'Hot-button' issues may have made her a target By Sharon Churcher.(News)

THE shooting of Gabrielle Giffords was last night being blamed on the volatile nature of modern American politics.

By British standards, the Arizona congresswoman is a political moderate, but her positions on several 'hot-button' issues - abortion, healthcare and stem-cell research - turned her into a figure of hate among Rightwingers and could have made her a target for the troubled young gunman.

In his internet ramblings, Jared Loughner alluded to his hatred of 'federalist laws', a sentiment shared by many Americans who resent 'big government' from Washington.

Though Giffords owned a gun and supported Arizona's lax weapon-licensing laws, her backing of President Obama's healthcare reform bill attracted the ire of Sarah Palin and members of the ultraconservative Tea Party. Just hours after Giffords voted in favour of the healthcare bill - which introduced subsidies to enable Americans to buy private health insurance but stopped far short of the universal plan advocated by Left-wing Democrats - the door of her Tucson office was peppered with shotgun pellets.

She was also pilloried for supporting stem-cell research and abortion.

However, she alienated liberals by taking a hardline conservative position on other issues, notably gun control and lobbying for military personnel to be stationed on Arizona's border with Mexico in order to stop illegal immigration.

A congressional insider said last night: 'A lot of people hated Gabrielle. Her misfortune is that she lives in a country where, if you disagree with someone, you can go down to your local supermarket, buy an automatic, kill them and be seen as a hero.'