GUNS IN FACE,
BUT NOT LAWS
So would the crazy guy who laid waste
to a congresswoman, federal judge,
9-year-old girl and crowd at a strip mall
in Arizona with a spray of gunfire from
his 30-round Glock be able to do the same
in Oregon?
Hell yeah. Oregon’s gun control laws
are almost as weak as Arizona’s. Oregon’s
laws rate a 17 out of 100 from the Brady
Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. By
comparison Arizona rates a 2 out of 100.
Shooter Jared Loughner was rejected
by the military and thrown out of college
for being mentally deranged and/or on
drugs, but that didn’t stop him from
getting a deadly weapon in Arizona, a
state which doesn’t even require a permit
to carry a concealed weapon.
In Oregon, you need a permit, but the
law requires almost no background
investigation, unlike some states. In
Oregon, it appears even those known to
be insane may legally carry a concealed
weapon almost anywhere unless there is a
court order on that person explicitly
forbidding it.
Oregon also has no state ban on the
large capacity assault clips used in
Arizona and at another recent act of
terrorism in Fort Hood, Texas. Oregon
also bans city and county gun laws, and
Gov. John Kitzhaber and the Legislature
did little to tighten gun control after Kip
Kinkel sprayed the Thurston High School
cafeteria with bullets in 1998.
Congress had prohibited such assault
clips at the federal level, but let the law
expire in 2004. The Brady Campaign has
called for renewing the law in the wake of
a fellow Congress member getting shot
through the face, but with Democrats
competing with Republicans for gun
enthusiasts’ votes, pundits don’t see the
reform getting much traction.
Local Congressman Peter DeFazio,
who earned a B grade from the NRA for
opposing gun control and a 50 percent
rating from the Brady Campaign for
supporting gun control in the most recent
rankings, said of the gunned-down
member of Congress, “Gabby is a stronger
defender of the Second Amendment than
I am.” DeFazio held a press conference in
Eugene this week.
The NRA gave Gabrielle Giffords a
D+ rating. “I have a Glock 9 millimeter,
and I’m a pretty good shot,” Giffords
recently told The New York Times while
campaigning in her pro-NRA district.
DeFazio said he has a concealed
weapons permit but wouldn’t “broadcast”
whether or not he would actually carry a
gun. “I had far more death threats as a
county commissioner than in many of my
years in Congress,” he said.
Gun advocates have argued that the
best protection for shootings like in
Arizona is more guns. But it’s unclear
how a concealed carrier would be able to
draw fast enough to shoot someone who’s
already taken aim with a weapon capable
of firing up to 30 rounds in a matter of
seconds.
— Alan Pittman and Shannon Finnell
CELEBRATING
MLK AS A DAY
OF SERVICE
Eugene and the rest of U.S. celebrate
Martin Luther King Jr. Day Monday, Jan.
17, two days after King’s birthday. Ronald
Reagan signed the legislation in 1983, but
it wasn’t until the year 2000 that all 50
states chose to recognize the federal
holiday.
“Some people think it’s a black
holiday, but we want it to be a people
holiday,” said Niyah Dotts, organizer for
a free MLK event from 4 to 6 pm Sunday,
Jan. 16, at the Eugene Hilton.
Dotts is excited that HONEY Inc.
(Honoring Our New Ethnic Youth) is
celebrating its 25th year hosting MLK
events. The family-oriented event will
feature youth performers from many
genres. The guest speaker will be author
John A. Andrews.
Other MLK events include the free
“Voices of Our Youth: Tomorrow’s
Leaders,” at 6 pm Monday at the Hult
Center, featuring slam poets Justin Long-
Moton and Jay Davis, and Springfield’s
MLK march and celebration, also on
Monday, which kicks off with a march
from Springfield Justice Center at 1 pm
and goes to Springfield Middle School
where the celebration continues. More
information at www.calclane.org
King said, “Life’s most urgent and
persistent question is: What are you doing
for others?” In 1994, Congress
transformed MLK Day into a national day
of community service. There are several
opportunities in the Eugene area to honor
King’s legacy by giving back to the
community
You can volunteer to prep downtown
Eugene’s youth center (aka the Youth
MOVE Center) at 965 Oak Alley for its
relaunch by repainting the interior of the
center from 9 am to 2 pm. For more
information call Lyndsey Tucker at 844-
6134.
UO’s Service Learning Program has
posted 16 service-oriented projects for
MLK day on its website ranging from
painting walls for St. Vincent de Paul, to
pulling invasive plants at Mount Pisgah
to fighting hunger with FOOD for Lane
County. The volunteer opportunities are
open to the entire community. For more
details:
www.serve.uoregon.edu/
programs/mlk
See more events in our Calendar
section this week. — Heather Cyrus
WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
METER HOOPS
REPLACE LOST
BIKE PARKING
The city of Eugene bolted hoops on
posts downtown this month to help make
up for bike parking that was lost after the
City Council ordered parking meter heads
removed to create free car parking.
The city attached about 35 metal hoops
to headless meter posts downtown. The
city plans to install 25 more hoops in
coming weeks, according to a press release.
analysis
The black metal hoops, already used in
other cities, feature a bike design from
Creative Metalworks in Dayton, Ore. The
bolts appear to be tamper resistant to
prevent bike theft.
Cyclists expressed concern about the
bike parking lost when the city removed
the meter heads from a 12-block area
downtown in October. The council
majority argued free parking would
increase business downtown, but
employees rather than customers have
often used the spaces for parking.
City parking and transportation staff
have also said they will install new
BY JOSEPH A. LIEBERMAN
Raising Cain
In Arizona
W
ithin minutes after Jared Loughner was arrested for the attempted
assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of six other
people, internet news websites were flooded with thousands of
polarized reader comments claiming Loughner was either a Tea Party-
influenced, right-wing hit-man, or a drug-addled liberal left-wing psycho.
Both sides cited as proof “favorite books” listed on Loughner’s YouTube
page, including Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto, along with Brave
New World and Animal Farm, which come closer to reflecting his obsession
about authorities controlling the masses.
Digging a little deeper, it becomes clear that Loughner attached himself
to whatever philosophies or political expediencies suited his paranoid
delusional fantasies. To find parallels among other homicidal predecessors,
we need look no further than our own local mass murderer, Kip Kinkel, who
in May 1998 slaughtered both his teacher-parents and proceeded the next
morning to shoot 27 students at Thurston High in Springfield, killing two.
Like Kinkel at Thurston, Loughner was also seen as a potentially serious
threat by classmates and teachers at his community college. In Loughner’s
online and handwritten ravings, there’s a neurotic fixation concerning fake
money (governments are colluding to create a unified “New World Order
currency”) and mind control. Kinkel similarly labored under a complex set of
paranoid delusions, including a certitude that Disney dollars would soon take
over our U.S. currency, Disney and the government were collaborating to
censor lyrics in music, and that his auditory hallucinations might be from a
satellite-controlled microchip the government had implanted in his head.
Oregon clinical psychologist Dr. Orin Bolstad, who examined Kinkel, stated
that people experiencing delusional paranoid symptoms can still maintain
sharp cognitive thinking, and shrewdly plan and complete a course of action.
“That doesn’t mean they’re logical,” he added.
That profile appears to fit Loughner. A current speculation is that what
really set him against Rep. Giffords was her reaction to a written question he
handed up to her during a previous “Congress on your Corner” event at a
mall in Tucson in 2007. The note said, “What’s government if words don’t
have meaning?” Giffords read the question, but (understandably) couldn’t
reply. The very same question was posted at the end of a semi-coherent
screed Loughner posted in video form on the Internet Dec. 15.
What sets Loughner apart from previous shooters is that he coupled a
targeted assassination with generalized mass murder. That’s something new.
Kinkel had an “enemies” list, but none of those students were targeted that
day in 1998. As in most mass murders, including recent mall and church
shootings, the killer’s purpose is to inflict maximum physical, psychical and
emotional damage upon a community he blames for alienating, marginalizing
or rejecting him. Loughner, it seems, coupled that urge with a specific quarry
who symbolically represented the government that he felt was trying to
disenfranchise him.
As for the right-left debate, what we can learn from this event is how
easily we’ve come to expect the worst from our political opponents. Using
Loughner’s actions as a metaphor to embody the “evil” of the other side
would be convenient, but no amount of projection can camouflage the fact
that this was simply one sick individual bent on a course of external and self
destruction.
Joseph A. Lieberman is a Eugene freelance writer and author of School Shootings — What Every Parent and
Educator Needs to Know to Protect Our Children.
EUGENE WEEKLY
JANUARY 13, 2011 7