Exclusive: Loughner Friend Explains Alleged Gunman's Grudge Against Giffords

[Imperialism Inc.]

Source: Mother Jones

Saturday—about eight hours before he allegedly killed six people and wounded 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.)—Jared Lee Loughner phoned an old and close friend with whom he had gone to high school and college. The friend, Bryce Tierney, was up late watching TV, but he didn't answer the call. When he later checked his voice mail, he heard a simple message from Loughner: "Hey man, it's Jared. Me and you had good times. Peace out. Later."

That was it. But later in the day, when Tierney first heard about the Tucson massacre, he had a sickening feeling: "They hadn't released the name, but I said, 'Holy shit, I think it's Jared that did it.'" Tierney tells Mother Jones in an exclusive interview that Loughner held a years-long grudge against Giffords and had repeatedly derided her as a "fake." Loughner's animus toward Giffords intensified after he attended one of her campaign events and she did not, in his view, sufficiently answer a question he had posed, Tierney says. He also describes Loughner as being obsessed with "lucid dreaming"—that is, that conscious dreams are an alternative reality that a person can inhabit and control—and says Loughner became "more interested in this world than our reality." Tierney adds, "I saw his dream journal once. That's the golden piece of evidence. You want to know what goes on in Jared Loughner's mind, there's a dream journal that will tell you everything."

Read more: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message?page=1

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[Imperialism Inc.]

2. What's a 2A apologists?

[xchrom]

3. second amendment. nt

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

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[customerserviceguy]

10. They used that a lot during the 1960's

to get a lot of gun laws passed, but somehow those laws never kept guns out of the hands of criminals.

Unless I'm mistaken, there hasn't been an attempted political assassination in this country since Reagan, so this sort of thing is new to anyone 35 years of age or younger. It used to be a much more common experience in our history.

[defendandprotect]

27. They moved from guns ....

to planes and cancer --

but now they seem to be doubling back again ---

[LisaM]

28. Not with guns

but there were politicians targeted with anthrax letters.

[customerserviceguy]

50. Good point

I had forgotten about that. But even in those cases, the Congresspersons targeted with the anthrax letters never came into contact with the poisons. It's not quite the same as having a bullet whiz by your head - or through it.

[dkf]

4. K&R

[Imperialism Inc.]

5. Thought maybe I should add a basic summary.

The lucid dreaming and fascination with words meaning nothing that was in the YouTube vids was something he talked to friends about. It had got more insane over the years.

He asked Giffords a question about 'What is government if words have no meaning?' at a rally in 2007. He didn't like her answer and occasionally brought up her name to friends ever since then.

He wasn't in any particular political party.

He started to act strange at around Junior or Senior year in high school and became worse over the years.

Loughner's mother is Jewish. Friend feels Mein Kampf on his YouTube page was probably to "push people's buttons". Friend speculates pushing people's buttons may have been his motivation. To shake people out of the trap of society.

In early 2010 he hung out with friends less and less and seemed crazier.

A month before the shooting he posted on MySpace: "I'll see you on National T.v.! This is foreshadow," and, "I don't feel good: I'm ready to kill a police officer! I can say it."

The last time the friend saw him he expressed interest in another friend's new gun and wanted to go shooting with them.

[Tunkamerica]

8. creepier and creepier

[progressivebydesign]

21. and not ONE Of his friends did anything when he wrote those things??

That's what freakin' galls me now. The guy is ACTIVELY writing that he wants to kill a police officer, and other things that are clearly threatening, and his friends and family seem to be like "oh, let's not judge." I've been seeing this more and more over the last few years. These guys acquaintances KNOW that they are dangerous... saying you're "ready to kill a police officer" means you're dangerous. In schools, kids know that someone is planning to bring a gun to school, etc., and they dont' tell anyone because they don't want to be judgmental. This could have been prevented had the people around him gotten involved in this.

Where did that increasingly dangerous person get his hands on a weapon?

[MilesColtrane]

25. I think a lot of parents wouldn't want to admit that their child is mentally ill.

We don't know if Loughner's parents took him to be evaluated after they received the warning note from Pima Community College. Maybe they did, but he stopped taking his medication.

Maybe his medication wasn't working.

Maybe they were in denial and never sought help for him. Maybe they were afraid of him.

He sure as hell should not have been able to buy a gun.

[ffootball278]

54. You Make a good point. How about this angle...

How could people not know this guy was dangerous. How many reports had been made with the Police or Sheriff Dept?I am wondering if the Sheriff or Police Dept. knew about his mental problems and failed to appropriately handle the situation. Maybe they missed a chance to get the guy some mental help and prevent this whole mess. If they did not act when they should have and failed to protect then it could be a huge liability for an agency.

[shanti]

31. loughner's mother is jewish

doesn't that make him jewish as well?

[Rex]

36. So those are his friends!?!?!

Wow, he was deadmeat from the get go. With friends like that...

"I don't feel good:" - how many warnings did they need to stop this guy!?!

[eowyn_of_rohan]

38. When did he attempt to join the military?

just curious

[LawnKorn]

6. Loughner's deranged mind with a standing hatred of Gifford's was ripe for Palins 'Target' message

Loughner was just who the supporters of Sarah Palin were looking for.

[customerserviceguy]

11. Yeah, obviously that poster

turned him from a rational young man into a murderer. I'm sure we'll find it mentioned prominently in his dream journal.

:sarcasm:

[tavalon]

13. No, it's just that usually the mentally unstable see connections and hear things

that the rest of us don't. That poster was a dog whistle. Was it the specific whistle that pushed Jared over. That I don't know. None of us do yet or possibly ever. But I do know, as I knew when it came out, that the poster was another irresponsible act by a hate baiting woman.

[slackmaster]

34. We don't know that he ever saw that image

Not yet.

[woo me with science]

41. How many people even heard of the poster before the shooting?

This is really getting beyond silly. Apparently Loughner is not the only one with fixations.

[tavalon]

44. Most of us at DU

We had many a discussion about it until the next outrage reared its ugly head.

[woo me with science]

48. I doubt it was "most"...and even if it was,

I fail to see how that indicates that HE saw it, or that it meant anything to him.

[bettyellen]

45. it was a hot topic after her office was shot up- see the connection now?

[woo me with science]

47. No.

I see inexplicable attributions of significance to a dumb poster he probably never even saw, and probably didn't even notice if he did see it.

[bettyellen]

51. it was in all the news immediatelty after she was attacked. he hated her

and somehow missed this national story about a local politician he was becoming obsessed with? Sorry, it;s not nearly as obsecure as you think.

[woo me with science]

52. It was not a big national story.

I think you are very mistaken if you think that very many people at all saw that map or paid attention to it before these shootings. There is absolutely no evidence that the shooter ever saw it, much less was influenced by it in any way.

We have already been given the reason for his grudge against her, from someone who actually knew him, and it sounded quite personal. He asked some bizarre, psychotic question to her at a meetup, and he was offended when she did not give it the attention he felt it deserved.

According to the news today, FBI looking at the evidence are reporting that they have not found any evidence so far of alliance to the left OR the right, or to a particular political group or philosophy. Personal reports from people who knew him also suggest that he was only vaguely political and all over the map.

[bettyellen]

53. three or four congressional offices were attacked, and so yes it was part of a larger incident that

played all over the country. And it happened to someone he was obsessed with, Have you looked t the coverage in Tuscon? Did you know Sarah's people denied thinking about it, even though Sarah herself went on record to say she was aware of the controversy?
Do you have anything to say about this except that you personally had your head hidden somewhere when this all happened. Because I beieve you as much as I believe Palin and the "surveyor's marks" nonsense.

[customerserviceguy]

49. Clearly

this brat asshole was fixated on Giffords long before anyone even knew who Palin was.

All the reich wing has to do to counter, is play the tape of Baldwin's cry to stone Henry Hyde.

[progressivebydesign]

22. honest-to-God, i think that the extreme right is HOPING for that.

They seem to continue their dangerous imagery and rhetoric KNOWING that someone will be killed. Remember when Palin got people so enraged at her election rallies? And the pissy little media guys could barely muster any outrage when people were calling for her to tone it down, as it represented a threat to then-candidate Obama?? they know what they're doing. EVERYONE knows that Fox, the RNC, and people like Palin, pay a lot of money for psych ops. It's been reported in the past that Fox "News" actually has former military psych ops people on the payroll. They know exactly what they're doing.... they always have.

[rayofreason]

39. Maybe it was this message...

...that got him going.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/25/1204/74882/511/...

From the post:

Well, I'd argue that we can narrow the target list by looking at those Democrats who sold out the Constitution last week. I've bolded members of the Blue Dogs for added emphasis.... this vote certainly puts a bulls eye on their district.

Giffords' name is bolded on a list of "targeted" blue-dogs.

Or maybe none of these things had anything to do with his rampage, since he was obsessed with Giffords since at least 2007 (he kept a form letter from her sent in 2007), well before the dailykos post or a time when anyone had heard of Palin in the lower 48.

[woo me with science]

40. Here we go again.

Yeah, it was DEFINITELY the poster.

:eyes:

[Democat]

7. There are many mentally ill people in America - enticing violence has consequences

This is exactly what happened with McVeigh. He was probably mentally ill as well - who else could kill that many people?

[fasttense]

12. There is a pattern to the responses by the seriously mentally ill who receive no help.

They follow a bizarre path outlined for them by society. Loughner took this way out of his crazy world because society, the corporate media, Sarah Palin, directed him to it. He could have chosen a hundred other ways to escape his life, but this way was laid out for him by the hate mongers on the right. Violence and murder against Democratic politicians and activists is the path our corporate media and politicians have advertised.

Loughner was a bomb waiting to go off. Instead of seeking help (which the RepubliCONS make nearly impossible) he chose a path that the right wing hate mongers had laid out for him. They do it with anti-abortion crazies and the religiously insane. They spew lies and hate, encourage murder, then wait for someone ill enough to act on it.

Fox and Limpballs have done it again. How many more times will this happen before action is taken?

[WatchWhatISay]

15. I agree with some of what you say

Except that I think this current bunch of so-called Democrats (most of them, anyway) are complicit as well. When is the last time our party did anything really meaningful about the abysmal state of mental health care (or any health care for that matter, other than just playing around the margins).

The more I read about this guy, I don't see him as liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat. Just very confused and in desperate need of mental health care.

But yes, susceptible to all the talk about violence solving problems, and almost all of that comes from the right.

[emilyg]

30. Good post.

[Ian David]

14. There are crazy people out there who are destined to kill someone, sometime, for something.

And Conservatives are more than willing to urge those people toward certain targets THEY want to see eliminated.

Why waste a perfectly good lunatic on a random shooting in a McDonalds?

There is a whole, Conservative infrastructure that does a very good job at directing those people to the "right" targets, and they make good money doing it.

[defendandprotect]

29. Agree --- and they're also ensuring that they get no help ... no proper care .....

Remember when Ollie North was running for Gov. of Virginia --

Clinton was president -- at his convention where they were selling buttons

to support him, one read "Where is Lee Harvey Oswald when you really need him?"

Pushing violence is ALWAYS on the mind of right wing leadership -- it is the

only way the right wing can rise --

well -- that and stolen elections and lies --

MIHOP 9/11

[ehrnst]

16. RW posts say that "he's a pothead" so he doesn't fit the Teabag profile.

But his friend says that he had given up booze. I heard reports that he had been rejected for Military service because of previous drug-related arrests, not a positive test for drugs.

[kirby]

18. He was obsessed with Grammer...

That certainly rules out an Tea Party connection!

[laundry_queen]

19. That always cracks me up

I know more right wing racist assholes that smoke pot than I know left wing hippies that do. Whether a person smokes pot or not says nothing about their political persuasion.

[shanti]

32. so...

wingers can't be "potheads"? really now.....:eyes:

[jakeXT]

35. How did he pass the fbi background check to buy a gun?

Or is this not important`?

[no_hypocrisy]

17. Loughner is not a RW version of Holden Caufield, saving the world from "fakes".

He's a deranged punk. Plain and simple.

[jkappy]

20. Femicide and Anti-Semitism Possibilities

Men don't like it when females don't measure up and answer their questions---because they see females as inferiors. This is central to domestic violence and femicide. And the fact that Gifford is Jewish perhaps enraged him even more--as it does the radical right in general.

[freshwest]

24. I didn't know she was Jewish, thought she was a Quaker. But your points still hold.

[newspeak]

23. His little dream world

keeps reminding me of *'s words when he said they create reality. That just comes to mind. Also, he is a reader, did he ever read any H.P. Lovecraft? Lovecraft wrote short stories based upon a dream world and "reality" and in some of the stories the characters couldn't determine in which world they were living.

It looks like a very mentally troubled young man who has caused a lot of grief.

[bigworld]

26. Where were this guy's parents?

Not to put any kind of blame on them, but I've heard nothing about them. Where were they during all this?

Talking Points Memo (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/gallery/2011/01/on-the-ground-in-arizona-tpm-retraces-shooting.php?img=5) has some pictures of the house on their site, which shows a couple of really old (even for AZ) cars in the driveway, at least one of which doesn't have a license plate. If you'll recall, McVeigh didn't believe in license plates, either.

Just wondering.

[slackmaster]

33. This story will get buried, because neigher the right nor the left can use it against their enemies

:kick:

[woo me with science]

43. [phone] nt

[Blue_Roses]

37. this guy has some serious mental illness ...

This guy had been noted by several people as having something "wrong" and nothing was done about it.

Now, we have people that have died and been critically injured because another one fell through the cracks.

It is just so incredibly sad :cry:

[woo me with science]

42. Kick for visibility. nt

[Imperialism Inc.]

46. I just wanted to add that the only reason I put this up was because it was a high quality

piece of information. I didn't have any particular axe to grind about the direction of discussions. While I would strongly agree that the picture of Loughner that has emerged doesn't support hyperbolic claims that he was definitely inspired by Palin's map, or that he acted to further the goals of the Tea Party groups, I also don't think his mental illness and placing some blame on a toxic political environment are mutually exclusive.

Because of the viscousness of the incident the shooter was almost guaranteed to be mentally ill in some way. We should all remember though that this hasn't been an isolated incident. This type of violence has been occurring regularly these last couple years. From individuals more or less by themselves, but clearly sympathetic to common right wing rhetoric, to groups with strong connections to the nexus of right wing grass roots groups, both actions and talk have turned increasingly deadly. All the perpetrators have been unstable and/or depressed in one way or another. Surely part of the blame lies in the state of the world and its economy. But, these acts have also occurred during the most toxic environment that I've seen in my 40 years. It is difficult to believe that this environment has not played a major role.

I would caution people against hyperbolic claims that already look dubious at best. I would also rebut anyone who would claim that the left is not capable of these types of acts even in principle. We all share the same DNA after all. Still , right now, today, the threats and actions are coming overwhelmingly from the right. There is nothing wrong with using this moment to point that out, discuss it, and call for a change.