Like most of the nation, I am still stunned a day after the horrific shooting in Tucson of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 18 other people. Six of those people died, including Federal Court Judge John Roll and the 9 year-old granddaughter of former Major League Baseball manager Dallas Green.
The truth is, I'm probably a little more stunned than most people. Tucson was my home for 25 years, from the day after I graduated from Law School in 1982 to the day I moved to Phoenix in 2007. It is still home to my mother, my brother, my sister, and my daughter and her mother. I passed the Bar exam there and began a legal career that is still going strong. I married my first wife there and had a beautiful daughter, and married my second wife there and helped to raise my two stepchildren. I met Ms. Giffords once, back when she was campaigning in what would be her first election to the U.S. House of Representatives. And I appeared in front of Judge Roll many times in Federal District Court in Tucson. I've been to that shopping center many, many times. These things are not supposed to happen in a place that you call, or have called, home.
The first reaction was one of total numbness and disbelief. That's always the case with senseless tragedies like this, but especially so when you know the place or the people whose lives have been taken for the ridiculous reason of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Judge Roll was a good man and a good judge. We weren't what you would call friends, but I appeared in his courtroom many times over the years, and I respected and admired him. The shopping center where the Safeway is located has a Chinese restaurant that I have gone to many times over the years. I don't know that I can ever bring myself to go there again.
The numbness and disbelief passes and what is left is shock and anger. Anger that some lone lunatic, obviously disturbed and deranged, is allowed to possess firearms and stalk an honorable public servant. Anger that the political discourse in this country, and especially this state, has grown so vitriolic and divisive that threats and violence are real dangers. And absolute fury that Sarah Palin can create a website that depicted certain Congressional districts on a map with crosshairs. Gabrielle Giffords was one of those members of Congress depicted by Palin as in the crosshairs of her movement. And how totally ironic and infuriating that Giffords herself pointed out the danger of being treated in such a manner. As far as I'm concerned, Sarah Palin, the Tea Party candidate who ran against Giffords, and the entire bigoted, racist, anti-Semitic movement has blood on their hands.
How did we get to this point? The political debate in this country has always been seriously divided among ideological grounds, but I don't remember it ever being this angry and divisive. There's nothing wrong with targeting certain Congressional races for a political party or movement to concentrate on, but to depict them with the crosshairs of a telescopic rifle? Not to mention the Tea Party candidate campaigning with a loaded rifle, aiming it symbolically at the incumbent. Don't these people realize that there are dangerously disturbed individuals out there who will believe that those messages are subliminal instructions to commit murder in the name of political zeal? How in God's name do these people justify their hatred and vitriol? How does Sarah Palin live with herself? Or is she such an ego-centric psychopath that she just doesn't care?
Palin actually had the nerve to state her condolences to the victims, and of course, deny that her actions had anything to do with the demented gunman in Tucson. The campaign manager of the Tea Party candidate who opposed Giffords (I refuse to use his name---my own personal decision to not humanize the cowardly s.o.b.!!) has said that there is no connection between the candidate and the nutjob gunman. They deny any responsibility whatsoever, the cowards. They make me sick.
Also dead in Tucson yesterday was Christina Taylor Green, a nine year-old girl who ironically was born on September 11, 2001, another day forever linked to senseless insanity and the horrific deaths of innocents. She was recently elected to her student council and wanted to meet her Congresswoman. And, not that it matters, but she had a famous grandfather who made a name as a Major League Baseball manager back in the 80's and 90's. She was apparently smart, loquacious, and a talented athlete. And now she is gone forever.
I mourn for my country, and my state, and the city where I lived for a quarter of a century. I don't understand why this has happened, how it can continue to happen time and time again. What is wrong with us that we have allowed our society to become like this? When will it ever stop?
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I hope things are easing up for you a bit. Maybe you've had a chance to talk to some people who knew Judge Roll in the same sort of working way that you did. I have been in the situation once or twice myself (although not with violence involved). Its hard to sort of know someone well enough to be effected by their death, but not really well enough to reach out to the family.
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