Obama Calls for Civility Over Conflict in Shooting Aftermath
US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama sing the national anthem during the memorial event “Together We Thrive: Tucson and America" at the McKale Memorial Center in Tucson, Arizona. Photographer: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- John Lott, a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park and author of "More Guns, Less Crime," Eric Pianin, Washington editor for the Fiscal Times and Bloomberg News's Michael Riley talk about U.S. gun control laws and the Jan. 8 shootings at a shopping center in Arizona. One-day sales of handguns in Arizona jumped 60 percent to 263 on Jan. 10 compared with 164 the corresponding Monday a year ago, the second-biggest increase of any state in the country, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data. They talk with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television's "Taking Stock." (Source: Bloomberg)
President Barack Obama implored Americans to choose compassion over conflict in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, that killed six people, including a 9-year-old girl, and critically wounded a member of Congress.
“The truth is, none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack,” Obama said at a memorial service yesterday for the victims of the Jan. 8 rampage. “What we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other. That we cannot do.”
The president used the life stories of the victims and the heroism of people in the crowd who jumped to their aid as illustrations of the heartbreak and hope that emerged from the chaotic scene after a gunman opened fire at a public meeting organized by U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head. Thirteen others were wounded.
A sign of that hope came from Giffords, whom Obama visited in the hospital before the service. Obama said that after he and first lady Michelle Obama left her room, Giffords was with three close congressional Democratic colleagues -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York -- when she opened her eyes for the first time since being wounded.
The overflow crowd in the basketball arena at the University of Arizona, Tucson, erupted.
“Gabby opened her eyes,” Obama said, “so I can tell you, she knows we are here, she knows we love her, and she knows that we are rooting for her.”
Debate About Rhetoric
In a 34-minute speech that was repeatedly interrupted by applause, Obama repeated his call for greater civility in public discourse, and he sought to squelch an increasingly heated debate over whether political rhetoric contributed to the violence.
“If, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse,” he said, “let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not -- but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud.”
Obama said it is human nature to demand explanations to “make sense of out of that which seems senseless.” The debates, under way already, about issues from the motivations behind the killings to gun safety laws to the nation’s mental health system are part of the exercise in self-government, he said.
Overflow Crowd
The arena was filled to capacity with 14,300 people for the service, with 13,000 more in an overflow area set up at the university’s football field, according to school officials.
The event mixed somber remembrance and a rally-like atmosphere of cheers and clapping. As the doctors who treated Giffords walked in, the audience gave them a standing ovation. Obama drew applause when he arrived as well.
Jerri Boerum, 37, said she kept her children, ages 2, 11 and 12, out of school yesterday to make sure they would be able to attend the service and hear Obama’s speech.
“I wanted my children to be a part of the healing process,” she said in an interview. “It means a lot that President Obama’s here.”
In his remembrances of the victims and his appeal for the nation to aspire to a higher level, Obama highlighted the life of Christina Green, the 9-year-old killed in the shooting.
Glimpse of Future
He recounted how she had just been elected to the student council and was “just starting to glimpse the fact that someday she, too, might play a part in shaping her nation’s future.”
Christina “saw public service as something exciting and hopeful” and was at Giffords’s event to see a role model, he said.
“I want us to live up to her expectations,” Obama said, drawing applause from the crowd. ‘I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it.”
The task of expressing empathy and providing context in the midst of tragedy has produced some of the most durable imagery of recent presidencies: Ronald Reagan addressing the nation on the day of the Challenger space shuttle explosion, Bill Clinton with the families of bombing victims in Oklahoma City, and George W. Bush amid the smoldering rubble of the World Trade Center.
Partisan Skirmishing
The memorial service was held against a backdrop of partisan skirmishing over how to interpret the actions of Jared Lee Loughner, the 22-year-old man accused of the shooting, and what role political rhetoric may have played.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, some public officials, including Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, criticized the strident language used by television and radio talk show hosts and some politicians. Authorities investigating the case haven’t discovered any link to politics in the shooting.
Republican Sarah Palin, while condemning the violence, disputed the notion that the nation’s political rhetoric is overly charged or had any link to the shooting.
“Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn,” Palin, the former governor of Alaska and her party’s 2008 vice presidential candidate, said in a video posted yesterday on the Internet. “That is reprehensible.”
Bipartison Group
Obama traveled to Tucson with a delegation of government officials and a bipartisan group of lawmakers that included Attorney General Eric Holder, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, Pelosi and Republican Representative Trent Franks of Arizona. Among those in the audience were retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican.
Holder spoke at the service, as did Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a former governor of the state.
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