Tucson

Hey colleagues and readers. Its been a bit since I last interjected myself on the esteemed blog. This won't be a long one, and I'll make an effort to come back and give a more academic and legally insightful analysis of the...and at this point I don't know what to even call it, out of disgust at trying to sum it up with catchy phrase...shootings, and the likely arc(s) of the case(s).

We in these related fields that delve in the very darkest parts of human behavior, are fascinated by it, often joke about it in a way that others people would find inhumane, but don't often have any real connection to the stories that we see. And I know alot of people after tragedies try to inject some part of themselves into it for some reason, which I often found annoying (If I would have done this or that, I would have been there). But I'm finding that maybe its a way that people process personal links, of whatever proximity, to extreme horror.

As my colleagues know, I lived in Tucson. Went to law school there. As they didn't know, I know that Safeway. And I've seen Gabby Giffords. In person. She was MY Congresswoman that I voted for during my time there. I was at the Pima County Democratic Party celebration in 2006 when she was first elected and watched her speak. My law school was walking distance to the hospital where the victims are being treated.

I only write this, not to try to interject myself into this awfulness, but out of some need to process it. Being schooled and involved both in criminology and criminal defense law, having more intellectual insight than most laypeople on why this guy did what he did and what will happen to him for the next decade of his life, oddly, doesn't keep it from hitting close to home that I have seen one of his victims in person and know personally the place where people were slain just going about their lives. I guess insight doesn't make some things easier to watch.