Gabrielle Giffords Shot At Arizona Safeway During Public Event.

[Ayatollahgondola]

Originally Posted by Twoller

I respect the moral courage of presenting oneself to the public directly, but not exposing a public official to danger in public, no matter how well intentioned. There is a right and a wrong way to do this and I wonder why there is no discussion about what might or should have been done in the way of security to prevent this incident.

I've read that in the days before Lincoln, one could walk right in to the whitehouse and talk to the president. Now the president only wants to talk to his closest advisors and visiting dignitaries. The people are locked out. I don't know if anything could prevent this short of insulating her from public contact. Maybe some dogs might have been able to sniff out the firearm prior, but then we end up going through an invasive warrantless search just to participate in government. It wasn't hard for this insane bastard to do as much harm as he did, but in all seriousness, an insane person could have done the same from afar, and not at a public event. The Unabomber proved this, and he didn't use a gun. The long and short of it is, it's a dangerous world we live in, and as statistics go, congresspersons are not in a dangerous occupation. I'll bet minimart owners are 1000 times more likely to be shot on the job.
The curious thing here is that Arizona is a "right to carry loaded" gun state, but with all the people in the area of a busy supermarket, either nobody was armed or felt strong enough to gun down the killer before he could gun down all those people. Go figure