The shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other people in Tucson is horrifying, tragic and heartbreaking.
But political?
It strikes us that those who rushed to place the alleged actions of 22-year-old shooter Jared Loughner in a larger context of divisive politics are way out of line.
The details just don’t exist to make such a supposition, and rushing to that judgment, as the Pima County sheriff and countless others already have done, isn’t helpful.
Early indications are that Loughner’s shooting rampage, which ended in the deaths of six people, is the product of a profoundly disturbed mind.
If you want to get political about it, how about focusing on whether Loughner ever received mental health care — and if not, why not?
How about examining how and why a disturbed young man was apparently so easily able to get his hands on a semiautomatic Glock?
To immediately put this shooting in the context of the Tea Party versus the establishment, or red vs. blue, with no proof whatsoever, is to cheapen the deaths and injuries by diverting attention from what we know.
Yes, there exists a climate of hyper-partisanship, particularly in our nation’s capital, which is often counterproductive. And yes, the currency of this dynamic can be distasteful and even disturbing at times. But we’re talking about a young man who believed the government was trying to control people with grammatical rules and language structure.
In his community college classes, Loughner would burst out laughing hysterically to himself at random, or so it seemed to others in his class.
And what to make of the creepy YouTube video the FBI is probing? A man thought to be Loughner, wearing a brown hoodie and what looks like a garbage bag and a mask, sets fire to a U.S. flag. A song by heavy metal band Drowning Pool plays in the background, with the lyrics, “Let the bodies hit the floor.”
It’s pretty tough to hang a harness of ideology on that freakish scene.
In the hours and days after the Columbine killings in 1999, many sought an instant scapegoat: Marilyn Manson. Guns. Violent video games.
But as we learned then, there often is no easy answer.
As the court case proceeds against Loughner, details may emerge that will help to better answer the question of “Why?” But it’s also important to keep in mind that some events, and the actions of some people, just don’t make sense and never will.
Nevertheless, closer to home, we don’t blame Colorado’s U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter for re-examining his practice of holding his “Government in the Grocery” meetings. Giffords, the critically wounded congresswoman, was holding just that sort of event when Loughner allegedly opened fire.
It makes sense for the Golden Democrat, and the stores that host him, to see if anything can or should be done to improve security. But we hope Perlmutter eventually decides to continue holding his constituent outreach meetings because such interaction is important to a representative democracy.
As the Arizona shootings continue to reverberate through society, we would hope people attempt to learn from the tragedy and not use it to make political arguments not borne out by the facts.
