Another infamous shooting of a nine-year-old girl that is making headlines this week in Tucson.

[phantom power]

The perverse effect of Tucson continue to amaze me. "The left" is now on the defensive and the right is empowered. Surprise. And even though the media is delicately discussing some aspects of right wing rhetoric, they aren't connecting any dots.

There's another infamous shooting of a nine-year-old girl that is making headlines this week in Tucson. This time, we wonder if the rest of the media will bother to cover it.

The little girl's name was Brisenia Flores. She lived near the border with her parents and sister outside the town of Arivaca, Arizona. On May 30 of 2009, a woman named Shawna Forde, who led an offshoot unit of Minutemen who ran armed border patrols for patriotic "fun". Forde's gang had decided to go "operational," which meant they concocted a scheme to raid drug smugglers and take their money and drugs and use it to finance a border race war and "start a revolution against the government". They targeted the Flores home, which had neither money nor drugs, based on dubious information. They convinced Flores to let them in by claiming to be law-enforcement officers seeking fugitives, then shot him point-blank in the head when he questioned them and wounded his wife, Gina Gonzalez. And then, while she pleaded for her life, they shot Brisenia in cold blood in the head. (Her sister, fortunately, was sleeping over at a friend's.)

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/shawna-forde-trial-will-mainstream-m

Neiwert has been following this story from the beginning and notes that the trial should reveal some very important details of the inner working of the Minutemen. Evidently, the most famous leader of the movement, Jim Gilchrist, is involved in this case --- he and Shawna Forde were very close.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/dots-in-arizona.html

[WhiteTara]

1. I hope they rot in Joe Arpio's jail. n/t

[shadowrider]

6. I'm pro-gun and pro-2A and I couldn't agree with you more n/t

[Ptah]

7. They're not in Arpio's jail.

They're in Dupnik's jail.

[WhiteTara]

8. lucky them. n/t

[blondeatlast]

13. BullConnor Joe would consider them heroes. nt

[DCKit]

2. Surprisingly, I don't remember that being included in the list of "Isolated Incidents"...

that have been linked to here.

Guess an actual link to RW groups makes that a no-no.

[pnorman]

3. k & R!

I had almost forgotten that story!

[baldguy]

4. Another blood sacrifice to the Alter of the Gun.

Guns have more rights than people in this country.

[Edweird]

9. Take away the guns and people still murder each other. See: prison.

The murder rate in prison is only slightly lower than that of free citizens, yet they have no access to guns or knives and their lives are strictly controlled and under 24/hr surveillance. Blaming it on 'the gun' doesn't make much sense.

[dsc]

12. oh please this such a goofy example

It is also totally wrong.

Here is a link discussing the prison homicide rate (it is pdf so I can't quote)

http://www.publicsafety.ohio.gov/links/ocjs_suicideandhomicideinprisonandjail2005.pdf

page 4 first bullet point US Prison homicide rate 4 per 100,000.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state

According to this link the murder rate in the country as a whole was 5.6 per 100,000 or 140% higher. That isn't a trivial difference. It should also be noted that prisons have the people who belong to the demographics most likely to murder and be murdered (young males, young males of color). In 2007, the only year I could find (but rates have been going down so this actually hurts my case to use this year) the murder rate of black males as 20.86 per 100,000. Link http://www.vpc.org/studies/blackhomicide10.pdf page 5 bottom of chart. That is over 5 times the rate in prison. No one is advocating living in prisons but the notion that the murder rate in prison is similar to that outside is ludricrous.

[shadowrider]

5. And according to this article, they were associated with the militia

but acted on their own. They were after drugs and money.

I'm not defending them, they need to swing for their actions but let's make sure we have all the facts before slamming militias

From the article:

Forde has ties to border militia groups and anti-immigration activists. Authorities say she founded a border watchdog group called "Minutemen American Defense."

"This is a very unusual woman," said Clarence Dupnik, Pima County Sheriff. "I don't really know what goes on in her mind, but she is obviously a very evil person. If you look at her history closely, and you know what we know, she is, at best, a psychopath."

http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=10526682

My question, if they know she's a psychopath, why wasn't she in a mental institution a long time ago? NOTHING in this article says she "went operational" and certainly nothing to indicate they were planning to use proceeds to start a border war or a revolution against the government.

That info may have been left out of the article, but there is nothing there right now.

[Capitalocracy]

11. Oh, they wanted drugs? Must be libs. nt

[Swamp Rat]

10. Looks like premeditated murder and sedition

:kick: