Jared Loughner and the Tuscon Massacre

Yesterday was a horrifically tragic day in Tuscon.

Rep. Gabrielle Gifford was shot point blank in the head with a 9mm handgun by Jared Lee Loughner. As of this morning, it looks like (thankfully) Rep. Gifford is going to survive this assassination attempt. Sadly, 6 other people lost their lives, including a 9 year old child:

Judge John Roll, 63; Dorthy Murray, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; Christina Greene, 9; Phyllis Scheck, 79; and Gabe Zimmerman, 30

While the unhinged left, as expected, went even further unhinged in their knee-jerk attempts to find a way to blame the shooting on the tea party or the collective right.

Somehow or another, the Left found a way to take this confirmed Left-wing radical, Constitution-hating, flag-burning, anti-religion, Karl Marx devotee, whose favorite books are Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto — and come to the conclusion that Sarah Palin is to blame.

Somehow, according to the left and the MSM (yes, I know that is redundant) conservatives are always threatening or condoning violence, but when violence actually occurs it is almost always from either total wackos or the far left (or Islamic jihadists, which I guess falls into the complete wacko category).

News Flash: There is one person and one person only to blame for yesterday’s mass murder: Jared Loughner. The shooter today was not politically motivated, This was the product of a deranged mind, no matter what the hacks at MSNBC say. Sarah Palin is no more responsible for the shooting than is Daily Kos.

Read his insane internet and Youtube postings and it’s pretty clear that his main “motivation”, if he had any at all, is that he is an insane person. Despite the fact that he’s clearly dillusional and insane, I hope that he still gets what he deserves: the death penalty. Arizona has only executed 22 people since 1976…so I wouldn’t hold out much hope for that.

George Packer from the New Yorker gets it exactly right: “It Doesn’t Matter Why He Did It.”

Judging from his Internet postings, Jared Lee Loughner is a delusional young man whose inner political landscape is a swamp of dystopian novels, left- and right-wing tracts, conspiracy theories, and contempt for his fellow human beings. He refers to the gold and silver standard; that doesn’t make Ron Paul responsible for the shootings. He is fond of “Animal Farm”; George Orwell didn’t guide the hand that pulled the automatic pistol’s trigger. Marx and Hitler produced a lot of corpses, but not the ones in Tucson.

So even though this guy leaned hard left, I do not in anyway blame the Left or the violent political rhetoric of the Left for his actions (perhaps Obama might not want to use instructions to his worshipers such as, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun” or “If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard” and others quite as much as he has been).

There will be far-reaching ramifications from yesterday’s shooting though. The anti-second amendment zealots will use this as an excuse for gun-grabbing legislation. Cowardly Congress critters (like Maxine Waters) will call for tax-payer funded security details and less contact with their constituents.