Congresswoman Giffords Shot in Tucson
Gabrielle Giffords, a congresswoman from Arizona, was shot in the head on Saturday at a public event held at a grocery store in Tucson, her spokesman, C. J. Karamargin, said. Others at the event, including members of her staff, were among the injured.
Her condition was unknown. She was taken to University Medical Center in Tucson, the trauma center for the area, about 10 miles away. Even though NPR and CNN reported that she had been killed, Darci Slater, a hospital spokeswoman, said that Ms. Giffords was in surgery.
In the NPR report:
A congressional official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that the gunman was using an automatic weapon.
6 Responses to “Congresswoman Giffords Shot in Tucson”
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So the NYT article says it’s a semi-automatic and NPR says it was an automatic. Never thought I’d say it, but I’d bet my boots that the NYT is correct. It’s pathetic how few news media writers understand what an automatic weapon is and how incredibly rare their use in a crime actually is.
My uninformed guess would be that you’re probably right. A lot of people seem to think that “shoot without manually cocking it every shot” is “automatic.”
It’s almost like someone has been trying to make them think that.
Mistakes in terminology are probably moot. Watch out for the next national gun control legislation that has a high chance of coming from this. It’s one thing when we are killing eachother, but if the political class feels threatened, it could raise the chances.
Since this guy is almost certainly nuts, how do we keep firearms out of the hands of the disturbed? I ask this sincerely, and will probably get hammered by someone. But I think crazy people really shouldn’t have guns as long as they aren’t able to act rationally, but there is no system in place in this country to lawfully identify, and classify people as nuts, certainly not without trampling on people’s rights to due process.
Even loons are usually able to lie on the check box that asks them if they are crazy on the DROS. I would really like to see some ideas on how we might be able to address this in a positive manner.
Well, I’d start by asking if mistakes in terminology are also moot when discussing how to keep gun out of the hands of “crazy” people. Seriously.
What is “crazy”? I know lots of people who have some crazy opinions about things. Does that mean they lose their right to keep and bear arms?
Do we establish a National Crazy Directory and perform background checks against it whenever someone buys a gun? How do we get people into that database? Mandatory personality testing? Who designs the tests? Is someone who believes in an unseen boogeyman that tells him to do things and who then acts on those beliefs crazy? How about a religious person who takes their faith very seriously and believes in God instead of a boogeyman?
Believing in boogeymen, God, or aliens in your head does not invalidate your right to bear arms. Acting in accordance with those beliefs does not invalidate your right to bear arms unless doing so breaks the law.
I’m not trying to be snarky here. I just think that if you ask 1000 people if we should keep guns out of the hands of crazy people, you will get 1000 people who agree. You will also have at least 1000 different opinions about what defines crazy, 1000 different opinions about who hand how to check for crazy, and 1000 opinions about how to enforce a “no guns for crazies” policy.
If the person hasn’t done anything wrong they can’t be convicted. If they have a history of issues that prevent them from owning guns, then yes that should be in the background check database and they should not be permitted to own guns. But trying to preemptively keep crazy people from getting guns is like preemptively keeping people who will commit crimes from getting guns.
And the problem isn’t really “keeping guns out of the hands of the disturbed” to begin with. The problem is keeping guns out of the hands of anyone (disturbed or not) that is going to use them illegally.
Gun control can’t keep guns out of the hands of those who commit crimes with them, and defining what is and is not a crime is far easier than defining who is or is not crazy.
If gun control can’t keep guns out of the hands of people who will commit crimes, how can it possibly keep guns out of the hands of “crazy” people when the latter is far, far more difficult to define, let alone accomplish?
Points taken. I guess I would only define “crazy” as someone who had been institutionalized, or had otherwise been diagnosed with a severe personality disorder, ala bi-polarism, schizophrenia, things like that. And clearly letting mental health professionals act as judge and jury is not acceptable for removing a right. Whether this guy falls into my broad and vague category, who knows? But it bothers me to hear about these guys, like the Virginia Tech nut job, that probably could have been seen ahead of time if society in general were paying more attention, and possibly had a legal and fair system to work within to address them before they go postal.
But then, I also believe we live in a world of billions of people, and that no law can stop all of the .001% that might choose to act psychotically, so perhaps trying to fix this “problem” would cause more issues than it would solve.
As far as the ability of any law keeping guns out of the hands of the nuts, since we can’t keep them out of the hands of criminals, I think that is a false comparison. I think most people probably support the instant background check on firearm sales to be able to at least broadly check that we aren’t legally selling guns to felons. Sure they will probably be able to get them illegally, but there is no sense in helping them.
As far as how a “crazy database” might be put together, that is where I run up against reality. I don’t know how to accomplish something like that without creating a big potential for abuse.