Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot at a rally she was holding in her district, just now.
Apparently she was speaking in the parking lot of a Safeway, when someone ran up and opened fire.
Instant update: Wait, apparently she’s in surgery. Reports of her death were premature.
Shot point-blank in the head, though.
NPR had reported that she & six others were killed.
Update again: Well, people on Twitter are moving very quickly to politicize it.
I’d wait till we actually know something about the gunman. (We know the shooter was a man, and was tackled and apprehended by a bystander. That’s about it.)
Terrible news, in any event — she’s so young.
Update the third:
Irony — one of her last acts was to read the First Amendment, as part of the reading of the US Constitution on the floor of the House of Representatives:
Gabrielle Giffords was the member of Congress who had the honor of reading the First Amendment when the Constitution was read on the House floor January 6th. Video.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Peaceably to assemble.
In any liberal, representative democracy, politicians have to get close to their constituents, in order to properly represent them.
No way to prevent this sort of thing — as we can remember from the assassination of the Swedish Foreign Minister, in a Stockholm department store a few years back.
But that doesn’t mean it’s any less surprising and sickening when it does happen.
Update the fourth: On constitution reading — 2:30 to 3:00 of this video.
News — KOLD is streaming its coverage online, and apparently at least one of the victims, one of Congresswoman Giffords’ staffers, has been confirmed dead.
Update the fifth, 3:10 PM: Confirmed that five are dead. Press conference in ten minutes re Congresswoman Giffords’ condition.
Apparently this was a weekly event for her — faced a very tough re-election battle last year, and just barely kept her seat. A good representative can outperform her party, and she did in 2010. (With an assist from a libertarian third party candidate, that let her win with 48% of the vote…)
Update the sixth, 3:50 PM: Apparently an Arizona judge was one of those shot.
Update the seventh, 4:25 PM: So the surgeon says that Rep. Giffords was shot “through and through”, i.e., the bullet didn’t stay in her head, and he is “optimistic”, though he can’t say just yet what kind of recovery she will have.
I hope the title of this post will end up being untrue — though the staffers of hers who did not survive the shooting most certainly _were_ assassinated.
I won’t be posting much more on this, I think, but I’m sure that the memeorandum thread will continue to be updated.
The killer — with any luck, not the killer of Congresswoman Giffords, as she’s looking like she’ll pull through — was a real looney-tune. All sorts of stuff about grammar and mind control and so on. (Well, and Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto.)
There really is no moral to draw, here — other than, of course, just wait before you spout off on breaking news.
If you did — well, it’s human. Just say that you’re sorry and that you’ll try not to do it next time. Or just don’t do it next time — that’s enough.
Final update, 5 PM: Children were shot dead today in a Safeway parking lot, while meeting their congressman.
That’s a terrible enough story for any day in North America.
Post-final update, 6:30 PM: I suppose this has to be said –
As people are trying to ascribe blame for this to someone, anyone, other than the nut who pulled the trigger — let’s keep our eye on the nut. His manifesto, such as it is, has been transcribed for posterity.
And as for those strange conspiracy theorists who want to blame targeting maps for this — keep this in mind. (But you won’t. Because you’re not going to let anything so simple as the facts get in the way of the narrative you’re weaving.)
With respect, and not pre-judging – if you espouse position “X” in an immoderate way you either manifest or own all those to the extreme of that position. You have an obligation to create the box in which your idea sits to make sure it is not misused as an idea. Loonie toons are out there waiting for a justification. Leadership includes not forgetting that and making sure you support moderate messages.Trent Franks (R – Aziz) is on CNN right now talking of the obligation to be kind and decent. That is the point I am trying to make.
Franks is still on. His interview is stunningly correct.
Uh huh.
Well, if you want to go there, Alan, let’s.
See some screenshots of the video:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256670/shooters-youtube-page-daniel-foster
Doesn’t like God. Doesn’t like the constitution. Doesn’t like grammar. Doesn’t like the currency policy.
To the extent that he was a political radical, he was a left-wing one — something of a radical syndicalist pothead.
See also what a high school friend of his said:
http://twitter.com/#!/caitieparker
But the actual relevant point is, he was a nut! That’s the only lesson to draw here.
So we can hold Jodie Foster and Robert de Niro responsible for the assasination attempt on President Reagan, because there were inadequate disclaimers in the plotline of Taxi Driver?
Sometimes nutbars are just nutbars, and have the capacity to take even a good or innocuous thing and massage it until it becomes a negative. As in frugality = good; hoarding until every square inch of your house is crammed with junk = bad. Or single beer at the end of each day = relaxing, while 16 beers at the end of each day = big gut, liver problems.
Decency, absolutely. But pedantry is no defence against the unbalanced, even at the best of times.
EMU’ed by Ben.
Well, I think you need to reread my comment and think a bit more. Note the second comment. I am not being rhetorical and would presume you would trust my honesty. If you don’t, well, consider this if you need to discuss things at that level: http://www.genx40.com/file/palintarg.png
And just to be clear, I assumed before I heard the details that this was a leftist wing nut shooter based on the citizenship issue with Arizona. My position would be the same and I expect both of you would acknowledge that based on our years of discussion. My point remains the same and the same as the Republican Congressman stated. Leadership requires decency and decency is a tool to avoid these tragedies. It is not lip service to some ancient ethical standard of your Grannie’s – it is a proper and powerful defence against extremism including the fringers like this one.
A nut is a nut is a nut.
As we’re not going to ban Mein Kampf and the Manifesto and Ayn Rand’s bodice-rippers, let alone conscious-dreaming classes, the raw material he used is already out there.
And as for target maps — see this:
Well, let’s be clear: Because Coyne says something doesn’t make it right. It is not about left or right. It is about moderating the range of public discourse by decency for the very reason that we know there are wing nuts who believe analogies and extreme illustrations not direct and not indirect forms of advocacy. What was most right about what the Franks and the Governor of Arizona said about the incident is that freedom from fear in legitimate discourse requires respect and support of those who disagree with you. The slide in the discourse – by all sides – into fantasy and fear is not unrelated. Not because it is logical but because there are the illogical who are fed by unreasonable discourse.
So, as Ben says, which are you going to ban first? Marx’s Manifesto? Mein Kampf? American Psycho? Dexter? I don’t consider any of those things even remotely decent, but I wouldn’t be lining up to ban them either.
Reasonable people hardly need to be told by other reasonable people not to go to extremes, or emulate unreasonable extremes presented or practiced by others. And the nuts plainly aren’t going to listen anyway.
I known lots of fine folks who were deep in the throes of Alzheimers and undertook things that they would never have condoned in their right mind—theft, assault and battery, sexual assault, etc. You can explain their nuttery to them, but in the end, they think their crimes are perfectly reasonable, and it is you who are the nut.
Trying to explain the boundaries to most of them is pointless; a literal waste of breath. At this point the act is already justified in their brain, and you can’t rewire it to make it otherwise. When dealing with those who cannot be swayed by discourse (for the sake of brevity, nuts), pontificating on the hows and whys of their inappropriateness is a sop to the feelings of the pontificator, not a real deterrent to the nut.
(Nor would it deter other potential nuts-in-being, it would only deter the reasonable. Who are, presumably, equally deterred by their own consciences, values, knowledge of the penalties, etc.)
So, is nuttery – which I take you mean to be a medical disorder – defined by the resulting criminal violence? Or only politically motivated or inspired criminal violence? Is irresponsibility in the discourse so sacred that no bad motives combined with criminal action can come into contact with it? Why are the two spheres so distinct? And if non-politically crime were treated in this fashion wouldn’t Penetanguishene be better populated than Kingston? It may give comfort to pundits but it isn’t much of a general theory of culpability.
I genuinely do not perceive what you are getting at. In brief, nutty people are nutty. Asking them to behave not-nutty isn’t going to work. It only works for people who are already not-nutty. People who are not nutty but subscribe to nutty ideas will act functionally nutty. Asking non-nuts them to refrain from acting functionally nutty will succeed or fail relative to the strength of their adherence to nutty ideas.
So—once again—the non-nuts with weak adherence to nut ideas don’t necessarily need somebody to tell them something they already know. If the adherence is weak enough to be broken by a random legislator on TV, the greater likelihood is that the adherence will be broken by their own intuition, values and moral compass. The non-nuts with strong adherence to nutty ideas, on the other hand, will not have their adherence to nut ideas broken by a random legislator on TV. The only person the random legislator influences is the non-nut with weak adherence to nut ideas.
Whether you think that useful or not depends on whether you think the percentage of non-nuts adhering to nut ideas is significant or insignificant.
Fair enough. The basic theory of criminality is insane, wicked and innocent. Only the wicked are criminals and punished. Your nutty confuses insane and wicked. If the Unibomber goes to jail along with all the other politically motivated criminals, then I fully expect this guy today to face a trial and not get sent to a psychiatric institution instead. And extreme political discourse can incite the wicked. That is why the Governor of Arizona and Rep. Franks both spoke of decency in the discourse as an issue today. Decency says you can say “X” without putting it in certain ways… including analogies of violence. I merely agreed with them based on the reality of the nature of criminal theory. If you are happy lumping the insane with the wicked, that is fine but that is not how it works.
It’s a distinction without a difference at ground level. The Alzheimer’s patient who brains a nurse with his cane or confines her against his will and jams his hand in her lady parts does the same physical/emotional damage as the girl who has it happen on the subway.
The distinction comes into play when punishment or retribution gets meted out. The old man in the home is “insane” and should not receive the same punishment as the “wicked” younger man who does the same thing on the subway. But absolutely none of that applies when we’re talking about a random legislator pontificating on TV. He’s not exacting justice or imposing sentence; he’s emoting because he feels a need to.
Not it is not at all. It goes to the heart of the constitution and political theory. The wicked man is a free thinking person who chooses to do wrong. Incitement is the crime of encouraging the free thinking person to do wrong by use of words. What you are describing is the consideration of mitigation or aggravation that goes to punishment once someone is determined to be responsible.
So, if this guy is wicked and not insane and references the relatively new lowering of political discourse into the realm of using analogies of violence casually, well, he is acting rationally in this brave new world, too, is he not?
I’m familiar with incitement. But as I said, I do not think the ratio of non-nuts who subscribe to nutty ideas is sufficiently great that a random legislator on TV will have an appreciable affect. If that were otherwise, street corner preachers would be able to convert entire blocks around their preferred intersection with ease.
And as far as deterrence goes, I am happy to lump the insane with the wicked, because they are both equally undeterrable. The insane cannot be deterred because they lack the capacity, and the criminal cannot be deterred by their own choice.
Deterrence is not where the wicked/insane/innocent distinctions come into play. Restitution is.
You are not in agreement with English speaking law if you think the criminal cannot be deterred.
It is a disagreement I am happy to have.
Funny, but in this discussion you are the progressive and I am the conservative. Not saying this as a “gotcha” as I am as embarrassed as you but I am aware I am one with the classics. You are, with respect, with the 1960s sociologists.
If that is the case, the Calvinists and Presbyterians are on the side of the 1960s sociologists. I am still happy to be numbered with them.
I don’t know if Taylor is with the sociologists.
As they would let both go. Whereas he’d string them both up. (I’m guessing.)
Only the pre-Enlightenment sort of Calvinists. They string up unfree actors.
I’m at peace with stringing up unfree actors if the severity of the crime warrants it.
I don’t see the connection to the 1960s, though. Pre-Enlightenment? Sure. Calvinists had the best parties.
What I meant by 60s sociologists is that they, too, considered criminals as unfree even when they were not insane – because they were victims. Calvinists and sociologists are each forms of predeterminists.
By the way, did we sort of reach the end of layers of the comment tree in the structure of the blog?
Re the comment limit — yes.
It’s something I can set.
The default was three layers, which I thought too few… I believe I set it at five. Should check on that…
In that sense then, I suppose I am more progressive; there are decades of research to indicate that our biological and evolutionary heritage does impart an influence in seemingly mundane day-to-day choices. The science is not isolated to 1960s sociology.
I am some distance from suggesting we are fleshy robots following evolutionary programming, but as our understanding of the brain has progressed there are more than casual indications that physical conditions can induce a predilection or predisposition to certain behaviour.
Examples can be found in research of addiction, paedophilia, criminal behaviour, and so on. I know you’re not suggesting that medical research is bunk, but then I’m not sure what you are suggesting, other than that such research is flawed because it might one day influence our 19th century conception of agency. As much as it pains me, that’s something I can live with.
Sure, agency still exists in many cases where a predisposition is also present. I don’t think you’d disagree. Our disagreement, as I see it, is whether hectoring from a random legislator will do any substantive good in countering alleged incitement. All else is distraction.
I don’t disagree with that, Chris, and it is an example of the distance between criminal culpability and biological reality. When you get into the fine points of memory, I have a hard time with witnesses as evidence, too. But I do think that judges and the law take these things into account as they have a much more organic approach to the nature of people. Consider this: I have taken at least one will from a person who died within the hour well past the point of medical capacity. I was satisfied based on reactions that the instructions, however, were given. I determined for that moment and for that person there was volition and sufficient understanding for responsibility.
Which does inform this moment for me. This is a crime and that person appears by all accounts to be wicked and responsible. I do not accept that the degree of wickedness of an act somehow nullifies responsibility even if we who are not wicked search for connections. That being the case, that there are non-insane wicked people in society, my point is that analogies of violence and other representations contribute and inform the wicked.
Alan, we agree on more than we disagree. I am not and would never suggest that wickedness does not exist; every human will eventually learn that it does.
I draw the comparison with insanity only to highlight my belief that wickedness, like insanity, cannot be deterred.
Compare: StephenTaylor is doing a very strange dance tonight around the difficulties of legal theory: http://twitter.com/#!/stephen_taylor/status/23938753068273665