Awful and then some

About the shootings in Arizona:

Authorities said the dead included U.S. District Judge John M. Roll; Christina Taylor Greene; Giffords aide Gabe Zimmerman, 30; Dorothy Morris, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Scheck, 79. Judge Roll had just stopped by to see his friend Giffords after attending Mass.

One of the victims, 9 year old Christina-Taylor Green, was a member of the student council at her local school and went to the event because of her interest in government. She is the grandaughter of former Philadelphia Phillies manager Dallas Green.

She was born on 9/11 and featured in a book called "Faces of Hope" that chronicled one baby from each state born on the day terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people.

The fact that Christina's life ended in tragedy was especially tragic to those who knew her. "Tragedy seems to have happened again," said the author of the book, Christine Naman. "In the form of this awful event."

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Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik: "When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous ... And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital.... We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry"

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Giffords expressed similar concern about the political atmosphere, even before the shooting. In an interview after her office was vandalized, she referred to the animosity against her by conservatives, including Sarah Palin's decision to list Giffords' seat as one of the top "targets" in the midterm elections.

"For example, we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action," Giffords said in an interview with MSNBC.



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SarahPAC staffer Rebecca Mansour, who has been tweeting in defense of her boss since the tragedy took place, is stating that the crosshairs were never intended to be gun sights.

"We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights," she said in an interview with talk radio host Tammy Bruce Saturday. "It was simply crosshairs like you'd see on maps." Bruce suggested that they could, in fact, be seen as "surveyor's symbols." Mansour added that "it never occurred to us that anybody would consider it violent" and called any attempts to politicize the Arizona tragedy "repulsive."

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There is so much to say and think about these facts and quotes, but words fail me.

If I'm going fling some blame of my own, I would aim at the contentious, uncivil, hatefilled political landscape that reduces every personal ideology into left or right, us and them; the inflammatory media frenzy; the increasing ignorance of the average citizen; the erosion of social networks and services that might have better supported or detected a deranged and unstable individual; and a system that makes it so easy for a deranged and unstable individual to acquire a semiautomatic weapon.

As I drove past signs for the gun show at the county fair grounds today, to take my pneumonia riddled daughter to the emergency health clinic, I thought about the victims and their families, and I wondered which unstable nutjob was looking at guns there today.

Three years ago, a few miles down the road, 27 year old and presumably unstable Steven Kazmierczak brought a Remington 870 shotgun and three handguns - a 9mm Glock, a 9mm Sig Sauer, and a .380 Hi-Point into a NIU lecture hall and shot 18 students, 5 fatally, before taking his own life. Senseless and unfathomable. And very, very close to home.

And it just keeps happening. All over the world. Switzerland, France, Spain, Germany, Scotland, the United States of America. Countries with and without gun bans. Unstable, angry, disassociated, disconnected men and modern weapons just keep ripping lives and towns apart.

I don't have answers, just questions and concerns. But I'm guessing less governement intervention or control is not going to decrease the frequency with which these tragedies keep occurring.

No I don't have any answers, just more questions, and more sorrow.