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Some of you might have heard this news:

In Tuscon, Arizona, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D-AZ-08) was holding a "Congress on Your Corner" town hall meeting, when she came to be among 18 people shot by a gunman who opened fire on the crowd. Six people died; Giffords was (as I last heard) in critical condition at the hospital (though she is apparently lucid enough to recognize her husband). Among the dead are a federal judge, a pastor, one of Giffords's aides, and a 9-year-old girl.

The shooter seems to have been a loner, but there may be co-conspirators, and the investigation is of course ongoing. It is unclear whether the violence was politically motivated, but it is notable that Giffords has been the target of threats and vandalism before, and the judge, John Roll, who had something to do with a case involving immigrants, had also previously received death threats.

My take on this? Well, it's good to hear that the congresswoman is alive, but from what I've read on Swing State Project's thread on this, she isn't out of the woods yet, with a severe brain injury--apparently the bullet went through her skull and back out. People seem to be talking about the potential for very problematic and possibly deadly swelling, though I can't comment much since I don't know my anatomy.

That said, I'm really not very happy about some of the possible factors that encouraged this shooting: People have pointed out various instances of (mostly right-wing) politicians and commentators speaking of "second amendment remedies", putting crosshairs on a map of congressional districts with incumbents "targeted" for (electoral, not combat) defeat, and even one of the campaign events held by her 2010 election opponent. I'd say, no matter what your political leanings, or what your take on the gun control/gun rights issue, there is a certain standard of Dude, Not Funny.

And the most heartbreaking part of this, though, is that 9-year-old. From what I've read, she was invited to the event by a friend, because she just got elected to the student council and was interested in civics. And on top of that, she was born on 9/11/2001.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 9th January 2011 09:26

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

I heard about this yesterday. As an American who is actually interested in hearing about politics, I am saddened. So many people are apathetic towards the state of our country. These people who wanted to help out, or at the least, be informed, were killed, injured, or scarred for life.

I had read Giffords was moving and conscious before the emergency helicopter got to her. I hope that her and the others who are injured make it out ok.

The shooting may have been fueled by political anger, but to be honest, I don't even know what the real issue is. I don't think anyone will have an idea until they figure out the shooter's motivations. Planned mass shootings are not new, though, and that is the worst reality of all.

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I say what I wanna say, I play how I wanna play.

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey)

I'd say, no matter what your political leanings, or what your take on the gun control/gun rights issue, there is a certain standard of Dude, Not Funny.

I do agree with the general sentiment but I think it's very important to discuss what those exact standards may be in cases such as this just so we don't lose sight of the core issues/considerations behind them:

I actually do believe that the potential for rebellion against a corrupt government is a key reason why second ammendment rights are needed in the U.S. considering the history of the nation's founding and the overall tonality of the Declaration of Independence, which esssentially states that such drastic action could be a part of our civic duty, albet only in equally long lived cases of equally extreme cases of neglect, opression and tyranny. This is particularly so since I believe the rights of the people are only as strong as their ability to defend them in such a scenario. As such it's particularly hard to say whether or not the means may or may not be justified without knowing the other side of the story and the motivations behind the act, albeit my most reasonable guess would be at this point probably not.

I noted "Obamacare" was mentioned as in the other thread and I must admit the prospect of congress forcing us to buy into privatized anything rather scares me, since it gives them near unlimited power under Section 8's clause of being able to tax and regulate deliberate on anything regarding "interstate commerce," which they're now forcing us to engage in for the very first time. However, I hear that some states are taking that all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend their tenth ammendment rights. So even if that was the motive, snce the issue hasn't been deliberated upon yet to my knowledge, there's still a reasonable chance that due process could succeed in a far more civil manner, especially since that part of the law won't go into effect until 2014 to my knowledge. More importantly it'd only really be the seed that could start such abuses, which doesn't necessarily justify a shooting in and of itself if such power is never abused.

Also whatever the cause, there's just simply no god foresaken reason to involve harmless innocents such as a powerless and weak little nine year old girl. I can only hope that these people will rethink the gravity of what they've done because of it, since at this point it seems like the only potential for any sort of good could possibly come of such a tradgedy.

This post has been edited by Tonepoet on 9th January 2011 16:54

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Role reversal at its finest.

It's a disturbing time to be an American...

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"If art doesn't risk upsetting expectations and challenging its audience, it can only stagnate."

Tonepoet: I agree that a panic button ought to exist. However, it ought not be used except in circumstances extreme enough to warrant it--and the sucky part is that there exist rabble-rousers who will try to encourage people to use it willy-nilly, in order to indirectly take political gain.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Tonepoet @ 9th January 2011 09:40)

I actually do believe that the potential for rebellion against a corrupt government is a key reason why second ammendment rights are needed in the U.S. considering the history of the nation's founding and the overall tonality of the Declaration of Independence, which esssentially states that such drastic action could be a part of our civic duty, albet only in equally long lived cases of equally extreme cases of neglect, opression and tyranny. This is particularly so since I believe the rights of the people are only as strong as their ability to defend them in such a scenario. As such it's particularly hard to say whether or not the means may or may not be justified without knowing the other side of the story and the motivations behind the act, albeit my most reasonable guess would be at this point probably not.

This has always been the weakest and most naive argument in favor of the 2nd amendment. The idea that we would be able to hold our own against the U.S. military should it turn on us is laughable and childish.

Quote (Tonepoet @ 9th January 2011 09:40)

More importantly it'd only really be the seed that could start such abuses, which doesn't necessarily justify a shooting in and of itself if such power is never abused.

NOTHING justifies this act, 'necessarily' or otherwise. This was completely and entirely without merit. I don't care what you're political views say, there is no act capable by anyone anywhere that makes indiscriminately shooting unarmed civilians okay.

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Arts

Farts

Twarts

Yeah, if you are claiming to be defending your own liberties in a desperate situation, then opening fire on a congressperson's event, killing a federal judge, killing random civilians, and (attempting to) killing a congressperson is not going to get you anywhere.

If these people have half a brain, they'd realize that it would more strategically effective to target military bases, and that targetting unarmed civilians is just going to cause a gigantic backlash against them.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Tonepoet @ 9th January 2011 17:40)

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey)

I'd say, no matter what your political leanings, or what your take on the gun control/gun rights issue, there is a certain standard of Dude, Not Funny.

...

I actually do believe that the potential for rebellion against a corrupt government is a key reason why second ammendment rights are needed in the U.S. considering the history of the nation's founding and the overall tonality of the Declaration of Independence, which esssentially states that such drastic action could be a part of our civic duty, albet only in equally long lived cases of equally extreme cases of neglect, opression and tyranny.

...

Also whatever the cause, there's just simply no god foresaken reason to involve harmless innocents such as a powerless and weak little nine year old girl. I can only hope that these people will rethink the gravity of what they've done because of it, since at this point it seems like the only potential for any sort of good could possibly come of such a tradgedy.

Unfortunately the shooting brings up all these questions. I think it's good to discuss. When I read your post I just don't understand the logic here. I could go into the many reasons why encouraging an armed militia is unnecessary (very unnecessary) and dangerous. I don't understand why it would be necessary to rebel against a stripped-down, devolved, heavily divided federal government for political reasons when power and corruption is invested in special interests and private individuals.

However the main reason against it is relevant here: indiscriminate and barbaric killings like this are just always going to happen. In contrast, last year a fanatical British Muslim woman was convinced into killing an MP because he voted for the Iraq war. She stabbed him with a knife and he survived. If she had a gun and was part of a nationwide anti-government militia who convincingly saw the government as corrupt in its invasion of Iraq, she probably would've killed him and others. Under your criteria this is completely acceptable because the government needs to be stopped in its oppression of rights, its perceived tyranny against Muslims and its neglect of their views. It's basically a level of barbarism on a wide scale that I thought we'd be able to phase out relatively successfully in the last two centuries.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

Quote (Narratorway @ 9th January 2011 14:01)

...there is no act capable by anyone anywhere that makes indiscriminately shooting unarmed civilians okay.

Number one with a bullet. I can think of a few groups (Palestine, Northern Ireland come to mind off the top of my head) whose causes I would be sympathetic to, if they did not do such horrible, monstrous things. Sorry, but killing civilians is NEVER okay, it doesn't matter how 'righteous' your cause is, to harm the innocent is courting ruin in my eyes, and I can think of nobody more deserving of ruin in such a case.

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"If art doesn't risk upsetting expectations and challenging its audience, it can only stagnate."

Quote (trismegistus @ 9th January 2011 13:41)

It's a disturbing time to be an American...

There have been worse times... but this is a not-so-good one. Why exactly did this guy do it?

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Praise Be To Helix!

It's not so much that I would justify shooting civilian so much as sometimes it's difficult to diferentiate between a civilian and an enemy. Without knowing any of the pertinent details of the case, I wouldn't know if anybody had the mind to take up a role of vigilantism which could make them targets. I had none of the pertinent details of the case to make that call on the adult's role in the case, so I tried to skirt around it entirely until I had more of the pertinent details of the case, such as the gunman's intents and what events happened during the crime in progress. It seems that there actually were heroes who did try to stop him. However you don't bring an extended clip to your semiautomatic pistol if you only have one or two unarmed targets. "One shot, one kill" is the assassin's creed if I'm not mistaken, right? What a bastard! I'm glad they got the suspect so quickly, at the very least. He made his first appearance in court

Additionally I'm not sure about you guys but my opinion is that government officials with ongoing roles of leadership aren't necessarily civilians. While it seems improbable that killing a federal judge and a congresswoman would have any major impact, what did I know? Not the exact motivations of the assailent, to say the least. I still don't as a matter of fact but I have a bit more of a clue now that I know there were some unsent threatening letters meant for Glifford found in his home that were rather suggestive, albeit only a few key phrases were released by the police. All I can derive from it is that he had his assassination planned in advanced and that he "Disagreed with Glifford's politics." which is more or less obvious but at the very least implies it couldn't have been anything important.

Also no offence intended guys but some of the strategic assessments made in this thread sound a little dubious to me.

Quote (Narratorway)

The idea that we would be able to hold our own against the U.S. military should it turn on us is laughable and childish.

Perhaps it may seem that way at first but in actuality, no it isn't. To summarize the sentiment civilians outnumber the armed forces by around the magnitude of 150-1 and naturally outproduce the military by sole virtue of funding it off of but a fraction of their income in taxes, by almost eight times iassuming an income tax rate of averaging 15%.

Some additional information I didn't have at the time of that post was precisely how many active nuclear weapons the U.S. had ready for deployment but it's somewhere around the magnitude of 2,000. Assuming each drop causes a number of casualties on scale of the Hiroshima bombing of japan in World War II, that means 232,000,000 would die in a carpet bombing of the nation, which leaves 76,400,000 survivors who're all the more desparate to fight, still outnumbering the military by approximately 48-1. Not that such a course of action would be wise.

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey)

Yeah, if you are claiming to be defending your own liberties in a desperate situation, then opening fire on a congressperson's event, killing a federal judge, killing random civilians, and (attempting to) killing a congressperson is not going to get you anywhere.

Perhaps this plan could work if the world worked under the tropes and idioms of video game RPGs Glenn. However the more astutely genre savvy members of reality would note that any small number of ragtag rebel wannabes charging into an enemy strongholld of heavily armed, heavily trained soldiers would send any other message than "Please shoot me dead on sight." Aside from that, with servicemen being highly respectable and even less influential on internal policy, I fail to see how this proposed alternative is actually any better, at least from a purely objective viewpoint.

Moving on from strategy....

Quote (SweetDude)

Unfortunately the shooting brings up all these questions. I think it's good to discuss. When I read your post I just don't understand the logic here. I could go into the many reasons why encouraging an armed militia is unnecessary (very unnecessary) and dangerous. I don't understand why it would be necessary to rebel against a stripped-down, devolved, heavily divided federal government for political reasons when power and corruption is invested in special interests and private individuals.

It is my belief that the world would be safer if we had no weapons at all but I view them as a sort of an unfortunate pandora's box. Now that we have them, what can we do about them? Laws are meaningless if they go unefornced, the alternative is to take some of that power out of the hands of the many and entrustng them into the hands of a few. All while hoping that the trust isn't misinvested and that the political ecosphere remains eternally stable. As any organization, special interests, governmental or otherwise is ultimately comprized of private individuals, I feel that they're just as prone as anything else to the corruption that power imbalances may bestow. If I cannot entrust my friends, family and self with fairly basic weapons, who could I trust and who could I trust. Who could I expect to bestow such trust unto me if I can't similarly bestow it unto them?

It is also a bit of a proverbial double edged sword. It is primarly because one party had such heightened power that this tragedy could occur precisely how it did. With the way things went, the assailent was only taken down by bystanders once he begain to reload his clip, as that was the only time anybody could safely get close enough to him to wrest it from his hands. If one of these heroes had a gun of their own, it's possible that quicker action could've been taken, since he could've been shot from afar instead. In such a timing critical situation that would mean fewer people injured and fewer people killed.

Just to be clear as to my primary point, my main concern is in having too much power in one place with no reasonable failsafes to regulate it. On the subject of regulation, it seems that the gun laws of Arizona are particularly liberal. Not only does there seem to be very little reason for a law abiding citizen to carry a clip that carries up to 30 rounds in one go, since privatized gun conflicts should be over fairly fast but nobody could even see it coming since you can conceal carry without permit, which is far more than what "the right to bare arms" calls for to begin with.

Quote

In contrast, last year a fanatical British Muslim woman was convinced into killing an MP because he voted for the Iraq war. She stabbed him with a knife and he survived. If she had a gun and was part of a nationwide anti-government militia who convincingly saw the government as corrupt in its invasion of Iraq, she probably would've killed him and others. Under your criteria this is completely acceptable because the government needs to be stopped in its oppression of rights, its perceived tyranny against Muslims and its neglect of their views. It's basically a level of barbarism on a wide scale that I thought we'd be able to phase out relatively successfully in the last two centuries.

I fail to see how this crime would stop the aftermath of a vote already made, unless an ultimatum was presented beforehand. Also as you've said, the tyranny is largely a manner of perception, with muslims being in bad light of it with 9/11 and all. A better example less prone to these problems is African American slavery. It was 321 years of the worse sort of continuous abuse, 84 of which were being perpetrated under the United State's "democracy" until an official was elected, President Abraham Lincoln under two centries ago in 1862, did something about it.

Perhaps waiting it out did work eventually but if something could've been done about it sooner, would that've really been so barbaric? Unfortunately as you've pointed out, basic human nature still hasn't changed since. As such, I have little reason to believe the strong will stop exploiting the weak anytime soon. As such, I feel we need to find ways to present people with equal opportunity in order to prevent it.

Edit

Feb 4th 2011 Interestingly enough, Gabby appears to have supported gun rights. Perhaps the goal of this crime wasn't to kill her after-all but to put her into the shoes of a victim to change her mind and sending a message to the public as to the dangers of giving anybody a gun? I can't say that'd be nothing short of a sort of sadistic genius if so. She'd garner a lot of sympathy votes and possibly the votes of people who also supported gun rights, only for her to vote against them on account of her own recent life experience. Especially effective if her top political rivals are anti-gunrights, since that essentially ensures a no lose scenario no matter who the people vote for...

Just a thought so long as I've been reflectively reviewing my posts in this thread.

Also does anybody know her current state of health? Is she recovering or still in a coma?

This post has been edited by Tonepoet on 4th February 2011 15:54

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Role reversal at its finest.