On Saturday in Tucson, Arizona 22-year-old Jared Loughner opened fire outside a Safeway grocery store and killed six people and injured at least 15 others, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) who was appearing at an outreach event organized by her office.
On Sunday, prosecutors in the office of the United States Attorney for the District of Arizona filed charges accusing Loughner of murder and attempted murder for his actions on Saturday.
Loughner is scheduled to appear Monday before Judge Lawrence Anderson at the Sandra Day O’Connor Courthouse in Phoenix. The accused is entitled to a preliminary hearing and a subsequent detention hearing. The court will soon set a date for both hearings. Meanwhile, Loughner remains in federal custody.
According to the Fedeal Rules of Criminal Procedure, a grand jury must review the evidence and issue an indictment within 30 days of the defendant’s initial appearance.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona is in the process of drafting an indictment against Loughner for presentation to the grand jury.
As the legal process is put into motion and investigations are conducted into the circumstances of the shooting and the events that may have precipitated such an outrage, there are important auxiliary issues to be considered, especially in light of the shameful molding of this massacre into pawns in a partisan chess match.
The forces that control or manage the jarring often violent events of the world in order to abolish liberty are neither Leftists nor Rightists, Conservatives nor Liberals, Progressives nor Tea Partiers. They are content, however, to set these antipodean axes against each other and manipulate the controversies that they might accelerate the pace of the eventual enslavement of mankind.
Of course, one of the chief aims of those so dedicated must be the eradication of the sovereignty of the United States, principally through the incremental alienation of the fundamental rights protected by the Constitution from encroachment of just that sort.
The right of people to defend themselves from such tyranny is an obvious obstruction lying in the path to paternalism of the would-be rulers. Therefore, the legislative annulment of the Second Amendment and the ownership of weapons as protected thereby is a priority of these embryonic masters. To wit, the words of former Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story:
One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms.
In fact, the tragic shooting in Tucson has played right into the hand of the foes of freedom. As the blood of innocent men and women flowed, so did ink from the pens of those who would callously employ these murders for their own political ambition.
Within hours of the shooting of Representative Giffords, her colleague Mary McCarthy issued a statement in bold type proclaiming her presumably holier than thou intent to outlaw the type of ammunition magazine used by the accused attacker. The headline as reported by CBSNews.com:
Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York plans to introduce legislation in the coming days that would limit access to the type of weaponry used to gun down Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) and 19 other people.
Further, McCarthy in her own words as quoted by Politico:
My staff is working on looking at the different legislation fixes that we might be able to do and we might be able to introduce as early as tomorrow.
We need to look at how this is going to work, to protect people, certainly citizens, and we have to look at what I can pass. I don’t want to give the NRA excuse the pun the ammunition to come at me either.
This reactionary abuse of power will become just another pretext for the annihilation of the representative government of the United States. It is doubtful that Representative McCarthy is ignorant of the dearth of empirical evidence linking the regulation of gun ownership to the commission of violent crime. While one must have sympathy for Ms. McCarthy, as she herself was affected by violent crime, that does not excuse her attempts to curtail rights and make legislative end-runs around the Constitution.
It was reported on January 10 that Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) will propose a bill to limit the availability of the type of ammunition holder that was used by the Tucson shooter.The New Jersey Democrat plans to alter or augment the McCarthy measure.
Also elbowing his way into the front of the line of the ambitious and advantageous was Representative Robert Brady of Pennsylvania, who reckons that the best way to prevent future attempts to murder members of Congress is to abridge the freedom of speech. From online journal The Hill:
Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) reportedly plans to introduce legislation that would make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress.
Do not misunderstand. The forces committed to severing the fetters of the Constitution are just as happy to arouse the passions of the Right as of the Left. They have no partisan preference. Their single-minded mission is to subtly shepherd this nation (and all others) along the gently sloping road to Gomorrah and they will syncretize the evangelical fury of all political denominations willfully and gleefully toward the worldwide establishment of their own debauched dogma: slavery is freedom.
A central tactic of this strategy is the pitting of one group against the other, piercing the air with the thrusting fingers of blame. The Left will recriminate the Right for being gun-loving maniacs who care more for the Second Amendment than for human life; while the Right will likewise decry the demonization as the typical rants of a group whose grip on reality was long ago pried loose by the hand of Big Brother.
Sadly, those on the Right that point to YouTube videos or other evidence of the shooters Leftist leanings are parroting the sort of illogical reaction that is ironically fueling the fire that will eventually consume the parchment barrier erected around our liberties.
The frothing zeal on the part of the Left to implicate Sarah Palin in this tragedy is demonstrative of nothing more than the embarrassing display of opportunism that so often degrades the debate and brings a smile to the faces of those who see this senseless slander for what it is: useful fodder for the assault on freedom.
It is particularly noteworthy that the New York Times, a newspaper that prides itself on being the paper of record, one that publishes all the news thats fit to print, actually suggested in an article that there might be something to be gained by analyzing the shooters opposition to the Federal Reserve.
Some people who study right-wing militia groups and those who align themselves with the so-called Patriot movement said Mr. Loughners comments on subjects like the American currency and the Constitution, which he posted online in various video clips, were strikingly similar in language and tone to the voices of the Internets more paranoid, extremist corners.
In article posted on aol.com commenting on the same connection, the author of the piece, Peter Cohan, makes the following unimaginable leap:
In that, Loughner and Ron Paul (R-Texas) are on the same page, not that Paul has any connection to what Loughner did.
In both the preceding articles, the authors are just clever enough to hide behind the semantical skirts of some people and not that Paul has any connection
Demonstrations of this sort of yellow journalism at a time when families are mourning are reprehensible and should be labeled as such by all legitimate news sources.
There is no political bent that of its own device or influence could ever convince someone to commit murder in cold blood. The very premise is laughable. Such acts are the result of mental instability and are the product of a perversion of purpose inscrutable to most, regardless of the virulence of their political or social associations and activities.
Moreover, even the most discerning minds in the fields of medicine and psychology are now and are likely to remain woefully ignorant of the even of the vortex of abnormalities that combine in ones mind to produce such anti-social behavior. Inside every cranium there is a universe and no explorer has successfully navigated the myriad spheres of influence that orbit therein. While the attempt is noble, the presumption that there are explanations to be found in Loughners mad scribblings or self-aggrandizing videos is naive at best and purposefully misleading at worst.
Unfortunately, the prevailing cultural zeitgeist is one of reality television where titillating production precedes performance and predicts ratings. In the sentient world we all occupy, however, there is no logical way to inculpate the sale of firearms or ammunition clips in the murders committed in Tucson.
The ready availability of guns is no more responsible for this or any other such massacre then an all-you-can-eat buffet is responsible for obesity.
Temperate appeals to right reason will instruct the thoughtful person that a propensity for such an act is not born of opportunity, but of instability.
Let us not dishonor the memory of those killed and of the attempted assassination of Representative Giffords by allowing partisan fealty or the purposefully bellowed passions of faction to indict us on the Left or the Right as co-conspirators in the legicide of the Constitution.
Related articles:
Politicizing Ariz. Mass Shooting to Demonize Guns, Conservatives
The Arizona Shooting: The Lefts Prejudice and Hypocrisy on Display
Photo: Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., displays an AR-15 carbine at a news conference on Capitol Hill, June 16, 1999, where he and other Democrats urged the House to pass his version of gun control legislation. In the background are Rep. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill) left, and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D, N.Y.), right: (AP Photo/Dennis Cook): AP Images
