I want to focus tonight on the crosshairs.
Just go to "Google" and write "crosshairs" under the news.
It'll take you to one person, one American political figure in this country. It's the person who has made "crosshairs" her political signature.
Want to know who this person doesn't like? Check the crosshairs. It is how that particular American politician identified people that are the preferred target, right there in the crosshairs.
"Don't retreat," comes the command from this same politician, "Reload!"as well.
Last spring, before she was shot, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords said that she was on a certain politician's "targeted list," that she's been put in the "crosshairs of a gun sight" on that politician's Website.
Congresswoman Giffords drew her own conclusions. "When people do that, they've got to realize there's consequences to that action."
Now, after the shooting and the death, the politician who put Congresswoman Giffords and others in her "crosshairs" has put out word that those crosshairs are really something else, something to do with surveying, that they are not the "bulls-eye" the politician said they were intended to be.
That's not the way this crime will be written in the history accounts. It will include an account of how Congresswoman Giffords had been targeted, placed in the "crosshairs of a gun sight" prior to the attack by one person: Former Governor Sarah Palin.
With all the history in the country in support of the Second Amendment, there's also an up-to-date history of rejecting politicians who use the threat of gunplay against other politicians. Sharron Angle talked of "Second Amendment remedies" against Congress and the need to "take out" Senator Harry Reid. The opponent of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz invited voters to shoot at a human-shaped target that had her initials next to it.
Voters don't like politicians who do this kind of thing.
As Republican consultant Todd Harris put it in the newspaper today, Governor Palin is missing an opportunity here to show that she's a leader at a "higher level."
Let's see whether she joins the country in saying that, however we may disagree in this country, people shouldn't be talking about guns -- reloading them or targeting them -- as a way to solve political arguments.