Before a rousing, raucous crowd of 13,000 Arizonans aching from Saturday’s deadly shooting, President Barack Obama on Wednesday evening urged Americans to tone down their rhetoric and debate “in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

TUCSON, Ariz. | Before a rousing, raucous crowd of 13,000 Arizonans aching from Saturday’s deadly shooting, President Barack Obama on Wednesday evening urged Americans to tone down their rhetoric and debate “in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

“Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath,” he said. “We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us.”

Obama also announced that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., gravely wounded by a bullet that passed through the left side of her brain, opened her eyes for the first time Wednesday, apparently minutes after the president visited her at the hospital.

“She knows we are here,” Obama told a cheering crowd at the University of Arizona.

“There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts,” Obama said. “But know this: the hopes of a nation are here tonight. We mourn with you for the fallen. We join you in your grief.”

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, told the crowd that the shooting “pierced our sense of self-being” but vowed the state “will not be shredded by one madman’s act of darkness.”

The event, five days after a gunman killed six people and wounded 13 during the congresswoman’s constituent event outside a suburban Safeway grocery store, took the tone of a rally for unity, rather than a memorial service for the dead.

National leaders and local heroes were met with repeated standing ovations and cheers. Thousands who attended wore navy blue T-shirts with the event’s theme, “Together We Thrive, Tucson and America.”

“If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost,” Obama said. “Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.”

Obama cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the killer’s motives. “For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.”

Obama concluded by urging the country to live up to the expectations of the youngest victim, Christina Taylor Green, the 9-year-old who was the granddaughter of former Phillies manager Dallas Green.

“Imagine: Here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy, just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship, just starting to glimpse the fact that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation’s future,” Obama said. “She saw public service as something exciting, something hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.”

Christina was one of 50 babies born on 9/11 to be featured in a book called “Faces of Hope.” Next to her picture, she wrote, “I hope you jump in rain puddles.”

Said Obama: “If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. And here on Earth, we place our hands over our hearts, and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit.”

In addition to meeting with Giffords at the hospital before the memorial, Obama visited the four others recovering at the hospital. Joined by Attorney General Eric Holder and Arizona’s Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, the president also met with 13 family members of the six people killed.



Earlier Wednesday, the chief trauma surgeon, Peter Rhee, said that Giffords was doing as well as could be expected. Although permanent damage is likely, she is moving more, and tugged at her gown, the doctor said.

“She was able to actually even feel her wounds herself,” Rhee told reporters. “Will she be functional, viable, normal? I can’t say for sure, but I’m very hopeful she will be.”

Rhee and other central players did not speak at the memorial, but they were saluted like rock stars as they entered the arena, and given rowdy standing ovations.

The most sustained cheers came for Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who after the shooting famously called Arizona “the mecca for bigotry and violence,” and for Daniel Hernandez, the congressional intern credited with saving Giffords’ life by cradling her head and applying pressure to her wound.

Hernandez was seated in a place of honor beside Obama. In brief remarks, Hernandez rejected the label of hero, and said the shooting should unite, not divide, Americans.

“E Pluribus Unum — out of many, one,” he said. “On Saturday, we all became Tucsonians. On Saturday, we all became Arizonans. We all became Americans.”

During the hourlong ceremony, no one uttered the alleged shooter’s name, and Jared Lee Loughner remained locked in a federal prison in Phoenix, charged with Giffords’ attempted assassination, the murder of a federal judge, John Roll, and a federal employee, Gifford aide Gabe Zimmerman. If convicted, Loughner faces a possible death sentence.

Arizonans began lining up for the evening ceremony before dawn, and thousands waited in line for more than eight hours to attend. Roughly 13,000 filled the McKale Center, the University of Arizona’s basketball arena, and another 13,000 who were turned away watched the event on a large screen at the football stadium next door.