Shooting in Tucson

[justcarol67]

"zanooda2" <zanooda2 at ...> wrote:
> 
> I thought about you immediately, Carol, but I had no idea all this happened so close to your home ;-(. Thank God you are all right, you never know when and where some crazy person will start shooting...
> 
> Mila

Carol responds:

Thanks for thinking of me. Ironically, I didn't know anything about it because I hadn't turned on the TV and didn't hear any sirens. I was on my way to see DH before the theaters stopped showing it--I'd given up on getting anyone to go with me and decided to go to a matinee performance by myself. I couldn't get out of the parking lot because the entrance to Oracle Road was blocked. I saw a police car and what looked like a fender bender, so I took a different route to the movie theater. When I got home, I saw the flag at half mast and found a message on my answering machine asking me to call her and let her know that I was okay. When I asked her what was going onnd she told me that Gabrielle Giffords had been shot, I couldn't believe it. I still can't. If she were a radical or a reactionary, I could at least understand someone hating her, but she's a moderate and a strong advocate for bipartisan legislation! I was also shocked to find out *where* the shooting occurred--the very Safeway store where I had bought groceries the night before. It's still unreal to me. But thank God Gabby Giffords is young, only forty, so she has a better chance than someone older of pulling through. And the bullet didn't cross the hemispheres of her brain. I'm afraid she may have some sort of speech impairment, but it looks as if she'll live.

I'm sad that the same can't be said for Judge Roll and little Christina Green and the other four innocent people that Jared Loughner murdered. (Yes, I know that he's officially "the suspect," but there's no question of his guilt.)

For those of you who aren't familiar with Gabrielle Giffords, she's also, among other things, the wife of an astronaut whose twin brother, also an astronaut, is on board the space shuttle Enterprise; the first Jewish Congresswoman from Arizona; and, I just learned, Gwyneth Paltrow's second cousin.

Carol, wondering why things like this happen and how we can prevent them