The mosaic of items laid by well-wishers outside the constituency office of Gabrielle Giffords includes a homemade sign, on plain white Bristol board, that is nearly obscured by countless candles, flowers, wreaths and teddy bears.
"Let us mourn together," the sign reads. "Don't make this about politics. Republicans and Democrats deplore this kind of hatred and violence."
They just happen to disagree profoundly about what causes it.
The ghastly act of a troubled 22-year-old may have no direct link to the ugly rhetoric, Tea Party tirades, Sarah Palin gun metaphors or militia mind meld of recent American politics. But it has indubitably provided a catharsis that will haunt the collective discourse for a while to come.
It is too early to know what may come from the violent killing of six civic-minded constituents and the grievous wounding of the earnest congresswoman they had come to meet. For now, the targeting of Ms. Giffords, the antithesis of a hot-button politician, is just a cruel irony.
"She's worked very hard to bridge the gap between the extreme right and extreme left. She's a moderate," insisted Melissa Callahan, 28, as she and her three-year-old daughter laid a heart-shaped wreath at Ms. Giffords's office. "I hope that people who have extreme agendas will realize that, in the minds of unstable individuals, when all that hatred is being spewed, people can take it so far as to cause a loss of life."
Her words echo those of Clarence Dupnik, the outspoken Democratic Pima County sheriff, who disparaged the "rhetoric of hatred, mistrust of government and paranoia" that has found pride of place on American cable news and in the blogosphere: "It has an impact on people, especially who are unbalanced personalities to begin with."
Indeed, none other than Bill Clinton warned in April of the potential consequences of such heated talk as he drew parallels between the recent political climate and that which preceded the bombing of an Oklahoma City office building by an anti-government zealot in 1995.
"There is an enormous psychological disorientation today and that is also the way it was in the early '90s," the former president said in a speech to mark the 15th anniversary of the violent tragedy that claimed 168 lives. "Our words really do matter. There is this vast echo chamber, and the words fall on the serious and delirious alike."
Jared Lee Loughner, who now faces five federal charges, including first-degree murder and attempting assassination of a member of Congress, is no Timothy McVeigh. In the months leading up to Saturday's shooting outside a Safeway store in a wealthy Tucson neighbourhood, he demonstrated neither the singularity of purpose nor ideological cohesiveness of the unrepentant Oklahoma bomber.
Mr. Loughner's obsession with the U.S. Constitution, and "all of the current treacherous laws" in apparent violation of it, is reminiscent of the kind of griping commonly heard at Tea Party rallies. But his fixation with Arizonans' literacy, or lack thereof, and his fondness for Mein Kampf, suggest an individual who was not sure at what or whom he was truly angry.
At the Einstein Bros. bagel outlet across from the cordoned off Safeway – where a road sign was still up directing passersby to Saturday's fateful "Congress on Your Corner" event – customers seemed unwilling to ascribe blame for the tragedy. Many were still too shellshocked to go there.
"Personally, I believe he did it to get a reputation. And what better way to get a reputation than a political assassination?" offered a man who gave his name as Blade, his age as 42 and his job as bounty hunter. "I think he would have killed himself, but he was tackled before he got to it."
Lee Fairman, a 65-year-old retiree on vacation from Colorado, expressed dismay at the speed with which liberal bloggers and Sheriff Dupnik seized on the tragedy to attack Republicans.
As proof, Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos political blog, tweeted shortly after the shooting: "Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin." It was an indictment of the former vice-presidential candidate, now notorious for a March Facebook posting, in which she placed crosshairs on the districts of 20 members of Congress who supported President Barack Obama's health-care reform bill, including the 40-year-old Ms. Giffords's 8th Congressional District.
If Ms. Palin had not already decided to take a pass on a presidential run in 2012, Saturday's events and their aftermath may have limited her options.
"I'm hoping it just doesn't go any further. But I'm predicting it will," Mr. Fairman, an active Republican, said of the liberal blame game. He called Sheriff Dupnik's comments "inappropriate … He's saying, 'We have to look deeply within ourselves.' Well, no we don't. You can't take [the actions of] a nut case and try to project."
There is yet no explanation for how someone of Mr. Loughner's troubled state of mind, and history of antisocial behaviour, was able to effortlessly purchase the Glock 9-millimetre semiautomatic handgun he allegedly used on his deadly rampage. No explanation for how he sailed through the background check to buy the weapon.
But forcing a re-evaluation of America's pro-gun culture is not likely to be among Mr. Loughner's legacies. After all, the call letters of Tucson's ABC affiliate are KGUN.
Even Ms. Giffords has been a strident defender of the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms). When her office was vandalized in the wake of her vote for Mr. Obama's health-care law in March, she boasted owning a Glock 9mm of her own and being "a pretty good shot."
On almost every other issue, however, Ms. Giffords is a paragon of centrist politics. She is a Blue Dog Democrat, advocating fiscal probity. She is co-chair of Third Way, an organization of moderate Democrats. She was one of 19 Democrats who voted last week against liberal lioness Nancy Pelosi, the party's nominee for Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The three-term congresswoman has taken a measured approach to the volatile immigration debate in her border district. She has rejected the divisive Arizona law that mandates state police to ferret out illegal immigrants, yet recognized the frustration over the federal government's lax enforcement that led to its adoption.
She is the voice of reason in a political culture that rewards, at least with air time, its opposite. Her absence from Congress saddens, perhaps shames, her colleagues. Republican leaders knew well enough to postpone a House vote set for Wednesday aimed at repealing what they had called, embarrassingly now, the "job-killing" health-care law.
As she kneeled in the gravel outside Ms. Giffords's office, the majestic Santa Catalina mountains rising behind her, Ms. Callahan clasped her child.
"Just a lot of emotions rising up," she explained. "It really saddens me what she's been put through, because we don't have many politicians like her today."
Konrad Yakabuski