After Giffords shooting, Credo Mobile issues petition against Sarah Palin’s gun crosshairs
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Credo Mobile, a wireless service provider with an activist streak, has issued a petition calling out Sarah Palin‘s use of gun crosshairs to identify Democratic politicians.
The petition, titled ‘Sarah Palin: Violent threats have consequences,’ comes partly in response to the shooting Saturday in Tucson, Ariz., that killed six people and injured 14 others, among them Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).
Before the shooting occurred, Palin’s political action committee, SarahPAC, posted a map of the United States with crosshairs over 20 House districts represented by Democrats.
One of those crosshairs was over Giffords’ district in Tucson.
The map included text that read ’20 House Democrats from districts we carried in 2008 voted for the healthcare bill ... it’s time to take a stand.’ Palin’s signature was at the bottom.
On Saturday, Giffords was shot in the head while meeting with her constituents. Six people died in the incident, including a federal judge, one of Giffords’ congressional staffers, and a 9-year-old girl.
That same day, SarahPAC removed the controversial map from her websites, but not her Facebook page. Palin later issued a statement offering condolences for the victims of the shooting:
My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today’s tragic shooting in Arizona. On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.
In its petition, Credo said:
Tell Sarah Palin: Renounce use of shooting images in political rhetoric immediately, and stop using your platform to promote and validate violent calls to action on the right. What happened in Arizona yesterday was not an isolated incident, but rather the culmination of a long stream of threats and attacks, most in response to the congresswoman’s support for healthcare reform. ...
Let us be clear. We do not know why the shooter targeted Rep. Giffords. Sarah Palin did not arm him or pull the trigger. We do not know if the shooter admired, loathed or ignored Sarah Palin. We will eventually know, and that will be a different accounting. But only Sarah Palin put 20 Democratic members of Congress in her crosshairs.
Credo also argues that the shooting wasn’t an isolated incident, but one in a string of violent actions:
In November of 2009, a staffer fearing for Rep. Giffords’ safety called authorities after a visitor dropped a handgun during another ‘Congress on Your Corner’ event at a local Safeway in her district. And on March 22, 2010, just hours after Rep. Giffords cast her vote in favor of healthcare reform, a vandal jumped a gate and smashed the glass front door of her Arizona office. It was just days later that the now infamous map featuring Rep. Giffords’ district in the crosshairs was posted by Sarah Palin’s PAC. In announcing the map, Palin issued a chilling tweet urging her supporters ‘Don’t retreat. Instead -- reload!’
It’s not unusual for Credo to ask its customers to take action against conservative figures such as Palin. The company has also issued a petition calling on President Barack Obama to back out of an interview with Bill O’Reilly before the Super Bowl, and it slammed AT&T for donating money to politicians connected with the ‘tea party.’
Credo says it and its users have donated more than $65 million to the ACLU, Doctors Without Borders, Global Fund for Women, Greenpeace and Planned Parenthood.
[Update 6:01 p.m.: An earlier version of this post said Palin had removed the gun crosshair map from her Facebook page. That was incorrect. The map is still available for view on her Facebook page.]
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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles
Top image: A screenshot of a tweet sent by Sarah Palin.
Bottom Image: A map posted by Palin’s political action committee, SarahPAC, with gun crosshairs over the districts of Democrats that Palin urged her supporters to remove from office.