The portrait of Jared Loughner, the accused Tucson Safeway Massacre shooter, is taking shape. Loughner, contrary to some pronouncements on and off the Internet, was not a right-wing, Tea Party acolyte of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.

But interviews with former friends and acquaintances paint a portrait of a man with " ... nihilistic, almost indecipherable beliefs steeped in mistrust and paranoia," according to the AP. YouTube videos and his MySpace page contain rantings about the currency, poor grammar, "lucid dreaming" and mind control. Loughner was also a 9/11 truther and atheist.

Loughner was also a heavy abuser of alcohol and marijuana, at one point taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. He was rejected for military service after failing a drug test.

Loughner had a number of run-ins with the police due to disruptive behavior in the library and classroom at the community college he was attending. According to the Washington Post, a classmate, Lynda Sorenson, was genuinely frightened of him.

"We have a mentally unstable person in the class that scares the living crap out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, Yeah, he was in my math class and he was really weird. I sit by the door with my purse handy. If you see it on the news one night, know that I got out fast..."

Jared Loughner also kept a bizarre shrine under a camouflage tent in the backyard of his home that featured a skull atop a pot filled with shriveled oranges. There were candles and a bag of potting soil nearby. The whole setup is suggestive of a weird version of the occult.

In short, Loughner was a disturbed loner who had no discernible ideology at all. Despite the pronouncements of certain pundits, there is no evidence that Jared Loughner was influenced by or was even aware of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck or the Tea Party.

There is a question about how Loughner passed the background check required when he bought, legally, the 9 mm. Glock in November. Gun control advocates are already suggesting new legislation restricting the ownership and use of firearms.


The problem, of course, is not access to guns or unrelated political ideology, but rather how society deals with the mentally ill. One wonders if the shooting could have been avoided if Jared Loughner had gotten some kind of medical help earlier.


http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.8362/pub_detail.asp


What made Jared Loughner, 22, go to a town hall style meeting outside a Safeway grocery store in Tuscon, Arizona and embark on a shooting rampage?

The news on Loughner is pouring in and will continue to come in. Not all of it is fact and with every media outlet trying to be one step ahead of the rest, a lot of information is not substantiated.

The authorities have already stated that he was a “troubled” and “mentally unstable” individual who was anti-government according to his own rants on both Myspace and Youtube.

Prior to Loughner’s Myspace being shut down, he had listed “Mein Kampf” as one of his favorite books. Okay, that does tend one to believe he is an Anti-Semite.

Today’s (Sunday January 9, 2011) USA Today had an article in the Faith and Reason section titled “Jewish Giffords' shooting suspect: 'No! I don't trust in God!'

His mug shot is freaking scary.

i Spent 2 months at Evergreen Airforce Base on a British Military Excersise, i spent a fair few nights down the town! the people of tucson where extremely friendly and welcoming. i am saddened to hear of such an event!

Here is a post I can agree with.....the problem with dealing with mentally unstable personalities is that it became to expensive to support mental institutions therfore it became decided that most of the mentally unstable populations could function in society with proper medical care......

The problem with that theory remains that families can not mentally institutionalize there loved ones needing help......and the jails have become the mental institutions of todays society.......now is jail the proper place and who really is now at fault.....we cannot force these people to take medications in society....and we have no place to send them without punishing them for their mental instabilities.....

So by allowing the mentally unstable to function within the limits of the societal domain.....who becomes at fault for their actions and inability to take there medications......and how do we watch this faction when everyone stated the mans instabilities but nothing could basically be done or could he be forced into help......placing him in jail at the very minimum could have prevented him from getting a gun legally.....but what steps really need to be taken to protect the societal domain from people such as this....

On the one hand once upon a time when institutionalization remained available......there were people forced into institutionalizations just because their husband or wife wanted freedom and stated an instability so these institutions took them anyways medicated them heavily for monetary gains......which remains unethical......and some even when getting better never were released........but the incidence like the one society now endured were less likely to occur......there good sides and bad sides to the institutionalizations of the mentally unstable....

We learn more and more each day as this story unfolds about the shooter.

I still have a lot of questions that nobody seems to be asking or I have not heard any of these details reported in the news:

1. Did he have a job or was he employed anywhere?
I haven't heard that he was working at all but was living with his parents.

2. Where did he get the money to buy the Glock 19?
They are not cheap and typically run around $500.

3. How did he pay for the gun? Did his parents give him the money? Cash? Credit card? Check? Did the sales person at Sportsmens Warehouse notice the guy was a whack job but sold it anyway?

4. Has he been living at home his entire life? From what I have heard, he started acting crazy his junior year of high school. Didn't his parents notice? Why didn't they have him evaluated?

My take on this whole incident is that we have a mentally ill person that slipped through the cracks and nobody took appropriate action to have him evaluated. Perhaps he had some sort of chemical imbalance that was exacerbated by drug use. If someone would have had him tested and possibly treated, this may not have happened.

I also think there are a lot of these time bombs out there waiting to go off.

Agreed and add to the unstable the hateful fearful rhetoric of late and bam big problem.

There are more of him out there for sure with access to guns.

The only real issue here is how this guy could have gone as far as he did without being given a mental health evaluation. His history is one that we are finding out now that the Pima County Sheriffs office was aware of.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/11/AR2011011102755.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline

It should've started there. If he had been given anti-psychotic medication this would not have happened, people in Arizona are learning that there is a state law that allows anyone to petition a court to have an individual undergo a mental evaluation. I think Rhode Island is the only other state to have this law.

He was able to empty the gun without anyone stopping him.

If you where armed like I am, you would at least have something to stop the guy before he ran out of ammo . . .

they said it took twelve seconds, there WERE armed citizens there, none of THEM had time to stop him

back to single load guns and away with glocks and semi autos,,,

if someone is shooting in a crowd of people, if your not a cop, do you really want to pull out a gun? they would shoot you just because they can....

Florida has what is called the Bakers Act which is similar and families can come forward and have someone Bakers Acted in to treatment......I have done it....so I know

Restrictions will not stop someone who is determined to from killing.

Withdraw all restrictions on firearms and make every State go Gunslinger.

Not likely he shouldn't have been able to get a weapon and slipped through the cracks they knew he was unstable with the police department........he should have been reprimanded into a secure facility and froced to be evaluated by law enforcement they knew he was a loose cannon....his parents knew he was a loose cannon everyone did.....

This kid is a madman: A whack-o. Limiting law-abiding citizens' access to guns will not stop these people. Would a car thief stop stealing cars if you took away his driver's license?

It is stupid, desperate, and mind-numbingly unsupported to make ANY attempt to connect Loughner's alleged behavior to some (either) end of a political ideology.

LOOK at the man:

I DO find it interesting that the Sheriff in Tucson knew all about this guy. They've had dealings with him in the past and when the rest of the reporting world was struggling with how to pronounce Loughner's name, the outspoken Pima County Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, knew exactly how to pronounce it. They'd dealt with Loughner in the past, several times.

So one has to wonder why Dupnik, who knew Loughner and had "been aware" of Loughner for some time, was so quick to blame someone ELSE as partly responsible (the media, Rush, Hannity, conservative talk radio in general).

It does give one pause.
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