User:Robster1983/2011 Tucson shooting

Political climate

The shooting came at a time of an especially acrimonious political climate. Democrats and Republicans both called for a cooling of political rhetoric as a result of the heated controversy building up before the shooting. On the eve of the shooting, Giffords wrote to a Republican friend, Trey Grayson, Secretary of State of Kentucky saying, "we need to figure out how to tone our rhetoric and partisanship down."

In the wake of the shooting, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik commented "When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

Giffords expressed concerns about the tenor of a national midterm election campaign map denoting targeted congressional seats including Giffords'. In March 2010, shortly after the map's posting and her office's subsequent vandalization, Giffords said: "We're in Sarah Palin's 'targeted' list, but the thing is that the way she has it depicted, we're in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize that there are consequences to that action."

International media referred to both the political climate in the US and the 'hit list'. About the political tensions, the Paris newspaper Le Monde said that the attack seemed to confirm "an alarming premonition that has been gaining momentum for a long time: that the verbal and symbolic violence that the most radical right-wing opponents have used in their clash with the Obama administration would at some point lead to tragic physical violence." In the Netherlands, a similar statement was made by historian Maarten van Rossem, as he mentions that "since two years a strong political polarisation in the United States has led to a poisoned political climate". The BBC News also mentions the gun control in the US, stating that "America's cable news channels have been flooded with analysts speculating about why [...] but one thing that has scarcely been raised is gun control".

Several defend Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement. Toby Harnden of The Daily Telegraph criticized the view that the shooting was the result of the Tea Party movement, noting that some of Loughner's stated political positions were more left-wing than right-wing, while most were unclassifiable on the political spectrum. Howard Kurtz and Robert Stacy McCain also criticized efforts to connect the murders to Palin and the Tea Party. Byron York criticized the media for a rush to judgement about the shooter's motivation.

There have been renewed calls to tone down political rhetoric in the wake of the shooting, with the feeling that certain words and phrases may have incited the violence. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann apologized for any of his own actions that might have incited violence saying, "Violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in our Democracy, and I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence."

Public opinion

Daniel Webster, a director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, explains to BBC news that "American individualism explains why the immediate response to shootings like the Tucson tragedy or the Virginia Tech massacre is not to look for legislative remedies", further saying it "is common for people simply not to ask why guns are so prevalent or why mentally unstable people can so easily access them, [...] instead, their attention focuses on what was wrong with the individual shooter. Did he have a troubled past or a mental illness?"