US Represenative shot in Virginia Park

That is awful!!!

It is awful. But the Breaking News that came across my tablet was scaliness shot at Baseball field..... And my first thought was 'why was he shooting at a baseball field?"

That coupled with the London Fire made for a tragic morning read

Just awful. I hope everyone recovers fully.

Scary. Glad everybody will be okay.

WaPo just reported that two victims at GW Hospital are in critical condition.

May they all recover well and soon.

All of them have spoken about the speed and volume of shots!!

I guess that'll teach him, huh?

So awful. An assault on members of Congress is an assault on our Democracy. My prayers are with all that are injured and affected by this.

Frightening. Glad the representative is stable. (As reported by the news here.) Hope he recovers quickly.

I took your post to mean you thought he might've been targeted because of that vote. Is that what you meant?

So scary! I routinely shop at the Target down the street from the park. Prayers for all injured

While it's horrible and I absolutely don't condone it, I can see it happening again in the future.

When people have nothing left to lose, they have nothing to stop them from taking violent and drastic measures. If the AHCA bill passes, you will have people who lose their health insurance. Many people. Those people have families. I can absolutely imagine someone whose wife or child gets sick and can't get treatment - the survivors will be looking for someone to blame. And who else other than those who passed the law that took away their ability to care for their wife or child?

It's no different from the suicide bombers in the middle east - when their families and loved ones are killed by drones or bombs dropped on them, they want vengeance. They can't go up against the US military, so they do what they can. They don't "hate our freedom," they hate the fact that their loved ones have been killed by a foreign power thousands of miles away, and there's nothing they can do about it. So they do what they can.

Again, I don't condone this - but I do believe that it will become more common if things continue down the path they appear to be heading down. Grieving people also feel anger, and if there is a target for that anger, some of them will focus on it. We don't know who this shooter was or what his motivation was. But it won't surprise me to see very angry people taking matters into their own hands if they feel that their families have suffered due to some legislator passing a bill that specifically harms their families.

If we should have learned one thing by now about America's gun fetishism it's that gun terror can happen in ALL neighborhoods.  It's high time we got this through our skulls.  I know some people can't empathize w/tragedy until/unless it happens to them personally, but that's a big part of the problem.  Does it have to affect us personally before we act to help others?