Five Missouri Democrats Discover Crosshairs Outside Their Capitol Offices

Five Democratic state senators in Missouri discovered large, orange crosshair stickers over their office nameplates on Tuesday in the Capitol Building in Jefferson. The targets included all four Democratic women in the state Senate, as well as the Democratic minority leader. One Republican state representative also found a similar sticker outside his office.

Capitol police are still investigating the matter, and some of the senators took to the Senate floor to express their concerns:

“Many of us when we came back to our office this afternoon had gun targets on our nameplates. A few of the senators removed them, only to have them replaced by larger stickers later,” said Jolie Justus, a Democrat from Kansas City.

None of the senators who were affected reported any kind of note or any other message. Capitol police have stepped up security, but they have yet to report any leads on a possible suspect.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reports that the senate on Tuesday was debating a Republican-sponsored bill that would seek to block the implementation of the health care reform that President Obama and congressional Democrats passed in 2010.

The controversy in Missouri comes in the same week that U.S Representative Gabrielle Giffords formally resigned from Congress. Giffords’ Arizona district was one of several marked by crosshairs on a map that Sarah Palin’s SarahPAC had used to highlight vulnerable Democratic districts. After the Giffords shooting last January in Tucson, the Palin map faced a wave of criticism.