Former Rep. Grayson blames Palin for Arizona shooting

Former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) blamed Sarah Palin for the Arizona shooting that severely injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in an email Wednesday.

Rep. Grayson, who was one of the more fiery House Democrats until he lost reelection in 2010, said in an email to supporters today that former Governor Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) had provoked the shooting that resulted in six deaths and thirteen wounded including Rep. Giffords who suffered a gunshot to the head, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

"As I observed on MSNBC last week, there has been a stream of violence and threats of violence by the right wing against Democrats," Grayson wrote in the email. "Gabby warned against it, and then became a terrible victim of it. Palin has instigated it, and then tried to pretend that it doesn’t exist,” he wrote."

Since the shooting earlier this month, Palin has received criticism for a map posted on her political action committee's website that placed crosshairs over roughly twenty congressional districts that Republicans should try and defeat in the 2010 election. Giffords's was one of the districts.

Grayson is no stranger to provocative statements. Last summer during the healthcare reform debates Grayson said that the alternative to the Obama administration's healthcare plan was to die quickly if you get sick.

"If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly."