“One of the things that the gun does is it equalizes the unequal”

“These maximum security felons say they fear an armed victim much more than the police.”

“Having a gun changes the balance of power.”

“If someone gets into your house, which would you rather have? A telephone? Or a handgun? You can call the police if you want and they’ll get there, and they’ll take a picture of your dead body, but they can’t get there in time to save your life. The first line of defense is you.”

“TAMPA – No charges will be filed against a Town ‘N Country man who fatally shot a teen he said confronted him during a late-night jog, Hillsborough County prosecutors said.

Thomas G. Baker, 28, told deputies he was jogging when two teens in dark clothing approached him about 1:30 a.m. Nov. 24 in the Pinehurst subdivision. A conversation turned into an argument, he said, and one of the teens punched him.

Baker told investigators he thought one of the teens had a gun and that he was going to be robbed. He pulled his .45-caliber pistol and shot Mustelier, 18, multiple times, authorities said.”

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/jan/11/111306/no-charges-for-jogger-in-town-n-country-fatal-shoo/

“Dick Winters, a highly decorated World War II hero who became a household name when his heroics were chronicled in a Stephen Ambrose book that later became the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers,” has died. He was 92.

A very private and modest man, he died last week but requested that the news be withheld until after the funeral, a family friend told the Associated Press.

After enlisting in the Army on Aug. 25, 1941, the Pennsylvania native enrolled in Officer Candidate School, eventually being commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in 1942. He was assigned to the 506th regiment of the 101st Airborne Division — known as Easy Company — and was deployed with his regiment to land by parachute in France on D-Day, June 6, 1944.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/dick-winters-wwii-hero-chronicled-in-band-of-brothers-dies;_ylt=ApCrXCcmWENfiSfyluYYVid0fNdF

by Roger Hedgecock

“There was a hero Saturday in front of that Arizona supermarket. He didn’t have a gun and didn’t shoot back, but it is said by witnesses he saved Gifford’s life.

Twenty-year-old Daniel Hernandez is a junior at the University of Arizona. He had signed up as an student intern in Gabrielle Gifford’s District office just five days before the shooting.

This was Hernandez’ first event staffing Gifford’s “Congress on Your Corner” constituent meeting. Hernandez was about 30 feet away from the representative, signing people in as they came up to see her. Then he heard the shots.

Then he ran, not away screaming as most people there understandably did, but toward the shots. “I don’t even know if the gunfire had stopped,” he recalled later to reporters from the Arizona Republic.

Dan Hernandez said, “Of course you’re afraid. You just have to do what you can.”

What Dan did was move from one wounded, bleeding, victim to another, checking for pulse. One man’s pulse had stopped. Then he saw Gifford, contorted and lying bleeding on the sidewalk. He ran to her. She was conscious but quiet, Dan later recalled.

Read the rest of this entry »

“TUCSON — Ms. Giffords was in critical condition after surviving, against the odds, a single gunshot wound to the head at point-blank range. Her doctors were cautiously optimistic that she would survive…

Prosecutors charged Jared L. Loughner, a troubled 22-year-old college dropout, with five federal counts on Sunday, including the attempted assassination of a member of Congress, in connection with a shooting rampage on Saturday morning that left six people dead and 14 wounded.

Mr. Loughner, who is believed to have acted alone, is in federal custody…

Investigators here focused their attention on Mr. Loughner, whom they accused of methodically planning the shootings, which occurred outside a supermarket. The court documents said Mr. Loughner bought the semiautomatic Glock pistol used in the shooting at Sportsman’s Warehouse, which sells hunting and fishing gear, on Nov. 30 in Tucson.

The gun was legally purchased, officials said, prompting criticism of the state’s gun laws, which allow the carrying of concealed weapons. Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik of Pima County, a critic of what he calls loose gun restrictions, bluntly labeled Arizona “Tombstone.”

Loughner has refused to cooperate with investigators and has invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, the Pima County sheriff’s office said.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/politics/10giffords.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Jared L. Loughner:

“As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy,” the former classmate, Caitie Parker, wrote in a series of Twitter feeds Saturday. “I haven’t seen him since ’07 though. He became very reclusive.”

“He was a political radical & met Giffords once before in ’07, asked her a question & he told me she was ‘stupid & unintelligent,’ ” she wrote.

Mr. Wiens said that something Mr. Loughner said during a discussion about religion had stuck in his mind: “Whatever happens, happens,” Mr. Wiens recalled the suspect saying. “Might as well enjoy life now.”

Don Coorough, 58, who sat two desks in front of Mr. Loughner in a poetry class last semester, described him as a “troubled young man” and “emotionally underdeveloped.” After another student read a poem about getting an abortion, Mr. Loughner compared the young woman to a “terrorist for killing the baby.”

“No one in that class would even sit next to him,” Mr. Coorough said. Another fellow student said that he found Mr. Loughner’s behavior so eccentric — including inappropriate remarks and unusual outbursts — that he wondered if he might be on hallucinogens.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09shooter.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS

“…With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the tea party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular. Why? Because they had created, in New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s words, a “climate of hate.”

The critics were a bit short on particulars as to what that meant. Mrs. Palin has used some martial metaphors—”lock and load”—and talked about “targeting” opponents. But as media writer Howard Kurtz noted in The Daily Beast, such metaphors are common in politics. Palin critic Markos Moulitsas, on his Daily Kos blog, had even included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s district on a list of congressional districts “bullseyed” for primary challenges.

When Democrats use language like this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama’s famous remark, in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”—it’s just evidence of high spirits, apparently. But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703667904576071913818696964.html

At the moment we’re seeing liberal Democrats self-righteously bemoaning the “violent rhetoric” of conservative Republicans, and criticizing Republicans for stirring up “vitriol”, implying that the shooting in Arizona was due in part to harsh language from conservative politicians and TV or Radio personalities.

George Packer of the New Yorker said,

“This relentlessly hostile rhetoric has become standard issue on the right. (On the left it appears in anonymous comment threads, not congressional speeches and national T.V. programs.)

Whatever drove Jared Lee Loughner, America’s political frequencies are full of violent static.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2011/01/judging-from-his-internet-postings.html#ixzz1AbtpGYkH

This is not to defend or excuse Republicans but just a little reminder to pious Democrats that maybe they should pause for a moment of self-reflection before accusing others of stirring up trouble.

Of course, in the minds of these fine Democrats the “violent rhetoric” displayed below is different, I suppose they felt it was justified. I suppose they felt they were expressing free speech.

May I suggest we try less name-calling and more actual discussion? Fewer insults and more genuine suggestions on how to make things better?

It would be good if everyone would tone down the rhetoric on both sides and try to be more civil in their disagreements, but it’s disgusting to see Democrats act self-righteous about “violent rhetoric” given their public expressions of hatred and violence in the past. Here are just a few examples:

“At a press conference on Sunday afternoon, Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Dupnik offered more details on how suspected Arizona shooter Jared Loughner was disarmed.

Dupnik said that when Loughner ran out of bullets in his first magazine, a woman who had already been shot “went up and grabbed” the new magazine “and tore it away from him.” Dupnik said the name of the woman was known but he did not share it during the press conference.

After the confrontation with the woman, Loughner was able to load another magazine into his weapon, but “the spring in the magazine failed,” Dupnik said, and two men were able to get his weapon away from him and subdue him until law enforcement arrived.

Dupnik said the work of these three people potentially averted a “huge greater catastrophe.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/09/arizona-shooting-hero-clarence-dupnik_n_806434.html