Win McNamee/Getty Images

alists, trying to find meaning is

what defines us. It's what we do. And we need to get it right.

st of where you are on the political spectrum when it comes to free speech and the

right to bear arms.

t

ut it abhors violence. But just because you have

the right to say something doesn't mean you should.

late

Our job is not to restrict speech but to restrict access to weapons by those who should not have them.

One of the attributes that make us human is that we try to make sense of things that don't make sense.

We often impute order where there may be none. These traits can lead us to form conclusions that don't

correspond to reality. For most people, that's not a problem. But as journ

For the past week, Americans have been trying to make sense of a senseless act of violence. This has

provoked a discussion on the role of political discourse, guns and mental illness in our society. That is as

it should be. But this discussion has quickly fallen into predictable patterns: the left blaming the right for

inflammatory rhetoric, the right blaming the left for unfairly singling it out. Tucson, Ariz., has become a

kind of Rorschach te

We don't know whether inflammatory language or images can incite the mentally ill to commit acts of

violence. It seems unlikely. But when we demonize our political adversaries rather than their points of

view, we go beyond the bounds of desirable discourse, even though doing so is permitted under the Firs

Amendment. The Constitution allows violent speech, b

At the same time, I would never put restrictions on what people can say, no matter how violent the

rhetoric — as long as it remains rhetoric. That's the standard in Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme

Court's defining case on free speech. "Mere advocacy" of any doctrine, however violent, does not vio

the First Amendment. And that makes sense. Words don't kill people; guns do. In an open and free

society, we don't police speech, but we do police those who violate the law by committing violent acts. This special issue reflects the complexity of what happened in Tucson and its aftermath. When the story

broke, news director Howard Chua-Eoan contacted Nathan Thornburgh, who had written a piece on the

political climate in Arizona last year, and sent him to the scene. Local reporter Adam Klawonn was soon

filing for TIME.com. Washington bureau chief Michael Duffy sent Alex Altman to Arizona, while other

members of the Washington bureau reported on all aspects of the shooting. Photographer Matt Slaby

was on the ground for us by the night of Jan. 8.

David Von Drehle, for his opening story, drew on all this reporting in a masterly way, telling not only of

what happened but of the intemperateness and score settling the event produced afterward. No one

understands better than David that the public discourse of the commentariat has very little to do with how

ordinary Americans live their lives. John Cloud's piece on the mental illness of Jared Loughner explains

the complicated science of what goes on in an unhinged mind. Michael Grunwald's story on what has

happened to gun control attempts to answer the question of why you can't carry a bottle of shampoo on

an airplane but can buy a semiautomatic weapon, even if you're not in your right mind. Joe Klein looks at

the political terrain that got us here and the unintended consequences of allowing mentally ill people and

automatic weapons on the streets.

That being said, have we been able to find meaning where there may be none? You be the judge. At the

very least, in the wake of the Tucson shootings, you may find some comfort in our adaptation of Ruth

Davis Konigsberg's new book, The Truth About Grief, which examines the latest research on loss and

explains why we're more resilient than we think.