Mass Shootings the last six months

[swake]

12/14/12  Newtown, CT – Elementary School
Dead: 28 (including 20 six and seven year old children)
Suicide: Yes
Wounded: 1
Mentally Ill: Probably
Body Armor: Yes
Extended Magazines: Yes
Assault Rifle: Yes (M4 Carbine)

12/11/12 Happy Valley, OR – Shopping Mall
Dead: 3
Suicide: Yes
Wounded: 1
Mentally Ill: Unknown
Body Armor: Yes
Extended Magazines: Unknown
Assault Rifle: Yes (AR15)

9/27/12 Minneapolis, MN - Workplace
Dead: 6
Suicide: Yes
Wounded: 3
Mentally Ill: Unknown
Body Armor: No
Extended Magazines: Unknown
Assault Rifle: No

8/5/12 Oak Creek, WI – Sikh Temple
Dead: 7
Suicide: Yes
Wounded: 4
Mentally Ill: No, but was a White Supremacist
Body Armor: No
Extended Magazines: Yes
Assault Rifle: No

7/20/12 Aurora, CO – Movie Theater
Dead: 12
Suicide: No
Wounded: 59
Mentally Ill: Yes
Body Armor: Yes
Extended Magazines: Yes
Assault Rifle: Yes (AR15)


Three mass killings with assault weapons leading to 43 dead and 61 wounded
Two mass killings without assault weapons leading to 13 dead and 11 wounded

It's time for these guns (and body armor and extended magazines) to go away. It may not stop all mass shootings, but it would greatly cut down the number of dead and injured.

Then it's time to address hate groups and mental illness to try and stop these events before they happen.

[RecycleMichael]

I agree with you. The Constitution says a well-regulated militia. I believe limiting or banning military assault type weapons from private ownership is an appropriate regulation.

[DolfanBob]

I agree with you. The Constitution says a well-regulated militia. I believe limiting or banning military assault type weapons from private ownership is an appropriate regulation.

I totally agree Mike. They are made for one purpose. To kill human beings in mass amounts. No private citizen needs that capability.

[dbacks fan]

The one main thing that you ignored in your post is that at least 3 if not all 5 of these shootings were carried out by someone with mental issues. You can go back to the clock tower shooter to the Edmond post office, to Newtown, and almost all of the shooters have had some form of mental episode. Say all you want about gun laws and gun control, but until we as a society get past the stigma of mental health issues and quit ignoring it, it will happen again.

[RecycleMichael]

I agree that we need some real change in how we address mental illness.

But we also need real change in access to military weapons in a home.

[patric]

The one main thing that you ignored in your post is that at least 3 if not all 5 of these shootings were carried out by someone with mental issues. You can go back to the clock tower shooter to the Edmond post office, to Newtown, and almost all of the shooters have had some form of mental episode. Say all you want about gun laws and gun control, but until we as a society get past the stigma of mental health issues and quit ignoring it, it will happen again.

But if you take away the guns, all they will have are knives, hammers, cleavers, pitchforks, bats, axe, chains, box cutters, broken glass...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_%282010%E2%80%932011%29

If we deal with it exclusively as a gun issue and not a mental health problem, we are only treating the symptoms and not the cause.

[nathanm]

The one main thing that you ignored in your post is that at least 3 if not all 5 of these shootings were carried out by someone with mental issues. You can go back to the clock tower shooter to the Edmond post office, to Newtown, and almost all of the shooters have had some form of mental episode. Say all you want about gun laws and gun control, but until we as a society get past the stigma of mental health issues and quit ignoring it, it will happen again.

This. I don't have a problem with some restrictions on guns, but as long as our mental health care in this country consists mainly of saying that it's not really a disease and that people just need to get over it, people will continue to go nuts and kill people. Even then, people will go nuts and kill people, just less often. Similarly, restricting high capacity magazines and getting serious about not selling guns to people who have current and untreated mental illness won't stop these tragedies from happening, but it will reduce the body count when they do.

Some gun advocates say that more guns is the answer. Sadly, just like most people are bad drivers, most people don't have the ability to own a gun responsibly. And just like driving, most people think they are one of the good ones even though they're not.

[Conan71]

I understand why people want to limit access to large capacity magazines and semi-automatic weapons but it's not the final word in ending large scale massacres of innocent victims.  Keep in mind that someone who is really bent on killing as many people as possible could still resort to explosives, and there's no shortage of plenty of legal materials to make an explosive device.

[Teatownclown]

I understand why people want to limit access to large capacity magazines and semi-automatic weapons but it's not the final word in ending large scale massacres of innocent victims.  Keep in mind that someone who is really bent on killing as many people as possible could still resort to explosives, and there's no shortage of plenty of legal materials to make an explosive device.

You're right....let's scrap controlling the ability to limit the chances of a mass murder.

plop plop

I believe stupid is a synonym for conservative:  http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/17/1347291/top-conservative-magazine-newtown-massacre-is-the-price-we-pay-for-the-second-amendment/

Huck's blaming the pill and taking Gawd out of the classroom while James Dobson is blaming the gays for godlessness....you people on the same side of their sand lines are idiots as well.

[Conan71]

You're right....let's scrap controlling the ability to limit the chances of a mass murder.

plop plop

I believe stupid is a synonym for conservative:  http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/17/1347291/top-conservative-magazine-newtown-massacre-is-the-price-we-pay-for-the-second-amendment/

Huck's blaming the pill and taking Gawd out of the classroom while James Dobson is blaming the gays for godlessness....you people on the same side of their sand lines are idiots as well.

It's all about mental illness.  Something you apparently know quite a bit about.

[Teatownclown]

It's not about mental illness at all....it's about losing self control. Now, that's Conan's past. He's cured now.

And the band played on.....

[DolfanBob]

Anyone for some WBC Kool-Aid? It's 10 cents a cup and forever lasting.

[Gaspar]

Something does need to be done, however, I think we need to understand causation before we react.  99% of the public does not understand what an assault rifle is.

First, the term "assault weapon" is a media term attached to a class of weaponry that looks menacing. I have hunting rifles far more deadly than many assault rifles.

Simi-automatic military style rifles have been available to the public since after WW1. Old Brownings and Fedorovs were some great guns back in the 50s and 60's. In the 1970s and 1980s the old soviet SKS's hit the American market and you could pick one up for about $89, as the Chinese were transitioning to newer weaponry.  I had a few of them as a teen, and they were a blast to shoot.  I still have one today.

The price of assault weapons has increased over the years.  Even the old Sks are now about twice as expensive as they used to be.  Most of these weapons take a 7.62x39mm round that you used to be able to buy by the case for pennies.  Now, you pay about $.25 a shell.  

So, the price of the weapons has increased, and the price of the ammunition has increased, and most of the models that you can purchase retail, are "LOOK ALIKES" basically they are designed to look like military weapons, without the same performance.  Yet. . .we are seeing an increase in violent crime involving people who strap on body armor, carry multiple weapons and kill without remorse or empathy.  That requires conditioning, and significant premeditation. We can certainly mitigate the presence of flashy weaponry, but that doesn't seem to be the problem.  

These kids are spending 4-8 hours a day carrying out computer simulated massacres.  The outside world may view them as outcasts, timid, and meek, but digitally, they are assassins with more mental training than many in the military and law enforcement.  These kids are "assault weapons," just looking for an opportunity to express their true talent, and show everyone what they are capable of.  

I think that a healthy discussion about civilian access to military weaponry should be on the table, but I don't think it's a good idea to discount in any way, the impact that modern warfare simulation games has on the minds of children.  Horror is not so horrible when you immerse yourself in it for hours each day.  Living in a virtual world where you are respected for your prowess at carnage, makes it difficult to function in the other world where you are ridiculed by people who wouldn't last 10 minutes in Call of Duty 4.

Don't think its the weapons making these folks carry out these horrendous acts.  I think that they are already immersed in these acts, the scene has played over and over in their heads, on their screens, and the movies they watch.  Picking up the metal is simply a transition from digital to physical.  I think if we really want to change things we need to limit access to virtual simulated violence, just as we do with pornography.

[Teatownclown]

Monday, 17 December 2012 19:30
The Heart of Darkness: The River of America's Violence Runs Through Newtown
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17700-the-heart-of-darkness-the-river-of-america-s-violence-runs-through-newtown
MARK KARLIN
The killing grounds of America
In front of me on my desk is a March 9, 1992, copy of Newsweek. The cover photograph shows a student who had been shot being rushed to emergency care underneath the headline, "Kids and Guns: A Report From America's Classroom Killing Grounds."

It quotes me, since I was a leader in the national movement to reduce gun violence for more than 20 years, and was often sought out for comments on the latest mass kilings or daily shootings.  This is my quotation:

"The school setting is almost impossible to police without tyrannical dictatorship," says Mark Karlin, President of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.  "At what point do we create such a hostile environment that these are no longer schools?" The schools, Karlin says, "are in an impossible situation...we expect them to do what the rest of us cannot."

That was more than 20 years ago, but nothing really has changed, including the cycle of mass murders and the routine garden variety killings at home, in the workplace, in bars...at just about any setting in America. In those 20 years, more United States citizens have been killed with guns to the point that the death toll on 9/11 looks like a footnote in the annals of murder.

There was an assault weapons ban for 10 years, but the NRA made sure that it was phased out during the Bush administration. The shooter in Newtown used a Bushmaster semi-automatic assault rifle, a favorite among mass killers (including the DC sniper and narcos in Mexico).

As a nation, we have historically always been in search of killing the "enemy": Native-Americans, Mexicans, Blacks, "geeks" in Vietnam, drone killings of civilians in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It's an endless list.  It's a list of the "other," a list of anyone an angry male has a grievance against. In the last few years, more than a few Tea Party members have advocated armed revolt and killing of "liberals." 

It is the subterranean river of America's history of violence, facilitated and made more effective with guns. It is the context in which Newtown and our regular litany of mass shootings occur – and the suicides in rural areas that happen with regularity and urban, domestic, and "routine" killings and gun injuries.

We glorify the violence of "how the West was won." We cheer for lone gun men in movies who mow down mobs of bad guys. Our teens wallow in the murder and mayhem of video games.

Most of all we see the rabid hatred that leads to violence in the faces and bilious statements of the gun guys who fear the government, who fear a non-white majority, who fear just about anything that psychologically threatens their male prerogatives and sense of manhood.

And then we hear from the hunters, but there's virtually no one whom I have known who wants to take away hunting rifles.  And you're not much of a hunter is you want to make swiss cheese out of a deer with an assault weapon.

As technology has advanced, weapons increasingly kill with greater lethality.  Most of them have no place in private hands, period.

Too many gun owners like the kill power of guns, the thrill of holding a machine gun at community shootouts with washing machines and old cars as targets.   But that adrenalin rush of lethality takes its toll on a culture where the some of its penchant for violence is greater than its parts.

One look no further than the US colonial conquest of Native Americans, as this description of the massacre at Wounded Knee reveals:

The Seventh Cavalry — the reconstructed regiment lost by George Armstrong Custer — opened fire on the Sioux. The local chief, Big Foot, was shot in cold blood as he recuperated from pneumonia in his tent. Others were cut down as they tried to run away. When the smoke cleared almost all of the 300 men, women, and children were dead. Some died instantly, others froze to death in the snow.

This massacre marked the last showdown between Native Americans and the United States Army. It was nearly 400 years after Christopher Columbus first contacted the first Americans.

In his compelling, bleak journey through the dark underside of America, "Days of Destruction: Days of Revolt," Chris Hedges visits the impoverished Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, plagued by unemployment and alcoholism. In his background narrative, Hedges alludes to the Washita massacre of Indians in Oklahoma in 1868. He quotes a Major Scott Anthony of the United States Cavalry about the killing of a "terrified" three-year-old Native-American child:

I saw one man get off his horse at a distance of about seventy-five yards and draw up his rifle and file.  He missed the child. Another man came up and said, "Let me try the son of a grumble. I can hit him." He got down off his horse, kneeled down, and fired at the little child, but he missed him.  A third man came up, and made a similar remark, and fired, and the little fellow dropped."

Nations create their own destinies. The United States expanded to the West via a right to violence based on a sense of entitlement.

We need to accept that, as a nation, we need to end our destructive love affair with the power to decide who shall live and who shall die.

What it reaps in blowback is an ongoing and growing death count, a trail of tears and lives denied.

If you don't get it by now, then you probably never will.

[DolfanBob]

Excellent observation and very well said Gasey. I have four young male gamers in my home and I know that all of them must be desensitized to the horrible visions and what they are doing in the virtual World. As I have become with the wonderful special effects that Hollywood has brought to me in some of the worst movies produced.
This generation is frightning. If not the bigger ones bulling the smaller ones, it's the geeks taking as much as they can endure and proving that they can fight back in the most horrendous ways.

When do profits of games and movies step over the bounds of what the human mind has the capability of dealing with? In this money driven society. We know the answer.

I'm not even sure that this generation would even have a problem with the old "Clockwork Orange" torture against Vidi Violence. It's a sad place this free World or Land that we have created. Where everything is cloaked and protected by a Constitution that no one can uphold or enforce.