sweasel.com

I’m gonna have an outbreak of Tourettes over this.

You should liveblog that.
That’d be fun to watch.

I was watching America’s Newsroom on Fox this morning, and one fo Giffords doctors was describing her injuries. Apparently, the shooter, who’s weapon was less than 12 inches from her when he fired, managed to MISS the center of her head, instead causing a ‘grazing’ wound just inside her skull and creasing out outer left surface of the white matter.

He then turned and managed to put 9 people down with dead on shots from MUCH farther away than the initial shot against Gifford.

NOW! The point of inconsistancy that he shot Gifford in a VERY survivable way from point blank range begs the question – WAS HE ACTUALLY TRYING TO KILL HER, or was it just an excersize in misdirection? After all, contrary to popular belief, Women CAN think logically, Old dogs CAN learn new tricks, and Lunatics CAN have ulterior motives….

We know that the DC Beltway shooter was committing his rampage as cover for his planned murder of his wife. What is bothering me is – Was Giffords shooter using her in some twisted way to cover his real target? If so, was it the Judge, or someone else in the crowd?

I can’t put my finger on what signifigance this apparent inconsistancy has, and that in itself is driving me absolutely BUG-FUCK nuts. I HATE unexplained oddities….

I’m not sure he’d ever fired the gun before, you know. He’d only bought it a few months before. His buddy (the one interviewed in Mother Jones) said himself and friends had declined to go shooting with Loughner (with a .22). He didn’t belong to a range our anything, that I’m aware.

The first shot was aimed at somebody. The rest was indiscriminate firing into a crowd. Oh, and he’s nuts. So I could easily believe that outcome.

Great news about her being grazed, though. I wondered, when the surgeon said he was “100%” sure she’d survive short-term. Those aren’t doctorly words.

That’s the problem. It is an unexplained inconsistancy, and unexplained inconsistancies drive me nuts….

Besides, I had learned to shoot more than a decade before I purchased my first firearm. You don’t necessarily HAVE to one one to learn how to shoot…..

It is an unexplained inconsistancy,

How do you explain luck? She got lucky. Perhaps his adrenaline pumped too much whatzit down his arm and his arm choked a little off on the first shot.

From the info I have seen, the judge was not a planned participant but instead attended rather spur-of-the-moment. Of course, Mr. Loughner MAY have originally targeted SOMEONE ELSE who was supposed to be there and merely taken advantage of the judge’s presence. Or it may only be a coincidence. OR could it be MKULTRA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA
???

I may not be able to come back here until the picture of that friggin self-righteous troll makes it’s way off the front page. The 200 proof stupidity on display from insular dweebs like him the past couple days makes me sick.

I dunno, maybe I’ve just been watching too many episodes of BONES lately….

(I’d say CSI, but those bore me anymore….)

Grom, what you do is print off poster sized copies of that pic with bulls-eyes on them and take them to the local shooting range.

Trust me, you will have LOTS of help venting your frustration…..

(oh, BTW, did you hear that sales of Glock pistols have more than DOUBLED since Krugman started shooting his mouth off?) 😉

I altered his face very little for this pic. He actually is all weird and asymmetrical like that.

I didn’t realize until I did this one that Krugman is one of those guys with no discernable jaw who has to grow a beard so you can find his chin. Like Lucas.

Scuba…OH, how I would like to. The club I belong to has rules (not kidding) about no ‘people’ targets. Easily solved by putting the pictures under a real target…just not as fun. Oh…did I use the word ‘shoot’ and ‘target’? Try and contain yourselves…you know how us bitter-clingers are just waiting for the secret code words to start shooting up the place.
Oh, and the same thing happened with the five-five-seven pistols after the Fort Hood shootings.

Scubafreak
Time: January 11, 2011, 8:19 pm

I did an analysis of this for some friends yesterday. Short form: In combat situations adrenaline plays merry hob with your aim. I have seen cases where both the cop and the perp were at two arms length, and both emptied their pistols at each other and every round missed. I can see that first shot at the Congresswoman pulling to the left [assuming that Loughner is right handed] from a combination of an overtight grip and adrenaline induced shakes.

We know that he used a Glock Model 19 9mm with an extended magazine [which itself will throw aim off]. To avoid magazine feed jams, that means he had to use 9mm FMJ or JHP ammunition. If he had used Jacketed Hollow Point rounds, the fatalities would have been much higher. 9mm Full Metal Jacket rounds [the type used by the military because of the Geneva Convention] punch holes and then keep going through. He was spraying into the crowd where there was a lot of overlap of bodies. Out of 30-34 rounds fired [the extended mags for the Glock 19 that I know of hold 29-33 rounds plus 1 in the chamber] we have 6 fatalities and 14 wounded. BUT I don’t think that it is a matter of “managed to put 9 people down with dead on shots from MUCH farther away”. He was firing wildly into a crowd, and I suspect that a number of the casualties were from rounds that had passed through other victims. He was in a position where not only did he have a high likelihood of hitting someone, each round had a high possibility of hitting more than one victim. Not a matter of “dead on” shooting. The same adrenaline induced inaccuracy that may have caused him to fail to kill his main target probably kept him from accurately aiming at individuals. For which we can be thankful.

The forensics people will be tracing the trajectory of each round as best they can, and I suspect we will hear about this at trial, if the loudmouth sheriff has not blown the case.

Subotai Bahadur

Oh SNAP!!!!

A little off topic, but FASCINATING, none the less…..

Apparently, the high School that the shooter attended apparently used a curriculum from “the Small Schools Project” of Chicago Illinois, developed by none other that Obama’s bestest buddy in the whole wide world, BILL AYERS….

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=249429

“the Small Schools Project”

Figures. Production line of lock-step minions?
High scores get you a seat next to Pelosi.
Valedictorian gets you a rubber room.

The circle is beginning to close.
And that’s a good thing.

Scubafreak –

I’ve heard numerous stories from guys that fought in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam about having an artillery round or some such detonate nearby and kill people on either side of them while leaving them unscathed.

It’s not really an unexplained inconsistancy, it’s completely consistent with confused, chaotic situations where shit happens that seems odd only later when we can review it at leisure.

It was just odd, GB…. Odd without an explanation irks me.

Oh, and before I forget, FUCK YOU, PAUL KRUGMAN!!!!!

that is all…. 😉

On the other hand, my current favorite conspiracy theory is that Sheriff Dipstick knew Loughner was fixated on Giffords and was about to go over the edge, but kept him out of jail and made sure it was possible for him to obtain a gun in order to provide Obama with his “OKC bombing moment”. Oh, and much of the media was in on it, which is why they were so quick and well coordinated at getting the “Tea Party violent rehtoric” meme going.

I haven’t done much development on the theory, but I thought it was a pretty good start.

Ugh. Just When i though it was safe in the water…..

In case it’s not obvious, my conspiracy theory is complete crap that I just pulled out of my ass as I was writing the comment, so feel free to critique, embellish, or condemn as you see fit.

@ gebrauchshund

I figured you were joshing us.
But I was about to call Alex Jones.
He needs new material? No?
Hear he pays well.

Mr. Krugman deserves nothing but scorn. He would be shunned in a just society.

Hmm. Now Scubafreak has me thinking how it could happen. Weird bullet shit happens. I’ve heard of a near point-blank .45 round aimed at the chest that caught a ride on a rib. Being at point-blank range may have saved Giffords. The bullet was still in linear flight, not tumbling at all. Hit her just above the eye, where we still have some vestigial eyebrow ridge reinforcement (reducing momentum) and then hits very low density brain tissue *or* skids along the edge of the brain case, also minimizing tumbling and associated raw trauma.

Just a wild guess, not a medical doctor. But it does give one furiously to think, no?

Oh, FFS!!!!

Democrat Bernie Sanders is already using the Arizona shooting to raise money for his re-election campaign……

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/sanders-fundraises-arizona-murders_533487.html?nopager=1

Weasel sed~

I altered his face very little for this pic.

What about his tie? Did you dress him in that dweebass tie, or was that his mommy?

Possible explanation: people’s heads are harder than you would expect from TV. Shots from further away work as advertised, hit soft parts.

And the NYT has just come out that not only were the shooter and his family under regular survelance by the police, but this guy used to target practice ALL THE TIME….

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/us/12loughner.html?pagewanted=all

From that NYT article:

“The account by Mr. Loughner’s friend, a rare extended interview with someone close to Mr. Loughner in recent years, added some details to the emerging portrait of the suspect and his family.

“He was a nihilist and loves causing chaos, and that is probably why he did the shooting, along with the fact he was sick in the head,” said Zane Gutierrez, 21…”

Gosh, who to believe? Someone who knew the chap, or all the left-wing media who are telling me that of course he was a normal harmless chap until the Tea Party came along?

I’ve heard it said that professional hitmen like to use a .22 in contact with the head, because the bullet gets in there and bounces off the skull, absolutely scrambling the contents.

Thanks for the link, Scoob. I watched a few seconds of the live feed yesterday, when they were waiting for the Loughner’s to come out and speak. The two cars in the drive, one was something from the Seventies — an old Impala or something — and the other was a pickup truck from the Sixties. Or even Fifties. Not lovingly restored, mind, but ancient beaters.

So. I stand corrected on the gun thing.

In support (partial) of Scubafreak —

We’ve got “instant background check” for gun purchases, a Federal law that applies to all licensed gun dealers. They run your name and SSAN through a computer data base, and if anything pops up you can’t buy the gun. (Unusually for a Fed project, the system is still new enough to be regularly maintained, and there’s a system for catching errors that actually works, if slowly.)

People with mental disturbances, histories of death threats, etc. are very definitely On The List. How is it that Loughner was not on the list? The FBI is in overall charge, but they delegate data entry to local law enforcement — in most States the lead for that is the Sheriff’s Department. Did Dupnik keep Loughner off the list as a favor to his (Loughner’s) mother?

Regards,
Ric

Something’s wrong here (in addition to the obvious). This is Loughner’s right eye:

His iris isn’t round. That’s a camera flaw of some kind. Not that it’s a big point, I just found it weird.

Oh, and BTW, Stoaty: The car in the Loughners’ drive is a ’68-’74 Nova. They don’t show the front, so I can’t pin it down closer than that. Definitely not the vehicle of a prosperous family — even older than mine, can you believe. I haven’t seen a picture of the pickup.

Regards,
Ric

But have you Clawed:
http://www.thesantaclaw.com/#
your way to fortune yet? Not to hijack this thread or anything…

However, to bring it back to topic, I have always thought of Krugman as the pontificating turd to Maureen Dowd’s bloviating couw.

Mark Matis: Mr. Loughner MAY have originally targeted SOMEONE ELSE who was supposed to be there…

Wouldn’t be without precedent.

John Connally thought that Oswald was after him and not JFK. (He was in the car and was hit.) Connally had been Secretary of the Navy, and made a ruling that cost Oswald pension or honorable discharge status or something.

And there was the case of Giuseppe Zangara, who tried for FDR and bagged Chicago Mayor Cermak.