Quote:
Originally Posted by Ayatollahgondola
I've read that in the days before Lincoln, one could walk right in to the whitehouse and talk to the president. Now the president only wants to talk to his closest advisors and visiting dignitaries. The people are locked out. I don't know if anything could prevent this short of insulating her from public contact. Maybe some dogs might have been able to sniff out the firearm prior, but then we end up going through an invasive warrantless search just to participate in government. It wasn't hard for this insane bastard to do as much harm as he did, but in all seriousness, an insane person could have done the same from afar, and not at a public event. The Unabomber proved this, and he didn't use a gun. The long and short of it is, it's a dangerous world we live in, and as statistics go, congresspersons are not in a dangerous occupation. I'll bet minimart owners are 1000 times more likely to be shot on the job.
The curious thing here is that Arizona is a "right to carry loaded" gun state, but with all the people in the area of a busy supermarket, either nobody was armed or felt strong enough to gun down the killer before he could gun down all those people. Go figure
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Yes, public life was much freer in Lincoln's time than it is now. But at the same time, it made little difference politically that it was. Remember also that public mobility was much more restricted in Lincoln's time as well. Sure you could walk into the White House, but you still had to get there and making the journey with speed would have required at least one horse. And no phones, even mail wasn't what it was now.
The unabomber did not target public officials, and the unabomber was very fussy about targets and all his targets never imagined themselves to be in the public eye. No comparison, really.
It is just absurd to describe being in congress as not a dangerous job. All of our national elected officials have some sort of security protocols and some sort of security details to protect them on the job. This is not the first time somebody in congress has been threatened by some citizen.