It’s Saturday afternoon. I’m in Vermont, having lunch at the Soup ‘n Greens in Barre, talking the minor league life with the guys from the Saint John (N.B.) Mill Rats before their game that evening against the Frost Heaves. I went back to the hotel room to gather my gear and catch up on the news.
And it was at that time I saw something horrible on the television screen. On Fox and on MSNBC and on every other cable channel I could see. And at that moment, a basketball game was meaningless in comparison.
There was a killing spree in Arizona today; Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot in the head – as someone opened fire outside a Safeway grocery store near Tucson. Giffords, who was meeting with her constituents, was shot – and five other people, at the time of this blog post, were killed. Among the murdered was a federal judge, John M. Roll, and a nine-year old child.
My thoughts and prayers are with Rep. Giffords and her family as she recovers from this senseless attack. My thoughts and prayers are also with the family of Judge John Roll, to the family of the fallen child, and to those who are also devastated by this painful and bitter tragic day.
And as for the murderer – a useless piece of trash named Jared Lee Loughner – you get a personal message from me.
You are the lowest piece of filthy scum ever existing on this earth. You killed a federal judge. You killed a 9 year old girl. And you put an elected representative in the hospital. You are a disgusting excuse for a human being. You don’t deserve to be on this planet. You are a monstrous degenerate, and your disgusting actions have no place in our world. Whatever your misplaced, deluded beliefs were, you made this world a worse place by your very existence.
May God have mercy on your pathetic soul.
Chuck The Writer 
I was shocked by the news myself.
Just a very normal, unsuspecting Saturday afternoon and then this news. What a terrible tragedy.
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How horrible the world must be to this man that he felt the need to kill. and as it seems over something as stupid as politics. My thoughts and prayers to all victim and their families and friends. I pray that the family of the 9 year old can survive this, as the death of a child can easily ruin a family and many lives. 😥
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What do we expect in a country where guns and ammunition are widely available and any restrictions are constantly torpedoed by trigger happy anti-gun-regulation activists?
The constitution gives the right to bear arms for the sake of forming a well regulated militia. How come that one person forms a well regulated militia? How many more have to die before change occurs?
The incident is tragic, sad, and was absolutely unnecessary, but again, we should have seen this coming and by far it wasn’t the first time that someone gets a gun and goes on a rampage. Do away with the guns for the safety of us all!
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Dave Blaming gun is like blaming McDonalds for my weight gain. I strongly agree with the saying “If guns are outlawed only outlaws will own guns” Most people that commit these crimes do not go through legal channels to get their weapons. This guy was crazy and it wasn’t the guns that made him kill.
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Go to the tea party blog on the T.U. and see how the comments have been turned off with regards to these senseless murders. Hypocrites who seek to be “freedom ” loving except for freedom of the press in their blog.
Just last week, one commentator warbled with pride on the tea party belief in the “sacred right” to own guns. Sarah Plain had this congresswoman’s name covered with a bullseye ion her website!
IT IS TIME AMERICA TO HOLD THE PALIN, FOX NEWS, LIMBUGH/HANNITY/BECK HATE MACHINE ACCOUNTBALE FOR THEIR WORDS THAT IS DIVIDING OUR COUNTRY AND PUTTING OUR DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED OFFCIALS AT RISK. WORDS AHEV CONSEQUENCES. GO THE THE T.U. TEA PARTY BLOG AND TELL THWEM THAT WE WILL NOT PUT UP WITH TWEIR HATRED ANY LONGER.
That little girl was nine years old..
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@Karen
That is the same attitude that Giffords has. That approach only makes guns to be easy to get. It is sad, but ironic that a pro-gun politician has to suffer from gun violence that has partially its origin in these pro-gun views.
Sure, McDonald’s doesn’t make us fat, but without McDonald’s we wouldn’t eat Big Macs. In my opinion not just the ownership of guns has to be drastically limited to exceptional cases and law enforcement, but production and sale of guns and ammunition has to be drastically reduced. Without changes like that we will have play dates shooting each other by accident, 8 year olds killing themselves with Uzis at gun shows, and 21 year old crazy people shoot at innocent people.
I ask again, how many people more have to die before the guns are going away? Karen, tell us, how many more? 100? 1,000? A million?
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@ Dave, Are you really so Naive as to believe guns kill people? Should we stop using knives too? People are killed by knives everyday, How about Cars? Cars kill people too, Seriously all this man not having a gun would have done is forced him to use a different means. Would it have been better in your eyes if he built a bomb to use? That would have only killed even more people. Please stop with the guns kill BS.
By the way I do not own a gun and have no desire to but I am not for taking the right to own a gun away.
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@Karen
Different means would have meant less dead people and most likely a much easier means to stop the action. The difference between guns and other weapons (bow and arrow aside) is that guns can be fired from quite a distance. With a knife you need to get up close.
Guns kill people and nothing changes that fact, not even yet another analogy that doesn’t compare.
Besides that, which law grants you the right to own a gun? Do you refer to the Second Amendment, which reads “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Since when are individuals shooting guns a “well regulated militia”? Since when do automatic assault rifles and shotguns in private homes guarantee “the security of the free State”?
It still baffles me how the gun huggers could twist this one sentence so much out of context that current rules do exactly the opposite. As for the “well regulated militia”, we do have that already. It is called Police.
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@ Dave, How do you know it would mean less dead people. if it were a bomb it would have meant more dead people.
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Since no one has ever attempted to kill a politician before and since no one has ever gone on a killing spree before this is clearly the fault of Fox News and Sarah Palin. Oh…and the gun…it’s the gun’s fault, too.
Chuck—good post, but I have no idea why you allowed the idiotic comments.
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@Karen
I’m not saying that there will be no killing if guns are gone, but it won’t happen through guns, which in this case were obtained legally, which in Arizona is as easy as buying a burger.
So when guns don’t kill, what else do they? Cook breakfast? Aside from pulverizing cans and killing deer (for which one would use a proper rifle anyway) guns are solely intended to kill people. There is no other obvious use for them. And whoever owns a gun will sooner or later use it.
I’ll guess we don’t get much further here. Guns are deadly and there will be more killings of this kind if the masses of guns in private hands are not drastically reduced.
@D357
JFK (unfortunately successful)? Ford (twice, both failed)? Reagan? Clinton? Bush? Obama? They all were target of assassination attempts using firearms. There are plenty of cases and they all were only possible due to the easy access to guns. But yea, it is just some blokes from the loony bin or some radical liberals or postal workers who are the real cause. Gimme a break! Most of these attempts wouldn’t have happened when there were no guns on every street corner.
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OMG.
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