2011 Tucson shooting

On the morning of January 8, 2011, U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was holding a constituent event called "Congress on Your Corner" outside a Safeway supermarket in Casas Adobes, Arizona, an unincorporated area in the Tucson metropolitan region. As 20 to 30 people gathered around Giffords, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner drew a Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol and shot her in the head at point-blank range before firing on the surrounding crowd. He was carrying four magazines, two capable of holding 33 rounds, and thirty-one shell casings were later recovered at the scene.

Bystanders intervened when Loughner paused to reload after dropping a magazine, which Patricia Maisch retrieved. Roger Salzgeber struck him with a folding chair, and Bill Badger, a 74-year-old retired Army colonel who had himself been shot, tackled Loughner to the ground; Maisch, Salzgeber, and Joseph Zamudio further restrained him until police arrived. Giffords's intern Daniel Hernández Jr. applied pressure to her head wound and is credited, along with paramedic Aaron Rogers, with helping save her life. A doctor and nurse who happened to be shopping in the store, David and Nancy Bowman, set up triage and attended to nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, who later died at the hospital.

Six people were killed: Christina-Taylor Green (9), Dorothy "Dot" Morris (76), Chief U.S. District Judge John Roll (63), Phyllis Schneck (79), Dorwan Stoddard (76), and Gabe Zimmerman (30), a member of Giffords's staff. Thirteen others were wounded by gunfire, and a fourteenth person was injured while helping subdue Loughner. Giffords underwent emergency surgery within 38 minutes of the shooting and was placed in a medically induced coma; she was later moved to a Houston rehabilitation facility and eventually resigned her House seat in January 2012 to focus on recovery.

Loughner, a Tucson resident who lived near the shooting site, had been suspended from Pima Community College for disruptive behavior and had a prior drug-related arrest. Investigators found handwritten notes in his home referencing "My assassination" and "Giffords," along with a letter thanking him for attending a 2007 Giffords event. He was arrested at the scene, refused to cooperate with the FBI, and invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. Federal prosecutors charged him with the attempted assassination of a member of Congress, the killing of federal employees, and related counts, ultimately indicting him on 49 counts. In May 2011, a federal judge found Loughner incompetent to stand trial based on medical evaluations diagnosing paranoid schizophrenia; he was forcibly medicated. In August 2012, after further evaluation, he was found competent and pleaded guilty to 19 counts. In November 2012, he was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years without parole. Arizona state prosecutors subsequently declined to pursue separate state charges, citing consultations with victims and families who considered the federal sentence sufficient.

The shooting prompted national debate over political rhetoric and gun control, including criticism of a Sarah Palin political map featuring crosshairs over Giffords's district, which Palin rejected as bearing any responsibility for the attack. President Obama led a nationally televised memorial service in Tucson on January 12, 2011.