John Fund: Mass Murder, Gun Free Zones & Mental Health

As I said in the opening line of the post below, "gun control laws - as well as "gun free zones" - do nothing more than disarm the law abiding, with of course disastrous effect when a gun is needed for defense of self and others." John Fund addresses those themes as well as mental illness in his NRO column today, first giving us some facts about mass murder:

Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.

In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.

Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.

The only addition to that list would be that the worst slaughter in a school in our nation's history occurred in 1927 in Bath Township, Michigan. In that incident, Andrew Kehoe, over a period of hours, used explosives to kill 45 people, mostly children attending the local school.

Fund then addresses "gun free zones:"

Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting. Indeed, there have been many instances — from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. — where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.

Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.

I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed that nothing has changed to alter his findings. He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.

“Disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks,” Lott told me. “A couple hundred people were in the Cinemark Theater when the killer arrived. There is an extremely high probability that one or more of them would have had a legal concealed handgun with him if they had not been banned.”

Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

Also as I said below, private businesses that choose to voluntarily disarm their clientele by designating their business a gun free zone should be sued for negligence if a mass murder is committed on their grounds. Nothing will drive the the debate on this issue like a few successful law suits.

You will note that it seems like all of the calls for "gun control" come from people on the left who live in safety, often protected in their work, if not their home, by people carrying guns. They seem to believe that allowing private citizens to carry weapons is a sure recipe for mayhem. Fund addresses their mistrust:

There is no evidence that private holders of concealed-carry permits (which are either easy to obtain or not even required in more than 40 states) are any more irresponsible with firearms than the police. According to a 2005 to 2007 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Bowling Green State University, police nationwide were convicted of firearms violations at least at a 0.002 percent annual rate. That’s about the same rate as holders of carry permits in the states with “shall issue” laws.

And Fund also addresses the role of mental illness in mass murders:

A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.” New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened. “Will we address mental-health and educational-privacy laws, which instill fear of legal liability for reporting potentially violent mentally ill people to law enforcement?” asks Professor Jacobson. “I doubt it.”

After several decades of ACLU driven lawsuits, our mental health laws today insure that those with potential problems will not receive the help that should be available, nor will society be protected against such individuals. That should be the starting point of any national discussions in the wake of Sandy Hook, followed shortly thereafter by a discussion of the evil of "gun-free zones."

Related Posts:

- St. Louis Police Chief Calls for Arming School Personnel

- Luby Cafeteria Massacre, Testimony of Suzanna Hupp, Texas School District Authorizes Concealed Carry For Its Schools

- Reynolds On Gun Free Zones, The Left's Mistrust Of Armed Private Citizens, & Our Problematic Mental Health Laws

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Sandy Hook, Gun Control & Mental Illness (Update 5)

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.

William S. Burroughs, quoted by Prof. Glen Reynolds, Gun-free zones provide false sense of security, USA Today, 14 Dec, 2012

The blood isn't dry yet in Connecticut and already the left is using this horrific slaughter to call for unilaterally disarming our nation under the rubric of gun control.

Had there been a person at Sandy Hook with a concealed carry permit, could this mass murder have been stopped, in whole or in part? As Bookworm Room points out, the police response to the tragedy was quick, but when seconds counted, they got there in minutes - in time to take stock of the carnage, not to stop it.

As Prof. Reynolds explained in his column linked above:

. . . One of the interesting characteristics of mass shootings is that they generally occur in places where firearms are banned: malls, schools, etc. That was the finding of a famous 1999 study by John Lott of the University of Maryland and William Landes of the University of Chicago, and it appears to have been borne out by experience since then as well.

In a way, this is no surprise. If there's someone present with a gun when a mass shooting begins, the shooter is likely to be shot himself. And, in fact, many mass shootings — from the high school shooting by Luke Woodham in Pearl, Miss., to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo., where an armed volunteer shot the attacker — have been terminated when someone retrieved a gun from a car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.

Policies making areas "gun free" provide a sense of safety to those who engage in magical thinking, but in practice, of course, killers aren't stopped by gun-free zones. As always, it's the honest people — the very ones you want to be armed — who tend to obey the law.

We don't need more gun control, we need laws that insure that responsible, law abiding people have access to guns both in and outside their home. Update: Interestingly enough, Michigan just passed a new law to expand concealed carry permits and to eliminate most so called "gun free zones," including at schools. And we need to see some of those institutions promulgating "gun free zones" sued for disarming the very people who could have stopped such senseless violence.

But that aside, it also appears, as is often the case in such mass murders, that the perpetrator may have been mentally ill. What this should ignite is not a “national conversation” on gun control, but a national conversation on our policies towards individuals with mental disorders when people around them have reason to suspect they might be or become violent. Right now, thanks to the past five decades of work by the ACLU and others, there is next to nothing that can be done to institutionalize such individuals and get them help. That is the string that ties together the last several high profile mass murders that come immediately to my mind – Giffords, the Colorado Cinema, and now, from early reports, Sandy Hook.

Update: Jeff Goldberg, writing at the Atlantic, makes the same points I make above, about why there was no one in the school with a weapon to stop the slaughter and a need to reexamine how we treat the dangerous mentally ill.

Update: Bookworm Room has put up a great post on responding to the many myths the left uses to justify their calls for gun control.

Update: Law Prof. Eugene Volokh posed a question for his readers that, in sum, asks what objection they would have, if any, to the teachers or staff in schools having concealed carry permits. The moaning and braying in the comments section from the left side of the aisle is a bit depressing actually. The negative comments almost uniformly show a distrust of private, law abiding citizens being armed while, at the same time, ignoring the elephant in the room, that such an individual might have been able to end the slaughter.

Update: From American Digest - Meanwhile, at Elementary School in Israel . . .

Related Posts:

- St. Louis Police Chief Calls for Arming School Personnel

- John Fund: Mass Murder, Gun Free Zones & Mental Health

- Luby Cafeteria Massacre, Testimony of Suzanna Hupp, Texas School District Authorizes Concealed Carry For Its Schools

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Evil Visits Connecticut

From Fox News:

Twenty-seven people, including 20 children, were killed Friday when a gunman clad in black military gear opened fire inside his mother's kindergarten class at a Connecticut elementary school.

The shooter, who sources identified as Adam Lanza, 20, shot his mother in the face at their home in Newtown, Conn., then went to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School where she taught and gunned down her entire class, according to sources. Lanza was found dead inside the school, according to officials. Eighteen of the children and six more adults were dead at the school and two more children died later, according to Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance.

- No motive is known for this crime - nor will one, even if identified, ever be understood.

- The guns used, two handguns, were legally owned by the mother, the shooters first victim. A .223 assault rifle was found in the killer's car.

- Lanza was mentally ill, apparently suffering autism and a 'personality disorder.'

- After murdering his mother, reports are that Lanza went to the school where she taught, Sandy Hook elementary, murdered several people in the school's office before going to the mother's class room and executing all of the children in the class.

- Pray for the souls of the murdered and for the comfort of their families.

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Krugman Tries to Save Face

Ed Driscoll, at PJM, wonders if Paul Krugman has not, after the past week, become a millstone around the neck of the NYT and the left. Given his column of today, it would seem that Krugman himself might be getting that message.

For the last six days, the left in general, and Paul Krugman in particular, has experienced a massive push back against the "blood libel" Krugman initiated when he claimed, iu the immediate aftermath of the mass murder in Arizona and in the total absence of any supporting facts, that the right created the climate of hate that drove the mass murder. Today, in his column, this ethically challenged hyper-partisans beats a retreat, still vaguely implying the same about the right, but couching it in a manner that is far less caustic. He appends his implications as an ad hominem to the conclusion of his column, wherein he divides America into two warring camps - those who support the welfare state and those who do not - with the latter being utterly heartless beings willing to see the poor starve. He concludes:

Right now, each side in that debate [about the direction of our country] passionately believes that the other side is wrong. And it’s all right for them to say that. What’s not acceptable is the kind of violence and eliminationist rhetoric encouraging violence that has become all too common these past two years.

This is a face saving - and perhaps job saving - effort if there ever was one. Krugman is trying to morph his libelous accusations into a general condemnation of the current political atmosphere. It won't work. We will have to wait and see, but I think Krugman has done tremendous damage to the progressive brand, at least among any of those in the middle who have been paying any attention.

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Dangerous Maps

Apparently only the Palin map is capable of taking our political dialogue to heretofore unseen levels of militancy in America. Who knew - well, other than Krugman, Faber, Moulitas, the NYT, Rep. Clyburn, Sen. Durbin, etc.

H/T to Rides A Pale Horse, commenting at Flopping Aces.

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Is It Me, Or Does This Sound Like A Campaign Stop?

The lead up to the President's speech, with various politicians and the like stepping to the podium to adoring cheers, seemed deeply out of place. The President's words seemed appropriate enough, but it seemed oddly inappropriate to have a memorial to those murdered and wounded punctuated repeatedly with cheers and applause. That is not the President's fault per se, but it has left me, at least, deeply uncomfortable with how this memorial was organized and executed.

At any rate, the speech seems neutral enough - a lot of platitudes, but how could anyone craft a speech for this occasion that would not be full of platitudes. As could be expected of Obama, he danced around the blood libel of the left, saying that no single thing anyone did caused this mayhem, but that our discourse should become more civil:

The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives - to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse. let's remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy - it did not - but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.

Color me not surprised. As to a call for "civility," the left's calls for "civility" over the past several days have been nothing more than the bare patina on a call to silence conservative speech. I note that Krauthammer thinks otherwise. He believes Obama has ended the blood libel. We disagree.

Given my jaundiced view of this President, I cannot objectively grade his speech beyond saying that it seemed acceptable for the occasion.

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Krauthammer: "The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?"

Charles Krauthammer, in a former life, Chief Resident in Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital, makes a rare Wednesday appearance in the Washington Post to address the insanity at work in Arizona, and the transparent political gambit using the dead and injured coming out of New York and Washington. Given his perspective both as a former psychiatrist and now, as perhaps the most astute political observer of our time, I quote him in full on this issue.

The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the "climate of hate" created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires.

The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence.

As killers go, Jared Loughner is not reticent. Yet among all his writings, postings, videos and other ravings - and in all the testimony from all the people who knew him - there is not a single reference to any of these supposed accessories to murder.

Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.

A climate of hate? This man lived within his very own private climate. "His thoughts were unrelated to anything in our world," said the teacher of Loughner's philosophy class at Pima Community College. "He was very disconnected from reality," said classmate Lydian Ali. "You know how it is when you talk to someone who's mentally ill and they're just not there?" said neighbor Jason Johnson. "It was like he was in his own world."

His ravings, said one high school classmate, were interspersed with "unnerving, long stupors of silence" during which he would "stare fixedly at his buddies," reported the Wall Street Journal. His own writings are confused, incoherent, punctuated with private numerology and inscrutable taxonomy. He warns of government brainwashing and thought control through "grammar." He was obsessed with "conscious dreaming," a fairly good synonym for hallucinations.

This is not political behavior. These are the signs of a clinical thought disorder - ideas disconnected from each other, incoherent, delusional, detached from reality.

These are all the hallmarks of a paranoid schizophrenic. And a dangerous one. A classmate found him so terrifyingly mentally disturbed that, she e-mailed friends and family, she expected to find his picture on TV after his perpetrating a mass murder. This was no idle speculation: In class "I sit by the door with my purse handy" so that she could get out fast when the shooting began.

Furthermore, the available evidence dates Loughner's fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to at least 2007, when he attended a town hall of hers and felt slighted by her response. In 2007, no one had heard of Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck was still toiling on Headline News. There was no Tea Party or health-care reform. The only climate of hate was the pervasive post-Iraq campaign of vilification of George W. Bush, nicely captured by a New Republic editor who had begun an article thus: "I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it."

Finally, the charge that the metaphors used by Palin and others were inciting violence is ridiculous. Everyone uses warlike metaphors in describing politics. When Barack Obama said at a 2008 fundraiser in Philadelphia, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," he was hardly inciting violence.

Why? Because fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power - military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents. Indeed, the very word for an electoral contest - "campaign" - is an appropriation from warfare.

When profiles of Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, noted that he once sent a dead fish to a pollster who displeased him, a characteristically subtle statement carrying more than a whiff of malice and murder, it was considered a charming example of excessive - and creative - political enthusiasm. When Senate candidate Joe Manchin dispensed with metaphor and simply fired a bullet through the cap-and-trade bill - while intoning, "I'll take dead aim at [it]" - he was hardly assailed with complaints about violations of civil discourse or invitations to murder.

Did Manchin push Loughner over the top? Did Emanuel's little Mafia imitation create a climate for political violence? The very questions are absurd - unless you're the New York Times and you substitute the name Sarah Palin.

The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?

I do not think Krugman or any of the others on the left are delusional. They - Krugman, the NYT, Moulitas, Rep. Clyburn and others on the left - seized on this mass murder while the blood of the innocents was still wet on the ground in a transparent effort to delegitimize their opposition. It is so transparent and so outrageous, so outside the bounds of legitimate political discourse - or as WSJ's John Fund puts it, crossing a moral line - that if there is any cosmic justice in the world, this will rebound against them.

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Palin: "Within Hours Of A Tragedy Unfolding, Journalists And Pundits Should Not Manufacture A Blood Libel"

Below is Sarah Palin's video commentary on the mass murder in Arizona. She strikes, I think, the right tone, both in mourning for the losses and responding to her critics and others who have seized on this event to delegitimize their opposition. The text of her speech is here.

Sarah Palin: "America's Enduring Strength" from Sarah Palin on Vimeo.

I imagined that blood libel remark, wholly accurate, would shake the left wing hornet's nest. And yet again, I see it is Rep. Clyburn, the left's leading player of the race card and the man who wants to use this event to shut down right wing talk radio, who is among the first to respond. This from Rep. Clyburn:

"You know, Sarah Palin just can't seem to get it, on any front. I think she's an attractive person, she is articulate," Clyburn said on the Bill Press radio show. "But I think intellectually, she seems not to be able to understand what's going on here." . .

Clyburn said that Palin didn't grasp why such rhetoric was so troubling, regardless of the motivations of the alleged shooter of Giffords. The No. 3 House Democrat referenced the Civil Rights Era, and said that some of the shrill rhetoric in modern politics are reminiscent of that time in history.

"I have some experiences that maybe she does not have," he said. "When I see and hear things today that are reminiscent of that period of time, I am very, very concerned about it, because I know what it led to back then, and I know what it can lead to again."

Let's see, stunning arrogance - yep. Condecension to his political opponents - yep. Race card against all those who oppose the left rather than address the specific issue - yep. It's a Clyburn trifecta. What an absolute scumbag.

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The Intersection of Sharron Angle & The Left's Imputation Of Responsibility For The Mass Murders In Arizona

The left is repeated trotting out two shibboleths to justify their blood libel that the right has created a climate of hate that set the stage for Jared Loughner's mass murder in Arizona. The first, Palin's map, has been addressed ad inifitum. That has mostly been dropped since it has been shown that the left did the same thing with maps, bull's eyeing targets for election contests. The second, however, Sharon Angle's reference to a "Second Amendment solution," is now appearing more and more as the justification for the left's scurrilous attacks

So what precisely did Ms. Angle say that has the left all atwitter? She was asked about the Second Amendment in a radio interview several months ago.

Angle: I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who's in the military. This not for law enforcement. This is for us. And in fact when you read that Constitution and the founding fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny. This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical...

Manders: If we needed it at any time in history, it might be right now.

Angle: Well it's to defend ourselves. And you know, I'm hoping that we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.

In a second interview, she spoke similarly:

"You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason, and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said, it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years," Angle said. "I hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying, my goodness, what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you, the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out."

So let's break that down. First, did she acurately describe the scope and history of the Second Amendment in both interviews? Going to the Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, that answer is decidedly yes. As the discussion of the history of the Second Amendment in that case makes clear, the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, and it was a right given in part in order to protect against tyrannical government.

The second portion of Ms. Angle's first statement was inartful at best, but is there anyone who thinks she was calling for revolt in the event she was not elected? Or did she mean that there is no need for armed rebellion so long as we have recourse to the ballot box? Contrast that with Rep. Kanjorski (D-Pa), who actually did call for the outright execution of a Republican - "put him up against a wall and shoot him" - last year.

In the second interview, is there anyone who thinks that she was advocating the murder of Harry Reid? Contrast that with, for but one example, the books and movies during the Bush years discussing his actual assassination.

Sharron Angle was the Republican version of Joe Biden - a cringe worthy gaffe-o-matic. But, to school my left wing readers, there is huge gulf between inartful gaffes and calls for outright assassination.

That said, let me reiterate Ms. Angles statement that a purpose of the Second Amendment was to protect against a tyrannical government. Despite what Ezra Klein may think, the fact that the document is over 200 years old does not vitiate in the least that purpose, embodied in this quote from Thomas Jefferson:

When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

I can see why the left is upset. That must be a nagging thought for a government that has moved our country far to the left against the will of the people and is now poised to further subvert our democracy by governing through regulatory bureaucracies, having them accrete and wield power that our elected representatives in Congress have refused to authorize. That is a bastardization of our republican form of government and, indeed, does move us incrementally closer to tyranny. I don't think anyone on the left thinks Sharron Angle was advocating armed rebellion, but I do think it struck a cord somewhere deep in the left's psyche. And well it should have.

That said, as Ms. Angle implied, our first, second, third, and next to last resort is to the ballot box. The penultimate question is not which side wins the election, but that the ballot be fair and free, and that the democratic / republican process be fully respected.

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Hey, NYT & Paul Krugman, About All That Violent Hate Speech . . .

Just One Minute may just have the single best example of the hypocrisy of the left's campaign to tar the right with responsibility for Jared Loughner's mass murder in Arizona:

[This from] the voted-out Rep. Kanjorski (D, PA) last fall:

"Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him [Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for Florida governor] and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he's running for governor of Florida. He's a millionaire and a billionaire. He's no hero. He's a damn crook. It's just we don't prosecute big crooks."

And as Tom goes to point out, this same person who called for the murder of a Republican candidate for governor now appears today as a guest columnist in the NYT pontificating about the need for civility in our political discourse because of "how easily political differences can degenerate into violence."

The cherry on top of this cake of hypocrisy comes when you remember that Paul Krugman, the man who, along with his employer, the NYT, are leading the charge to blame the right for the the acts of Jared Loughner, said in a NYT op-ed the other day:

[T]here isn’t any place [in our democracy] for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary.

And it’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized.

No, NYT, no, Paul Krugman, it's not hard to imagine at all. One merely need take the briefest look at the facts over the past ten years.

On a related note, this from Instapundit:

Mark Halperin, last seen musing that what Obama needed was a “horrendous act of violence” that would save his Presidency, is now advising people on the right that they should turn the other cheek when falsely accused of murder after the hoped-for “horrendous act of violence” occurred. To avoid “escalation,” don’t y’know.

Bull. Now Halperin is throwing bible quotes at us to try and stamp down the backlash against the left for this scurrilous attack. Perhaps he and his commrades should have read the rest of the bible before engaging in this outrageous attack. Proverbs 19:5 - "A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will not escape."

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Motivations For Murder & Manipulation

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

- Winston Churchill

Almost three days removed from the horrid mass murder committed by Jared Loughner in Arizona, sufficient information now exists to bring some perspective and clarity to the acts not only of Loughner, but to the acts of the left in the wake of Loughner's killing spree. The former was caused by severe mental illness. The latter, bearing only a tangential relation to the former, arises out of the left's desire to stop conservative speech by any means possible.

As Maggie's Farm puts it, Loughner didn't accompany his killing spree with shouts of "Rush Limbaugh Akhbar!!!" There is not a shred of evidence tying him to Palin, Limbaugh, or the Tea Party movement. He appears to be a paranoid schizophrenic who went under the radar simply because he took no threatening acts in the community prior to his killing spree - or at least none that would cause the Pima County Sheriff's Dept. to react. One of Loughner's few friends, in a recent interview, speculated that Loughner's motive was just to "fuck things up to fuck shit up," adding that Loughner wanted "to watch the world burn."

The far left has not allowed the lack of evidence - or indeed, contrary evidence - to slow them down. Instead, they ascribe responsibility for the murders to the right on the grounds of creating a climate of "hate." The NYT is leading the charge in their editorial today:

It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people.

Yet a look over the last decade shows conclusively that the left is light years beyond the right in terms violent rhetoric and political vitriol (See Malkin, Cupp, PJM, Rush, Wash. Examiner, Hot Air, McGuire, and the WSJ on the hisotry of our political discourse). Indeed, if political vitriol were the cause of violence, the MSNBC studios would be knee deep in blood. And as to martial metaphors, there are more examples of that from Obama than from Palin (PJM, Seraphic Secret). That said, such metaphors are, as Charles Krauthammer points out, a regular part of political speech that derive from the days when the path to political power was through military campaigns.

So just what has the right done to cause this "gale of anger." They have fought against massive deficits, over-taxation, and out-of-control spending. They have fought against Obamacare on the grounds that it is unaffordable and an unconstitutional expansion of federal power. In short, they have fought against the radical pull of our government to the left. So what do any of those things have to do with homicidal mania or, more generally, hate? Well, nothing, of course. Those are all very legitimate political arguments.

So there is something else at work here.

Brit Hume, on Monday, noted that:

It has become a habit of the American left to equate disagreement with liberals and liberalism with hate. So convinced do they seem of the virtue of their cause that the only possible explanation for resistance to it must be hatred. In the past week, at least two prominent liberal commentators spoke of the need to resist the right, quote, ‘Obama hate machine.’

George Will in a column today, speculates that blaming the right for an act such as this is literally part of progressive DNA:

A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment. From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress. It actually is the crux of progressivism. And it is why there is a reflex to blame conservatives first. . . .

I think that both Hume and Will let the left off far too easy. Will implies unconscious action where there is clearly malice aforethought. Hume postulates what is in essence an insanity defense for the left - that they are mentally incapable of seeing their opponents as having any reasonable basis for disagreeing with them. I think that gives short shrift to the intellectual dishonesty and moral bankruptcy of the left pushing this blood libel.

What the left has done here is seize on the Arizona mass murder, not because they believe the right somehow created the environment for homicide by their political arguments, but because the left sees it as an opportunity to delegitimize the right. The goal for the left is to create a situation where they won't have to engage in those political arguments that go to the heart of the direction of our country. They are losing those arguments on an epic scale, and they will do anything at all, including using the dead and injured from a psychotic's attack, to try and turn their fortunes around. They are shameless beyond words.

This is, in many ways, nothing more than an extension of throwing the race card, something that the left has relied upon for decades to end debate. Thus it is wholly appropriate that the left's most veteran race card aficionado, Rep. Clyburn (D-SC), would use the mass murder as justification for imposing the Fairness Doctrine, a law that would effectively silence conservative talk radio:

The shooting is cause for the country to rethink parameters on free speech, Clyburn said from his office, just blocks from the South Carolina Statehouse. He wants standards put in place to guarantee balanced media coverage with a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, in addition to calling on elected officials and media pundits to use 'better judgment.'

'Free speech is as free speech does,' he said. 'You cannot yell ‘fire' in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that.' . . .

For its part, Soros mouthpiece Media Matters is calling on Fox to fire both Glen Beck and Sarah Palin. Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders has sent out a fund raising letter asking for donations to allow him to "fight Republicans and other 'right-wing reactionaries' responsible for the climate that led to the shooting." Chris Matthews has cited Mark Levin and Mark Savage as talk radio personalities for particular note in his discussion of the Arizona mass murder.

All of this is despicable. It is intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy on a grand scale. As Michelle Malkin says today,

The Tucson massacre ghouls who are now trying to criminalize conservatism have forced our hand.

They need to be reminded. You need to be reminded.

Confront them. Don’t be cowed into silence.

And don’t let the media whitewash the sins of the hypocritical Left in their naked attempt to suppress the law-abiding, constitutionally-protected, peaceful, vigorous political speech of the Right.

Update: Legal Insurrection has one ridiculous example of how the left is trying to mine the climate of hate meme . They quote Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Me) writing at HuffPo, who claims that the Obamacare repeal bill must be renamed in the wake for the Gabrielle Giffords shooting:

A good place to start a more civil dialog would be for my Republican colleagues in the House to change the name of the bill they have introduced to repeal health care reform. The bill, titled the "Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act," was set to come up for a vote this week, but in the wake of Gabby's shooting, it has been postponed at least until next week.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not suggesting that the name of that one piece of legislation somehow led to the horror of this weekend -- but is it really necessary to put the word "killing" in the title of a major piece of legislation? I don't think that word is in there by accident -- my Republican friends know as well as anyone the power of words to send a message. But in this environment and at this moment in our nation's history, it's not the message we should be sending.

(emphasis added)

A final thought. In essence, the left now wants to make paranoid schizophrenics the arbiter of appropriate speech in America - at least for those who oppose the left. How's that for an insane idea?

Update: Hot Air brings good news for America, bad news for the left wing slime machine doing their best to use the mass murder to delegitimize its political opposition:

CBS polled almost 700 adults in the wake of the mass murder in Tucson committed by Jared Lee Loughner to determine whether the media spin that the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murders of six others was a political act had resonated with the public. Perhaps surprisingly, the spin machine seems to have failed. A majority of 57% say that politics had nothing to do with the shooting, and even a plurality of 49% of Democrats agree.

This means our nation is firmly in the "you can't fool all of the people all of the time" leg of Lincoln's tripart theorem. What that likely means is that ever more discordant attempts to delegitimize the right will have a rebound effect. The Krugmaniacal left wing slime machine should proceed with caution.

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Yet More on The Left's Mission To Tie The Arizona Mass Murder To Sarah Palin & The Tea Partiers

Prof. Glen Reynolds, writing at the WSJ, asks "where is the decency in blood libel?"

To paraphrase Justice Cardozo ("proof of negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do"), there is no such thing as responsibility in the air. Those who try to connect Sarah Palin and other political figures with whom they disagree to the shootings in Arizona use attacks on "rhetoric" and a "climate of hate" to obscure their own dishonesty in trying to imply responsibility where none exists. But the dishonesty remains.

To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America's political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

Where is the decency in that?

This from Victor Davis Hanson at NRO:

For every apparently right-wing Timothy McVeigh there is a left-wing Ted Kaczynski; both exhibited a sort of mental derangement in their braggadocio about extreme politics. The Sixties culture of drugs, permissiveness, national liberation, radical politics, and environmentalism no more made the Palestinian extremist Sirhan Sihran assassinate Bobby Kennedy, or Charles Manson follower Squeaky Fromme try to kill President Ford, or pop socialist and cult preacher the Rev. Jim Jones order the execution of Rep. Leo Ryan, or Arthur Bremmer shoot the “segregationist dinosaur” George Wallace, than right-wing politics drove on the equally deranged Jared Lee Loughner.

At PJM, for the apparent benefit of Paul Krugman, Roger Kimball has amassed a short history of left-wing "hate speech," including the use bull's eyes to target Republicans. And I would be remiss indeed if I did not mention this post from Dr. Sanity, discussing the sickness in the mind of Jared Loughner as well as the sickness in the soul of a leftwing nutjob who, in the wake of Loughner's mass murder, e-mailed Dr. Sanity to say "This is what comes of spewing hate, you fascist pig!." Talk about irony.

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A Tradgedy In Arizona, Politics On The Hudson

Today, in Arizona, Jared Loughner, 22 years old, walked into the middle of a public meeting being held by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Az) and opened fire, killing five, including a 9 year old girl and Arizona's senior Federal District Court Judge, John Roll. He injured many more, including Rep. Giffords whom he shot through the temple at point blank range, the bullet passing through her brain before exiting her skull. Rep. Giffords is currently in critical condition, but apparently able to talk which, according to physicians, is a very positive sign.

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Update: The child murdered was Christina Taylor Greene. See her bio at Weazel Zippers. The total number killed is now six.

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No sane American can do anything other than mourn this act of brutal mass murder. Why Loughner committed this act is as of yet not known, though his internet rants suggest that he was delusional at best. This from Fox News on some of Loughner's internet postings:

"Hello, my name is Jared Lee Loughner," one of the videos says, in words appearing on the screen. "This video is my introduction to you! My favorite activity is conscience dreaming; the greatest inspiration for my political business information. Some of you don't dream - sadly. . . . The majority of citizens in the united states of America have never read the united states of America's constitution. You don't have to accept the federalist laws," the video's titles say. "In conclusion, reading the second United States constitution, I can't trust the current government because of the ratifications: the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar. No! I won't pay debt with a currency that's not backed by gold and silver! No! I won't trust in god!"

. . . In other videos, Loughner calls the people of District 8, his Ariz. district, illiterate.

In a bizarre equation that Loughner appears to mean as example of deductive reasoning, he concludes that "the police are unconstitutional."

In yet another rant verging on the paranoid, he says:

“I know who’s listening: Government Officials, and the People. Nearly all the people, who don’t know this accurate information of a new currency, aren’t aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn’t have happen.”

He lists reading under interests, as well as "conscience dreams," and among his favorite books are "Mein Kampf," the "Communist Manifesto," "Animal Farm" and "Brave New World."

In a comment posted on MySpace three months ago in connection with a video about Pima Community College, Loughner wrote: "Hello, I know you’re illiterate! This is the greatest protest for exposure into a wrongful act. The school is breaking the constitution. If you watch the video then you’ll understand. The teachers are taking advantage of you in the first and Fifth Amendment. The United States Constitution, which is the law, can be broken at this school. Thank you and goodnight! Jared"

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Update: From of Legal Insurrection, ". . . a women who claims to have known the shooter claims that he was fairly left-wing as of a few years ago . . ."

Update 2: This from the Arizona Daily Star on Loughner's apparent mental problems:

A former classmate of Loughner at Pima Community College said he was "obviously very disturbed."

"He disrupted class frequently with nonsensical outbursts," said Lynda Sorenson, who took a math class with Loughner last summer at Pima Community College's Northwest campus.

Sorenson doesn't recall if he ever made any threats or uttered political statements but he was very disruptive, she said. He was asked to leave the pre-algebra class several times and eventually was barred from class, said Sorenson, a Tucson resident.

Another Pima classmate, Lydian Ali, said Loughner would frequently laugh aloud to himself during the advanced-poetry class they attended. Only about 16 people were in the class, so Loughner's behavior stood out, Ali said.

"It almost seemed like he was on his own planet, because his comments would have nothing to do with what we were talking about," Ali said. . . .

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This was, quite simply, a horrendous act by a person deep in the throws of psychosis. This mass murder was political only in the sense that psychosis can be considered political - which it cannot. Indeed, given the facts above, it would be the height of irresponsibility to attempt to assign any sort of blame to either side of the political spectrum for the actions of Mr. Loughner. But that has not stopped the NYT, with the blood still wet on the street and the bodies not yet cooled in the morgue, from firing the first salvos suggesting Loughner's violence is tied to the Tea Party movement and Sarah Palin:

. . . Last March, after the final approval of the Democrats’ health care law, which Ms. Giffords supported, the windows of her office in Tucson were broken or shot out in an act of vandalism. Similar acts were reported by other members of Congress, and several arrests were made, including that of a man who had threatened to kill Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington.

And in August 2009, when there were demonstrations against the health care measure across the nation, a protester who showed up to meet Ms. Giffords at a supermarket event similar to Saturday’s was removed by the police when the pistol he had holstered under his armpit fell and bounced on the floor.

During the fall campaign, Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, posted a controversial map on her Facebook page depicting spots where Democrats were running for re-election; those Democrats were noted by crosshairs symbols like those seen through the scope of a gun. Ms. Giffords was among those on Ms. Palin’s map, which later removed the crosshairs symbols. . . .

So someone tell me how any of that is germane to Loughner's motivations or obvious psychosis? None of it is, but I am sure the NYT's not so subtle attempt to link Loughner to the Tea Party and Sarah Palin is only the first of many efforts to come. It is intellectual dishonesty on a despicable scale. These people have no shame and will twist / politicize anything for political gain.

All this despite the fact that the vast majority of political violence in Obama's America, to the extent it arises from a discernible ideology, arises from the left. No need to let facts get in the way of the narrative, however. And do recall that it was a left wing strategist who opined in November that "what Obama needs is another Oklahoma City moment."

Update: At Crooks and Liars, "We don't yet know why the shooter -- identified as a 22-year-old man named Jared Laughner -- shot Giffords and a number of other people; we'll learn more as the day progresses. But it's impossible to survey the events so far and not come to the preliminary conclusion that this was yet another awful act inspired by right-wing hate rhetoric."

At Jack & Jill Politics, "Tea Party Sympathizer Shoots Rep. Giffords, Kills/Wounds Others"

Gawker: "Shot Congresswoman Was In Sarah Palin's 'Crosshairs'"

Firedoglake - "Sarah Palin's Hit List"

Politics Daily - "Sarah Palin Blamed By Bloggers For Shooting Of Gabrielle Giffords"

Enron Advisor Paul Krugman - "We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that “the whole Tea Party” was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list.

Just yesterday, Ezra Klein remarked that opposition to health reform was getting scary. Actually, it’s been scary for quite a while, in a way that already reminded many of us of the climate that preceded the Oklahoma City bombing."

Andrew Sullivan - "An Assassination?" - highlighting Sarah Palin's likely culpability for this political violence.

And much more from the venomous left-wing twittersphere at Flopping Aces . .

Much more from Instapundit: "Let me be clear, as a great man says: If you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Sarah Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting — which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie — or you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. So which is it?"

Update: Loughner's internet vids, compliments of Legal Insurrection:

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