The Gun - the Second Update to the Giffords Shooting: Guns and Gold?

There is a familiar mantra on the right, the ideology sound byte, "Guns, God and Gold".  The videos of the shooter addresses some rambling, not very literate statements about gold.  Although hardly reliable or definitive, the shooter is not reported to be religious, which leaves out 'God' in understanding this tragedy on the part of the gunman.  God would seem right now, and during the initial tragedy, to be at the side of Congresswoman Gifford.  The number of people injured and killed caused me to wonder about what the shooter used to cause so much harm to so many people.  And I wondered as well about the legality of the gun purchase by this pot smoking possibly mentally ill shooter.  Coincidentally, Giffords herself owned a Glock, the same brand of gun that the shooter used.


Now we have the answer to those two questions:

A 9mm Glock handgun that had what police described as "an extended clip" with 30 bullets was recovered at the scene, The Washington Post reported. Officials told The Associated Press the gun used in the attack was purchased legally. The Post said it was bought Nov. 30 from the Sportsman's Warehouse in Tucson.

The shooter had another magazine that held about 30 bullets and two that held about 15 bullets each, sources told the Post, and he also had a knife.

Some authors have tried to make a connection to the fundraisers by the Tea Party candidate who ran against Giffords where supporters had the opportunity to shoot a fully-loaded M-16 rifle.  I think the notion that this was in any way connected to this tragedy is ludicrous.  There is absolutely no indication that the shooter was in any way a supporter of that candidate.

I do have a problem with this statement however, by that Tea Party candidate under these circumstances:

"Arizona is a state where people are firearms owners — this was just a deranged individual."

Arizona is just a state where this deranged and drug-using individual could apparently legally buy a firearm, and then openly walk up to within 3 to 4 feet of a U.S. Congresswoman, opening fire at point blank range, wounding her and others and killing 6 people.  It is worth noting, again, that two unarmed individuals tackled and restrained the shooter.  Those brave persons are still unidentified.

One of the blogs which we include on our blog roll, Juan Cole's Informed Comment, has the best analysis I've seen so far as to a right wing political connection to this tragedy.  I encourage our readers to read his entire post on the subject:

It is irrelevant that Loughner may (at this point we can only say “may”) have been a liberal years earlier in high school. If so, he changed. And among the concerns that came to dominate him as he moved to the Right was the illegitimacy of the “Second Constitution” (the 14th Amendment, which bestows citizenship on all those born in the US, a provision right-wingers in Arizona are trying to overturn at the state level). Loughner also thought that Federal funding for his own community college was unconstitutional, and he was thrown out for becoming violent over the issue. He obviously shared with the Arizona Right a fascination with firearms, and it is telling that a disturbed young man who had had brushes with the law was able to come by an automatic pistol. He is said to have used marijuana, which would be consistent with a form of anti-government, right-wing Libertarianism. I don’t think we can take too seriously the list of books he said he liked, as a guide to his political thinking. They could just have been randomly pulled off some list of great books on the Web, since there is no coherence to the choices."

I would point out, we have no way of knowing if this guy ever read a single book on his 'favorite books list'.
The individual 'of interest' turned out to be the cab driver who drove the (alleged) shooter to the Safeway location, and he was seen with the (alleged) shooter going into the store to get change for the fare, nothing else.  For that reason I have updated this post and removed the cabbie's photo.  Poor man, he  must be a bit shaken by all of this, through no fault of his own to have been part of this story.

Our prayers continue for those who are hospitalized. Our condolences go to the family and friends of the victims who were killed, including her husband, navy pilot and astronaut Commander Mark Kelly.  Our great admiration goes to those yet to be identified who were the two heroes that tackled the gunman.  An especial prayer and sympathy for Congresswoman Giffords husband who is an astronaut, scheduled to fly another mission this spring.  I will also pray that she will be sufficiently recovered for him to be able to fulfill that mission on behalf of the United States, and for her brother in law who is currently serving on the international space station, which must make his ability to be supportive of his family during this crisis much more difficult.

We can only hope that House Speaker Boehner's cuts to the budgets of members of Congress will not reduce the expenditures on the safety of our members of Congress; it remains to be seen if those cuts will reduce the efficiency of our Congress in other ways.

An additional detail, the 9 year old girl, Christina Taylor Green, who was killed by the shooter, was interested in government after being elected to the student council, was born on 9/11/2001, and had been featured in a book as one of 50 kids born on that fateful day, kids who were hoped would be forces for change in our post-9/11 world.  I hope that her loss to our post 9/11 world as a possible person who might change it will prompt all of us to think harder about violence, and what we can do to reduce it and how we can make it a better place.