The Tucson Tragedy

My first experience with violence in American society was the assassination of John Kennedy. I was 12 years old. We were watching a movie on how to eat healthy in Phys. Ed. Class when the announcement was made over the loudspeakers that the President had been shot, and we were being sent home early. I remember getting on the bus, and looking over my shoulder. My mother drove to the school to pick me up, along with anxious parents of half the school. Three days later I watched them shoot Lee Harvey Oswald after coming home from early mass at St. Dominic’s Church.

The violence seemed to escalate from there. It was rampant all through the 60’s. The Vietnam War was brought into our living room every night on Walter Cronkite, along with the body count. More assassinations! Race riots! University riots! Shootings at Kent State! It was a never ending cycle backed by a soundtrack of rock and roll, the British invasion, heavy metal, Motown, and folk music. Sonny Bono summed it up in The Beat Goes On.

What can we do about domestic violence? I often think that had Lee Harvey Oswald missed on that November day in Dallas things might have been different; that as a society we would have be more civil. Maybe yes. Maybe no.

Assassinations are part of our history. From Lincoln to McKinley to Garfield to Kennedy, assassins are not new to American culture. That doesn’t take into consideration the attempted assassinations of the likes of Jackson, Reagan, Nixon and Gerald Ford twice, and numerous other attempts.

Whether we like it or not, there are wing nuts and whack jobs walking among us. While some assassination attempts may be politically motivated (John Wilkes Booth), others are simply the manifestation of illogical madness (John Hinkley). The attempt on the life of Congresswoman Giffords is an example of the latter.

Jared Loughlin had been obsessed with Giffords since 2007. With a library that included the writings of Adolph Hitler and Karl Marx, he certainly was an eclectic nut job. The guy would laugh maniacally at the drop of the hat. The political commenting Sheriff of Pima County admitted he was aware of death threats made by Loughlin to other people. (And the sheriff did what about those?) His community college demanded a certificate of sanity before it would let him back in after throwing him out. And let’s not forget the skull altar in young Jared’s back yard. For a 22 year old, this guy needed some serious head work.

Trying to explain what happened in political terms is interesting, but useless. This type of tragedy is not politically motivated. Loughlin’s obsession and madness would be focused on something else if not Congresswoman Giffords. Mental illness like this will manifest itself in one form or another, none of it good.

Our prayers are with the victims of the Tucson shootings; and double prayers for that little girl. Our hope is that we can find a way to stop another senseless tragedy like this one. I know that our prayers will work. I’m not so sure about our hope.