Sadness to start

Dear Congressman,

My blogs to you will normally be light hearted in nature and hopefully humorous in general, but today's blog entry, our first, will be a sad one.

Yesterday, what has been described as a deranged individual, attended an event put on by Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, pulled out a handgun and started shooting, killing six people and wounding 14, including Representative Giffords. As we all know, Ms. Giffords was critically injured with a gunshot wound to the head. Surgeons (as I type) have stemmed the bleeding and kept the swelling to a minimum, but it will be many days or weeks before we know if M.s Giffords will have any chance of a normal life after this incident.

I wanted to begin this blog with something witty or funny, but we must start with an instance of violence. There are violent incidents on an hourly basis all over our country, but it is the rare event that a politician is targeted.

Don't get me wrong, the average American believes the average politician is power hungry and doesn't care about them. But, it doesn't mean that we want people on the street deciding to kill them. An important difference between what happens here and, for example, what is happening in Mexico is that we do not target our politicians with weapons or force to obtain our gains. We will continue to grip that our politicians are targeted by bribes and graft from lobbyists and ner-do-good types, but we settle our scores at the ballot box, not down the muzzle of a gun.

So I would hope that all Americans, from those who flaunt NRA stickers on their cars to the pacifists who carry spiders out of their house rather than stomp on them, realize that the acts of a deranged individual should solidify our stance for freedom, not divide us into factions fighting over the tragedy's meaning.