What Motivated Giffords' Shooter?

By ADAM KLAWONN / TUCSON Sunday, Jan. 09, 2011

Instructions: Read the following article and attempt a quiz based on it.
Click “English Quiz” in the portal.

Alleged

Tuscon shooter,

Jared Loughner, in 2010

Updated: 9 January, 2011

1. The La Toscana Village is a shopping mall like most others in Tucson except it
happens to be in one of the city's trendier neighbourhoods. Here, the rugged Santa
Catalina Mountains give way to gently rolling foothills in the high desert. Many of
Tucson's prominent families live in the area, in sprawling ranch-style homes, surrounded
by well-groomed flora. The mall has banks, a flower shop and, at the back of the parking
lot of the Safeway, a Beyond Bread, the favorite bakery belonging to Tucson's star
restaurateur, Sam Fox. It was towards Beyond Bread, shortly after 10 a.m. on Saturday
morning, that everyone ran when the shooting began at the La Toscana Safeway.

2. Just outside the supermarket, the local Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, a

Democrat who had just been sworn in for her third term in Washington, was a few
minutes into of one of her regular town-hall-style meetings when a young man
approached. He had reportedly been trying to speak to Giffords even before the event
got underway but had been told to wait his turn. "He was intent," Alex Villec, a Giffords
volunteer, told the Arizona Daily Star. "He was intent when he came back — a pretty
stone-cold glance and glare."

3. The young man eventually got up close to the politician, took out a semi-
automatic weapon with an extended clip and opened fire. He shot Giffords once in the
head and sprayed the rest of the crowd with bullets, hitting a total of 19 people. Before
he could do more damage or get away, he was tackled by two men in the crowd.

4. Emergency vehicles and medical helicopters soon converged, with the choppers
landing in the eastbound lane of one of Tucson's busiest intersections, which would be
closed for close to seven hours.

5. So far, six of the victims have died, including nine-year old Christina Taylor
Green, who was born on Sept. 11, 2001 and had just been elected to her school council,
and a federal judge named John Roll, who, after attending Catholic church services in

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downtown Tucson, decided to drop by the Safeway to say hello to his friend, the
congresswoman. "Unfortunately, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time," said

6. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who provided some details at an evening
press conference. Giffords remains in critical condition. But Dr. Richard Carmona, a
former U.S. Surgeon General who now works with the Pima County Sheriff's Department
— and who became an important local ally of Giffords during the heated debate over
health care — said he had looked at her medical records at the hospital and that he had
"guarded optimism" about her recovery.

7. Meanwhile, by the time local officials held a press conference, media reports had
identified the alleged shooter as 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner. Although the sheriff
did not refer to the suspect by name, he mentioned various online postings that the
media has attributed to Loughner. Dupnik also said that investigators believe the
gunman had received help from a white man in his mid-50s. The sheriff did not say how
this second "person of interest" is believed to have played a role in the shooting. On
Sunday, the sheriff's department said that the "person of interest" was the cab driver
who took the suspect to the supermarket. He had gone into the Safeway apparently
because Loughner had to get change to pay the fare. He is no longer a person of
interest, much less a suspect.

8. Giffords was no stranger to danger or threats. Though she managed to eke out a
victory in her most recent Congressional campaign, it had been rife with contention as
anti-immigrant rhetoric dominated the debate. Some windows of her congressional
offices in Tucson were knocked out shortly after she cast her vote in favor of the
President's health care reform. At the press conference on Saturday, Dupnik said police
were investigating a suspicious package found at her offices.

9. Nevertheless, during her meet-and-greet session, at Safeway Supermarket,

Giffords did not have any security forces with her. Dupnik said she was the shooter's
main target, but declined to discuss details of the grocery's security camera footage.
Although the sheriff did not speculate on the shooter's motive, Dupnik did say, "I have
no reason to believe this individual was insane."

10. "Was he unstable?" Dupnik said at the press conference. "I would agree with
that." With the suspect in custody, the media has been parsing online rambling
commentaries allegedly posted by Loughner. Among them: a video on YouTube ("I can't
trust the current government because of fabrications. The government is implying mind
control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar") as well as what appeared
to be a farewell message on Myspace ("Goodbye... Please don't be mad at me").

11. What is not clear is what role politics — and, in particular, the red-hot rhetoric of
the mid-term elections — played in the shooting. Descriptions one of Loughner's high
school classmates posted on Twitter only added to the mystery. "He had a lot of friends
until he got alcohol poisoning in 2006 and dropped out of school. “Mainly loner very
philosophical," @caitieparker tweeted. "As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal and
oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy." And, most ominously, "He was a political
radical and met Giffords once before in 2007, asked her a question and he told me she
was 'stupid & unintelligent.'"

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12. Neighbors say the Loughners kept to themselves, but weren't exactly unfriendly.
The family, they say, had a passion for classic cars and were often seen driving up the
street in 1970s-era muscle cars that they had worked on and restored. The father would
occasionally exchange a neighbourly wave. Still, Dawn Cook, 33, says she and her
daughter avoided the house. "We go selling Girl Scout cookies door-to-door," says
Cook, who works at her husband's Tucson scrapyard. "But we didn't go there," she says
of the Loughners' house, because it appeared foreboding with its unkempt plants. (See
TIME's most unforgettable images of 2010.)

13. "This has not become the nice United States of America that most of us grew up
in," Dupnik said at his press conference, which took place at the posh Westward Look
Resort, roughly half a mile from the crime scene. "And I think it's time that we do some
soul-searching." He had opened the conference by blaming the media — particularly
broadcast news and cable television's talking heads — for adding fuel to the "vitriol" that
sets off these sorts of fires. He called it a "sad day for America."

14. U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who spoke at the press conference,
said that Americans all "long for more civility everywhere, but I wouldn't want to ascribe
what happened today to political rhetoric. Usually when we speak out on something like
that, we are proven wrong." The Congressman said he disagreed with Giffords on a lot
of issues, but that they were always friendly. Still, the risks of public life are changing
the security equation for politicians. "I wouldn't want to reveal how security measures
have changed," Flake said. "You never want that out there. But certainly, I'll be more
careful."

Read more:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2041427,00.html#ixzz1ENt0n8PO\

Link for ‘Imagine’ Song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QqAVFwGwaI&feature=related

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IMAGINE (By John Lennon. Cover by: Sam Tsui & Ahmir)

Imagine there's no heaven

It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above this only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today....

Imagine there're no countries

It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will live as one

Imagine no possesions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one (I'm not the only one)
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will live as one
----------------------------------------------------------
Questions For Journal Writing (Graded Assignment)

Using BOTH the passage and the song, answer the following:

1.) Why do you think this song was chosen and dedicated to the innocent
victims of the Arizona shooting earlier this year?

2.) What meaning did you get from the music and lyrics? What do you think the
song is prompting you, the listener, to do in your lives?

3.) Write about your feelings regarding the shooting incident. Explain, with
reference to the article, the root cause of the unfortunate incident and how such
incidents can be avoided.

Type out your response in Word Document (Font: Arial, Size: 12, Word
Count: 500 words), Save, and Print it for submission as Journal Writing.

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