And John Gruber at Daring Fireball (among other libs) is in a full-on froth-at-the-mouth lather that somehow Sarah Palin is somehow to blame, as well, because of some icons that were used on a website before the last election.
John- you're way off base. Sarah Palin didn't come down from Alaska and pull the trigger, nor did she advocate anything of the sort. Blaming imagery and putting that much importance on such imagery is irresponsible at the least and offensive to designers. You should know better.
There's also mounting evidence that the shooter was a troubled loner who was radically left-wing, accordiing to classmates- not some right-wing nutjob as the kneejerk reaction from the media has indicated.
And speaking of knee-jerk reactions, it only took one day for another Democrat lawmaker to use this tragedy to push for tougher gun laws. And so-called "gun control activists" are definitely on the warpath:
Many said that people with a history of mental instability, like the alleged shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, should not be able to buy a gun — and no one should be able to buy stockpiles of ammunition used by the 22-year-old assailant.
First of all, the government has no business keeping tabs on how many guns someone owns. That private property ownership is their own business. But the paragraph above begs the question- "how, exactly, does the government propose to regulate how much ammunition a person can own?" The answer, I fear, is that every time you buy a round of ammunition you'll have to go through some sort of computerized check with a government database that will register all ammunition you buy and cross-check it against some arbitrary number of rounds that some bureaucrat somewhere deems "acceptable."
I find it to be a colossal conflict that the government would then be able to regulate the means for which the Constitution specifically allows for citizens to be able to overthrow a corrupt government if necessary. God forbid a revolution ever does come, but how is a citizenry supposed to protect itself from an abusive government if the government regulates how much ammunition one can own? Ridiculous.
The media also seems to be trying to stress the point that the shooter had, in recent months, made increasingly critical comments about the government. But all indication I've read indicates that the comments made were very deranged in nature, ranging from government mind control to its very authority to exist. The gunman was clearly not making traditional Conservative arguments, but the media seems hell-bent on painting us all with the same brushstroke as this nutball. The conclusion that they seem to be subtly driving at is that any criticism of the government in the wake of this shooting must be investigated and that the writer might just be planning the next assassination of a government official. Again, ridiculous. As a blogger who is frequently is critical of the government, I find this particularly offensive. I would no sooner go on a shooting spree than any other conservative I know of who is deeply distressed by the direction our country is headed. But that's the bush we're boing painted with, it seems.
What's clear to me is that demonization of "partisan rhetoric" seems to be in fashion at the moment, as well. Political rhetoric had nothing to do with this shooting. A deranged loner did.
The bottom line of this whole thing is that this Jared Lee Loughner is just plain crazy. He's crazy in a Columbine High School sorta way. I hate that this happened, but I don't think that reactionary clamping down by the nanny state is going to solve anything. But just watch- just as it did following Columbine, the government is going to try to swoop in and legislate the problem away. It didn't prevent this shooting and it won't prevent the next one.
Loughner legally purchased his weapon – a Glock 19 with an extended magazine – from an Arizona store. The same kind of extended magazine was illegal under the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.
After the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, in which a student with a history of psychological problems killed 33 and injured 25 others, lawmakers immediately started looking at gun control reforms both in the state and atthe federal level.
Then-Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine issued an executive order making it harder for people who have been committed to mental health treatment centers to buy a gun.
In 2008 President George W. Bush signed a law expanding the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which registered gun dealers use, to include more comprehensive reporting of mental health records. Under the current law, it is illegal for anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution” to purchase a firearm, according to the FBI’s website.
However, Loughner did not fall into either of those categories, according to Josh Horwitz, the executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.
“I’ve seen no evidence that he falls into those categories. It’s the same thing as this guy at Virginia Tech,” said Horwitz. “We can do a much better job checking people’s mental health background.”
So the assault-weapons ban expiring in 2004 is to blame, as well, it seems. But wait. Didn't the Democrats have control of the House and Senate from 2006 until 2011 and have a Democrat president for two of those year? They had a super-majority and yet never felt the pressing need to renew the weapons ban? So who, then, is to blame here? The ban was important enough that it supposedly would have prevented this attack, but yet it wasn't important enough for the Democrats to pass as soon as they could? Hypocrisy.
And finally- where was the Secret Service?
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