The Gun Slinging Savage of Arizona

Before we all saddle up, form an opinion posse, and ride off blaming Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Hannity et.al. for provoking the senseless shooting last Saturday of a United States Congresswoman, a United States Magistrate, a nine-year old girl, and 15 others near the front door of a Safe Way grocery market in Tuscon, let's stroll over to the saloon, throw down a couple of belts of Rot Gut, and cipher this one out.

This much appears to be reckoned: the shooter is a sociopath, certifiable wacko. He dropped out of high school and has been ranting and raging about his being a victim of every imaginable kind of authority ever since.

Did he have any friends? Apparently, he had just one -- and they sat around watching conspiracy theory movies together.

Did he have a girl friend? Nope.

I feel some empathy for the father and the mother, but from what I'm reading and hearing vis a vis the news, the parents were permissive molly-coddlers who enabled all of his tantrums and whims.

I don't know which photo you may have seen of him in your newspaper, but the one I saw in my paper depicted a very conflicted and extremely angry young man.

His eyes give him away.

A pattern seems to be emerging here, one that places Mr. Loughner in company with the likes of the Texas Tower Sniper, the Beltway Murderers, and the Virginia Tech Shooter -- and many other psychopaths who, over the years, have resorted to a firearm in order to satisfy their inner demon.

That a Congresswoman was one of his victims may be completely accidental to his act of rage. For all I know, he would have started blasting away at parents trying to register their kids for Little League.

We'll all get to know more and more about Jared Loughner in the coming days. I, for one, won't be too terribly surprised to learn that he likes Metal Head Music, the dark side of Hip Hop, Mayhem Movies, and that he gravitated to neo-Nazi web sites before his senseless act of savagery last Saturday.

Can there ever be a better case to be made, to include mental health care in national health care reform?

Just one more point, if I may: did anyone else notice that most of his victims were women?