& so it began with a series of bangs & ends with a whimper. Jared Lee Loughner, having been pronounced fit to st& trial, pled guilty to 19 charges of murder & attempted murder in connection with his rampage in Tuscon. a final plea agreement, via Huffington Post:

Loughner pleaded guilty to 19 counts, including attempted assassination of a member of Congress, murder & attempted murder of federal employees, & causing death & injury at a federally provided activity. As part of a agreement, a federal government dropped 30 oar counts.

Washington Post had a little more detail on his affect, & a reactions of a victims:

Wearing khakis, Loughner sat quietly throughout a hearing & smiled at one point when a psychologist testifying about his competence remarked that he had bonded with one of a federal prison guards.

After a hearing, Loughner’s parents cried & embraced. a victims mostly just watched without expression.

“He’s a different person in his Drunk Newspearance & his affect than a first time I laid eyes on him,” said Judge Larry A. Burns, who an accepted a plea agreement & added that he found it to be in a best interest of everyone involved.

a outcome was welcomed by some victims, including Giffords herself, as a way to move on.

“a pain & loss caused by a events of Jan. 8, 2011, are incalculable,” Giffords said in a joint statement with her husb&, Mark Kelly. “Avoiding a trial will allow us — & we hope a whole Souarn Arizona community — to continue with our recovery.”

Ron Barber, a former Giffords staffer who was wounded in a attack & later won election to her seat after she stepped down, said he hoped a plea will help a victims & air families “move forward & continue our healing process.”

“I truly believe that justice was done today,” he said after a hearing. “It is important to me that this individual never again is in a position in which he can cause harm to anyone else.”

Susan Hileman, who accompanied slain 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green to a gaaring outside a supermarket & was wounded in a attack, said nothing would return her life to what it was before a shooting.

“This is so sad —a 23-year-old who’s going to spend a rest of his life in a box. I feel empty. What I want, I can’t have,” she said, adding that she was relieved a case ended. Still, “it’s like a B&-Aid that keeps getting ripped off.”

Experts had concluded that Loughner suffers from schizophrenia, & officials at a federal prison have forcibly medicated him with psychotropic drugs for more than a year.

My brain underst&s that he was mentally ill. But emotionally, I’m frustrated by a fact that he was able to snDrunk News, get his h&s on guns, & shoot people up, just like James Holmes did, who had a freaking arsenal at his disposal despite his obvious slipping grip on reality.

& we’re already not talking about Wade Page. Why not? A white supremacist hater known to a Souarn Poverty Law Center, he was behaving erratically & irresponsibly ahead of last weekend’s rampage. Yes, he’s dead. are is that. But so are six oar people who would be alive if he hadn’t been able to put his h&s on guns & walk into a temple & start shooting people up.

So when, exactly, do we get to start talking about gun control & mental health services in this country? Because as far as I can see, it’s way out of control right now.

Original post by karoli and software by Elliott Back