Local lawmakers shaken, pondering their own security

Horrifying

. It's a word that came up often Saturday as stunned Philadelphia-area lawmakers grappled with the news of the shootings in Arizona that left a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, among others, dead and U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords with a gunshot wound to the head at what was supposed to have been a meet-and-greet with voters.

Local members of Congress described a woman they know as "Gabby" as gracious, soft-spoken, and energized by reaching out to her constituents, as she was when she was shot.

They wondered how a routine weekend event at a supermarket could suddenly become a murderous rampage - and whether the shooting says something about the harsh political rhetoric of these times.

"The fear one has in these circumstances . . . is that the constant media coverage could lead to a copycat," said U.S. Rep. Patrick Meehan, just elected to his first term in Congress. While "American history has been full of debates, and it has sometimes been an angry debate, it hasn't gone this far."

Meehan heard of the shootings as he was attending a conference for freshman congressmen in Williamsburg, Va. The news first filtered through the group via e-mails from staff. Later, the Secret Service and the Capitol Police briefed the new representatives by saying the event was a singular shooting and not part of a coordinated attack.

Former U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, who lost reelection to a second term in November, was clearly upset when contacted about the shootings - too emotionally raw to talk about them, he said, because Giffords is a friend.

"My thoughts and prayers go out to her," he said.

The attack on Giffords was particularly difficult for Murphy, and not just because of their friendship: The Bucks County Democrat was one of several congressmen who received threats last year because of his vote for health-care reform.

The political atmosphere has become increasingly more angry and virulent, said U.S. Rep. Robert A. Brady of Philadelphia, now ranking minority member of the House Administration Committee, which supervises the Capitol's police force and is responsible for security.

Congress has tightened precautions around the Capitol, with more barricades and more police lining the corridors where members go back and forth, Brady said. But the government does not provide security for representatives in their home districts.

"People are screaming and hollering at us as we go by," he said of Washington. "People calling us names. It's a shame it's getting to that."

Experts will likely be talking about rising partisanship and other economic factors as a backdrop to the shooting.

As if anticipating Saturday's events, the website Politico in September 2009 published an article that warned that supercharged rhetoric could lead to violence.

"Times of threat bring increased aggression," Jerrold Post, a CIA veteran who founded the agency's Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior during his 21-year career at headquarters in Langley, Va., said in the article.

"And the whole country's under threat now, with the economic difficulties and political polarization," said Post, now a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. "The need to have someone to blame is really strong in human psychology. And once you have someone to blame, especially when there's a call to action, some see it as a time for heroic action."

This, indeed, is a nation in which individuals have acted on violent impulses directed at political leaders. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme tried to kill President Gerald Ford in 1975, and John Hinckley Jr. shot and seriously wounded President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

"In our country, violence must never substitute for the democratic process," New Jersey Rep. Robert Andrews said in a statement late Saturday. "In the days ahead, however, our nation must examine all the circumstances that led to this tragedy, and the consequences of these circumstances for our democracy."

Safety is a constant issue for public officials, said U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah of Philadelphia.

"The country is in a challenging set of dynamics."