Rachel gets it right

As usual, Rachel Maddow provided a liberal voice of sanity and reason in response to the Tucson massacre and assassination attempt.

Whether political rhetoric motivated this kid or not, whether this kid was sane enough to process political rhetoric as sane people understand it or not, whether we will understand sooner or later or never the motivation behind this kid...here's the question: do we have any tools to stop the next gun massacre?"

She then ran through a long list of mass gun shootings that have occurred in the United States in the 22 years since Jared Lee Loughner was born, then showed clips of politicians responding to these "unimaginable" happenings at the time (Columbine, VA Tech, etc.) "Inconceivable" and "unimaginable" are routinely used to describe these massacres. Rachel counters:

It is hard for anybody to find the words to express the horror and the anger and the grief that are the only rational responses to massacres like this. But the one thing that events like this are not, in America, now, is inconceivable or unimaginable.

We can discuss at length the effects of political hate speech and violent images. As a nation, we need to have an adult conversation about this, separated from heated political rants. But that is not the solution that we need to focus on in a case like this, or at least it is not the most salient solution.

This young man, obviously mentally ill and having caused concern among classmates, faculty, and neighbors, was nevertheless able -- perfectly legally -- to purchase a handgun and extended ammunition magazines, allowing for firing 30 rounds of bullets without having to reload.

We have laws that prevent selling guns to mentally disturbed people. But how do you get on lists that show up on background checks? That is where Jared fell through the cracks. He had no official designation as mentally ill, even though his college had handled his disruptive behavior appropriately by barring him from classes until he got mental health clearance. Absent overt threats, they had no authority to force him to seek help, nor to report him as mentally ill.

Despite our gun culture (collectively we Americans own 277,000,000 guns), and though we differ sharply on questions of gun control, we should be united in wanting to prevent the next such massacre when a mentally unbalanced, angry young man easily obtains guns designed for mass destruction -- and does just that -- destroys masses of people before he can be stopped.

We can't have that conversation until we get past the need to blame someone for this one.

Assigning blame in this case and discussing the effect of hate speech in political discourse should be two separate issues. So far, that's proving very difficult to do -- because the private demons in Jared's mind, that led him to think the government was trying to control his mind, seem to coincide with much of the right-wing paranoia about government taking over our lives. And he did, after all, go to a political event, shot a politician, and on his web site called it "my assassination."

Ralph