Reply #112: We're fairly mild by world standards

[Francis Marion]

Until our city streets furnish dozens of decapitated, brutally tortured corpses, like Baghdad or Juarez, we don't even know the meaning of the term political violence.

What has been called 'vitriolic rhetoric' cheapens that term also.

I remember reading an interview with a hard line Iranian theocrat who, when asked what should be done with respect to a competing political faction, said, (paraphrasing) '...we'll cut the heads off of some, and the tongues out of others,' -THAT is vitriolic rhetoric.

The Tucson crime was the product of ONE mentally ill criminal. Not a brigade of terrorists, not a death squad, not a secret police purge. To be clear, the Tucson crime is sickening and senseless.
But it's not an example of world class political violence, which is carried out to rational, willful purpose, and by many people. Tucson is one crazy man on one day, and the US is so delicate that it shut down our government, and provoked a misguided 'reaction' to restrict the freedom of the American People. What a shame that one criminal is allowed to do damage to our nation, far beyond the families and loved ones he murdered.

This is the time to protect the Bill of Rights, not gut it.

We don't need a 'Patriot Act' for the Second Amendment.