them while holding them at gunpoint and threatening to kill them. Judge Roll had certified the trial, an act that brought in hundreds of threats against him and his family from local anti-immigrant fanatics, forcing him to live under 24-hour protective guard. He was a conservative Republican, but he was committed to the rule of law.

I told the jury about how Barnett had bragged to me about taking migrants hostage. In the end, the jurors delivered justice, forcing Barnett to pay his victims $73,000 in damages. Roll politely excused me from his courtroom, I did not see him again until his face appeared in newscasts about his killing during the assassination attempt on Giffords.

Roll spent a significant part of his judicial career in Arizona's climate of violent extremism, and he died in it too. He was an innocent bystander, and not the only victim. Unfortunately, he may not be the last one either.

Could that judge also have been a target after all...?

If Cali wanted proof that the far right is inciting people to violence, this article is dripping with it.

I've been to Tucson, it seemed like a nice peaceful place when I was there...

[Caligastia]

It's funny because it's so true.

Young Crackers

While it's true that school shootings are mostly perpetrated by white kids, black kids are far more likely to be involved in violent crime overall.

[dannubis]

The dude who offed all thos people seemed pretty white to me...

[Caligastia]

Wow, you are incredibly stupid. You ask for comments that incite violence. I give you the comments and the actions that followed them (except in the case of Rush), and you're too stupid to either recognize them or come up with a clever retort. Go back to panda****ers where you all pat eachother on the back about how ignorant you are about climate change.

[sarcasm]I just punched my neighbor in the face because I was so angry at your post. You really should stop inciting violence.[/sarcasm]

No reasonable person would view your examples as incitement to violence, but you're a blind ideologue, so you can't see that.

[Caligastia]

Here's an interesting piece on why AZ and the US as a whole is a ****ed up basket case of a country:



Could that judge also have been a target after all...?

If Cali wanted proof that the far right is inciting people to violence, this article is dripping with it.

I've been to Tucson, it seemed like a nice peaceful place when I was there...

Your article was obviously written from the leftist point of view. The guy seems to equate any support for immigration enforcement with bigotry. He provides some examples of Arizonans who have gone too far, but IMO these stem from the failure of the federal govt to enforce immigration laws and protect the border. No reasonable person should be surprised when extremism pops up here and there in light of the situation.

[MOBIUS]

I think you should read the article again. The only charge of bigotry was directed at the state's refusal to honour Martin Luther King Jr with a federal holiday.

Nice try to twist things, but then again, you seem to think that extremism is reasonable...

[Caligastia]

I think you should read the article again. The only charge of bigotry was directed at the state's refusal to honour Martin Luther King Jr with a federal holiday.

Nice try to twist things, but then again, you seem to think that extremism is reasonable...

Not reasonable, but unsurprising considering the situation.

[Wezil]

Poor Canada

Wow, you found one of our gun nuts. Well done.

[MOBIUS]

Not reasonable, but unsurprising considering the situation.

See what I did there. Unsurprisingly you don't seem to like your own tactics being used against you.

[DaShi]

[sarcasm]I just punched my neighbor in the face because I was so angry at your post. You really should stop inciting violence.[/sarcasm]

No reasonable person would view your examples as incitement to violence, but you're a blind ideologue, so you can't see that.

Every time I think I've identified the dumbest person on poly a new contender rears his head.

That's the same argument as the Jody Foster one, which is a non sequitur. Clearly you don't know what incitement to violence actually is, because the examples I give couldn't be any closer. One person says something to encourage others to act out violently against others either through direct orders or by labeling the other group a threat.

Here are some examples that you primitive mind may understand:

Malcolm X:

"Concerning nonviolence: It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself, when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks. It is legal and lawful to own a shotgun or a rifle. We believe in obeying the law."

"If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country."

"I don't favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully. But I'm also a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are black people."

"The common enemy is the white man."

It's eerie that if you replaced white with liberal and black with conservative, you'd have a Rush rant.

[DaShi]

Wow, you found one of our gun nuts. Well done.

Soon, we'll get the other one.

[Wezil]

Please take them all. They'd probably all fit on one bus. Where would you like us to deliver them?

For a pittance we can throw in a second bus with all our religious nuts.