Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is currently in intensive care after a shooting in her district left six dead and 14 injured including her on Saturday.
Much of the immediate focus of blame fell on Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, whose Facebook page offered a map that placed crosshairs over Democratic districts, including Rep. Giffords’.
Aides to Palin are defending her controversial campaign target map, saying the circles over certain districts were never meant to be gun sights. However, Palin herself described the symbol as a “bulls-eye.”
“We have nothing whatsoever to do with this,” Rebecca Mansour, an aide to Palin, said in a radio interview on Sunday. “We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply crosshairs like you’d see on maps,” like, she suggested, a “surveyor’s symbol.”
Those who saw the crosshairs on Palin’s Facebook page found that hard to believe, and Rep. Giffords herself criticized the target map when her office was vandalized last year.
The Arizona Democratic congresswoman had spoken about the dangers inherent in the target imagery.
“For example, we’re on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action,” Giffords said in an interview with MSNBC.
Rep. James P. Moran, D-Va., a friend of Rep. Giffords, told reporters that she told him just a week and a half ago that she was worried about the potential for violence back home.
“Gabby did tell me that she was concerned,” Moran said. “She said it’s really bad out there, particularly in a district like (hers). She was very much troubled that Sarah Palin put her in the crosshairs.”
All 535 members of Congress are now wondering about their own safety, saying the cost of individual protection is considered prohibitive, and many lawmakers say they would not want a strong police presence anyway.
Several lawmakers have reported — since Saturday’s horrific shooting — they are already changing their security arrangements, and several lawmakers say they’ll now be packing firearms in public when they’re in their home districts.
In the aftermath of Saturday’s shooting, many in Washington are focusing on the common perception among Congressional veterans that the current political climate is as bad as they can recall. And although the attack in Arizona went far beyond contentious confrontations lawmakers had at town hall-style meetings in the summer of 2009, the Department of Homeland Security in April 2009 released an internal report warning that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence.
Conservatives denounced that report. But there has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials, including both Judge John Roll, who was killed Saturday, and Rep. Giffords.
Clarence Dupnik, the sheriff responsible for dealing with the Arizona shootings said: “The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.”
Over the weekend, the media focused on the toxic-talk theme, referencing the penchant of Tea Party candidates for artillery imagery. Or the time Palin said: “Don’t retreat, reload.”
Or the time House Speaker John Boehner said a colleague, a Democrat, “may be a dead man” because he voted in favor of President Obama’s health care overhaul.
Representative Robert Brady, D-Pennsylvania, said Sunday that he intended to introduce legislation that would extend to members of Congress the federal law criminalizing threats to the president.
