Gunslinger Nation

Only two weeks before the Tucson tragedy, out-going New Mexico governor Bill Richardson decided not to pardon Billy the Kid. It was a good move. The historical Billy the Kid was a pathological killer, who was romanticized in myth. But he is part of our national myth--the Wild West and the ethos of gunslingers and quick draw artists. It wasn't High Noon with white hats and black hats but an environment of cheap killings and shots behind the head.

Tea baggers e-mailed that the Tucson killings would never have happened if everyone wore a gun. I'm sorry. A bunch of pot-bellied middle-age white guys would have ended up killing more people. We know from the Virginia Tech slaughter that motivated killers with semi-automatic weapons kill at such a rapid rate,there could be little effective response. Even with a woman taking one magazine from him and his second jamming, the Tucson assassin wounded 16 and killed several people. If he had another clip, he would have massacred everyone in the Safeway parking lot.

The events on Saturday have led to a useful debate on political rhetoric and its role in the shooting. Whatever pundits say, the political culture does have an effect on the mentally ill. Jared Loughner is said to have a thought disorder typical of post-adolescent onset schizophrenia. His friends have him all over the political map from pot-smoking liberal who listened to Mars Volta to an anti-government paranoid, who had absorbed the conspiracy theories of radical libertarians. With respect to Gabrielle Giffords, the first Jewish congresswoman from Arizona, it has been said that Jared tried to beat up Jews at high school and was anti-semitic but his mother was Jewish.

You can list symptoms and bizarre behavior all you want and draw whatever political conclusions you are inclined towards. But, we are dealing with a male in his early twenties, who just like the young American Muslims travelling to Yemen because they got hooked on the jihadi internet, has a fluid and unstable identity and ended up acting out with destructive behavior. His photo looked like a younger Uncle Festus from the Adams Family with a face of someone clearly in another zone. A friend of his talking to Mother Jones said that all he wanted was Chaos,and more Chaos, and that the circus around this tragedy was what he wanted.

It was clear that the Pima Community College wanted him to get a mental health evaluation before letting him re-enter school. His teachers and the older students in his class recorded his disruptive behavior in their e-mails. Unfortunately, neither he nor his parents made efforts to follow-up on the school's advice. Instead, he wrote a friend that "there were other ways to graduate in life."

The Right has been the most defensive during this whole episode because you can tell they feel quilty about their possible moral responsibility in triggering this man's behavior. For a mentally disturbed person, political rhetoric can serve as triggers even though they may not be processed lucidly by the subject. The Right, particularly Sarah Palin, has assumed the position of the victim. While people lie dead, the overpaid pundits pretend they have been victimized by the Left, wherever they may be these days. Judson Phillips of the Tea Party immediately sent out e-mails saying they would be attacked and to make sure the shooter was identified as a "lunatic liberal". That effort went into high gear with Drudge printing photos of the "satanic alter in the shooter's backyard" and quoting a high school acquaintance saying the shooter was a pot-smoking lefty. However, the skinhead we saw yesterday had morphed into an anti-government conspiracy theorist. Which should come as no surpise given his state of mind and where he lived.

Remember Gabrielle Giffords' district is highly polarized and has been since the last days of Jim Kolbe, the gay Republican who created NAFTA. Jim Kolbe told the press that he would have to have armed police at his town meetings in the last years because of the heat over the immigration issue. We know the local teaparty targeted Giffords for her healthcare vote and Sarah Palin marked her on a map of targets with "surveying marks" (cough). Other Arizona Democrats were also subject to death threats, including Raul Grijalva, the head of the Progressive Caucus and the congressman in the neighboring district. The high amp rhetoric has been in over-drive there for the last two years at least. Did it contribute to the shooting? It helped create the environment to reinforce the shooters' intentions.

Mental Illness, guns and politics merged on Saturday and produced another tragedy, which is rather routine by now in the United States. This time a political official and a federal judge were targets. But Rachel Maddow last night randomly reviewed the number of slaughters in the United States since Jared Laughner was born and pointed out how awful but similar they are all.

Over 30,000 Americans die per year from gunshot wounds, another 200,000 are wounded. The Brady Project counted gun deaths in the United States from 1979-1999 and found that they exceeded the American deaths in all our wars combined. For every 100 Americans, there are 90 guns. We are Number 1 in gunownership in the world. U.S.A! U.S.A! Number 2 is Yemen at 60 guns per 100 people. We are number 3 in the world in gun deaths. We are behind Colombia and Guatemala. I'm frankly surprised we aren't number 1.

Talk is cheap but guns may be cheaper. Jared managed to buy a Glock and passed the F.B.I's background check. He had only been arrested once and that was for putting"Christian" graffiti on walls. He bought the gun shortly after being expelled from school. On the day of the shooting, he bought his ammo at Walmart's. Strangely, one Walmart would not sell him ammo. I would love to know why. For his Glock, he had magazines which held over twice the number of bullets as the standard issue Glocks for law enforcement officials. All of this was in a radius of six blocks from his house and the target area. The taxi driver, who had first been reported as a person of interest,said Jared was cool, calm and collected.

This isn't going to stop. Only yesterday a white man was arrested for threatening to kill the staff of Democratic Senator Michael Bennett from Colorado. Prevously a Washington State citizens was arrested for threatening to kill Patty Murray for her healthcare vote. Jared Louchner also had a second congressional target--Congressman Davis from Illinois. Why? But it shows he wanted to take his show on the road. As long as semi-automatics are easily available, there will be more killings,some political, others not.

The other issue concerns mental health programs. Fortunately, some commentators are raising this aspect of the tragedy. Jan Brewer has cut the mental health budget of Arizona by 39%, some $36 million. Every state undergoing a budget crisis cuts the mental health budget as if this doesn't have consequences. The state of Minnesota created a pioneering mental health program but that has been gutted in Tim Pawlenty's drive to prove his conservative bona-fides. This doesn't mean people like Jared will not constantly fall through the cracks but others who might be susceptible to violent detructive behavior might be helped.

Tomorrow President Obama travels to Tucson to speak for the nation at a memorial service for the victims.