Another former classmate, Caitie Parker, who attended high school and college with Loughner,[38] described his political views as "radical."[39] "As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal," said Parker of Loughner in an online interview with Anthony De Rosa of Reuters Media. Parker, a self-described liberal activist and environmentalist,[40] also remembered Loughner as a "pot head" who was "into rock like Hendrix, The Doors, Anti-Flag."[41] Loughner has a history of drug use, having been arrested in September 2007 for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.[42] "I haven't seen him in person since '07," Parker recalled in early 2011. "I'm looking back at this [as] a 1419 year old...who knows if any of us knew what for sure we were yet."[43]
According to a former friend, Bryce Tierney, Loughner had exhibited a longstanding dislike for Gabrielle Giffords. Tierney recalled that Loughner had oft expressed a view that women should not hold positions of power.[44][45] He repeatedly derided Giffords as a "fake". This belief intensified after he attended her August 25, 2007 event when she did not, in his view, sufficiently answer his question: "What is government if words have no meaning?"[15] (Loughner kept Giffords' form letter, which thanked him for attending the 2007 event, in the same box as an envelope which was scrawled with phrases like "die bitch" and "assassination plans have been made".)[46] Zane Gutierrez, a friend, later told the New York Times that Loughner's anger would also "well up at the sight of President George W. Bush, or in discussing what he considered to be the nefarious designs of government."[45]