Left wingers jumped the gun on Tucson shooting

I'd never say that I am ashamed to be Irish. Be they left wing or right wing you should always be proud of who you are and where you come from.

I'm ashamed to say I'm Irish you are way too right winged.

About time. Most of us righties want an orderly, crime-free and prosperous nation. We just hold it self-evident that less government and more personal responsibility are the way to get there. speaking of which, please note that the only crime which declines when guns are banned is gun crime. If it is important to you to be five times more likely to be assaulted with a knife rather than a gun, gun control laws make sense.

"Violent crime continued to fall in 2009, even as gun sales reached an all-time high, according to statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)."According to the FBI, the number of violent crimes of all types declined in 2009 by 5.3 percent and property crimes declined 4.6 percent. In fact, the rate of violent crime declined 6.1 percent below 2008 figures" Studying crime trends in every county in the U.S., John Lott and David Mustard concluded, “allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes. . . . [W]hen state concealed handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell by 8.5 percent, and rapes and aggravated assaults fell by 5 and 7 percent." "There is also not a single academic study that claims Right to Carry laws have increased state crime rates. The debate among academics has been over how large the benefits have been.” Dang reality sucks when it completely contradicts the garbage some people wish to spread.

Thank you, Mr. Farnan! Just when I'd purposed to opt out of receiving updates from Irish Central because of their blatant left tilt, you come along and spoil it all by being reasonable. Good on ya, sir. I will wait a short while longer before pulling the plug.

I believe his main point is that he thinks the current level of vitriol is unaceppatable. If you are not a Tucson resident, you have no idea what you are talking about.

McGlynn, your beloved Sheriff put his foot in his mouth repeatedly. He was wrong as has been clearly shown. The shooter had zero ties to the Tea Party and was clearly not a right winger in any way. He should resign immediately for his conduct. The truth is that the most hateful rhetoric emanates from the left, lead by Keith Olbermann, Chris Mathews, Ed Schultz, Paul Krugman, Bill Press etc, etc.

And one more thing-- Clarence Dupnik is the only person around these parts--Tucson-- who speaks the TRUTH.

I am a resident of Tucson and witnessed first hand what went on in ths community during the last election, which was in November 2010. The Tea Party poured millions of dollars into trying to defeat Congresswoman Giffords. Her opponent, Jesse Kelly held campaign events entitled "come practice shooting an AK-47 as we target Gabrielle Giffords". The whole town was covered in signs with horribly negative smears against Giffords. Kelly supporters not only broke Giffords office windows, but also broke the windshields of cars displaying Giffords bumper stckers--not to mention spray painting the cars. I have heard about Germany in 1934 and the parallels are obvious. So whether or not this particular nut case is directly attributable to it, I was surprised that it took until January

Sorry, Ed, but you will wait for those apologies and amends till the UFOs land and the Flat Earth Society is proved right, after all. Just as important to an angry, accusing person (of any political or religious stripe) as insulting the other side with ad hominem arguments, is the unthinkable premise of ever having to retract or rethink their views. You can almost define a crazy by their unwillingness to reconsider. And doesn't that put us all in an environment with a lot of very suspect people?! ;>)

our society is becoming such that those with the maturity and skill to carry and use firearms have a social responsibility to do so.. there was one licensed weapons carrying person near the shooting.. but he was too fearful to intervene

Apologies to ajreaper, but if you look at the statistical report put out by the Arizona department of health services you will find that between the years of 2001 and 2008 there are always at least 300 murders by gunshot. I, unfortunately read the line for total homicides (old perfessors don't have the best vision). In all, slainte is right that Arizonans could go to Northern Ireland to get away from all that violence.

Ya secondthought so during the troubles with the military and police forces in N.I. working to stop the movement of arms into N.I. and working to secure those already in N.I. and catching those folks using them, let me ask you- how did that work out? I must assume assualt weapons and explosives were legal because surely if they were not all that violence would have just stopped. If people or groups of people are determined to use violence they will obtain that which they need regardless of the law. There are all manner of things governments and society have decided it's not legal to manufacture, sell or purchase- name one that's no longer available.

In fairness, it seems like right-wingers had nothing to do with this murder. I am still opposed to their fiery rhetoric, mostly as it will eventually be used by someone as a reason to commit violent crime but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that this guy committed the murders because of any right-wing sympathies.

Whew, what a relief. Thought for a minute I might have to give up painting crosshairs on people and threatening "2nd amendment solutions" Thanks for pointing out how one wacko with his own agenda invalidates the whole argument for civility and tolerance. Evil liberal oppressive media is so quick to make an issue out of our God-given right to imply threats to peoples lives. Thank Jesus that we can all go back to implying the politicians we don't like should be murdered. Whether the gunman be liberal, conservative, or just bats**t (as in this case) at least we can all agree it is always Obama's fault. Nice point Ajreaper, the deathrate is only 8 times as high, not 16 like the perfesser said (in this one year), so shut up liberal volvo-driving pansies. Clearly guns do keep us safe, and stimulate our brilliant political dialog.