Julian Assange

Six people were killed and 13 besides Giffords were injured in the rampage that occurred Saturday outside a local Safeway where the representative was  greeting constituents.

Jared Lee Loughner, 22, the alleged shooter, has been charged with five federal counts including attempted assassination of a member of Congress.

Everyone's found someone to blame: Those on the left are blaming the right, and those on the right are blaming the left. Some are blaming guns, some are blaming politicians, others are blaming conspiracy theories, the media and social networking sites.

But someone unexpected put a hat in the ring Monday night.

WikiLeaks.

The anti-secrecy organization issued a statement via Twitter warning that unless incitement is treated more seriously, the country could "expect more Gabrielle Gifford killing sprees."

The statement quotes Tucson Sheriff Clarence Dupnik who has said that "'vitriolic rhetoric'" intended to "'inflame the public on a daily basis ... has [an] impact on people, especially who are unbalanced personalities to begin with.'"

The organization then goes on to compare the Giffords situation to the calls of public officials for violence against WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange.

WikiLeaks staff and contributors have also been the target of unprecedented violent rhetoric by US prominent media personalities, including Sarah Palin, who urged the US administration to “Hunt down the WikiLeaks chief like the Taliban”. Prominent US politician Mike Huckabee called for the execution of WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange on his Fox News program last November, and Fox News commentator Bob Beckel, referring to Assange, publicly called for people to "illegally shoot the son of a bitch."

Assange is quoted as saying, "No organisation anywhere in the world is a more devoted advocate of free speech than Wikileaks but when senior politicians and attention seeking media commentators call for specific individuals or groups of people to be killed they should be charged with incitement -- to murder. Those who call for an act of murder deserve as significant share of the guilt as those raising a gun to pull the trigger."

Reactions on Twitter to the WikiLeaks response have been mixed with some finding it odd for the organization to comment, and others finding it right on point.

ReadWriteWeb writes, "There certainly seems to be some logic to the argument Wikileaks is making. Meaningful prohibition of public figures advocating extra-judicial killings of their political opponents might represent an even bigger disruption of the realpolitik status quo than the dissolution of diplomatic secrecy, however. Thanks to the ease of rapid publishing online, it's now easy for anyone to call for anyone else's assassination or arrest and find a global audience, but that new capability for any kind of messages, good or bad, to fly far and free, clearly requires a discussion of how to relate to it responsibly."

Assange and the organization issued the statement on the eve of his return to a London court where he is fighting to avoid extradition to Sweden.

In December, the WikiLeaks founder was freed from a London jail on bail, where he was fighting charges of rape and other sex crimes, all of which he has denied.

Since then, he's scored a $1.3 million book deal and made the rounds on TV talk shows proclaiming his innocence.

The WikiLeaks statement ends on an ominous note, "We call on US authorities and others to protect the rule of law by aggressively prosecuting these and similar incitements to kill. A civil nation of laws can not have prominent members of society constantly calling for the murder and assassination of other individuals or groups.”