Stratfor report:

The suspect allegedly responsible for shooting U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has been identified as 22-year-old Arizona native Jared Loughner, AP and NBC reported Jan. 8. A second man thought to be connected to the shooting has been arrested at Thornydale and Magee roads in Tucson, while a third man is being sought by the authorities.
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Some news feeds are reporting a Fared Laughner as a shooter instead, and some are reporting that the shooter is a vet from afghanistan.

He had a YouTube channel. Scary, disconcerted stuff from him. No idea what the hell he was talking about in *any* of them.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Classitu.../0/7uRjwPWaxiY

I found this on pipl.com as part of a search.

Anyone want to bet his mother says" he is a good boy, it is not his fault, his friends were a bad influence" I bet I'm close.
His youtube stuff is very disturbing, I guess his attempt at logic and control of his life.
Prayers to the victims, bad dreams and pain to him.

In the featured video, he mentions going to MEPS. :confused: I wonder what his status is?

Pat

I had a younger cousin that talked like that, no one else knew what he was talking about either. We were all stupid and he was beyond us.

Drugs and poor parenting.

Prayers for Rep. Giffords and the other victims, as well as for the Republic.

LINK

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, along with a federal judge and 16 others were shot outside a Safeway in Tucson in a shooting spree that left six dead, local law enforcement officials said.

Local hospital officials said that Ms. Giffords, 40, had survived a gunshot wound to the head after emergency surgery and was likely to recover. The shooting occurred Saturday morning during a "Congress on Your Corner" event that the lawmaker was holding in her district.

Two law-enforcement officials confirmed that Tucson's chief federal judge, John Roll, was also shot at the scene and killed. Judge Roll had ruled on a number of heated immigration cases in the southern part of Arizona, which includes Ms. Giffords's district.

A spokesman at the University Medical Center in Tucson, Dr. Peter Rhee, said Ms. Giffords had completed surgery and she was being transferred to intensive care. "I am very optimistic about her recovery," he said, adding that the bullet had gone straight through her head.

Dr. Rhee said that 10 patients were being treated at the hospital, and that five of them were in critical condition. In addition, he said, a child who was brought to the hospital had died of gunshot wounds.

Police said they were holding the suspected gunman, who they described as a white male, born in 1988. A police report identified the man as Jared Lee Loughner.

The U.S. Army said in a statement that Mr. Loughner had tried to join the Army but was turned away. "The Army has confirmed that the suspect was never in the Army," the spokesman said. "He attempted to enlist in the Army but was rejected for service. In accordance with the Privacy Act, we will not discuss why he was rejected."

Ms. Giffords was first elected to Congress in 2006 after serving several years in the Arizona state House and Senate. She married the space shuttle astronaut Mark Kelly in 2007.

President Barack Obama released a statement calling the attack "a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society. I ask all Americans to join me and Michelle in keeping Representative Giffords, the victims of this tragedy, and their families in our prayers," he said.

Newly elected House Speaker John Boehner said he was "horrified by the senseless attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and members of her staff." Mr. Boehner said that "an attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve. Acts and threats of violence against public officials have no place in our society. Our prayers are with Congresswoman Giffords, her staff, all who were injured, and their families. This is a sad day for our country."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.) called the shooting a "terrible act of violence" and "a national tragedy."

"This terrible act of violence is a national tragedy, and today is a very sad day for our country," she said.

Rep. Giffords was recruited to run for Congress in 2006 by Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff who was at the time head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Mr. Emanuel noted that she was shot while "doing the Congress on your corner" kind of event that he pioneered in his home district in Chicago and that he encouraged new Democratic lawmakers to do regularly when back home.

The shooting was not the first time the congresswoman has had brushes with violence. Following the health care overhaul vote this year, her district office was vandalized.

"The rhetoric has gotten incredibly heated," she told MSNBC in March. "Not just the calls, the emails, the slurs. Things have really gotten spun up."

She also specifically called out a "targets" website created by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for the 2010 midterm elections that featured a crosshair over hers and other districts. Republicans campaigned heavily against Ms. Giffords, a moderate Democrat in a Republican-leaning district, last year.

"We can't' stand for this, we do really need to realize that the rhetoric and firing people up, and you know things for example we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, the thing is the way she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gunsight over our district," she told MSNBC.

Rep. Giffords earned a reputation as a strong fundraiser and campaigner who was deeply engaged in Arizona's bitter immigration debate.

A member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, she won a tough reelection battle last fall against a Republican, Jesse Kelly, who was championed by many tea-party groups. She won the race by fewer than 4,000 votes.

Tea Party Nation, the group started by Tennessee lawyer Judson Phillips, put out a statement to its supporters decrying the shooting. "Congressman Giffords was a liberal, but that does not matter now. No one should be the victim of violence because of their political beliefs."

The statement went on to say that "no matter what the shooter's motivations where, the left is going to blame this on the Tea Party Movement."

The 8th District shares a 100-mile-long border with Mexico.

Ms. Giffords's district is overall politically moderate, represented for years by an openly gay, moderate Republican, Jim Kolbe, then by Ms. Giffords. But the GOP in southeastern Arizona is deeply divided. A moderate Republican hand-picked by Mr. Kolbe to succeed him after he retired in 2006 was beaten badly by Randy Graf, a staunch conservative who ran a strong, anti-immigration platform. He was in turn beaten badly by Ms. Giffords.

The pattern repeated itself in 2010. While Arizona Democrats were swamped in November, Ms. Giffords survived in large part because Republican primary voters picked the most conservative candidate to challenge her.

The district includes part of Tucson, but also large stretches of ranch lands stretching to the Mexico border, where anti-illegal-immigration sentiment runs strong. During the runup to the November election, the other Tucson representative, liberal Democrat Raul Grijalva, had his office vandalized.

Ms. Giffords's family owns tire stores in the area.

Hang in there U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Reports suggest you're responsive and going to survive. One tough lady......

God bless you and all the victims. Prayers all around for all the families and staff personnel.

May the shooter bun in hell you sorry SOB....

:mad:.......jd

She is alive..Fox News is saying...

This shit bag needs the best killing he can get..


My prayers for all

AL

My heartfelt condolences to the all the victims, and to their families.
I hope a full recovery awaits Congresswomen Giffords, and the other shooting victims.
SnT

Wow. :eek: Especially the Introduction one. Shall we look for the "sleepwalker defense? I liked the sound track to that one though.

He was big on the "conscious dream" theory apparently, even saying that he was sleepwalking and didn't set an alarm clock. Makes one wonder if he was trying to set up the pieces for an insanity defense, or if he was just completely off his rocker.

Music was good, the rest of it was from the dark side of the moon. If the feds get him anything is possible. The State will be less forgiving. No matter how wacked you are, if you can even think murder is wrong no wack job defense. I hope.

If you notice on the bio portion of the shooters youtube page, everything is written in past tense. He had planned and thought of people watching his youtube channel after this. Seems like he planned to go down with the bullet.

I wonder what part of his plan did not go the way he wanted it to. It is some pretty creepy stuff. His youtube videos are very strange. Reminded me of Ted Kaczynski stuff. As in someone who is obviously very smart, but turned totally psychotic in their own genius.

Insanity defenses only succeed around 20% of the time, and Arizona isn't the best state to try an insanity defense in to begin with because it disallows the defense on the basis of antisocial disorders, character defects, or impulse control disorders. So at least the chances of him using a bogus insanity defense are pretty slim. (From my forensic psych class, but verified here prior to posting:

http://www.psychiatry.us/articledetail.php?ID=44&CID= )

Although watching those videos gives credibility to claims of mental instability. Not completely word salad, but definitely mangled. Hopefully he pleads guilty and saves everyone some time and money. Even if they give him NGRI I can't imagine they will ever let him out of the psych hospital, not after shooting so many.