"Things Have Really Got Spun Out"

"I think it is time as a country that we need to do a little soul searching. When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths, tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. Unfortunately, Arizona has sort of become the capital, the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.
"There's reason to believe that this individual may have a mental issue. And I think people who are unbalanced are especially susceptible to vitriol. People tend to pooh-pooh this business about all the vitriol we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it's not without consequences." Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik

That reads like a fairly introspective and intelligent assessment of the situation. If a 74-year-old man elected repeatedly for his county by people who trust his judgement and intelligence as sheriff cannot be trusted to parse the psychological-emotional environment that has afflicted his country with the election of a biracially black president after centuries of black enslavement and a background of frontier-mentality gun-slinging, then who can?

Interestingly enough, as a senior citizen entrusted with the safety and security of his locality, he speaks in outrage and with sorrow on behalf of six victims of a demented mind's political and social rage culminating in their untimely deaths. While his target may have been Congressional Representative Gabrielle Giffords, once Jared Lee Loughner had accomplished what he set out to do, he casually turned his gunfire on bystanders, killing six people and injuring fourteen others.

Of those six one was a man slightly older than himself, Gabe Zimmerman, a man described as "...an amazing person. His goal in life was to do nothing but help people. There's not enough words to describe him." Another was a 63-year-old Federal Court Justice, John M. Roll, of whom Sheriff Dupnik said "I have never met a more sincere ... fair-minded, brilliant federal judge - or any judge, for that matter - in my whole life."

Another was a retired construction worker, 76 year-old Dorwan Stoddard who placed himself protectively on top of his wife Mavanell who emerged wounded, but who will survive to mourn her husband who "...was a teddy bear, he didn't have a mean bone in him." And then there were Dorothy Morris, 76, and her husband George who graduated from Reno High School together in 1952. Also Phyllis Schneck, 79, a great-grandmother and homemaker who made crafts to help raise money for church fairs.

Last, a third-grade little girl of nine, spirited and beautiful Christina Taylor Green, born on September 11, 2001, the pride of her parents. Christina, even at nine years of age already exhibited a burgeoning interest in politics and attended the town hall meeting arranged for Congresswoman Giffords to speak directly to her constituents at the street level, on a casual, comfortable basis in a setting familiar to all of them, an area supermarket.

Described as 'tough and tenacious' by her colleagues, Representative Giffords, though shot through her brain, may yet survive and may retain her faculties. A young intern, Daniel Hernandez, who had signed up a week earlier to assist the Congresswoman, (the same age as her assassin), found her bleeding on the sidewalk, lifted her onto his lap to help her breathe until paramedics arrived, and accompanied her to hospital where she responded to a question from him by squeezing his hand.

Congresswoman Giffords extended an invitation to "Please stop by to let me know what is on your mind" for her "Congress on Your Corner" event scheduled for Saturday morning. Sheriff Dupnik described Gabrielle Giffords as being "one of the nicest human beings on the planet". "We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list. But the thing is the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize there's consequences to that", Congresswoman Giffords observed prophetically.

To which observation an aide of Sarah Palin responded that the graphic was meant to represent a surveyor's symbol, it had nothing whatever to do with firearms. This, despite the undeniable fact that Sarah Palin speaks often of guns, and it's unlikely she has any idea what surveyors even do, let alone what symbolically represents what they do. Sarah Palin's language as related to guns is unambiguous, as in Reload!

In November's midterm election which Congresswoman Giffords fought successfully against conservative Republican Jesse Kelly, a former marine sergeant, his fundraisers sloganeered "Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office", and to make them fully comfortable, invited supporters to "shoot a fully automatic M-15 with Jesse Kelly". During the upheaval over health-care reform Gabrielle Giffords wrote, "The rhetoric is incredibly heated - the calls, the emails, the slurs. Things have really got spun out."

But there are American heroes, as well as American villains and assassins. Like the men on the 9/11 Pennsylvania flight bound for Washington who rallied to fend for themselves in the face of death, an elderly woman, Patricia Maisch, moved to disarm the murderer. And she was joined by Roger Sulzgeber, Bill Badger and Joseph Zimudie who managed to wrestle the demented gunman to the ground to subdue him until the arrival of police.

There are almost 300 million firearms in the United States. Almost as many guns as there are people living there. A third of the guns are handguns, and almost 100 million are in the possession of ordinary citizens, representing the highest concentration of gun ownership in the world. Unsurprisingly, the United States racks up the highest firearms homicide rate as well, of any industrialized country.

"The fiery rhetoric that has taken hold in politics may be free speech, but it's not without consequences." Sheriff Clarence Dupnik.