David Frum Asks Important Question: 'Did Pot Trigger Giffords Shooting?'

There is a fierce competition at foot to figure out who can blame the shooting in Arizona on the dumbest thing. Is it Sarah Palin's fault because she put up a map with gun sights on it this one time, because she is a terrible person who hates for people to understand/get along with each other? That's a pretty good one. But David Frum does one better:  "After horrific shootings, we hear calls for stricter regulation of guns. The Tucson shooting should remind us why we regulate marijuana." Yes, why do we "regulate" marijuana? Because we are as insane as this shooter we call insane? Nope. Because lazy potheads do nothing but lounge around giggling and GOING ON SHOOTING SPREES.

Jared Lee Loughner, the man held as the Tucson shooter, has been described by those who know as a “pot smoking loner.”

He had two encounters with the law, one for possession of drug paraphanalia.

We are also learning that Loughner exhibited signs of severe mental illness, very likely schizophrenia.

The connection between marijuana and schizophrenia is both controversial and complicated. The raw association is strong:

Schizophrenics are twice as likely to smoke marijuana as non-schizophrenics.

People who smoke marijuana are twice as likely to develop schizophrenia as those who do not smoke.

Hooray! The good Doctor Frum has given us a diagnosis. Because schizophrenics like pot, it was the pot that murdered all those people! It is high time we keep people found with pot and such in prison for much longer. If we keep them in prison, they might not become violent! If there's one thing this country needs, it's stricter pot laws.

You know what, after we pass those laws, we should let that kid go free. He won't have that pot to make him crazy and murderous any more. Not smoking pot relaxes you and takes the edge off.

But otherwise, yes, let's go around to America's basements and break up these evil plots to shoot a bunch of people. (If by "shoot" you mean "hug," and by "people," you mean "funny animals on teevee.") We should probably go in with guns blazing, because who knows what kind of weapons caches these potheads keep. [ Frum Forum ]