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Officials Perplexed By Arizona Shooter's Motivation
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jan 9, 2011
Modified Jan 9, 2011
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Jan 9, 2011
Modified Jan 9, 2011
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In the aftermath of yesterday's horrific shooting in Arizona, in which six people were killed, and 14 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, were seriously injured, the media has turned its focus onto the 22-year-old alleged shooter, Jared Lee Loughner. Loughner was tackled by bystanders after he opened fire outside a Safeway store in Tucson during a "Congress at Your Corner" event, and is currently in FBI custody. But Loughner had left a long internet trail that has left people perplexed by his motivations.
Loughner graduated from Mountain View High School and attended Northwest Aztec Middle College and Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona, according to his YouTube page. He uploaded several strange, ranty videos there, including many text-heavy ones with quasi-political beliefs. Among his favorite books listed there is "Mein Kampf." AnimalNY has screengrabs of Loughner's equally strange MySpace page here; among other things, he posted a picture of a handgun, possibly the one used in the shooting, on a copy of "united states history."
Yesterday there was a twitter exchange between Caitie Parker, who claims to be a former friend of Loughner's, and Anthony De Rosa; during the correspondence, Parker says Loughner was a "political radical," "oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy," and had "met Giffords once before in '07, asked her a question & he told me she was 'stupid & unintelligent'" (after the exchange, at least 35 media outlets contacted Parker for interview).
Fox News obtained a Department of Homeland Security memo with even more details about Loughner: officials believe that Loughner may have ties with anti-Semitic, anti-immigration hate group American Renaissance, which he mentions on his MySpace and YouTube accounts; with that in mind, officials believe that Giffords, the first Jewish female "elected to such a high position in the US government" (and a distant cousin of actress Gwyneth Paltrow), was the intended target. Huffington Post has more info on the group and its radical ideologies here.
At a press conference yesterday, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said that Loughner had made previous threats to kill but not against Ms Giffords, adding "All I can tell you is that this person may have a mental issue." In the New Yorker, George Packer writes that "Judging from his Internet postings, Jared Lee Loughner is a delusional young man whose inner political landscape is a swamp of dystopian novels, left- and right-wing tracts, conspiracy theories, and contempt for his fellow human beings." Despite that, he views the political landscape as the true problem: "for the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale."
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gabrielle giffords
jared lee loughner
shooting
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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