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" BORDERING ON DANGEROUS /// The Gabrielle Giffords district stretches from the supermarket where she was attacked, to the Mexican border (bottom), and back to the outskirts of northwest Tucson, where last fall&amp;#039;s frustration over the health-care bill fell upon the &amp;quot;communist&amp;quot; Congresswoman \u2014 and one man&amp;#039;s gun fell to the ground at her campaign event. TUCSON \u2014 It should have been a good day for Ally Israel. For everyone in town, really. Or at least everyone downtown. It was a bit cooler than Friday, sure, but the Wildcats had won a close one before the weekend and sixteen-year-old Ally got to sleep in late before a basketball game of her own at Green Fields Country Day. And then she heard. &amp;quot;I just started shaking,&amp;quot; she told me at the school&amp;#039;s gym on Saturday afternoon. &amp;quot;I was so... angry.&amp;quot; Ally had met Gabrielle Giffords a couple times \u2014 once at home and once in Washington. Their families became close within a Jewish community that has been tight-knit since Tucson&amp;#039;s frontier days. And as that frontier started looking more like a front over the last year, well, the first Jewish woman elected to Congress from Arizona was about as good a role model as a high-school sophomore could find. Giffords had confounded people by holding court in a district \u2014 a state, really \u2014 that has developed a decidedly conservative edge. And an increasingly sharp one at that. She beat, in order, a border zealot, a rising star from the state legislature, and, just a couple months ago, a Tea Party stud straight out of Central Casting \u2014 as in tall, white, handsome, white, ex-military, and, of course, white. She supported, in order, the passing of President Obama&amp;#039;s health-care plan, the repeal of Jan Brewer&amp;#039;s controversial SB1070 immigration bill, and the increase of the Border Patrol&amp;#039;s presence in town. Her most effective campaign commercial last year featured a craggy-faced Cochise County rancher \u2014 a lifelong Republican, probably \u2014 who said he would vote for her because &amp;quot;Gabrielle Giffords gets it.&amp;quot; So the most confounding thing about her shooting this weekend \u2014 besides conflicting reports as to whether Giffords was actually alive \u2014 was not why some nutjob would do such a thing. It was how nutty things have gotten around here so quickly, and why getting angry is getting to be a surprisingly unsurprising experience. &amp;quot;When SB1070 happened, I would go out of my way to tell people that Tucson was different from the rest of Arizona,&amp;quot; said Hayley Evans, a Tucsonan and former Giffords intern whose weekend sporting match \u2014 a crew race for GW in Florida \u2014 was also shrouded in tragedy. &amp;quot;And now this.&amp;quot; This is, at its core, a college town, with the University of Arizona occupying a huge chunk of territory just west of downtown. The people in The Chunk are generally better educated \u2014 and more liberal \u2014 than most Arizonans. They were in the Gabrielle Giffords camp before everyone was in the Gabrielle Giffords camp. But on the outskirts of town, around the fringes, there&amp;#039;s The Fringes \u2014 the SB1070 crazies, the Georgia Satellites look-alikes who would legitimately welcome a mulligan on the Civil War, the folks who think a newspaper subscription is an unfortunate waste of money but wouldn&amp;#039;t think twice about dropping sixty bucks on an MMA pay-per-view. They came a-calling last summer. Holding a copy of Saturday morning&amp;#039;s Arizona Republic \u2014 GOP TAKES FIRST SHOT AT HEALTH CARE LAW, read the unfortunate headline \u2014 local high-school government teacher (and liberal) Michael Steward considered the shooting with a shrug: &amp;quot;I know I should hate to say this, but two words popped into my head when I heard: Tea. Party. Those people were brutal during the election, going way beyond the boundaries of decency. It was raw hatred. And over what, health care and an economic stimulus?&amp;quot; Arizona experienced the same mind-boggling eruption of frontier-toting, anti-government conservatism as the rest of America last year, but if you drove through northwest Tucson in October, you might as well have been driving a time machine. Burma Shave-style signs along the roadways seemed to place the blame for the passage of the health-care bill squarely on Giffords. Shouters at campaign appearances called her a communist; at one, a man made noise when a weapon fell out of his pants and onto the floor. And that was before you got to the official rallies. District 8 \u2014 Giffords&amp;#039;s district \u2014 stretches from the supermarket where she was attacked, at the base of the upscale Catalina Foothills area of northern Tucson, up through the fringes and into Cochise County, past legendary Tombstone and all the way down to the Mexican border. That border has thrust Arizona into the national and international spotlight, and that same border probably saved her job in an election-year tsunami that swept away sixty-three of her fellow House Democrats. Not that the wave of violent rhetoric stopped coming on November 3. A week later, the local news here was touting a bunch of guys who tried to get kicked out of as many Tucson fast-food joints and bars as possible... with weapons strapped to their side. Gunburger, they called themselves. But, hey, that&amp;#039;s this town for you \u2014 a place where an eccentric, schizophrenic, openly gay Republican can be replaced by a hard-working, respected, open-minded Democrat, and then someone shoots a hole through her brain. But things have gotten better here since Saturday. Ally Israel&amp;#039;s father, Gary, watched his phone for updates from the rafters at Green Fields Country Day \u2014 the Congresswoman would survive, but his fellow judge, John Roll, would not \u2014 and then he watched the girls&amp;#039; basketball team win. Hayley Evans had watched too much CNN, so she watched her team row down the head of a river. Things weren&amp;#039;t exactly normal, but, then again, they haven&amp;#039;t been for a while anyway. Tom Danehy is a columnist for Tucson Weekly. CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE SHOOTING IN ARIZONA &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a9217/tucson-shooting-news-analysis-4803947/>