Bob Burnett: Is the Giffords' Shooting a Teachable Moment?

The Arizona Tragedy and the American Reaction
The story dominating American conversation this week is the tragedy in Tucson, Arizona. In shock, after a mentally troubled assassin named Jared Lee Loughner shoots a round from his 9mm Glock through the brain of beloved Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and then turns his weapon on the crowd and kills 6 bystanders while wounding 13 others — America mourns. Giffords is alive today and fighting for her life, the extent of the damage caused by her wound still unknown. There are positive signs...

Lowry: What is The Madness Lobby?
Rich Lowry writes: In his Tucson Speech, President Barack Obama rightly said that “terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding.” Why that morning? Why Gabby Giffords? These and other questions can’t be answered, but at a more Pedestrian level the Tucson massacre isn’t so mysterious: Someone displaying all the symptoms of untreated schizophrenia killed people. This is not an extraordinarily rare or inexplicable occurrence. According to the Psychiatrist E. Fuller

Is Help On the Way?
There’s still a lot we don’t know about the massacre in Arizona, but by now it’s quite clear that the alleged shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was mentally disturbed. In college, he was prone to surreal rants that unnerved classmates and teachers. While working at an Animal Shelter, he didn’t see why sick dogs needed to be kept away from healthy ones. Loughner’s friends were even aware of his weird obsession with Representative Gabrielle Giffords. (At one 2007 event, h...

Epic Fail
Posted by John at 7:17 PM This Quinnipiac Poll provides more evidence that hardly anyone buys the Democratic Party's spin on the Tucson murders. When asked "What do you think is the main reason for the Arizona shooting; failure of the Mental Health system, lax Gun Control laws, overheated political Rhetoric, or do you think this is a situation that could not have been prevented?" respondents answered: * Mental health system: 23% * Gun control laws: 9% * Political rhetoric: 15% * Couldn't have b...

The Lefty Talking Points Fell Flat
Powerline has the details from a recent poll in the aftermath of the Arizona shooting: This Quinnipiac Poll provides more evidence that hardly anyone buys the Democratic Party's spin on the Tucson murders. When asked "What do you think is the main reason for the Arizona shooting; failure of the Mental Health system, lax Gun Control laws, overheated political Rhetoric, or do you think this is a situation that could not have been prevented?" respondents answered: * Mental health system: 23% * Gu...

Is the Giffords' Shooting a Teachable Moment?
Many feel we need to engage in a "national dialogue." That citizens from different persuasions need to sit down and talk about our hopes and dreams for America; we should search for ideological common ground. While this approach does need to be encouraged, the logistics are daunting. Americans tend to live in communities of like-minded individuals; those of us who want to dialogue would have to travel miles outside our comfort zone to be part of an assembly that represents the diverse sentimen...

Giffords intern handling sudden fame after speech
(01-14) 17:31 PST PHOENIX (AP) -- He sat next to President Barack Obama in the nationally televised event. People are lining up to shake his hand, seeking an Autograph or photograph. A mariachi band recognized him and rushed over with a spontaneous serenade. Intern Daniel Hernandez's brave and clear-headed actions in helping save the life of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords after she was shot in the head last Saturday made him an unlikely hero. His appearance Wednesday at the Tucson memorial service fo...

Giffords Intern Experiencing Sudden Fame
PHOENIX (AP) -- He sat next to President Barack Obama in the nationally televised event. People are lining up to shake his hand, seeking an Autograph or photograph. A mariachi band recognized him and rushed over with a spontaneous serenade. Intern Daniel Hernandez's brave and clear-headed actions in helping save the life of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords after she was shot in the head last Saturday made him an unlikely hero. His appearance Wednesday at the Tucson memorial service for the shooting victi...

Obama urges Americans to work together after rampage
WASHINGTON | Sat Jan 15, 2011 6:11am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama urged Americans on Saturday to maintain the "spirit of common cause" that arose from grieving over the Arizona shootings and use it to solve the nation's problems. Legislative work in Washington came to a halt this week while lawmakers and citizens from both parties mourned the Victims of a gunman who went on a rampage in Arizona on January 8, killing six people and wounding 14, including Representative Gab...

Obama urges Americans to work together after rampage
WASHINGTON | Sat Jan 15, 2011 6:11am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama urged Americans on Saturday to maintain the "spirit of common cause" that arose from grieving over the Arizona shootings and use it to solve the nation's problems. Legislative work in Washington came to a halt this week while lawmakers and citizens from both parties mourned the Victims of a gunman who went on a rampage in Arizona on January 8, killing six people and wounding 14, including Representative Gab...

Obama urges Americans to work together after rampage
Legislative work in Washington came to a halt this week while lawmakers and citizens from both parties mourned the Victims of a gunman who went on a rampage in Arizona on January 8, killing six people and wounding 14, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Obama gave a well-received Speech at a memorial service for the Victims on Wednesday in Arizona and he revived the theme of national unity in his weekly radio and Internet address. The president lauded lawmakers who came together to pay...

Video: Jon Meacham, a gun owner, on restoring the assault weapons ban
First, some personal history.  I am a southerner who grew up with and around guns.  I own some still. My father gave me a .22 rifle when I was 9 and a single barrel .410 shotgun when I was 10.  I have inherited many of my family’s guns, including a rifle made by my great, great, great grandfather, which I will preserve and give to my son. One of the central memories of my childhood is of hunting — not well; I am a terrible shot — quail and dove and grouse on a farm on the

The Times Loses It
Among the worldly, however, there is a temptation to make nonsense. Thus it was that on Sunday, January 9, the New York Times provided a further grief, much less important than the death and mutilation of innocents but shameful nonetheless. The Times ran, as its second lead, above the fold on the front page, a story about the Tucson shootings headlined “Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics.” The article, by Carl Hulse and Kate Zernike, contains almost nothing newsworthy. N...

A Climate of Slander
Jan 24, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 18 • By THE SCRAPBOOK Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. Liberal pundits suffered a psychotic break last week, metaphorically speaking, of course. When a gunman opened fire on Representative -Gabrielle Giffords and a crowd that had gathered to hear her speak in Tucson, they were certain that Conservatives must, somehow, be to blame. So the liberal intelligentsia rushed to erect a gallows in the public square (metaphorically speaking, a...

The Tucson Massacres The Hall Of Shame: Liberals Who Used Tragedy To Smear The Right
G.I. Wood Shop Inc. Mrs. Peel Oh…My Valve! V The K’s Caption This! An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later. The massacre in Tucson was a horrendous tragedy. Everyone in the country, of every ideological stripe, should have been allowed to mourn the Victims’ deaths and injuries without the imposition of having to defend people who had nothing at all to do with it. But where normal people saw tragedy, the Far Left saw opportunity. They  jumped at th...

There's a New Sheriff in Politics
The Thread is an in-depth look at how major news and controversies are being debated across the online spectrum. Tags: blogs, Internet, Media, tuscon shooting In his Speech in Tucson Wednesday night, President Obama called on Americans to expand their “moral imaginations” and “remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.” Well, never hurts to aim high. For now, at least, the president seems to have put an end to the...

Arizona gun sales jump 60% following Gabrielle Giffords shooting
Another American Mass Shooting. Another rush to buy more guns. On the Monday after the latest of the bloody rampages that are part of American life, gun sales in Arizona shot up by more than 60 percent and rose by an average of five percent across the entire country. The figures come from the FBI and speak volumes about a gun culture that has long baffled much of the world. The Federal Bureau of Investigation compared January 10, 2011, with the corresponding Monday a year ago. So what would prom...

Obama urges Americans to work together after rampage (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama urged Americans on Saturday to maintain the "spirit of common cause" that arose from grieving over the Arizona shootings and use it to solve the nation's problems. Legislative work in Washington came to a halt this week while lawmakers and citizens from both parties mourned the Victims of a gunman who went on a rampage in Arizona on January 8, killing six people and wounding 14, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Obama...

Mortal Recoil
Consider the following reactions to the tragic shooting in Tucson: First, President Barack Obama’s Speech got rave reviews (“magic,” New York Times columnist Gail Collins called it), even though, by the standards, say, of Bill Clinton’s Oklahoma City address, it was pretty humdrum, especially during those times when the president was trying to draw lessons from the tragedy rather than eulogizing its Victims. Second, Obama’s Approval Rating, taken after the killings...

Metaphors Don't Kill People; People Kill People
metaphor: a figure of Speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our god.” Sticks and stones might break my bones but words will never hurt me. ~Nursery rhyme The recent tragedy in Arizona managed to unleash the pundits on both sides of the aisle. In this world where there must be a root cause for every wrinkle in the landscape and every calamity that befalls us, eve...

Washington Week
This past week, the House conducted Memorial Services for those murdered and injured in the Arizona shootings last weekend. The House of Representatives also passed resolutions and conducted general speeches concerning this horrific act of violence. On Thursday, many members of Congress traveled to Tucson, Ariz., for the national memorial service where the president and dignitaries addressed the nation. The memorial service was moving, inspiring and especially uplifting when the president announ...

Political speech today -- it's not Bobby Kennedy's America
No, though it's certainly more debased and lacerating than it was just a few short years ago. We've been through eras of bitterly expressed politics more often than we'd probably care to admit. The Federalists and anti-Federalists bickered ferociously. Contention over the Bank of the United States during the Jacksonian era was fierce. The political Rhetoric leading up to the Civil War was murderous. Franklin Roosevelt's policies were the target of vile opposition. And during the McCarthy period,...

Obama: 'We carry on'
WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama said Saturday the nation must carry on following a week of grieving for the Victims of the shooting that left six dead in Tucson. In his weekly radio and Internet address, one week after a gunman killed six and wounded 13 - including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz. - the president said the nation "properly spent much of the week mourning the Victims and remembering their lives." "We also discovered stories that serve to l...

John Dingell (D-MI) blames Palin, GOP for rhetoric leading to AZ shooting. Flashback: Dingell links tea party to KKK, called rad
Curiously, Dingell said:"I saw the district of Gabrielle Giffords has a crosshairs put on it. As a lifetime rifleman and shooter, I know what crosshairs signify when you put them on somebody and I know what happened.Is he talking about Palin or Daily Kos? The liberal Daily Kos put a bullseye on Giffords in 2008 (via HillBuzz): More from Henry Payne at The Michigan View: Dingell just accused Palin as an accessory to Murder? Yawn.Dingell had previewed his comments Monday when he toured the Detroit...

'How to be Civil': The Finale!
Previous installments here and here. The question is whether the even-now ever so slightly fading talk about "civil" discourse means anything in practice. Today we have one more set of suggestions from readers. First, from a reader on the stakes in changing the political tone: >>The Incivility that typifies political and public life pushes people like me away from engaging in the public discourse and away from public service. In the Private Sector people are mostly polite because it's good...