Alexis (courtesy usatoday.com)

Now there’s a surprise: the gunman who launched a horrific attack at the Washington Navy Yard was having mental issues—of which the police were aware. CNN: “Aaron Alexis — the man authorities say is responsible for killing 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard — told Newport, Rhode Island, police last month that an individual ‘had sent three people to follow him and to talk, keep him awake and send vibrations into his body,’ according to a police report. According to that report, which is related to an investigation into a harassment complaint at a Marriott hotel in Newport, Alexis said he first heard the people ‘talking to him through a wall’ at a Residence Inn in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he’d been staying. He packed up and went to an unidentified hotel on a Navy base in Newport where he heard the same voices talking to him . . .

He moved to a third hotel, the Marriott, according to the police report. There, Alexis first told authorities that the three individuals spoke to him through the floor and then the ceiling. Alexis said the individuals were using “some sort of microwave machine” that sent “vibrations through the ceiling, penetrating his body so he cannot fall asleep.”

He told authorities, according to the police report, that “he does not have a history of mental illness in his family and that he never had any sort of mental episode.”

And they believed him? And no one in the RI police department thought to tell Mr. Alexis’s employer about this mental health crisis. You know; assuming that whole microwave mind control thing isn’t true (I’m looking at you Alex Jones). Anyway, usatoday.com has an account of how the killer smuggled in his legally purchased long gun; ominously described as a “law enforcement style” shotgun:

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the criminal investigation is continuing, said investigators believe that Alexis stopped in a men’s restroom and assembled the law-enforcement style shotgun, then proceeded to a spot on the third or fourth floor that overlooked an interior atrium and began shooting.

Contrary to earlier reports provided by law enforcement officials, Alexis was not believed to be in possession of an AR-15 assault rifle, the official said.

Alexis fired several rounds randomly on the people below, the official said, then ran down a flight of stairs where he confronted and shot a security officer.

It is believed that Alexis took the officer’s handgun and returned to the overlook where he continued to shoot. At some point, the official said, Alexis again left the location and confronted a victim described as a maintenance person or building staffer. He shot that person and returned one last time to the overlook where he was ultimately killed in a confrontation with police.

The po-po say the entire incident lasted from “30 to 60 minutes.” That’s quite a spread, Tex. Especially considering the fact that DC officers responded to the first 911 call within seven minutes.

One wonders how long the carnage would have lasted, or if it would have begun at all, if the Yard hadn’t been a gun-free zone in a gun-free military base in a gun-free city. And if the RI police had detained Mr. Alexis.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

65 COMMENTS

  1. It’s almost as if this Red Flag was allowed, maybe even encouraged to slip into a position where he could serve some vague political purpose, much as Hassan/Boston Bombers, which we now know were on DHS/NSA radar.

      • yeah, what Kook! He probably thinks the NSA can and do spy on anything on the internet!! RUBE. Hell he probably thinks the IRS is used as a political weapon! LOLZZ Conpiracy nutz is nutz!

        • I believe he was referring to the idea that the government allows mass murder to happen on US soil for political gain.

        • Current adminstration has pattern of fomenting revolution in several counties. Of arming radical political extremists. Of stabbing the US military in the back.

          But those are all much different.

    • We are all on their radar. Until someone actually acts out what can be done? Unless you want to increase the powers of the feds to act pre emptively, what’s the answer?

  2. DAFUQ IS A LAW ENFORCEMENT STYLE SHOTGUN?! THE CAPS LOCK THOROUGHLY EXPLAINS MY FEELINGS ON THE USE OF THAT TERM.

      • With the serrated muzzle to grip a door to blow/breach a lock.
        That kind of police shotgun.
        Not saying his had that. Don’t want to start a rumor

        • The Persuader has capacity of 8 rounds, pistol grip 20″ barrel & magazine with cylinder choke and cooling shroud, all blacked out.

    • Well, it’s a pump action shotgun. Its only purpose is to pump bullet after bullet into innocent and heroic victims. I respect the second amendment and the rights of responsible hunters, but incredibly powerful weapons such as the Remington 870 have nothing to do with hunting and only highly trained individuals such as police officers should be allowed to access one. Hence, “law-enforcement-style shotgun”.

      /s

      Really, a campaign against pump shotguns can only be beneficial to gun activism. It would certainly wake up a lot of people who don’t care about gun control because they only own “grandpa’s shotgun”. Like when scoped deer rifles become sniper rifles that can penetrate body armor from a mile away.

      • Personally, my 870 is the only firearm I own that has taken a life. Every year, about this time I take it on a killing spree….pan fried wood duck…mmmm

    • I would imagine they mean a model such as the 870P(olice) – 18″ or 20″ barrel, +2(or 3) extension, possibly a pistol grip. Like this.

  3. “Law enforcement style shotgun.” Christ, should we start a pool on what kind of nitwit ban proposals that loaded phrase will lead to?

      • Imagine the apoplexy if he’d put a Nordic +5 extension on an M4 to make a 3-gun-style shotty, with the mag tube sticking out a foot past the muzzle.

    • I am guessing the Mossberg Persuader and similar renditions is going to go through the roof like the AR’s etc. did they last gun ban attempt. I am glad Shotgun Joe is on our side on this one.

    • I have a sneaking suspicion that this “law-enforcement-style shotgun” is remarkably similar in design to my “deer season-style shotgun”.

  4. Law-enforcement style shotgun. Hmm. So, pump gun with no round in the chamber, 5 in the tube mag, and some sort of side-saddle with ~6 more rounds?

    Mark my words. Next legislative session the CA Assembly will be falling over each other in the rush to make shotguns with side-saddles “assault weapons”. They’ve already done it with adjustable stocks, so why the heck not?

  5. A law enforcement style shotgun?

    I guess we should be happy it wasn’t branded a “military style assault street-howitzer” … after all NOBODY needs more than 3 rounds, am I right?

    • Given that most newsmedia content providers (formerly called reporters or journalists) get their degrees from marketing departments, it comes as no surprise that they’re technological idiots. Yesterday they were all referring to “military-style” arms and “military-style” clothes. Today it’s “LE-style.” So my guess is that it’s fall fashion sweeps, and tomorrow it will be the next flavor of the day.

      When I talk to the gun-ignint, I ask them what a “non-military-style” rifle looks like. After much hemming and hawing they usually come around to describing something on order of an (original furniture) M1 Garand or Mosin Nagant. Enlightenment sometimes proceeds from there.

  6. So for some reason, it takes a properly trained and probably licensed mental health professional to diagnose a mental health condition. While a regular person may meet a crazy person and decide, “Man, this person is freaking crazy,” this is not enough to be a diagnosed condition. Even if the regular person has enough experience to know generally what disorder the symptoms indicate.

    Last week I was called out to speak to a woman who was saying similar kinds of things, people watching her, hearing voices, etc. At the time, she was displaying no behavior that could even be stretched to indicate a danger to herself or others. We spoke to her for a few minutes, enough to realize we had no legal reason to detain her, much less send her to the hospital for evaluation. Then we left.

    I’ve been talking to her regarding the voices for two years now. Not a thing anyone can do until either she decides to get help (she won’t, she just keeps calling to ask if I can find the people talking to her and make them stop), or she does something actively dangerous.

    By the way, I don’t want expanded police powers to deal with mental health. I want social welfare money to be diverted from food and housing assistance to drug dealers who don’t have a lot of reported income, so people who really need help can be housed in a facility until they’re better. Which may be never.

    • Unfortunately, even if there were funded housing/help facilities there’s nothing you can do to get someone in there unless they pose a danger to themselves or other…which involves court and is pretty hard to prove even then until it’s too late.

      • True, given the current state of law regarding the mentally ill. I’m told it used to be different.

        Here’s what I would like to see. A list of mental health conditions that are likely, if untreated, to result in behavior that presents a danger to the patient or to the public. If a person develops one of these, they would be evaluated by a doctor who could determine if they could be effectively treated with medication.

        If they can, then they can go about their normal life as a free person, except that they would have to check in once a month or so to make sure they are actually taking the prescription. If they are, then their behavior is not likely to become dangerous (at least, as a result of the illness), and they continue life. If not, they are involuntarily committed to a hospital until they can be reevaluated. After the second evaluation, if they appear to be willing to start taking the medication on their own, then they go back to normal life.

        If a person fails to check in, this would also result in commitment for evaluation. If a person fails to check in three times, or if they check in and are found three times to be off the meds, then longer term commitment would result.

        I realize this would be wildly unpopular and politically impossible, but the only other way besides increased commitment seems to be waiting until they snap and grab a weapon.

    • Also, I think a local PD trying to contact a private or government employer and saying “hey, we have no clinical diagnosis on your guy, but take it from us, he’s freaking crazy and you should fire him,” wouldn’t and shouldn’t go very far.

      • Yeah, I’m not sure what Robert would have had the PD do in this case. Call his boss and tell him that the dude reported hearing voices? Let’s picture what would happen in that scenario: RF would be crying about the creeping police state getting someone fired from his job who hadn’t even committed a crime. Furthermore, what good would telling his employer even do? He could just as easily have killed a dozen people in a Starbucks or a bus station.

        Crazy people are out there. Some of them can keep it together well enough to pass as not-crazy, or at the worst, “a little off”. If he didn’t say or do anything that seemed threatening when the cops interviewed him, what could they do?

        If there’s any blame for this outside of the shooter’s own head, I’d start with the Navy folks who ran his background check and cleared him, when he obviously had a couple of red flag incidents in his history, long before the voices and microwaves.

    • This was my reaction as well to Robert’s comment, Mr. Barca. What concerns me is what 32×20 says: when the voice-hearers suddenly “take it outside” so to speak. They never pose a danger to others…till they do. Then everyone’s wondering what their “motive” was, as though there were one, or it is comprehensible.

      The one thing I’ve observed in dealing with violently mentally ill people is that they can be very intelligent, master boundary-pushers who have contempt for weakness. They can push others, and push, and push, testing the limits, and staying juuussssssst inside the limits…till they don’t. It’s as though they hunger for someone to push back strongly. To set limits they can’t set for themselves. Isn’t it a feature of sociopathy and psychopathy that those conditions involve an inability to self-generate normal social and psychological boundaries, or live with those set by others?

      IMO most of these mediafest slaughters happen because of GFZs. Without GFZs, there’d be fewer convenient locales for self-directed, dramatic, globally reported, public homi-suicides. No amount of “security improvements” or government control or gun control or even crazy person control is going to completely stop this sort of thing. But given the world as it is, “gun free zones”–i.e., free-fire zones–are going to be psychopath/sociopath magnets precisely because they advertise a refusal to set self-defense boundaries. Which is to say, they advertise submission.

      • The only way to deal with a crazy person with a gun is a lot of not crazy people prepared to defend themselves.

        Gun-free zones are crazy. Hiding in the corner praying while you wait for someone to rescue you is crazy. Believing you live in a safe environment where nothing can ever go wrong and if it does the government will be there to protect and/or save you is CRAZY.

  8. This situation highlights the conundrum we seem to have in the gun rights community. On the one hand, we scream bloody murder any time the mere suggestion of mental health checks or reporting is made with respect to conducting the background check. Then we scream bloody murder when some lunatic shoots up a place and wonder why someone didn’t report this guy.

    Newsflash here – if a crazy person was not committing any crime, then the police had no ability to hold him. Furthermore, he was under no obligation to tell RI police who he worked for, so for all they knew, he was just some local loser whackjob.

    The reality is that most if not all of these “mass shooting events” are perpetrated either by terrorists (very rare) or by nutcases. Right now, we don’t have any reliable way to keep nutcases from getting their hands on guns. If this thing continues to happen, heavy gun restrictions will be imposed. Look at what California is getting away with. If they can do what they are doing out there, then it can spread across the country, so don’t expect the court system to protect us. We need to smarten up and figure out how to come up with some reasonable restrictions to keep guns out of the hands of people who are likely to misuse them. Otherwise, we are all going to lose our rights.

    • Look up the side effects for SSRI drugs like Zoloft and Prozac, and countless others; the inserts are dozens of pages long, and list delusions, hallucinations and uncharacteristic violent urges and behavior in some individuals.

      Virtually every mass shooter since (maybe before) Dylan Kliebold, Holmes, et all has been found to be on SSRIs. Including mothers who suddenly microwave their poodle or newborn child.

      You can hurl insults, or you can actually LOOK IT UP. I’m betting most of you ostriches will choose the former.

      • No offense, WB, but saying that “virtually every” mass murderer was on an SSRI is like saying that they all were crazy and used a gun. The vast majority of people on SSRIs never commit a crime, and are better off for taking them. Just like the vast majority of gun owners never commit crimes, and in fact prevent more mass murders than actually occur.

        Yes, they can have some wicked side effects. The problem is, they are handed out by general practice doctors, who have virtually no training in psychiatry, to people who don’t need them, and sometimes to people who shouldn’t be taking them. SSRIs are primarily for depression and bipolar disorder, and really should only be prescribed by a psychiatrist in conjunction with therapy and fairly close supervision.

        If Alexis was having problems with anxiety, paranoia and auditory hallucinations (hearing voices), then I don’t think an SSRI would have been the indicated medication. I’m going to step beyond my limited knowledge, and venture a guess that Mr. Alexis was schizophrenic, and therefore would be treated with a completely different class of drugs.

    • Lets rewind to the Navy giving him a clean discharge and then approving his security clearance. We can dwell on that a long time before anyone has to blame or defend any LEOs on this one. This is at the Navy’s feet all the way. There is “falling through the cracks”, and then there is “people making cracks for you to fall through”.

    • Newsflash here – he committed crimes in at least three states, including Rhode Island where he accosted a man at the airport. He was never charged.

      And in most states, a disturbed person can be taken into temporary custody for his own protection and the protection of others.

      If any of those things had been done, we wouldn’t be having this “conversation.” A thirteen people might still be alive, and who knows — Alexis might be living a happy life.

  9. Shame on you, Robert Farago, you liar. Alex Jones has never said one word about “microwave mind control”. Putting words in the mouths of those you know not the smallest thing about: that’s playing to the peanut gallery. And a very low, very shameful thing to do.

    I hope you can see this bright, full moon I’m transmitting to you via the interwaves. And yes, it does smell like Limburger Cheese shat by Bigfoot…

    • Alex Jones has never said one word about “microwave mind control”

      No, but he telepathed it.

      Telepathed — is that a word?

      • Alex Jones is a CIA shill hired to misdirect people from the real government plans. It was known by his handlers at Langley that as soon as he started broadcasting He would get help in spreading his lies from the eager tin foil hat wearing crowd. Brilliant deception plan when you think on it.

        How else would you explain with run away government tyranny that alex is allowed to live, let alone broadcast? Joe Stalin had similar operations in place in the Soviet Union. His shills would organise clandestine meetings to talk of overthrowing Joe and when people showed at the meetings they were shot.

  13. I read an eye witness account from one of the employees that said he fled the building, was standing outside talking with one of his coworkers. Suddenly the guy he was talking to was shot in the head and dropped. I cant find the link but the article is out there.

    So if that account is true, and If the shooter had only 2 handguns and his shotty, how does one shoot someone outside?

    Putting some of the stories together, its sounds like at least a portion of the body count can be attributed to the LEO’s. Not surprising since we know the only thing they can hit consistently are innocent bystanders and dogs.

    • Doesn’t have to have been an aimed shot. Heck, didn’t even have to be a line-of-sight shot — if a round hit a window and deflected on the way out, it could certainly hit someone in the head even if they weren’t line-of-sight to the gun.

      Regardless, this doesn’t have the ring of truth to it. I’ll believe this one when there’s evidence that it happened.

  14. First off, Obama was photographed shooting a shotgun, and “Double Barrel” Bidden told us all to ditch the AR and get a shotgun! This one is going to be a tough one to pass. Clinton signed his E.O. ban arms on bases, no guns were bought illegally. With the support they DO NOT HAVE RIGHT NOW, I don’t see it going far. As for this sleeze bag. He should have been taken down stairs and given a marine education, code reds of every type, with dishonorable discharge thrown in for fun.

  15. Crazy, in naval shipyards you cannot Carry. If you are parked in their lot you cannot have a firearm stored in your vehicle. You cannot have a camera phone. You cannot have an MP3 player or any other data storage device. You cannot have any banner or apparel with a strong political message. You cannot draw or speak of what you do in said yard. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I work in a Yard and the regulations are very strict, all set by the navy.

  17. So again our government fails to protect us, and again we are told that the solution is more government. Apparently, if 1 x 0 is not enough, then 10 x 0 will do the trick.

    Just as on 9/11, when the only success out of four hijacked flights was the one on which citizens, acting on information received by phone from other citizens, took action to stop the terrorists.

    We can rely only on ourselves for certain.

  18. So did he or didn’t he have some type of AR? I read on the news he broke into an arms locker and got an M4? And DiFi has already starts her coniption fits

  19. The Federal government renewed his security clearance, after he shot a round through the roof of his apartment AND all four tires of a construction vehicle. They bear sole blame for this.

  21. What the heck is a “law enforcement style” shotgun? Now are the statist knuckleheads going to adopt this as their mantra in their bleating to further dismember our freedoms? Is this going to be the next call to arms (no pun intended) of the left to accompany “military style assault rifles” in their zeal to be subjects? Does a “law enforcement style” shotgun have evil features much the same as a semi auto rifle magically acquires power and capability exponentially greater than one without pistol grips, detachable mags, flash suppressors etc?? Would this make a “law enforcement style” shotgun much more powerful than a double?
    These people are idiots, lead by the chief idiot int he White House and his sycophants on the Hill and in the media.

Comments are closed.