Thoughts about the Tucson tragedy...

It has been a week now since the terrible shootings in Tucson, Arizona, when a single shooter killed six people, including a 9-year-old girl, and wounded 14 others, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Here are a few observations...

One of the quotes about the young girl named Christina Taylor Green, who was starting to show an interest in politics and public service, from President Barack Obama's speech on Jan. 12 at a memorial service in Tucson following the tragedy: "We should do everything we can to make sure that this country lives up to the expectations of our children."

Sarah Palin provided a defensive and idiotic (again) moment when she talked about "blood libel" after being chastised for having a "crosshairs" map on her website, which included a "targeting" of Gabrielle Giffords' district in the past election. When Giffords had earlier criticized the "crosshairs" map, Palin flippantly shrugged it off and continued to speak in gun language as though she thought it was cute. After the tragedy, Palin's website removed the map. While Palin isn't to blame for the actual shooting, her map could have influenced crazy people with guns and it does point to Palin's lack of good sense, wisdom, and intelligence. She didn't have the vision to see that the vitriol of her map and rhetoric could be detrimental to American society and might come back to haunt her. I think that says a lot about the unworthiness of her leadership qualities.

The thinking of some gun owners is quite ridiculous. Some gun owners say that if other people, also with concealed guns, had been there, they could have shot the shooter before he fired 30 bullets in just seconds. Well, there was a man with a concealed gun who came out of the Safeway Store near the time of the shooting and he ran to the scene, but thought that one of the heroes who taken the shooter down was the culprit. He said that if he'd used his gun immediately, he might have shot the wrong person. !!!!

Americans shouldn't have to carry around a gun in order to be safe in this country. That would turn a good country into a chaotic one like Somalia or other Third World countries where every person is armed. Who wants to live like that or in a place like that?!

There is definitely a need for stricter gun laws. The Assault Weapons Ban should never have been allowed to expire by Congress. Yes, I know. Outlawing guns won't work as there are too many around and it is a right for good citizens to possess a gun. But if stricter laws and more procedural steps keep even one more tragedy from happening, then it is worth it and Americans should get reasonable and be glad that guns and violence are better controlled and reduced.

It has been interesting to see the Tucson locations in the recent news coverage. I went to the University of Arizona as a college student. I worked in the late evenings, sometimes from about 9 p.m. to midnight, in the library and copy center at the University of Arizona Medical Center, where Congresswoman Giffords was taken and has been receiving care. One time, for about 30 minutes, I got stranded in the library's elevator when it misfunctioned and stopped. I think I finally had to use an emergency phone in the elevator box to call for help. The only other student at the library's front desk wondered where I'd been after the elevator finally came back into service. Another time, in walking to my apartment several blocks away late one colder desert night from the Medical Center, I experienced a somewhat unnerving incident that people don't think about happening in a city. I was walking home--everyone else in homes along the streets were, of course, sleeping, for the most part--when this pack of loose dogs started following me. One of dogs even started to nip at my gloves. Eventually, the dogs went running away. But it was a bit unnerving. No, I didn't need a gun. But the presence of a loud whistle or a can of pepper spray might have made me feel a little better. Another time I was walking down a street and a little old lady called out to me for assistance. She was near her front door. She was very elderly and frail and she had stepped into a flowerbed and couldn't, without some support, lift her feet only about an inch to get back onto the sidewalk and back into her house. I helped her mainly by just holding onto her hand to steady her as she managed to gain her footing onto the sidewalk. It took a while, but neither of us were in a hurry. I will always remember the squeeze of her hand. Despite her obvious declining health, I could feel her spirit and life in that grasp. For the most part, I enjoyed being a college student in Tucson. I traveled all over town, feeling perfectly safe, in the bus system. It was a nice city and university. The people were nice as well.

I also remember visiting the McKale Center, where the recent memorial was held, when it first opened and on occasions. It was a big arena, mainly for sports though sometimes the class registration process, going from academic discipline table to table for classes, would also take place there, at the University of Arizona.