Potential New Threat

Just as every possible connection Jared Loughner had was examined after the tragic Giffords' assassination attempt led to six murders, the Eduardo Sencion murder spree in Carson City, Nevada must be investigated from every possible angle. The shooter's family suggested he was mentally ill which is almost a given in a circumstance where someone attacks total strangers and then kills himself but political motives must be explored considering his primary target appeared to be uniformed Air National Guard personnel. Could the gunman have been involved in radical Islam or merely fascinated by it and exploring jihad online? Could the murderer have belonged to some extreme Left or even Right organization? Could he have been motivated by some of the fringe statements issuing out of the most radical members of La Raza who believe vast swathes of the United States must be returned to Mexico? All these questions are speculative but need to be answered along with more prosaic inquiry into whether Sencion had any organic disease of the brain or documented history of mental illness including involuntary committal that should have precluded his possession of a firearm. Investigators simply can not take his family's assertion at face value that he was a mental case because even if that is true that does not mean that Sencion was also not engaged in an Internet conversation with Anwar al-Awlaki, the Americam-born inspiration for so much terror hiding somewhere in Yemen.