Congress Pays Tribute to Victims of Shooting

WASHINGTON — Shaken by the attempted assassination of their colleague, Gabrielle Giffords, and the murder of one of her aides, House members reconvened at the Capitol on Wednesday to honor those killed and wounded in the Arizona shooting rampage, and to begin reviewing security concerns with law enforcement officials.
At the same time, many Republican lawmakers quickly rejected any suggestion that gun control laws need to be tightened, even to limit access to the expanded ammunition clip that the gunman, Jared L. Loughner, used to spray bullets outside a supermarket, killing six people and wounding 14, including Ms. Giffords who was shot in the head. As the House convened to consider a resolution honoring the dead and those wounded in the Arizona shooting, the speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, said, “These are difficult hours for our country” and his eyes welled with tears as he described the loss of Gabriel M. Zimmerman, an aide to Ms. Giffords, calling him, “one of our own.” “At the time of the attack he was engaged in the most simple and direct of democratic rituals,” Mr. Boehner said, “listening to the people, listening to his neighbors.”

With all eyes on the rostrum of the House, and many Americans still forming their first impressions of him, Mr. Boehner struck a bipartisan and conciliatory tone, sniffling and choking with emotion as he spoke. “Our hearts are broken,” he said at one point, “but our spirit is not.”

“We feel a litany of unwanted emotions that no resolution could possibly capture,” Mr. Boehner said, blowing his nose into a handkerchief. “We know that we gather here without distinction of party. The needs of this institution have always risen above partisanship.” With lawmakers finally back in Washington, it was clear that the political implications of the shooting were still just beginning to be felt in the nation’s capital with Mr. Boehner and fellow House leaders forced to quickly recalibrate as the trajectory of the first days and weeks of their new majority was shifted by events outside of their control. Mr. Boehner was followed by the Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, who spoke in a similar vein; she was scheduled to travel with President Obama to attend a memorial service in Arizona later in the day.

Aides to Mr. Obama have said he is unlikely to directly engage today in issues like gun control, or to explicitly draw a connection between heated political rhetoric and the violence in Arizona. Today, in an online video, Sarah Palin denounced criticisms of her own political use of a“targeting” metaphor, saying that “journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.”

The attack on Ms. Giffords, a relatively centrist Democrat known for her easygoing charm, and its unremarkable setting at a weekend “Congress on Your Corner” event for constituents, left fellow lawmakers rattled and with a sense that democracy itself had been a victim of the attack.

The resolution put forward on the House floor by Mr. Boehner not only honored the dead and the wounded, and praised the bravery of those who responded to the shooting but also reaffirmed “the bedrock principle of American democracy and representative government” – the right to peaceable assembly enshrined in the First Amendment.

Republican leaders had planned to hold a vote Wednesday on a measure to repeal the Democrats’ big health care overhaul, called the “Repeal the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” But they postponed all legislative business including the divisive health care vote in response to the shooting, putting off an inevitably angry, highly partisan floor debate. The proceedings on the House floor were to be interrupted at 1 p.m. for a bipartisan prayer service, and lawmakers were expected to resume their remarks later in the day before approving the resolution.

House Republicans on Wednesday morning met with the House Sergeant at Arms and with senior officials from the United States Capitol Police, who urged them to appoint a security coordinator in their home districts and to reach out to local law enforcement agencies for assistance, while also staying in contact with officers at the Capitol. Several lawmakers described the message from law enforcement experts as telling them to simply use common sense but that protecting all 535 members of Congress from largely unpredictable threats was a somewhat unmanageable task.

“It is ‘contact your local law enforcement and we’ll help you as best as we can but good luck,’” said Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, who has a license to carry a gun and said he may do so more frequently. “It’s very difficult with the sheer number of people.” He said officials were taking the situation seriously but called the briefing “shallow.”