If Loughner met Giffords there is any number of reasons he could have latched onto for wanting to

[dkf]

Kill her.

He seems mentally unstable to me, and we've seen these types try to do things to people like Letterman and others. Who knows what went on in his mind.

[The Wielding Truth]

1. Who knows, but a target should never be put on someone's back!

[dkf]

12. True. That is just plain stupid.

[hughee99]

2. I think you're missing the point...

Yes, there are any number of reasons a mentally unstable person would do such a thing, but why waste this opportunity to blame Palin, Beck, the lack of the fairness doctrine, and gun control laws before we find out the truth.

You remember the teabagger who tried to blow up Times Square with his truck bomb? Oh, wait...

[Barack_America]

3. He was obsessed with her, but never mentioned her in his political ramblings?

[LisaL]

7. We likely don't have all his ramblings.

[aquart]

14. So you will assume something NOT in evidence to absolve Palin?

Whose bullseye IS in evidence? WHY?

[aquart]

4. WTF are you trying to argue? That Palin and Beck are innocent?

That the right wing hysteria did NOTHING to foment this crime? That they can endlessly call for murder and when it happens, it ain't their fault?

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. +1

[stray cat]

8. It sounds like the poster is interested in facts for this particular incident

[Rex]

9. I sometimes wonder why people around here deny the truth about

the GOP and their murderous hatred of all things to the Left. They really do want to kill us, just listen to Rush/Glenn/Hannity 8 hours a day (which a LOT of people do while they work) and it is easy to see how an unstable person could go out and kill someone over what they were told day in and day out.

[dkf]

10. Maybe they are and maybe they aren't.

All sides are jumping to conclusions. I was too, but it could be more complicated and off base than our easy conclusion.

For all we know maybe it was as simple as a voice in his head telling him to kill her.

[aquart]

11. A voice told an anti-Semite to kill a Jewish woman.

Perfectly reasonable. What made it imperative? Lotta Jewish women. THIS Jewish woman was a blue dog congresswoman. If she was gone, her district would go Republican. Also, perfectly reasonable.

You'll allow Mein Kampf to feed his hatred but not the immediacy of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin? WHY NOT? Why is it so vital to bend over backward to absolve them?

Hate speech never gets anybody killed?

[Rex]

15. Very good questions.

[dkf]

16. Maybe it was even more personal than that.

Maybe he felt his representative wasn't representing his crazy views and that was against democracy or something. Honestly it could be so many things that wouldn't make sense to us.

I think his writings are off enough that his rationalization of this will be just as off.

[aquart]

18. So he would have killed her without Palin's target giving him approval?

He would have killed her without Glenn Beck or his personal favorite, the ranting Limbaugh? That's what you consider fair to assume?

[dkf]

22. They will probably find out if he was on Palin's web page.

If Palin was the driving force then it will come out no doubt.

[Rex]

20. It was a poltical assassination and he is a member of the Tea party

so if we need to take into account his lifestyle and that would include RWing hate radio.

[kestrel91316]

21. Your support for the RW has been duly noted.

[dkf]

23. I was jumping to conclusions that it was the RW in the beginning but I'm walking it back til we get

Some facts.

I think that a perfectly rational person full of animus can do something like this and we can rationalize it as extreme but sane. Those are the martyr types. But then we get into mental illness and that is another territory

[LisaL]

6. Supposedly he met Rep. Giffords in 2007, asked her a question and

didn't like the answer.

[spanone]

13. he's alive, perhaps we'll find out.

[Old and In the Way]

17. No doubt he was mentally unstable.

But his ramblings on Youtube also tell us he was a libertarian with an undeserved superiority complex. The only difference between him and the average poster on Free Republic is that he acted on his eliminationist inclinations/rhetoric. Today's Republican Party is home to an amalgam of anti-socialists, each with their own personal bigotry that finds support and sympathy from the mutual political association. I'm not surprised that another Democrat has had this act of terror inflicted upon her. And we'll continue to see violence against Democratic politicians because that's how a totalitarian, theocratic society comes about...kill/intimidate the opposition until there is no one left to stop it. Boehner, Cantor, palin, Brewer, et al can issue all of the pithy statements they want about how sad they are with Gifford's situation...but these people will not address the problem through legislative action that will stop this from happening over and over again in the future.

And those people who hold their 2nd Amendment higher than the rest of the Constitution principles of our government. When our Constitution gets blown away, that 2nd Amendment will go along with it.

[dkf]

19. An aside, but he seems to be an atheist and was offended by the military giving him a mini bible.

I think you are right about the superiority complex part. It may be this which was the driving force as he was unimpressed by Giffords supposed lack of intellect as compared to his own. I'm sure there was something twisted that made him come to this conclusion.

Or maybe I'm watching too many episodes of "Criminal Minds".