Police stay focused on a target after a deadly shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, Calif., Sunday, July 28, 2019. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
Here’s the latest on the shooting yesterday at the Gilroy Garlic Festival southeast of San Jose.
From the AP:
GILROY, Calif. (AP) — A gunman cut through a fence to avoid security and opened fire at Northern California’s popular Gilroy Garlic Festival, killing three and wounding at least 15 before police fatally shot him as terrified people and performers ran for cover.
Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said the gunman was armed with a rifle and sneaked in through a fence that borders a parking lot next to a creek. He appeared to randomly target people when he opened fire just after 5:30 p.m. Sunday, the conclusion of the three-day festival that attracts more than 100,000 people to the city known as the “Garlic Capital of the World.”
Emergency personnel stand outside Gilroy High School following a deadly shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, Calif., on Sunday, July 28, 2019. (Nhat V. Meyer/San Jose Mercury News via AP)
Police responded within a minute, engaged the suspect and killed him, Smithee said.
Some witnesses reported a second suspect, Smithee said, but it was unclear whether that person was armed or simply provided assistance. A manhunt continued late into the night.
Smithee called the scene at the festival a “nightmare you hope you never have to live.”
A 6-year-old boy was one among those killed, his father said. “My son had his whole life to live and he was only 6,” the father of Stephen Romero told NBC Bay Area. “That’s all I can say.”
The wounded were taken to multiple hospitals, and their conditions ranged from fair to critical, with some in surgery Sunday night. At least five were treated and released.
The Gilroy Garlic Festival features food, cooking contests and music. It’s a decades-old staple in the agricultural city of 50,000 about 80 miles (176 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco. Security is tight — festival-goers pass through metal detectors and their bags are searched.
Festival attendees are transported on a bus following a shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, in Gilroy, Calif., Sunday, July 28, 2018. (AP Photo/Josie Lepe)
On Sunday, the band TinMan was starting an encore with the song “We’re an American Band” when the shooting started.
Singer Jack van Breen said he saw a man wearing a green shirt and grayish handkerchief around his neck fire into the food area with what looked like an assault rifle. Van Breen and other members of the band dove under the stage.
Van Breen, from nearby Santa Clara, said he heard someone shout: “Why are you doing this?” and the reply: “Because I’m really angry.”
Their audience began screaming and running, and the five members of TinMan and others dove under the stage.
Van Breen’s bandmate, Vlad Malinovsky of Walnut Creek, California, said he heard a lot of shots and then it stopped. Later, law enforcement came by and told the band members and others hiding with them to come out with their hands up.
Taylor Jackson was working at a booth drawing caricatures of festival-goers when she heard gunfire, saw people running and “ran for the hills.” She said her boss ran in the opposite direction. Several hours later, Jackson was at a reunification center trying to get information on her whereabouts.
Donna Carlson of Reno, Nevada, was helping a friend at a jewelry booth when “all of a sudden it was pop, pop, pop. And I said, ‘I sure hope that’s fireworks.'” She got on her hands and knees and hid behind a table until police told her it was safe to leave.
In a tweet, California Gov. Gavin Newsom called the bloodshed “nothing short of horrific” and expressed appreciation for the police response. President Donald Trump tweeted before authorities confirmed the gunman was dead and urged people to “be careful and safe!”
Video posted to social media showed people running in terror as shots rang out.
Evenny Reyes of Gilroy, 13, told the Mercury News that she spent the day at the festival with her friends and relatives.
“We were just leaving and we saw a guy with a bandanna wrapped around his leg because he got shot. And there were people on the ground, crying,” Reyes said. “There was a little kid hurt on the ground. People were throwing tables and cutting fences to get out.”
Reyes said that she didn’t run at first because the gunshots sounded like fireworks.
“It started going for five minutes, maybe three. It was like the movies — everyone was crying, people were screaming,” she said.
Smithee said the festival is a source of pride for the community and that thousands donate their time to make it a success.
“It’s incredibly sad and disheartening that an event that does so much good for our community has to suffer from a tragedy like this,” he said.
Wrong… They are already calling him an angry white male. This is going to be “white Hispanic” all over again.
They can’t avoid is spanish name and his family Persian history. Down the memory hole he goes.
His family’s Persian history?
Dude, his grandfather graduated from West Point. He is a white supremacist who’s writing show he opposed both Hispanic immigrants and Silicon Valley workers.
miner49er
US Army Maj. Nidal Hasan held the record for the worst mass shooting until the Las Vegas massacre. He looks like a WHITE MAN to me!!! His family geography don’t matter to me either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nidal_Hasan
Yes, the Fort Hood shooter is an interesting case. He was born in the US, but was later radicalized. He served 20 years in US Army, and there were many who thought during his service that his work with combat traumatized GIs was very stressful for him. With his contact with radical Islam clerics, his stress and frustration found a terrible outlet.
Just as a Christian inquisition put Jews and Muslims to death, fundamentalist Islam is equally threatening to the world.
But, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, today’s Islamic radicals are probably the most dangerous religious sect but in the 30s and 40s I would’ve said Catholicism, because of their allegiance with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
miner49er
Yes, white europeans were putting each other into gas chambers in the 1940s. And the that included white muslims putting white christians and white jews into gas chambers in the former Yugoslavia during the same time frame.
Also the white muslims were working with the white european atheist leader Hitler, to get rid of the white people in the the arab world as well. All tho they did tend to be a darker hue in that part of the world.
Chris, Hitler was no atheist.
He was a devout Christian who believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ. He was familiar with the biblical stories about the life of Jesus, and approved of Jesus his actions.
“Mein Kampf also shows a bizarrely racialized interpretation of Christianity:
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. . . . And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God.”
Don’t believe the propaganda from the organize Christian religion, from the crusades to the inquisition to the Vatican’s deals with Hitler and Mussolini, the Christian religion has been responsible for much suffering and death.
But so have all the other religions.
Perhaps with the exception of the Buddhists, they are mostly peaceful and have a sweet reverence for all life.
Whataboutism anyone?
Someone: Hey, look, a non-white, non-christian did something bad currently / recently.
Miner49: Oh yeah? What about Christians centuries ago? Huh? What about that? See, whites and Christians are the worst! They’re basically Nazis!
miner49er
You lose points using Christopher Hitchens name. A former Brit atheist who couldn’t cut it in his home county. He like so many other, human parasites, came to this country and try to make it like the sh*t hole they came from. Hitchens was a gun grabber. He hated 2A civil rights.
Hr never supported the 1st amendment (religion). But he did support the 1st amendment (pornography). A typical left wing atheist hypocrite pig. He also supported the communist takeover of Hong Kong.
He will be smiling up from Hell when the tanks roll into Hong Kong. Just like they rolled into Tiananmen Square. I wonder if he supported, or made excuses for, the communist government massacre of the thousands of people back then?
I will have to research this. Thank you.
How’s that Gun control workin’ out for y’all out their in CA?
The reporting must be incorrect as Commiefornia has some of the strictest gun control on the books.
Well, California is number 23 for mass shootings per capita so that’s kind of middle of the pack.
OTH, Florida is number one, for mass shootings per capita, and their gun laws are relatively lax so there’s that.
You keep bringing up the rate difference between California (19 mass shootings) and Florida (11), but fail to mention how incredibly small that difference in rate is (.00003512, a single digit percent change). The laws are radically more strict in CA, but show very little difference in the rate of mass shooting deaths.
Why is CA, a state with such strict firearms laws, in the middle of the pack by your stats? Shouldn’t they be at the bottom, or at least near it?
But if you want to draw a causation based on correlation with a tiny data set, which you’ve done, I’ll play that game too. Both Arizona and Hawaii show 1 mass shooting death each over the last 17 years. Arizona’s population is 17M, Hawaii’s 1.5M. Hawaii, which has much more strict gun laws than Arizona, has a mass shooting rate several multiples higher. Based on the rate of mass shootings, gun laws clearly increase mass shootings. https://www.statista.com/statistics/811541/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-state/
Actually Arizona’s population is a little over 7 million, but your point remains the same.
dph, thanks for the correction
SHHH!!! facts will hurt their feelings and then you’ll need to create a safe space for them to cower in.
“Both Arizona and Hawaii show 1 mass shooting death each over the last 17 years. ”
Arizona has had one mass shooting death over the last 17 years?
Does the name Jared Loughner mean anything to you?
Six dead, he played guilty to 19 charges of attempted murder.
It is interesting that you limit your statistic to the last 17 years that cleverly trims off the 1991 Buddhist temple shooting with 9 dead.
And you choose to not mention the arson cover up shootings in 2006 with five shot to death.
White supremacist JT ready shot 4 in 2012, why did you failed to mention that mass shooting, that was just seven years ago.
And how about the Phoenix family shooting, five members of one family shot to death in 2015.
Are all of those mass shootings just fake news from the MSM? Or are you intentionally concealing mass shooting event in order to prove your point.
When you come out with statements like this that are obviously false it becomes difficult to except any of your comments as fact.
Miner49er, I cited my source and provided a link to it. I also specifically called out in another post that you responded to that the reason why all of those statistics were invalid was because the sample set was so small that you could skew the outcome entirely depending on what years you included.
It’s also clear you didn’t look up the definition of “mass shooting” when you cited your statistic about the mass shooting rate in California vs. Florida. That stat is using the FBI’s definition. I’m guessing you’d be surprised to find out some your examples fall outside of it, and the other falls outside of the data set I cited.
Thanks for proving my point, again!
Miner, the incidents other than Loughner don’t meet the definition of “public mass shooting”.
How’s your nonsense when you include Chicago?
Chicago is one continuous mass shooting that never stops.
Florida really isn’t a super lax gun law state which liberals claim, especially compared to most southern states. It doesn’t even have open carry which 45 states do.
Florida is not a traditional open carry state.
Open Carry is lawful while engaged in, or going directly to and from, lawful Target Shooting, Hunting, Fishing, and Camping expeditions.
Defining degree of faithfulness to the Constitution’s prohibition against infringement as “relatively lax” is offensive. Would you claim a state has lax voting laws because it permits women and blacks to vote? Various organizations do report grades on state gun laws, but methodologies vary, if at all revealed.
That aside, there is no universally accepted standard for “mass shooting.” Even the FBI does not report that as an official category of crime. So trying correlate legal climates with criminal outcomes of this type is fraudulent, as anyone is free to make up their own definitions and to include or exclude figures to serve their purpose.
I don’t know about mass shootings, however those are defined in this case, but the per capita murder rate is not correlated with strictness of firearms regulations (as assessed by the Brady Foundation) across states. Both sides could cherry pick examples of states that are low or high, but overall there’s no relationship. Which is why you will never see murder rated in all states plotted vs. Brady score, especially not from the Brady Foundation. Have to do that yourself if you are interested.
California is #3 for mass shootings per capita in age, income, education, other key cohort based risk factors, and background crime adjusted rates.
A given Californian is MUCH more violent with guns than his/her same age, income, education,race match in Florida.
I know the gun control lobby hates controls of well understood relevant variables because that consistently shows places with more gun laws have more murder, not less,
Lol whatever. You failed to mention how California has the strictest gun laws but they still have the most mass killings.
You say California has more mass shootings than any other state?
And I’m sure you and many others believe this, fascinating.
The fact is, Florida ranks number one in the past five years, with a greater population. In Florida has reasonably lax gun laws with hundreds of thousands of permit holders. So while the mass shootings in Florida.
Since 2014, 11 more people died in mass shootings in Florida than in California, where private ownership of assault rifles is banned. And California has more than twice as many people as Florida.
And California ranks number 23 for mass shootings per capita.
Did the lax gun laws lead to Parkland, who knows, more research needed.
By “assault rifles,” I am assuming you mean the complete arbitrarily-defined term “assault weapon,” which is a political creation, in which case, guns functionally identical to those banned are not banned, and thus one can for the most part own the same guns as in Florida.
Citations?
@miner
dude trust me
JWT, you are still maintaining that Arizona has had only one mass shooting death in the past 17 years?
And you are dismissing all of the factual events that I listed, amazing.
And you believe that the FBI does not define Jared Loughner’s shooting of six people and wounding of a dozen more as a mass shooting?
I’m not sure what planet you’re on but it’s not the same one that I share with my neighbors up the holler here.
Why do you keep changing the subject? (And point of fact the number I listed was 1, with a cited source. Maybe do the tiniest amount of work, follow the link and see which shooting it was.)
You said that “gun laws do work”. You cited California’s mass shooting rate being lower than Florida’s as evidence. It is, but by so infinitesimally small a margin as to be meaningless because of the sample size. I used the same definition to show that Arizona’s rate is far lower than Hawaii’s. I can do the exact same thing with several states. Again, to prove the point that because the sample size of those numbers is so incredibly small, they are completely meaningless and can be used to create whatever outcome you would like. Why do you keep ignoring that? By providing examples outside of the data set you originally chose, you’re only proving my point.
Well would you look at that? The “gun crime” in California has fallen at a slightly lower rate than the “gun crime” in Texas. And at the same time, California has further restricted firearms ownership and carry, and Texas has dramatically increased it. If gun laws worked, this could not be the case.
Quit changing the subject and ignoring facts when they don’t fit your narrative. Gun laws don’t work.
Deja vu. We had this conversation before. If you want to look at the effectiveness of gun laws, you have to look at all criminal gun use, not just mass shootings.
Gun control laws have no effect upon mass murderers.
And California is not communist, it’s liberal. Two vastly different things.
Not as different as you think.
Wow, I just noticed your handle! Ragnar red beard was the nom de guerre of the book worshipped by the garlic shooter. In the book Ragnar advocates anti-sematism and other racist views.
So Ragnar, I guess you’re hip to the vibe of your namesake’s book?
Wow, maybe I am for restricting private firearms ownership, some of you folks make me very nervous. Like Donald Trump said, maybe we should just take their guns and worry about the courts later.
Yeah… California is about as “liberal” as the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union was not liberal. It began as a Utopian Marxist-Socialist coup and rapidly evolved into a brutal dictatorship and police state.
and…
“muh’ not real socialism” right on que. Get bent commie.
@enuf
Exactly. Like California.
“Liberal” means total opposite of what the leftists are.
He bought his “AK” in Nevada, so California gun control laws would not apply. It is because of California’s gun control laws that he had to buy his guns out of state.
You state the shooter had to buy his gun out of state because of California’s gun laws.
Thanks for making the point that gun laws do help make it difficult for criminals to purchase their weapons.
Now, if Nevada had just as restrictive gun laws perhaps this shooter would not have been able to obtain a weapon at all. As it was, he had to acquire transportation and go to a gun shop in Nevada to find a weapon.
Just like someone that wants to get high on pot wouldn’t bother because their state doesn’t allow pot to be purchased at the store? Do you really believe that nonsense you spout?
Few casualties because: good guys with guns stopped the bad guy within 1 minute.
That very simple fact will be altered by advocates for the disarmament of citizens very soon.
Watch and see how it will be pushed as “who” ended it quickly and not “why” it was ended quickly. Narrative, narrative, narrative.
“Police responded within a minute, engaged the suspect and killed him, Smithee said.”
That doesn’t mean the police shot anyone within a minute, only that they showed up on scene within a minute.
Not surprising, since they were already on the scene. Any such festival has a police presence.
Well, no they don’t. The Vardaman Sweet Potato Festival in MS is very popular and draws large crowds for MS. Been there several times, including last year. Zero police or any other security presence, except for me and many other attendees carrying side arms. Never been anyone shot there. Just good food, good music, and a good time all around. 🙂
Why? My father hated garlic but never shot anyone. They said had pretty solid protection. I would not even think of something like this at Garlic Festival. But then I would not think of something like this anytime. Would be interesting to know why he was Mad? Next I find most mass shootings Democrat backed. Every School shooting has been Democrats. Most mass has too. Do as we say not what we do!
Please provide citations to back up your claim that most school shootings are Democrat backed, I would find that very interesting, thank you
Seriously? LMGTFY? The truth is out there…
Democrat backed in that almost all of the Democrat politicians and their gun control allies love to dance in the blood of the victims.
Well, that’s just empty speech.
Let’s allow Tom to provide the citation to back up his claim
That’s bullshit. Most mass shooters have no particular political affiliation.
And those who do are distinctly leftist…the guy who shot Steve Scalise, Jared Loughner the loon who shot Gabby Giffords, Nidal Hasan, Aaron Alexis, Seung-Hui Cho, Amy Bishop, etc. Many of these were somewhat crazy, but that does seem to help people vote for Democrats.
The guy who shot up Vegas was clearly a lefty but that was suppressed.
Again, do you have any evidence to back up your claim that the Las Vegas shooter was a lefty? Please post here, thanks!
Let’s see miner if he had shot up oh let’s say a gay pride parade, there wouldn’t be any question about his political motivations, would there? But no, when he shoots up a country music festival everyone’s all “oh well what a mystery guess we’ll never know.” Right. All you liberals are the same. You’re not special or unique. I just hope I live long enough to watch your reactionary hyper right wing children eat you alive.
This just in, the shooter was a white 19-year-old neo Nazi white supremacist. His grandfather was a West Point graduate. From his Instagram posts he appears to oppose both Hispanic immigrants and Silicon Valley workers.
“Legan also shared his views that include fringe white supremacist book written in 1890. Called “…one of the most incendiary works ever to be published anywhere,” by a noted anarchist, Legan quoted from the book in a post accompanied by a Smokey the Bear sign about fire danger. He wrote: “Read Might Is Right by Ragnar Redbeard. Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white twats?”
Wait, he’s a white supremacist that lumps mestizos in with whites? Are you sure you know what “white supremacist” means?
To Taylor.
Sorry your half assed try to duck the truth which is that most mass murderes are White Supremacists nut cases. The surveys prove it beyond. all doubt
This just in shooter was black Muslim socialist. See how easy that is?
Are you suggesting that a non white can become a white supremacist? Because if that’s true, then liberals and multiculturalists have a very serious problem on their hands.
Well, we do know that he spoke of whites in a derogatory manner:
Legan wrote: “Read Might Is Right by Ragnar Redbeard. Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white twats?” Mestizos is a term used to describe someone of mixed descent, but specifically white and Hispanic and/or white and Native Indian. He appeared to have used it in a derogatory manner.
I followed the link above for this. Maybe it will take a day or two to sort out?
Why did you include that one of his grandfather’s graduated from West Point, but failed to mention his other grandfather was Iranian, moved to the US, and was a professor at UT and UCLA?
You seem to have a habit of omitting facts that don’t fit a particular narrative.
He certainly wasn’t black or Latino, he was a privilege child of the suburbs who believed in white supremacy and considers himself white.
Adolf Hitler had Jewish ancestry but he hated the Jews and totally believed in the supremacy of the white race.
Regan hated the Latino immigrants and the Silicon Valley workers who he probably viewed as elitist liberals, but it’s hard to say until we know more.
Quit dodging the question. Why did you ignore the fact that he considered himself of Iranian ancestry and that his grandfather was Iranian and taught at UCLA? Why did you only include his other grandfather that graduated from West Point? Why one and not the other?
Why is ancestry so important to you, it in no way is a predictor of behavior. His early environment during the critical period, birth to five years of age, is the primary driver of his personality development.
It makes no difference is ancestry, there are many with mixed ancestery who hate a particular element of their genetic background. As I pointed out, Hitler had Jewish ancestry but that didn’t stop him from killing 6 million Jews.
Does having Iranian ancestry two generations back automatically make you a terrorist?
Are all Italian Americans members of the mafia?
Self-hate is not rational.
It is telling that you picked up only on the heritage, and not the college professor at notoriously liberal schools part.
But again, you changed the subject. Quit dodging.
Answer the question.
JWT, you are the one that picked up on the heritage first, I believe the shooter’s problem was religious radicalization laid on top of mental illness.
None of my comments have his race mentioned, just the fact that he was a white supremacist. Again, there are many racists who hate a particular element in their gene pool, self hatred is rarely internally consistent.
I understand that you want to mention his Iranian ancestry two generations back because it is important to you that the Iranians are bad guys.
Are Italian American members of the mafia motivated by their Italian heritage?
Are the members of MS 13 motivated by their central American heritage?
In the aforementioned two instances, I’d say their motivation is greed laid on top of mental illness but people’s internal motivations are often a mystery to everyone, including themselves.
Quit dodging the question.
Miner49er,
You just wrote:
“JWT, you are the one that picked up on the heritage first…:” and “None of my comments have his race mentioned…”
In this same post, on this SAME THREAD, just a few comments above, you opened up with:
“This just in, the shooter was a white 19-year-old neo Nazi white supremacist. His grandfather was a West Point graduate.”
Are you high?
Jwt, my description is not opinion, it’s taken directly from an eyewitness account:
“Julissa Contreras, who was standing within 20 feet of the shooter, told CNN’s Natalie Allen the gunman “looked like the average guy.
“White, about in his 30s, under 6 feet. He was wearing tactical gear, had a baseball cap on, sunglasses, and he had a semi-automatic rifle. He was dressed for what he was there to do.”
Miner, I am not trying to be rude, I am really asking this so that I can communicate with you better. Do you have some kind of reading disability?
A coward and a POS, hope he rots and burns in Hell !!
Just as the Christchurch New Zealand shooter wanted to force the government to have gun control by murdering people and the synagogue shooter in California stated the same thing. That he wanted the state to increase the number of California gun control laws by murdering Jews. I wonder if this shooter also wanted to force the government’s hand in writing more gun control laws in the state of California?
If all else fails the left will simply murder its way to force laws to be written that they cannot get by debating people on the issues. That is exactly what happened at the baseball field. The Democrats socialist tried to murder the Republican government in Congress.
What did he write on his social media pages? And will they be quickly erased?
The shooters at the Denver school two homosexuals the children of an illegal alien. And their social media has disappeared. Why wonder why?????
I am really surprised that pe-lousy and her black crows aren’t screaming for more gun control , what do you want to bet the shooter is from a life-long democrat family????
Yep, this shooter seems to be a real liberal Democrat… Wait a minute, this just in.
“Legan also shared his views that include fringe white supremacist book written in 1890. Called “…one of the most incendiary works ever to be published anywhere,” by a noted anarchist, Legan quoted from the book in a post accompanied by a Smokey the Bear sign about fire danger. He wrote: “Read Might Is Right by Ragnar Redbeard. Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white twats?”
Yeah a guy named Santiago is a real hardcore white supremacist I’m sure.
If this guy is, it actually really harms the cause of liberalism more then you think. If Latinos can be radicalized into white supremacists, you have a serious problem on your hands.
If you are going to make politics an issue, about 90% of mass shooting — and over 90% of murder are committed by Democrats in Democrat run paces — no one even attempts to debunk that.
Do you have any facts or a citation to back up your obvious BS? If so, please post here, thanks!
The book the murderer quoted is an eco-anarchist book:
“Might Is Right, or The Survival of the Fittest, is a book by pseudonymous author Ragnar Redbeard. First published in 1890, it heavily advocates egoist anarchism, amorality, consequentialism and psychological hedonism. In Might Is Right, Redbeard rejects conventional ideas of human and natural rights and argues that only strength or physical might can establish moral right (à la Callicles or Thrasymachus). The book also attacks Christianity and Democracy. Friedrich Nietzsche’s theories of master–slave morality and herd mentality serve as a clear inspiration for Redbeard’s book written contemporaneously.[1]
Individualist Anarchist historian James J. Martin called it “surely one of the most incendiary works ever to be published anywhere.”[2] This refers to the controversial content such as the viewpoint that weakness should be regarded with hatred and the strong and forceful presence of Social Darwinism in the text. There are also controversial parts of the book that deal with race and male–female relations, claiming that the woman and the family as a whole is the property of the man.
“
I find it interesting actually. A lot of the ideology in Right is Might ties to Friedrich Nietzsche. His original writings were not racist, however his works were reworked by his sister after his death to fit her German nationalist views. It is sort of an unusual mix as might is fringe even for most “white Supremacist groups”.
The individual anarchist ideals seem to fit more inline with people affiliated with ANTIFA, but not even there really. The book itself has ties within the Church of Satan in fact LaVey recognized as influences, including Ragnar Redbeard.
That doesn’t seem to fit the narrative of your typical alt-right.
Legan wrote: “Read Might Is Right by Ragnar Redbeard. Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white twats?” Mestizos is a term used to describe someone of mixed descent, but specifically white and Hispanic and/or white and Native Indian. He appeared to have used it in a derogatory manner.
I got that from the same place.
One woman one child. and dead shooter. sounds like possible domestic. If it had been an intentional high casualty mass shooting even with a bullet button rifles lot more would be dead. Almost all Injuries seem to be from running panic or from the multiple rapid shots fired by police in a crowded place.
We had a woman kill two of her kids due to custody dispute around the corner from us six months ago — no national coverage since she did not use a gun.
Chris, what episode of a mother killing her two children was not carried by mainstream media? Is it the one I post here below, the news story by the CNN affiliate? This story seems to have received national coverage, and mom killed them with her bare hands by her own statement.
“A New York woman accused of killing her two toddler daughters is in custody and faces two counts of second-degree murder, authorities said.
Tenia Campbell’s mother called 911 on Thursday and said her daughter was “threatening to kill herself and her twin 2-year-old daughters,”Suffolk County Police said Friday.
The mother, Vanessa McQueen, told the operator that her 24-year-old daughter, a Long island resident, indicated the girls were already dead, Suffolk Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart said.
“I killed them with my bare hands,” Campbell said, according to a written statement by her mother, CNN affiliate WABC reported.”
Chris, what episode of a mother killing her two children was not carried by mainstream media?”
”
there are many cases of a parent killing a kid or two that never make it to mass media. You have a claim form a prior post that Australia has no mass murder, and I posted about the murder of eight kids with a knife in Australia that got barely a blip.
The fact is 90% of US murder is criminals killing criminals. If you are not a criminal you are safer int eh US than most developed democracies.
Chris, so you don’t have a citation for your claim of two killed by their mother that you say did not receive national coverage. OK, I see what you’re doing.
Not domestic violence. The dead are unrelated. The dead 6-year-old was with his mother and grandmother, who were wounded in the hand and leg. His father was at home with the 9-year-old daughter. This is the epitome of senseless violence and trying to rack up a body count. Whatever he was mad about wasn’t caused by the people he murdered. I’m sorry the police killed the gunman so efficiently. The 8A would have prevented him from receiving his deserved punishment anyway, like being draw and quartered or used as a cancer test subject.
It seems as if mass shootings, particularly those occurring in public places, are THE driving force for gun control. (Granted, mass school shootings are an important part as well; but I think the public places venue is more important.)
This strikes me as curious in that 2/3’rds of gunshot deaths are suicides while almost all the remainder are one-on-one or fewer than the definition of “mass” shootings. Be that as it may, we must try to identify the motivating forces and deal with them such as they are.
What could conceivably be done to reduce mass shootings? Most of the possibilities are either impractical or ineffective.
Securing the perimeter is impractical. Imagine picking some definition of “mass”; suppose we say that every venue with 100 or 1000 people present is a mass venue. Now, how could we possibly afford to secure all the perimeters of all such venues at all times whenever their populations exceed our defined threshold?
Reducing the number of guns suitable to purpose would be ineffective. There are 400 million guns in America. Suppose 1/2 are suitable for a mass killing; that’s 200 million. Suppose we reduced this number by an order of magnitude; to 20 million. Would a crazy killer get access to one of them? Suppose we reduced the number by 2 orders of magnitude; 2 million. That would make it more difficult for a crazy killer to get access to one. So, he would likely buy one fabricated in a cottage machine shop or smuggled from abroad.
Could we shut down cottage machine shops? Stop smuggling? Clearly, we’ve been ineffective in shutting down meth labs or stopping drug smuggling. We couldn’t do any better with guns (even if we could imagine reducing the number of applicable weapons from 200 million to 2 million.)
America has suffered from only a relatively few mass public-venue shootings; nearly all of these from native culture/religion crazy people. Do these represent the greatest threat? Or, should we be conscious of some other threat?
America was asleep at the wheel with respect to the prospect of an attack by Japan before WW-2. Could we be asleep today? E.g., could an equally imprudent attack occur from some other Asian country in the foreseeable future? How about such an attack from a middle-eastern country? Or an African, Latin American, country? When was the last time a Mexican bandit crossed our border and raided an American town? (Pancho Villa’s 1916 raid on Columbus NM.) Is there any lawless well-armed force operating near the US border? Just because it hasn’t happened – YET – on American soil doesn’t provide much basis for objective comfort.
If Americans are concerned about the (miniscule) risk of being shot in a public venue by a mass killer of domestic origin, then we should be even more concerned by the enormous potential for such an attack by a foreign-influanced attacker. How could gun control possibly reduce this risk?
The message described above is vastly beyond the attention span of the American voter. Nevertheless, there IS a pertinent audience willing to listen. American law-enforcement officers. Patrol officers; sheriffs/chiefs; state trooper officials. Many of these are military vets; they understand mass public shooting venues.
I wonder if it wouldn’t be cost-effective to make a concerted effort to target the American LE community with this line of reasoning. Ask: ‘What could possibly be effective in preventing, mitigating or stopping a mass shooter in a public venue?’
Cycle through the usual gun-control solutions: UBC; magazine capacity limits; semi-auto actions; registration; reducing the number of certain types of arms; . . . Would any of these have much of an effect on the number of domestic crazies willing to shoot-up a public venue? Would any of these have ANY effect on a foreign-influanced attacker?
What do LE experts know would work? Would police equipped with carbines in public venues be effective in dissuading domestic crazies? Would they be effective in stopping a shooting-in-progress by a foreign-influanced attacker? What is it about police – equipped with carbines – that makes this a potentially effective measure? Is it that they get their W-2 forms from a government agency? Or, is the power to stop a mass killer to be found in the carbine?
Next, ask: ‘Can American taxpayers afford to have a LEO in every (or most) public venues whenever the population exceeds 100 or 1000?’ Would a single officer be enough? Would 2 or 3 be needed to be confident of their effectiveness?
(I think the Mandalay Bay incident would require a formal LEO + carbine solution. Handguns were impotent in that case and would be impotent in comparable cases. In less challenging venues, handguns would be effective; they have proven to be effective. While we can’t afford uniformed cops in every public venue we can easily afford civilian CWPs in nearly every venue. Moreover, in a Mandalay Bay type of venue, we could easily afford civilian marksmen accompanying cops in the sniper+spotter configuration.)
Such an educational campaign (on LEOs) would be a long-hard-slog. Nevertheless, it WOULD be within the extent of our resources. We COULD do this; provided, of course, that we concentrate on precisely this question: ‘What could possibly be effective in preventing, mitigating or stopping a mass shooter in a public venue?’ NOTHING ELSE. (No appeals to the 2A; no insistence on Con-Carry; just this ONE question. A question that they are sworn to be concerned with! They can’t demure claiming: “That’s not my purview.”
Imagine dragging a big-city chief of police into a Congressional committee hearing on gun-controls. Imagine asking her whether she sees proposed gun controls having any effect on mass public shootings. Could she respond: ‘Gee, I haven’t given the question much thought!’ If she responded so she would look like a fool in the wake of a few years of debate in the LEO community on just this question.
Too long. Skipped it.
Too bad. It’s worth reading.
Because you recommended it. I will read it.
@Ing: Remarkable! You have inspired one (count him, 1) “TLDR” to read a few paragraphs.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with reading just one essay. (Probably not one of mine.)
Haha! I never expected it to work. (Maybe that’s the key.)
MarkPA,
The solution: we encourage and help families to be physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy. Such families not only reduce the number of demented individuals who would attempt mass-murder, those very same families would also produce people who were comfortable discussing and implementing real solutions to myriad problems facing our society.
Note that any solution focused on firearms is a fool’s errand since a motivated spree-killer can find countless ways to murder hordes of people.
Also, venues with 1000+ people can easily afford to pay for security overwatch. Suppose an event lasts four hours and event organizers have to pay $800 for two snipers (that is $100 per hour for each sniper) plus $200 for those two snipers to set up their “hides”. That is a total expense of $1000 which costs every attendee $1. In addition to the two paid snipers, local police could assign/divert two officers on-shift to roam around the venue for additional support at no additional cost. Of course this security overwatch expense (amortized per person) goes down significantly when even greater numbers of people attend an event. Once again, the problem is not firearms. The problem is event organizers who do not want to part with a couple thousand dollars. And I imagine snowflakes who do not want to see effective security overwatch (snipers) are another part of the problem.
While I tend to agree I will point out that there’s no way you’re getting “sniper overwatch” from competent and credentialed shooters for $100/hour.
The overhead costs exceed that pricepoint by a lot, probably at least an order of magnitude once insurance costs for this service are figured in, because insurance is going to place demands for enormously high bars on training, continual retraining, certification and all the latest and greatest gear to try to reduce the chance of an errant shot or misidentified target to the lowest possible rate.
You’re going to end up paying the freight, effectively, for two Scout-Sniper teams at each venue.
Seems to me that we need the spotter+sniper combo ONLY at venues characterized by uncontrollable surrounding high-ground positions. NYC’s Times Square; Mandalay Bay. The occasions when there are very large crowds at such venues are exceptional; not the norm.
In some cases there are relatively higher-ground positions but they aren’t a thousand yards away. In such cases equipping a few police with rifles or carbines could be enough.
The most common case is one where there isn’t much of a high-ground position problem. A rifle would be nice; but, most of the shooting will be at pistol range. These seem to be the really economically-challenging cases. The number of potential victim-targets is in the dozens or hundreds. They are EVERYWHERE. Just not enough cops (on and off-shift) to provide adequate coverage. Moreover, we give the crazies a clear map: here are the GFZs; there are the CWP zones.
Will there be a cop in the GFZ when the shooter choses to fire? If he sees the cop, he will wait for a more opportune time. At best, the cop wanders into the shooting zone at just the right time. The only solution for this case that I see is to eliminate the GFZs.
Your comments are rational and concise…thank you for your clarity.
Having lived and worked on the southern border for decades I offer the following in response to one of the points you raised: “Is there any lawless well-armed force operating near the US border?”
Unequivocally > Yes <.
There are reported border incursions dating back to the 80's (when I still lived in Texas / New Mexico) by units of the Mexican Army. The commonly held opinion of the LEO's I talked with at the time was that they were "scouting" and providing "protection" for drug / alien loads in-bound to the US. C&P the following into your search engine: "mexican army incursions into the us". Take the time to scroll through the multitude of pages that return to understand how often this armed force incursion occurs. The Mexican authorities say that it is an accident every time and their troops, vehicle and weapons are all escorted back to Mexico without any consequences. Yet, decades ago an El Paso PD officer was in pursuit of a car thief and crossed into Mexico over the Bridge of the Americas…Mexican Customs allowed the thief to cross unhindered while the officer was arrested and paraded around like a POW…his vehicle, uniform, weapons, etc were all seized by Mexican authorities. El Paso PD eventually got the vehicle (no uniforms, personal possessions or weapons) back in negotiations…the officer was repatriated to the US only after high-level diplomacy intervened.
Rational, yes. Concise, no. Too long. Didn’t read all of it.
You should read all of MarkPA’s comment…it is worth your time.
@Old Guy: Thank you for your support.
I have long ago written off the “TLDR” crowd. They have spent too much time on Twitter; they can’t be redeemed.
It’s up to the rest of us who can still read and think rationally about how to solve problems. I make no special claim to profound insight. Still, occasionally an idea occurs to me that I think worth sharing.
Do we PotG think we might get somewhere “preaching to the choir”? If we could focus for more than 30 seconds on one issue – mass shootings in public venues – wouldn’t we quickly come to the conclusion that “gun control” has the least likelihood of preventing deaths? Wouldn’t we come to the conclusion that returning effective fire (often with carbines or rifles) is just about the only effective response? IF this were so, what audience would be the easiest to convince of our analysis? Wouldn’t it be LEOs and vets? Aren’t these folks our “choir”?
Look at it the opposite way. Suppose we conclude that we can’t convince “the choir” of the wisdom of our viewpoint? Were that our conclusion then shouldn’t we conclude that our political cause is lost?
If we COULD get LEOs and vets to discuss this one narrow issue – mass shooters in public venues – and come to their own rational conclusions, what might that mean to the political situation? If LEOs and vets testified before Congress and their state legislators that shooting back is the only effective – and economical – solution, then wouldn’t that undermine the cry for more gun-control?
As a Vet and retired LEO I approve your message…campaign speak for you’re correct.
This is a discussion my regular range group has frequently immersed ourselves in (we are all former LEO’s of one flavor or another, two of us were tactical Paramedics and four of us served sometime between 1963 and 1982 in various DoD agencies).
@Old Guy: Thank you again.
Do you and your group believe (or doubt) that it does any good to encourage vets and LEOs to discuss this line of reasoning?
Admittedly, if 1 or 100 or 1,000 LEOs and vets reach the right conclusion it can’t possibly make a difference. But what if the awakened eventually numbered 10,000 or 100,000? Could that happen? If it did, could chiefs and mayors and legislators keep them all silent?
Or, would their neighbors learn of their seditious thoughts?
Mass shootings are a terrible thing. So much worse than bombs and arson; to say nothing of poison. The difference among these is that – apparently, possibly – there IS something we can do about mass shootings. We the People can shoot back. How do we stop a bomb; or a Molotov cocktail? How do we stop poison?
Our thoughts are that the more good guys with a firearm the better the survival chances become for whatever group or venue is targeted during a wanton shooting spree. We encourage non-shooters and Fuddy-type shooters to join us for informal tips on improving their situational awareness, marksmanship, weapon handling, etc. It is a slow process…many shooters believe that they are “doing it” correctly and it is a balancing act to offer coaching that does not “offend” them. I was recently in the Seattle area and being bored looked up several Ranges that I could get to fairly easily (traffic sux along the I-5 corridor). Just about all of the Ranges I contacted do not allow human silhouette or photo-realistic law enforcement targets. At one store / range I asked the clerk “what reason do most people give for purchasing and practicing with a handgun”, response “self-defense”. To which I replied that shooting paper plates and mag dumps into splatter targets are a poor training substitute for learning to engage a human target, he agreed and said that “the anti-gun fanatics in King and Snohomish counties would go apesh*t if they saw people practicing on realistic targets”.
When I was in Management at a LEA I purchased copies of Lt. Col Grossman’s two excellent books: On Killing and On Combat. I made them available for my officers to checkout and read. The general consensus was that On Combat was a better book for LEO’s in that it deals exhaustively with the aftermath of a shooting incident. One of my guys was in an OIS and had read the book…he told me after the investigation that the book gave him an understanding of what he was going to go through and that knowledge helped him cope with the self-doubt, fear of losing his job, stress (work related and home), etc.
The short answer to your question is Yes – the more LEOs and Veterans who carry responsibly the better the overall safety will be and possibly more non-LEO and non-Vet firearms owners will consider their own safety and (maybe) start carrying the means to protect themselves and their families.
Thanks again. Even so: “Yes – the more LEOs and Veterans who carry responsibly . . . and possibly more non-LEO and non-Vet firearms owners will consider their own safety and (maybe) start carrying . . .” But that answer is NOT what I was asking about.
I assume that LEOs are mostly carrying when not on shift. I assume that lots of Vets are carrying. I doubt that these practices would improve much from an active discussion.
What I’m expecting (hoping for) is a realization that “the only thing that stops a bad man with a gun . . . ” It ought to be obvious; but it isn’t soaking in. After every public venue shooting the calls for gun control are deafening.
Look at Mandalay Bay. I’m shocked that there was virtually no discussion of the most important fact: the shooter had the high-ground position. I’m shocked that there was virtually no discussion of the fact that he (a millionaire) could have gotten a gun no matter how stringent gun control might be.
Focusing narrowly on mass shootings – especially in public venues – there is nothing in the gun-control list of proposals that could help at all. The only thing our society can do about mass shooters is ensure that 2A-able people are properly kitted up. This means – first and foremost – getting rid of GFZs. There aren’t enough cops to cover all public venues (nor all schools or Post Offices, etc.) And, whenever there are high-ground positions in a very large public venue, we need the cops (and maybe civilian volunteers) to be on-duty with counter-sniper capability.
If cops and Vets could just focus on this proposition – “Focusing narrowly on mass shootings – especially in public venues -” then that realization would take the wind out of the gun-controllers’ sails politically. At least with respect to magazine and “assault weapon” bans.
There remains the doubt – legitimate – that all cops and Vets could be thoroughly convinced, yet remain silent in public debates. A few sheriffs would speak their minds but most would remain silent and all chiefs of police would continue to testify in favor of gun-control. Is this so? Or, with enough momentum from the rank and file, would most chiefs find that they can’t continue to testify in favor of gun-control as a means of preventing mass shootings in public venues?
Can a consensus in the rank-and-file make it impractical for chiefs to testify nonsense? – THIS is the core question.
“I have long ago written off the “TLDR” crowd”
If you can’t be brief that’s for the best. This is a site for comments and chat, not dissertation.
Nothing personal, there are plenty of internet randos who want to waste peoples’ time with their screeds and none of them are worth reading either.
“I have long ago written off the “TLDR” crowd.”
God help them if they ever stumble upon a “book”. No, really, they’re kinda worth writing off. People who just skip something are one thing but people who skip it and then bother spending the time to tell you that they skipped it because they can’t be bothered to read it are another kettle of fish.
As for the rest, I would point out something. Vet and LEO are different. The vet doesn’t have anyone in authority telling them to STFU for political reasons. Many LEOs do, which makes them a tougher nut to crack. If their opinion, right as it may or may not be, goes against that of the Chief and isn’t backed by the union, you probably won’t hear about it.
City and municipal police generally report to a Chief who reports to and serves at the pleasure of a politician, usually a mayor.
“The vet doesn’t have anyone in authority telling them to STFU for political reasons. ”
Not really…if the Vet is hired or contracted by a Federal department or agency as a civilian then the Hatch Act may apply to them during election cycles. If they work for a DoD component then DOD Directive 1344.10 may apply to their political activities, opinions and freedom of speech.
Do not forget that there are many large businesses and corporations that restrict their employee’s espousing personal political opinions or beliefs in the workplace.
Old Guy:
That’s a valid point. Overall I think my original comment is more or less correct though. Vets who’ve separated don’t generally have to worry about the military apparatus coming after them for saying something but, as you point out, depending on their subsequent employment they may have other concerns that fall within this general realm.
It’s a bit different than a LEO speaking in a manner that is meant to change the behavior of their current employer and going about trying to effect that change in an overtly political way, but it’s still a valid concern on their part.
I probably should have worded the original post a bit differently since I basically thought something that I didnt really explain and for which there was no good context for a reader to pick up on. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
This isn’t going to be popular but to address an issue the root cause of it must be attacked. In this case that is mental illness & overcoming the stigma associated with it. I’m betting this is another person that the mental health care industry has failed. That system needs to be revamped from the bottom up. The very idea of doctoring needs to be changed from making themselves rich to the care of their patients. Top notch non-politicaly biased care needs to be of no cost to the patient with goal of getting them to be a happy & content productive person. Not shoving meds down their throat & hope for the best. If restricting guns from them during that time is necessary then so be it. As long as that is done in a proper legal manner by at least a judge or a jury of their peers. If the doctor & patient decide they are safe to have them immediately restore that right.
One thing we’ve lost as a country is we used to do this for each other. If Jim down the street wasn’t safe around guns neighbors would hold them until he was OK again. We knew & cared about each other then. We don’t anymore. Think about this, how far down the block do you have to go before you don’t know people’s names? My backyard neighbor is as absolute ass whose mouth has nearly gotten him into trouble. Do I know the guy’s name? Nope.
A valid point. I haven’t looked at the statistics personally, and I don’t remember where this comes from but…
Just yesterday I was listening to a podcast debate about marijuana (JRE 1246 for those interested) where the two guys were throwing out stats from various studies so fast that you’d need to constantly pause the podcast and right it down to remember all the citations.
Point is this: there are studies that indicate that serious psychosis and schizophrenia increase the overall likelihood that the person suffering delusions is violent towards another person by something on the order of 20x (2000%). Now, this was in the context of how that chance might be increased by the delusional person also using street drugs with no supervision, but that’s kinda wandering here.
The other associated points of interest were the rate at which psychosis and schizophrenia occur in a population. In the US, due to HIPAA, we don’t really know but tracking seems to indicate that schizophrenia is something like 0.3% to 0.7% of the population while psychosis is probably about 3%. However, about 10% of the population will experience short-term psychosis (a mental breakdown basically) at some point in their life.
Now the key point the one guy made here is as follows: where we do have good data on this it’s suppressed by the professional groups because they’re afraid that most people won’t understand it and it will lead to further stigma against the person with the problem. Therefore we can’t even really talk about it, never mind actually act in a rational way.
“Is there any lawless well-armed force operating near the US border?”
Was that sarcasm? I’m seriously asking. Tens of thousands of people have been killed over the last couple of decades near the US border. Within the first 6 months of just this year, cartels killed 700 people in Juarez alone.
I have watched news reports of border land owners patrolling their property with AR15s for the last 15 years now. And I remember when the ACLU helped illegals aliens confiscate one man’s property. Because in today’s world you can’t protect what is yours in 2019. It’s just crazy.
I wish you guys would really wise up! I am an active shooter. I go to the range, I am a safe and responsible gun owner.
That guy is a murderer. Not a gunman, not a firearm owner, people like that are freaking murderers. You fall into the trap of saying assault rifle, shooter, active shooter, gun man etc. Wake up, you’re being programmed.
I understand and agree with the basic sentiment of what you’re trying to say, but the term “Active Shooter Event” is an LE phrase to denote a situation in which an individual (or group) is firing upon innocent people. In such a case, shots have actually been fired and the lives of innocents are at stake.
Whether we like it or not, the term “Active Shooter” is with us to stay. It refers to a criminal action, and most people recognize it as such.
I myself have attended ASE training, as I’m part of an armed volunteer security team.
“Here’s the latest on the shooting yesterday at the Gilroy Garlic Festival southeast of San Jose. The shooter(s) has still not been apprehended.”
“…before police fatally shot him…”
it’s different out there.
With three fatalities, will this event not qualify as a mass shooting in FBI statistics? I thought the threshold was four casualties.
Fake news. Only three people died in this shooting. Not four. The police shooting the perpetrator doesn’t count. Yes it’s sad that three people died. But the definition of a mass mueder is four or more.
The anti-gun media is simply lying to change the status of this shooting for statistical purposes.
And it was a “gun-free zone”. And apparently he used wire cutters to cut a hole in the fence to get into the fair area. So now the state government can ban Wirecutting tools.
That will certainly help to make the world much safer for democracy.
Yes, by strict definition it may not be a ‘mass shooting’.
But the people doing the bleeding and dying say it’s the best imitation they’ve ever seen.
By your logic any given weekend in Chiraq would count as a “mass shooting”.
pwrserge
Mass shootings happen in Chiraq all the time. But when Mass murder happens in Chiraq one one cares about that either.
Miner49er
Its not mass murder. Yes its a mass shooting. The distinction is important.
I haven’t said it was murder, murder usually requires premeditation of particular victims. So far, this seems like a random act committed by NeoNazi white supremacist.
miner49er
You are correct! The people who shot up the california christmas party a few years ago were in fact NeoNazi white [Arab] supremacist. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is a best seller the the Arab world these days.
You may not know it but the “white” arabs look down upon people with darker skin than themselves.
So now we’re talking about the San Bernardino shooting from a few years ago? Yes those were Arabs, I don’t know if they were lighter skins or not. I suspect their motivation was a layer of fundamentalist religion on top of a basic mental illness.
I would even postulate that the San Bernardino action was indeed mass murder, the perpetrators apparently knew most of the victims and had a long-term plan.
Again, I believe it was motivated by religion. There are millions of people across the world and in and in this country who believe their sky daddy tells them to kill particular people or groups of people. I believe that a belief in religion without evidence is a mental illness in itself, self delusion
miner49er
“I believe it was motivated by religion.”
You atheists are in a serious mental health status when you forget Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc, were all atheists as well. The New Zealand mass murderer is a self declared atheist.
I can give you a Link to his manifesto if you like?
The crime of murder does not require premeditation of the victims. First degree murder requires premeditation of the act. A person who plants a bomb in a train station has no idea who he will kill, but has the mens rea required to charge first degree murder for everyone who dies.
Lesser degrees of murder don’t require any sort of premeditation at all.
Miner49er
The 15(?) year old who murdered two of his classmates and shot 5 others was also a self declared atheist. The shooting was at a high school 60 miles from my house in kentucky. It happened 3 months BEFORE the Parkland FL shooting.
It seems if you are an atheist murderer your story disappears very quickly.
Please stick to the historical facts.
Neither Stalin nor Hitler or atheist.
Do you know what was in graved on every German Army uniform belt buckle?
Did you know Stalin attended the Gori church school as a youngster and then later attended the spiritual seminary of Tiflis? Stalin’s switch to atheism was more about consolidating power rather than any religious conviction. And you would think, after attending many years of priesthood training, he would be one more really moral SOB. But apparently all those years of religious studies led him to be the dictator he turned out to be, fascinating.
Chris, the atheism of the 15-year-old had nothing to do with his crime, I believe he had a mental illness caused by years of abuse. And you will find that approximately 95% of all killings in the USA are committed by Christians, only because there’s a whole lot of them around here.
BTW, I’m just across the river from you in WV, and we’ve never had a mass shooting. Of course, for about 80 years this is been a democratic controlled state so I expect that’s the reason. Now that Jim justice has switched parties to Republican and the state legislature is controlled by the Republicans it probably won’t be long till we do have a mass shooting.
I’m sure you think the belt buckle thing is a clever way to link Christianity to nazism but the in motto dates back to at least old imperial germany, and even to the kingdom of prussia.
miner49er
“BTW, I’m just across the river from you in WV, and we’ve never had a mass shooting.”
You need to read more about the state history you live in. I’m currently reading this fascinating book. It’s about how american citizens and legal immigrant workers used their 2A civil rights to defend themselves against government tyranny AND THE tyranny of a big corporation. Coal companies. I was taught this history even in my california high school history classes. It seems you missed out.
Also it’s sad how some atheists have a “religious belief” in the lie that Hitler and Stalin were somehow believers in some form of christianity.
BTW
They used everything from black powder muskets to machine guns.
As Extra, Adolf Hitler was deeply religious, as he said both publicly and in his book my struggle.
“Mein Kampf also shows a bizarrely racialized interpretation of Christianity:
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. . . . And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God.”
The first treaty Hitler signed with a foreign power was with the Vatican, and he enjoyed a special relationship with the church, which said a special mass on his birthday every year until 1945.
Even more interesting, no Nazis, even the concentration camp guards, were ever excommunicated by the Catholic Church.
No oven operators, no gas chamber technicians, no one. Except for Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda manager.
And he was only excommunicated because he married a non-Catholic, sad.
Chris, I am very familiar with the battle of Blair mountain, I’ve been there several times.
And yes, I approve a private ownership of firearms and the use of those private firearms to prevent Tyranny by the government or in this particular case, big business in the form of King Coal.
I am against the glorification of guns and the worship of weapons we see in our culture today, I’m concerned that it leads to senseless violence.
I’m not against 2A, I just like a more rational interpretation of its provisions and obligations.
miner49er
“I’m not against 2A, I just like a more rational interpretation of its provisions and obligations.”
You are either lying or are just stupid about the history of “Industrial Wars” in this country. You would never support the private ownership of machine guns for working class people. Because then the cost would be much lower and they then could afford to buy one or two.
But privately owned coal companies did in fact purchase thompson sub machine guns, BARs, as well as tri-pod mounted heavy MGs. And then they used them against the miners. It was the government and the private companies that together, conspired to acquire bomb layned aircraft. And then drop those bombs on american citizens. Every american neighborhood should have a Quad 50 at their disposal. And a family bazooka as well.
TTAG is sprinkled with Left wing hypocrites like you.
It’s mass VIOLENCE. Some more so than others but everyone in the country has been affected by this murder’s violent act.
Probably couldn’t stand the stench and lost the plot.
At the risk of sounding callous, hope the guy was over 20, didn’t use a suppressor, and didn’t have any trigger modifications or anything else the president doesn’t understand. POTUS needs the pr points right now and “common sense” gun control would be an easy move for him. And yes I understand he’s basically competing with insane clown posse on the democrat side.
I read white guy, 25-30. Probably not Islamic terrorist. He was wearing a “green vest”, but I don’t know if that meant load bearing or something like a Vietnam-era flack jacket. Probably not an armor or plate carrier given the speed at which he was dispatched. If it was one of the latter, maybe they can use it as an excuse to ban them.
It is most likely completely homegrown terrorism, but we should await the results of the investigation.
Unofficial sites now claiming the dead loser is 19-year-old American of Italian and Iran descent. Hatred of sprawl and urbanization, which some are calling “white supremacist,” but comments about “white twats” in Silicon Vallley make me doubt it.
Body armor would be an easy feel good target for the anti-gunners but I’d love to see them rationalise it. And they’re saying the guy was 19 with a rifle and trump already suggested raising the minimum age for long gun in the past.
we still haven’t “peeled the onion” on the mandalay shooting , there was way too many disconnects ,half-truths and mis-directed answers from the feds. way too much “BRENNER” evidence for the good cops to wade through,BLACK HELICOPTERS, Saudi ownership of the top floor of the mandalay building..CIA gun-dealers and smugglers involved . NOTHING WAS ANSWERED.
I think we still don’t know what weapons were used in the VA municipal building shooting from a few months back, and whether the silencer was real/etc
So…
— “Gun control” laws let this guy get armed (while disarming his victims.)
— “Security” didn’t provide a whole lot of, um, that (while burdening the people it didn’t protect.)
— Disarmed people could run and hide (which wasn’t enough for some of them.)
— Bad guy kept killing til somebody stopped him (which took until the designated protectors scrambled n responded.)
— The cops moved toward the carnage. All honor to them. (And it still wasn’t enough.)
— Even hust a minute away, victim count in two digits (which is an acceptable loss?)
Do I have my facts straight?
This festival had literally every anti-“violence” prescription in place, from no arms, to controlled access, to saturation with designated defenders, and it didn’t work.
Until you can get rid of arms n the will to violence *outside* your control, banning for safety *inside*/your control isn’t going to work. Maybe there’s a better answer than Ban All The Things!
Also, while we’re busy being outraged, what’s this carnage measure in Chicagos? Or Baltimores in the competing system of units?
Would the anti-people.please stop getting people killed.
Maybe the murderer was a vampire there seeking revenge for the odor keeping him away from his lair.
Vlad?
Really? Three people dead and you’re throwing stuff like that out there? Don’t quit your day job.
Huntmaster , I guess I have to explain it too you, since you didn’t get it. The comment was just like the rest of the explanations we will hear over the next few days and makes just as much sense as to why some nut case was able to pull this off. Well why do people attend events that are “gun free zones”? I don’t go anywhere my gun isn’t welcome, I assume I am not either. Gun free zones are target rich environments for evil people. Gun control just creates more targets that can’t shoot back. We will now see more gun control in California, a solution that will save lives /sarc Next California bans wire cutters.
You don’t tell a vampire not to quit their day job.
LOL
What really needs to happen is the liberals need to be banned
Gun free zone, plenty of cops, metal detectors at the entrances, the most anti-Bill of Rights gun laws in the country, a libtard’s paradise…but, as usual, a good guy with a gun stopped the carnage.
They had everything covered except the evil in peoples’ hearts.
I can see outright gun bans coming in Commiefornia, and afterwards, a huge increase in shootings. Well, they got what they voted for, and only have themselves to blame. That is what happens when population majorities become sniveling little snowflakes, and mentally regress to their early childhood, becoming offended by every little word or action and scurrying away to hide in their safe spaces.
Mother nature, in her infinite wisdom, is slowly removing the useless excess population.
Early reports are always filled with confusion, panic, rumor and conflating the info of many sources. Takes time to settle it all down and work out what really happened.
Right now it sounds like a disturbed person got around security by cutting thru a fence. Then opened fire on random people.
Because, and only because, police were in attendance at this event their response was uncommonly rapid. Or at least it is claimed to be, some reports say it took a while to kill the attacker while others say the shooting took all of a minute from first shot to dead bad guy.
So then, so far we have a case where the gun laws did nothing. The killer did as he pleased, including making efforts to bypass the security designed to keep guns out. Metal detectors at the entrance don’t help when the attacker makes his own entrance.
Time frame is questionable, Chief says less than a minute, witnesses are all over the map from a minute to up to 5 or 6 minutes.Time is way different when you are under fire a minute can seem like (and sometimes is) a lifetime..
Spent the day outside yesterday set up at an antique show. IN ILLinois. Yep a gun was ready in my car. Rarely do we do events with large crowd’s unarmed. While this doesn’t count as mass murder it certainly COULD HAVE. Commiefornia is so screwed…
@former water walker. What good does your gun do you in your car? Unless it’s in a vault, it’s accessible to any dirtbag with a rock, who just might start shooting up the place with your gun. Have fun trying to explain that to the D.A.
Man this sucks, three dead and multiple wounded in California and one dead with multiple wounded in NYC the same weekend at what should have been a fun weekend for groups of innocent people.. I have attended the Gilroy Garlic festival and hauled truckloads of garlic across the country to NY and Canada. Those people are hard working, down to earth normal everyday folks who did not DESERVE this as suggested by some on here. Not everyone in California is a Liberal, Socialist, Communist like those in SF, LA and cannot be blamed for the way those people lead the state.. It’s been several years since I parked my rig for the last time but I hope this does not affect the attitudes of the people I’ve me in that area…..
“People were throwing tables and cutting fences to get out.” This statement is pretty scary. People caged and panicked.
How were they cutting down fences? Even pocket knives were banned?
If it took the cops 60 seconds to get this guy, and I doubt the press in accurate about that. I bet a law abiding ccw holder who was closer to the shooter could have gotten him in 10 seconds. Because he would have seen him pull his weapon out of the rifle case before the cops would have seen him.
MB: I was LITERALLY a few feet from my car all day. And I am otherwise “armed”. DUH…
We almost went to this.
The garlic festival has been a staple for those of us in the Bay Areas for a long time.
The event promoters did everything right that they would normally do.
Kudos to the LEO’s who did respond quickly although that is little solace to those who died.
Bottom line crazy will find away, if not with a gun, then a bomb, or a large truck, or something to cause destruction.
Shooter is Santino Legan, who self identifies as Italian/Iranian.
Just an update from the press conference just now – they say the shooter used an ‘assault ak type weapon’ but they did say it was an SKS bought in Nevada.
Two things (or maybe three or four) The weapon was described as an “assault weapon” AK-47 type and then confirmed to be an SKS.. The only things an SKS and an AK-47 have in common are a similar gas operating system, both were designed in Russia and both use 7.62×39 ammo (no detachable magazine, no pistol grip).. An SKS has never been considered an assault rifle by anyone I know.. And unless the guy had modified his with custom or aftermarket furniture it doesn’t fit the “SCARY” rifle scenario the gun grabbers look for….
But but it was scary looking!!!! WE MUST BAN IT!!!
Don’t worry I am sure they will fast track a law…
As the immortal Bard once said, a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.
It’s a distinction without a difference, it is a 762X 39 projectile followed immediately by nine more at a minimum. If it was retrofitted with a 20 or 30 round magazine, even more.
I can assure you that the dead and bleeding have no idea whether it was an assault rifle or grandpa’s squirrel gun.
And another group that cares not for the hair-splitting distinctions of definitions is the majority of the American citizens, who are outraged by the carnage and will act soon.
This is a very good time for POTG to act with restraint and dignity, and demonstrate the maturity of the vast majority of America is gone owners.
Okay. Listen up hillbillies. These horrific shootings have nothing to do with gun-free zones or the fact the people should carry guns to protect themselves or even that better fences need to be built. It has everything to do with the number of guns in this country. WE DON’T NEED THEM. We are a country of laws not idiots running around with their enhanced penis’s. 200+ million guns in a country our size is flat out insane. What the hell do you need so many guns and weapons (AR-15’s) of mass destruction for? Every civilized country has stringent laws on guns and who can purchase them. Why don’t we? Why the hell would anyone need an AR-15 (which is a bonafide assault rifle)? Why would you need a pistol that holds 17+ rounds? I can see that an honest, law-abiding hunter would need a couple of bolt action rifles. That is his hobby. I get it. But an assault weapon that holds 30 rounds of the most devastating, carnage induced ammo, that could pierce the hood of a car, is not needed.
You jethro’s will learn a hard lessons in 2021. When assault style rifles are banned and magazines over 10 rounds are banned and when you will need to wait 3 weeks before you can pick up that pistol at the gun shop – if you pass the mandatory background and mental health check. If you don’t think Kamala is going to burn down your crosses of gun culture you are in for a big surprise. Get educated and do something else.
@Vlad: Venezuela.
(Comments from the “TLDR” crowd are welcome.)
Unlikely. Trumpenreich starts this fall and soon all you liberals will be in Trumps secret concentration camps out west. I just applied to be a camp tower guard so I know this to be true.
Wait you applied too??
I met another guy who got hired! hey maybe we can all be bunk mates!!
Bunkmates?
As George Takei would say:
Oh, my!
I’ve applied for a job loading the cattle cars. Beers are on me!
My Brother-In-Law honestly believes Trump will pack off all the liberals to death camps (he protested the inauguration with his pink kitty hat).
It is interesting, they never seem to have problems finding people to load the cattle cars.
This time it’s beer, last time it was schnapps.
It is said history repeats itself, the first time is a tragedy and the next time as a farce.
Funny he thinks we are all hillbillies.
Do I have an enhanced penis??? Oh wait till my wife finds out she will be thrilled!!!
Can someone please explain what a “bonafide assault rifle” is???
OMG ammo, that could pierce the hood of a car!!!! hahahhaa yeah that 22 guage steel is so darn thick there right Jethro??? We probably shouldn’t tell him a 22 plinker will do the same!
My gosh the drive by ignorance on this post is drool inducing.
Oh you must be talking about the illustrious ex California AG/current U.S. Senator that has already promised to make over 350 billion dollars available for “African-Americans” to buy homes and go to school.. The very same who listened to Tupac in college 10 years before he recorded his first album, that Kamala that has admitted that she would be a “TYRANT” as POTUS, the Kamala that covered up staff accusations of sexual misconduct/harassment, and lied about her “bussing” experiences as a small school girl? Once again your ignorance has successfully astounded me and I know you must thank God daily that breathing is a reflex action lest you suffocate as your only available brain cell seems preoccupied with dreaming up your bullshit fantasies..
What do you think is going to happen to YOU when that political whore burns down America’s gun culture? That’s what I want to know.
Vlad, are you projecting your wants onto others? Just because you don’t think you need a firearm doesn’t mean others don’t need one as well. Are you also projecting your lack of self control onto others. If you think you are normal, then everyone must be like you. And that probably scares you.
Zero sympathy for sheeple that choose to keep their heads in the sand drifting through life relying on others when misfortune visits.
We have the internet and access to a wealth of information that people never had before. Zero excuse for not being informed.
Darwinism. Move on.
Who are you talking about?
But, Cali has gun bans and extreme Nazi Gun Laws! How could this happen?
Did this criminals not know about these gun laws and follow them?
Its illegal to kill or shoot innocent people!
Yea murder has been illegal since the beginning!
You just can’t trust a criminal to obey the rules….
I’ll bet you a dollar this guy was pissed off because he was thrown out of the garlic festival for smoking pot in public. I really hate living in commiefornia.
The Gilroy Garlic Festival southeast of San Francisco. SECURITY IS TIGHT — FESTIVAL-GOERS PASS THROUGH METAL DETECTORS AND THEIR BAGS ARE SEARCHED.
Well that Security stopped what?? Oh Yeah it stopped the honest victims……
More gun control fail ..more children and people dead… with their blood on the Commie Gun Control politicians and Anti-gunners hands!
If people there were armed………lives could of been saved!
This will continue to happen until these cowards get shot b4 they ever get to harm another person.
I wonder how many shootings there would be if all the shooters got hanged or executed??
Or every shooter got gunned down by citizen defenders every time they tried to hurt innocent civilians!
Usually hanging includes getting dead. Unless the hangman screws it up. But everyone deserves a 2nd chance. 😉
I agree the public should be permitted to be armed in public places, and Christmas Hill Park is a City of Gilroy park. Banning the carrying of firearms, concealed especially, is un-Consitutional and stupid.
There is no “Commie” gun control anywhere in the USA. Communism is a very specific thing, a specific form of evil. I don’t suppose it will ever entirely die out, evil has a way of holding on that way. But it’s been beaten down very low in this country and for a long time.
Gun Control is damned foolishness perpetuated by the scared, the panicked, the unthinking. There’s even been the odd Republican or Blue Dog Dem that has slipped into that mind trap, from time to time.
Executing criminals would do little to deter others but would at least prevent recidivism. I’m good with that, just have a couple of concerns. Need to know we get the right person, never kill an innocent by mistake. And I want us to be honest about executing the scum of the Earth, we do it for punishment and revenge. When facing up to evil, punishment and revenge are morally just and entirely proper.
So why make up false reasons for doing the right thing?
I say if we capture a mass shooter in the act, got all manner of video and eye witness proof. Got chemical proof from all the fresh gun powder residue. Fingerprints and DNA on the gun and the magazines and ammo. Well hell that ought to cover the bases just fine. Stand him naked on a stump in the center of a hog pen and shoot him in the head.
That’s it, job well done, head out for steak and beers!
(lives could of been saved!) Actually in this case that might not necessarily be true.. This guy slipped in through a concealed section of fence and opened fire into a crowd without warning.. It’s called an ambush and there is little you can do to defend against its initial success.. The shooter might possibly have been engaged sooner and maybe even dispatched much more quickly but the death toll and wounded count would probably have been the same… The FURTHER loss of life would have been the positive outcome of the presence of armed civilians as proven out by the rapid response of the cops which turned the shooter from his cowardly offense to a most likely scared shitless defensive position..
The Stats prove beyond all doubt that the majority of mass shootings are done by Right Wing Nut cases. The kid was more than likely started down the path of racism by what he heard at home when growing up from his parents. Many times such parents are lower income and uneducated and tend to blame societies problems on anyone not of their particular white tribe and religion.
Not that I would doubt your estimable words…however, at this point I have to believe that you are engaging in gross hyperbole since your blatant claim is unsubstantiated. Source(s), cites, references, etc would be appreciated by those of us who do not operate solely on emotion and feelz.
It’s bullshit whether a right winger is blaming it all on lefties or a left winger is blaming it all on righties. Damned near all the claims like these I have followed up on turn out to be blatant lies. The typical mass shooter is not doing it over any factional politics. They are doing it because they have some severe mental defect that over time evolves into violence. That’s it.
There are exceptions, sure. But outside of Terrorism, not that many.
VLAD…. VLAD….VLAD…. Veritable Lies And Deceit … Must be allowance time, got to please the Master or you won’t get yours…
More guns Newt, more guns! Damn it, we need more guns!
Some peoples di sumpin – Omar
Little or Khayyam?
We have an ID. Santino William Legan, 19. A spanish name. Well he doesn’t fit the propaganda profile does he? This story will disappear very quickly.
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/garlic-festival-mass-shooting-gilroy-california-victims-suspect-santino-william-legan-live-updates/
The Libertarians Liberals and the Left are going to make this story go away.
“Legan, Who Identifies as Being of Italian & Iranian Descent”
https://heavy.com/news/2019/07/santino-william-legan/
Wrong… They are already calling him an angry white male. This is going to be “white Hispanic” all over again.
They can’t avoid is spanish name and his family Persian history. Down the memory hole he goes.
His family’s Persian history?
Dude, his grandfather graduated from West Point. He is a white supremacist who’s writing show he opposed both Hispanic immigrants and Silicon Valley workers.
miner49er
US Army Maj. Nidal Hasan held the record for the worst mass shooting until the Las Vegas massacre. He looks like a WHITE MAN to me!!! His family geography don’t matter to me either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nidal_Hasan
Yes, the Fort Hood shooter is an interesting case. He was born in the US, but was later radicalized. He served 20 years in US Army, and there were many who thought during his service that his work with combat traumatized GIs was very stressful for him. With his contact with radical Islam clerics, his stress and frustration found a terrible outlet.
Just as a Christian inquisition put Jews and Muslims to death, fundamentalist Islam is equally threatening to the world.
But, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, today’s Islamic radicals are probably the most dangerous religious sect but in the 30s and 40s I would’ve said Catholicism, because of their allegiance with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
miner49er
Yes, white europeans were putting each other into gas chambers in the 1940s. And the that included white muslims putting white christians and white jews into gas chambers in the former Yugoslavia during the same time frame.
Also the white muslims were working with the white european atheist leader Hitler, to get rid of the white people in the the arab world as well. All tho they did tend to be a darker hue in that part of the world.
Chris, Hitler was no atheist.
He was a devout Christian who believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ. He was familiar with the biblical stories about the life of Jesus, and approved of Jesus his actions.
“Mein Kampf also shows a bizarrely racialized interpretation of Christianity:
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. . . . And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God.”
Don’t believe the propaganda from the organize Christian religion, from the crusades to the inquisition to the Vatican’s deals with Hitler and Mussolini, the Christian religion has been responsible for much suffering and death.
But so have all the other religions.
Perhaps with the exception of the Buddhists, they are mostly peaceful and have a sweet reverence for all life.
Whataboutism anyone?
Someone: Hey, look, a non-white, non-christian did something bad currently / recently.
Miner49: Oh yeah? What about Christians centuries ago? Huh? What about that? See, whites and Christians are the worst! They’re basically Nazis!
miner49er
You lose points using Christopher Hitchens name. A former Brit atheist who couldn’t cut it in his home county. He like so many other, human parasites, came to this country and try to make it like the sh*t hole they came from. Hitchens was a gun grabber. He hated 2A civil rights.
Hr never supported the 1st amendment (religion). But he did support the 1st amendment (pornography). A typical left wing atheist hypocrite pig. He also supported the communist takeover of Hong Kong.
He will be smiling up from Hell when the tanks roll into Hong Kong. Just like they rolled into Tiananmen Square. I wonder if he supported, or made excuses for, the communist government massacre of the thousands of people back then?
I will have to research this. Thank you.
How’s that Gun control workin’ out for y’all out their in CA?
The reporting must be incorrect as Commiefornia has some of the strictest gun control on the books.
Well, California is number 23 for mass shootings per capita so that’s kind of middle of the pack.
OTH, Florida is number one, for mass shootings per capita, and their gun laws are relatively lax so there’s that.
You keep bringing up the rate difference between California (19 mass shootings) and Florida (11), but fail to mention how incredibly small that difference in rate is (.00003512, a single digit percent change). The laws are radically more strict in CA, but show very little difference in the rate of mass shooting deaths.
Why is CA, a state with such strict firearms laws, in the middle of the pack by your stats? Shouldn’t they be at the bottom, or at least near it?
But if you want to draw a causation based on correlation with a tiny data set, which you’ve done, I’ll play that game too. Both Arizona and Hawaii show 1 mass shooting death each over the last 17 years. Arizona’s population is 17M, Hawaii’s 1.5M. Hawaii, which has much more strict gun laws than Arizona, has a mass shooting rate several multiples higher. Based on the rate of mass shootings, gun laws clearly increase mass shootings.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/811541/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-state/
Actually Arizona’s population is a little over 7 million, but your point remains the same.
dph, thanks for the correction
SHHH!!! facts will hurt their feelings and then you’ll need to create a safe space for them to cower in.
“Both Arizona and Hawaii show 1 mass shooting death each over the last 17 years. ”
Arizona has had one mass shooting death over the last 17 years?
Does the name Jared Loughner mean anything to you?
Six dead, he played guilty to 19 charges of attempted murder.
It is interesting that you limit your statistic to the last 17 years that cleverly trims off the 1991 Buddhist temple shooting with 9 dead.
And you choose to not mention the arson cover up shootings in 2006 with five shot to death.
White supremacist JT ready shot 4 in 2012, why did you failed to mention that mass shooting, that was just seven years ago.
And how about the Phoenix family shooting, five members of one family shot to death in 2015.
Are all of those mass shootings just fake news from the MSM? Or are you intentionally concealing mass shooting event in order to prove your point.
When you come out with statements like this that are obviously false it becomes difficult to except any of your comments as fact.
Miner49er, I cited my source and provided a link to it. I also specifically called out in another post that you responded to that the reason why all of those statistics were invalid was because the sample set was so small that you could skew the outcome entirely depending on what years you included.
It’s also clear you didn’t look up the definition of “mass shooting” when you cited your statistic about the mass shooting rate in California vs. Florida. That stat is using the FBI’s definition. I’m guessing you’d be surprised to find out some your examples fall outside of it, and the other falls outside of the data set I cited.
Thanks for proving my point, again!
Miner, the incidents other than Loughner don’t meet the definition of “public mass shooting”.
How’s your nonsense when you include Chicago?
Chicago is one continuous mass shooting that never stops.
Florida really isn’t a super lax gun law state which liberals claim, especially compared to most southern states. It doesn’t even have open carry which 45 states do.
Florida is not a traditional open carry state.
Open Carry is lawful while engaged in, or going directly to and from, lawful Target Shooting, Hunting, Fishing, and Camping expeditions.
Defining degree of faithfulness to the Constitution’s prohibition against infringement as “relatively lax” is offensive. Would you claim a state has lax voting laws because it permits women and blacks to vote? Various organizations do report grades on state gun laws, but methodologies vary, if at all revealed.
That aside, there is no universally accepted standard for “mass shooting.” Even the FBI does not report that as an official category of crime. So trying correlate legal climates with criminal outcomes of this type is fraudulent, as anyone is free to make up their own definitions and to include or exclude figures to serve their purpose.
I don’t know about mass shootings, however those are defined in this case, but the per capita murder rate is not correlated with strictness of firearms regulations (as assessed by the Brady Foundation) across states. Both sides could cherry pick examples of states that are low or high, but overall there’s no relationship. Which is why you will never see murder rated in all states plotted vs. Brady score, especially not from the Brady Foundation. Have to do that yourself if you are interested.
California is #3 for mass shootings per capita in age, income, education, other key cohort based risk factors, and background crime adjusted rates.
A given Californian is MUCH more violent with guns than his/her same age, income, education,race match in Florida.
I know the gun control lobby hates controls of well understood relevant variables because that consistently shows places with more gun laws have more murder, not less,
Lol whatever. You failed to mention how California has the strictest gun laws but they still have the most mass killings.
You say California has more mass shootings than any other state?
And I’m sure you and many others believe this, fascinating.
The fact is, Florida ranks number one in the past five years, with a greater population. In Florida has reasonably lax gun laws with hundreds of thousands of permit holders. So while the mass shootings in Florida.
From an article by the AJC:
State shootings per capita:m
1. Nevada (Vegas shooting skews this)
2. Washington D.C.
3. Louisiana
4. Illinois
5. Mississippi
6. Tennessee
7. Alabama
8. Missouri
9. Florida
10. Georgia
Since 2014, 11 more people died in mass shootings in Florida than in California, where private ownership of assault rifles is banned. And California has more than twice as many people as Florida.
And California ranks number 23 for mass shootings per capita.
Did the lax gun laws lead to Parkland, who knows, more research needed.
By “assault rifles,” I am assuming you mean the complete arbitrarily-defined term “assault weapon,” which is a political creation, in which case, guns functionally identical to those banned are not banned, and thus one can for the most part own the same guns as in Florida.
Citations?
@miner
dude trust me
JWT, you are still maintaining that Arizona has had only one mass shooting death in the past 17 years?
And you are dismissing all of the factual events that I listed, amazing.
And you believe that the FBI does not define Jared Loughner’s shooting of six people and wounding of a dozen more as a mass shooting?
I’m not sure what planet you’re on but it’s not the same one that I share with my neighbors up the holler here.
Why do you keep changing the subject? (And point of fact the number I listed was 1, with a cited source. Maybe do the tiniest amount of work, follow the link and see which shooting it was.)
You said that “gun laws do work”. You cited California’s mass shooting rate being lower than Florida’s as evidence. It is, but by so infinitesimally small a margin as to be meaningless because of the sample size. I used the same definition to show that Arizona’s rate is far lower than Hawaii’s. I can do the exact same thing with several states. Again, to prove the point that because the sample size of those numbers is so incredibly small, they are completely meaningless and can be used to create whatever outcome you would like. Why do you keep ignoring that? By providing examples outside of the data set you originally chose, you’re only proving my point.
Here’s what actual meaningful data looks like. It includes a massive data set and is from The Trace none the less: https://www.thetrace.org/2017/05/states-gun-crime-gotten-worse-since-1990s/
Well would you look at that? The “gun crime” in California has fallen at a slightly lower rate than the “gun crime” in Texas. And at the same time, California has further restricted firearms ownership and carry, and Texas has dramatically increased it. If gun laws worked, this could not be the case.
Quit changing the subject and ignoring facts when they don’t fit your narrative. Gun laws don’t work.
Deja vu. We had this conversation before. If you want to look at the effectiveness of gun laws, you have to look at all criminal gun use, not just mass shootings.
Gun control laws have no effect upon mass murderers.
And California is not communist, it’s liberal. Two vastly different things.
Not as different as you think.
Wow, I just noticed your handle! Ragnar red beard was the nom de guerre of the book worshipped by the garlic shooter. In the book Ragnar advocates anti-sematism and other racist views.
So Ragnar, I guess you’re hip to the vibe of your namesake’s book?
Wow, maybe I am for restricting private firearms ownership, some of you folks make me very nervous. Like Donald Trump said, maybe we should just take their guns and worry about the courts later.
Yeah… California is about as “liberal” as the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union was not liberal. It began as a Utopian Marxist-Socialist coup and rapidly evolved into a brutal dictatorship and police state.
and…
“muh’ not real socialism” right on que. Get bent commie.
@enuf
Exactly. Like California.
“Liberal” means total opposite of what the leftists are.
He bought his “AK” in Nevada, so California gun control laws would not apply. It is because of California’s gun control laws that he had to buy his guns out of state.
You state the shooter had to buy his gun out of state because of California’s gun laws.
Thanks for making the point that gun laws do help make it difficult for criminals to purchase their weapons.
Now, if Nevada had just as restrictive gun laws perhaps this shooter would not have been able to obtain a weapon at all. As it was, he had to acquire transportation and go to a gun shop in Nevada to find a weapon.
Just like someone that wants to get high on pot wouldn’t bother because their state doesn’t allow pot to be purchased at the store? Do you really believe that nonsense you spout?
Few casualties because: good guys with guns stopped the bad guy within 1 minute.
That very simple fact will be altered by advocates for the disarmament of citizens very soon.
Watch and see how it will be pushed as “who” ended it quickly and not “why” it was ended quickly. Narrative, narrative, narrative.
“Police responded within a minute, engaged the suspect and killed him, Smithee said.”
That doesn’t mean the police shot anyone within a minute, only that they showed up on scene within a minute.
Not surprising, since they were already on the scene. Any such festival has a police presence.
Well, no they don’t. The Vardaman Sweet Potato Festival in MS is very popular and draws large crowds for MS. Been there several times, including last year. Zero police or any other security presence, except for me and many other attendees carrying side arms. Never been anyone shot there. Just good food, good music, and a good time all around. 🙂
Why? My father hated garlic but never shot anyone. They said had pretty solid protection. I would not even think of something like this at Garlic Festival. But then I would not think of something like this anytime. Would be interesting to know why he was Mad? Next I find most mass shootings Democrat backed. Every School shooting has been Democrats. Most mass has too. Do as we say not what we do!
Please provide citations to back up your claim that most school shootings are Democrat backed, I would find that very interesting, thank you
Seriously? LMGTFY? The truth is out there…
Democrat backed in that almost all of the Democrat politicians and their gun control allies love to dance in the blood of the victims.
Well, that’s just empty speech.
Let’s allow Tom to provide the citation to back up his claim
That’s bullshit. Most mass shooters have no particular political affiliation.
And those who do are distinctly leftist…the guy who shot Steve Scalise, Jared Loughner the loon who shot Gabby Giffords, Nidal Hasan, Aaron Alexis, Seung-Hui Cho, Amy Bishop, etc. Many of these were somewhat crazy, but that does seem to help people vote for Democrats.
The guy who shot up Vegas was clearly a lefty but that was suppressed.
Again, do you have any evidence to back up your claim that the Las Vegas shooter was a lefty? Please post here, thanks!
Let’s see miner if he had shot up oh let’s say a gay pride parade, there wouldn’t be any question about his political motivations, would there? But no, when he shoots up a country music festival everyone’s all “oh well what a mystery guess we’ll never know.” Right. All you liberals are the same. You’re not special or unique. I just hope I live long enough to watch your reactionary hyper right wing children eat you alive.
This just in, the shooter was a white 19-year-old neo Nazi white supremacist. His grandfather was a West Point graduate. From his Instagram posts he appears to oppose both Hispanic immigrants and Silicon Valley workers.
“Legan also shared his views that include fringe white supremacist book written in 1890. Called “…one of the most incendiary works ever to be published anywhere,” by a noted anarchist, Legan quoted from the book in a post accompanied by a Smokey the Bear sign about fire danger. He wrote: “Read Might Is Right by Ragnar Redbeard. Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white twats?”
Wait, he’s a white supremacist that lumps mestizos in with whites? Are you sure you know what “white supremacist” means?
To Taylor.
Sorry your half assed try to duck the truth which is that most mass murderes are White Supremacists nut cases. The surveys prove it beyond. all doubt
This just in shooter was black Muslim socialist. See how easy that is?
In your case it’s easy to be wrong.
https://heavy.com/news/2019/07/santino-william-legan/
Are you suggesting that a non white can become a white supremacist? Because if that’s true, then liberals and multiculturalists have a very serious problem on their hands.
Well, we do know that he spoke of whites in a derogatory manner:
Legan wrote: “Read Might Is Right by Ragnar Redbeard. Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white twats?” Mestizos is a term used to describe someone of mixed descent, but specifically white and Hispanic and/or white and Native Indian. He appeared to have used it in a derogatory manner.
I followed the link above for this. Maybe it will take a day or two to sort out?
Why did you include that one of his grandfather’s graduated from West Point, but failed to mention his other grandfather was Iranian, moved to the US, and was a professor at UT and UCLA?
You seem to have a habit of omitting facts that don’t fit a particular narrative.
He certainly wasn’t black or Latino, he was a privilege child of the suburbs who believed in white supremacy and considers himself white.
Adolf Hitler had Jewish ancestry but he hated the Jews and totally believed in the supremacy of the white race.
Regan hated the Latino immigrants and the Silicon Valley workers who he probably viewed as elitist liberals, but it’s hard to say until we know more.
Quit dodging the question. Why did you ignore the fact that he considered himself of Iranian ancestry and that his grandfather was Iranian and taught at UCLA? Why did you only include his other grandfather that graduated from West Point? Why one and not the other?
Why is ancestry so important to you, it in no way is a predictor of behavior. His early environment during the critical period, birth to five years of age, is the primary driver of his personality development.
It makes no difference is ancestry, there are many with mixed ancestery who hate a particular element of their genetic background. As I pointed out, Hitler had Jewish ancestry but that didn’t stop him from killing 6 million Jews.
Does having Iranian ancestry two generations back automatically make you a terrorist?
Are all Italian Americans members of the mafia?
Self-hate is not rational.
It is telling that you picked up only on the heritage, and not the college professor at notoriously liberal schools part.
But again, you changed the subject. Quit dodging.
Answer the question.
JWT, you are the one that picked up on the heritage first, I believe the shooter’s problem was religious radicalization laid on top of mental illness.
None of my comments have his race mentioned, just the fact that he was a white supremacist. Again, there are many racists who hate a particular element in their gene pool, self hatred is rarely internally consistent.
I understand that you want to mention his Iranian ancestry two generations back because it is important to you that the Iranians are bad guys.
Are Italian American members of the mafia motivated by their Italian heritage?
Are the members of MS 13 motivated by their central American heritage?
In the aforementioned two instances, I’d say their motivation is greed laid on top of mental illness but people’s internal motivations are often a mystery to everyone, including themselves.
Quit dodging the question.
Miner49er,
You just wrote:
“JWT, you are the one that picked up on the heritage first…:” and “None of my comments have his race mentioned…”
In this same post, on this SAME THREAD, just a few comments above, you opened up with:
“This just in, the shooter was a white 19-year-old neo Nazi white supremacist. His grandfather was a West Point graduate.”
Are you high?
Jwt, my description is not opinion, it’s taken directly from an eyewitness account:
“Julissa Contreras, who was standing within 20 feet of the shooter, told CNN’s Natalie Allen the gunman “looked like the average guy.
“White, about in his 30s, under 6 feet. He was wearing tactical gear, had a baseball cap on, sunglasses, and he had a semi-automatic rifle. He was dressed for what he was there to do.”
Miner, I am not trying to be rude, I am really asking this so that I can communicate with you better. Do you have some kind of reading disability?
A coward and a POS, hope he rots and burns in Hell !!
Just as the Christchurch New Zealand shooter wanted to force the government to have gun control by murdering people and the synagogue shooter in California stated the same thing. That he wanted the state to increase the number of California gun control laws by murdering Jews. I wonder if this shooter also wanted to force the government’s hand in writing more gun control laws in the state of California?
If all else fails the left will simply murder its way to force laws to be written that they cannot get by debating people on the issues. That is exactly what happened at the baseball field. The Democrats socialist tried to murder the Republican government in Congress.
What did he write on his social media pages? And will they be quickly erased?
The shooters at the Denver school two homosexuals the children of an illegal alien. And their social media has disappeared. Why wonder why?????
I am really surprised that pe-lousy and her black crows aren’t screaming for more gun control , what do you want to bet the shooter is from a life-long democrat family????
Yep, this shooter seems to be a real liberal Democrat… Wait a minute, this just in.
“Legan also shared his views that include fringe white supremacist book written in 1890. Called “…one of the most incendiary works ever to be published anywhere,” by a noted anarchist, Legan quoted from the book in a post accompanied by a Smokey the Bear sign about fire danger. He wrote: “Read Might Is Right by Ragnar Redbeard. Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white twats?”
Yeah a guy named Santiago is a real hardcore white supremacist I’m sure.
If this guy is, it actually really harms the cause of liberalism more then you think. If Latinos can be radicalized into white supremacists, you have a serious problem on your hands.
If you are going to make politics an issue, about 90% of mass shooting — and over 90% of murder are committed by Democrats in Democrat run paces — no one even attempts to debunk that.
Do you have any facts or a citation to back up your obvious BS? If so, please post here, thanks!
The book the murderer quoted is an eco-anarchist book:
“Might Is Right, or The Survival of the Fittest, is a book by pseudonymous author Ragnar Redbeard. First published in 1890, it heavily advocates egoist anarchism, amorality, consequentialism and psychological hedonism. In Might Is Right, Redbeard rejects conventional ideas of human and natural rights and argues that only strength or physical might can establish moral right (à la Callicles or Thrasymachus). The book also attacks Christianity and Democracy. Friedrich Nietzsche’s theories of master–slave morality and herd mentality serve as a clear inspiration for Redbeard’s book written contemporaneously.[1]
Individualist Anarchist historian James J. Martin called it “surely one of the most incendiary works ever to be published anywhere.”[2] This refers to the controversial content such as the viewpoint that weakness should be regarded with hatred and the strong and forceful presence of Social Darwinism in the text. There are also controversial parts of the book that deal with race and male–female relations, claiming that the woman and the family as a whole is the property of the man.
“
I find it interesting actually. A lot of the ideology in Right is Might ties to Friedrich Nietzsche. His original writings were not racist, however his works were reworked by his sister after his death to fit her German nationalist views. It is sort of an unusual mix as might is fringe even for most “white Supremacist groups”.
The individual anarchist ideals seem to fit more inline with people affiliated with ANTIFA, but not even there really. The book itself has ties within the Church of Satan in fact LaVey recognized as influences, including Ragnar Redbeard.
That doesn’t seem to fit the narrative of your typical alt-right.
Legan wrote: “Read Might Is Right by Ragnar Redbeard. Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white twats?” Mestizos is a term used to describe someone of mixed descent, but specifically white and Hispanic and/or white and Native Indian. He appeared to have used it in a derogatory manner.
I got that from the same place.
One woman one child. and dead shooter. sounds like possible domestic. If it had been an intentional high casualty mass shooting even with a bullet button rifles lot more would be dead. Almost all Injuries seem to be from running panic or from the multiple rapid shots fired by police in a crowded place.
We had a woman kill two of her kids due to custody dispute around the corner from us six months ago — no national coverage since she did not use a gun.
Chris, what episode of a mother killing her two children was not carried by mainstream media? Is it the one I post here below, the news story by the CNN affiliate? This story seems to have received national coverage, and mom killed them with her bare hands by her own statement.
“A New York woman accused of killing her two toddler daughters is in custody and faces two counts of second-degree murder, authorities said.
Tenia Campbell’s mother called 911 on Thursday and said her daughter was “threatening to kill herself and her twin 2-year-old daughters,”Suffolk County Police said Friday.
The mother, Vanessa McQueen, told the operator that her 24-year-old daughter, a Long island resident, indicated the girls were already dead, Suffolk Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart said.
“I killed them with my bare hands,” Campbell said, according to a written statement by her mother, CNN affiliate WABC reported.”
Chris, what episode of a mother killing her two children was not carried by mainstream media?”
”
there are many cases of a parent killing a kid or two that never make it to mass media. You have a claim form a prior post that Australia has no mass murder, and I posted about the murder of eight kids with a knife in Australia that got barely a blip.
The fact is 90% of US murder is criminals killing criminals. If you are not a criminal you are safer int eh US than most developed democracies.
Chris, so you don’t have a citation for your claim of two killed by their mother that you say did not receive national coverage. OK, I see what you’re doing.
Not domestic violence. The dead are unrelated. The dead 6-year-old was with his mother and grandmother, who were wounded in the hand and leg. His father was at home with the 9-year-old daughter. This is the epitome of senseless violence and trying to rack up a body count. Whatever he was mad about wasn’t caused by the people he murdered. I’m sorry the police killed the gunman so efficiently. The 8A would have prevented him from receiving his deserved punishment anyway, like being draw and quartered or used as a cancer test subject.
It seems as if mass shootings, particularly those occurring in public places, are THE driving force for gun control. (Granted, mass school shootings are an important part as well; but I think the public places venue is more important.)
This strikes me as curious in that 2/3’rds of gunshot deaths are suicides while almost all the remainder are one-on-one or fewer than the definition of “mass” shootings. Be that as it may, we must try to identify the motivating forces and deal with them such as they are.
What could conceivably be done to reduce mass shootings? Most of the possibilities are either impractical or ineffective.
Securing the perimeter is impractical. Imagine picking some definition of “mass”; suppose we say that every venue with 100 or 1000 people present is a mass venue. Now, how could we possibly afford to secure all the perimeters of all such venues at all times whenever their populations exceed our defined threshold?
Reducing the number of guns suitable to purpose would be ineffective. There are 400 million guns in America. Suppose 1/2 are suitable for a mass killing; that’s 200 million. Suppose we reduced this number by an order of magnitude; to 20 million. Would a crazy killer get access to one of them? Suppose we reduced the number by 2 orders of magnitude; 2 million. That would make it more difficult for a crazy killer to get access to one. So, he would likely buy one fabricated in a cottage machine shop or smuggled from abroad.
Could we shut down cottage machine shops? Stop smuggling? Clearly, we’ve been ineffective in shutting down meth labs or stopping drug smuggling. We couldn’t do any better with guns (even if we could imagine reducing the number of applicable weapons from 200 million to 2 million.)
America has suffered from only a relatively few mass public-venue shootings; nearly all of these from native culture/religion crazy people. Do these represent the greatest threat? Or, should we be conscious of some other threat?
America was asleep at the wheel with respect to the prospect of an attack by Japan before WW-2. Could we be asleep today? E.g., could an equally imprudent attack occur from some other Asian country in the foreseeable future? How about such an attack from a middle-eastern country? Or an African, Latin American, country? When was the last time a Mexican bandit crossed our border and raided an American town? (Pancho Villa’s 1916 raid on Columbus NM.) Is there any lawless well-armed force operating near the US border? Just because it hasn’t happened – YET – on American soil doesn’t provide much basis for objective comfort.
If Americans are concerned about the (miniscule) risk of being shot in a public venue by a mass killer of domestic origin, then we should be even more concerned by the enormous potential for such an attack by a foreign-influanced attacker. How could gun control possibly reduce this risk?
The message described above is vastly beyond the attention span of the American voter. Nevertheless, there IS a pertinent audience willing to listen. American law-enforcement officers. Patrol officers; sheriffs/chiefs; state trooper officials. Many of these are military vets; they understand mass public shooting venues.
I wonder if it wouldn’t be cost-effective to make a concerted effort to target the American LE community with this line of reasoning. Ask: ‘What could possibly be effective in preventing, mitigating or stopping a mass shooter in a public venue?’
Cycle through the usual gun-control solutions: UBC; magazine capacity limits; semi-auto actions; registration; reducing the number of certain types of arms; . . . Would any of these have much of an effect on the number of domestic crazies willing to shoot-up a public venue? Would any of these have ANY effect on a foreign-influanced attacker?
What do LE experts know would work? Would police equipped with carbines in public venues be effective in dissuading domestic crazies? Would they be effective in stopping a shooting-in-progress by a foreign-influanced attacker? What is it about police – equipped with carbines – that makes this a potentially effective measure? Is it that they get their W-2 forms from a government agency? Or, is the power to stop a mass killer to be found in the carbine?
Next, ask: ‘Can American taxpayers afford to have a LEO in every (or most) public venues whenever the population exceeds 100 or 1000?’ Would a single officer be enough? Would 2 or 3 be needed to be confident of their effectiveness?
(I think the Mandalay Bay incident would require a formal LEO + carbine solution. Handguns were impotent in that case and would be impotent in comparable cases. In less challenging venues, handguns would be effective; they have proven to be effective. While we can’t afford uniformed cops in every public venue we can easily afford civilian CWPs in nearly every venue. Moreover, in a Mandalay Bay type of venue, we could easily afford civilian marksmen accompanying cops in the sniper+spotter configuration.)
Such an educational campaign (on LEOs) would be a long-hard-slog. Nevertheless, it WOULD be within the extent of our resources. We COULD do this; provided, of course, that we concentrate on precisely this question: ‘What could possibly be effective in preventing, mitigating or stopping a mass shooter in a public venue?’ NOTHING ELSE. (No appeals to the 2A; no insistence on Con-Carry; just this ONE question. A question that they are sworn to be concerned with! They can’t demure claiming: “That’s not my purview.”
Imagine dragging a big-city chief of police into a Congressional committee hearing on gun-controls. Imagine asking her whether she sees proposed gun controls having any effect on mass public shootings. Could she respond: ‘Gee, I haven’t given the question much thought!’ If she responded so she would look like a fool in the wake of a few years of debate in the LEO community on just this question.
Too long. Skipped it.
Too bad. It’s worth reading.
Because you recommended it. I will read it.
@Ing: Remarkable! You have inspired one (count him, 1) “TLDR” to read a few paragraphs.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with reading just one essay. (Probably not one of mine.)
Haha! I never expected it to work. (Maybe that’s the key.)
MarkPA,
The solution: we encourage and help families to be physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy. Such families not only reduce the number of demented individuals who would attempt mass-murder, those very same families would also produce people who were comfortable discussing and implementing real solutions to myriad problems facing our society.
Note that any solution focused on firearms is a fool’s errand since a motivated spree-killer can find countless ways to murder hordes of people.
Also, venues with 1000+ people can easily afford to pay for security overwatch. Suppose an event lasts four hours and event organizers have to pay $800 for two snipers (that is $100 per hour for each sniper) plus $200 for those two snipers to set up their “hides”. That is a total expense of $1000 which costs every attendee $1. In addition to the two paid snipers, local police could assign/divert two officers on-shift to roam around the venue for additional support at no additional cost. Of course this security overwatch expense (amortized per person) goes down significantly when even greater numbers of people attend an event. Once again, the problem is not firearms. The problem is event organizers who do not want to part with a couple thousand dollars. And I imagine snowflakes who do not want to see effective security overwatch (snipers) are another part of the problem.
While I tend to agree I will point out that there’s no way you’re getting “sniper overwatch” from competent and credentialed shooters for $100/hour.
The overhead costs exceed that pricepoint by a lot, probably at least an order of magnitude once insurance costs for this service are figured in, because insurance is going to place demands for enormously high bars on training, continual retraining, certification and all the latest and greatest gear to try to reduce the chance of an errant shot or misidentified target to the lowest possible rate.
You’re going to end up paying the freight, effectively, for two Scout-Sniper teams at each venue.
Seems to me that we need the spotter+sniper combo ONLY at venues characterized by uncontrollable surrounding high-ground positions. NYC’s Times Square; Mandalay Bay. The occasions when there are very large crowds at such venues are exceptional; not the norm.
In some cases there are relatively higher-ground positions but they aren’t a thousand yards away. In such cases equipping a few police with rifles or carbines could be enough.
The most common case is one where there isn’t much of a high-ground position problem. A rifle would be nice; but, most of the shooting will be at pistol range. These seem to be the really economically-challenging cases. The number of potential victim-targets is in the dozens or hundreds. They are EVERYWHERE. Just not enough cops (on and off-shift) to provide adequate coverage. Moreover, we give the crazies a clear map: here are the GFZs; there are the CWP zones.
Will there be a cop in the GFZ when the shooter choses to fire? If he sees the cop, he will wait for a more opportune time. At best, the cop wanders into the shooting zone at just the right time. The only solution for this case that I see is to eliminate the GFZs.
Your comments are rational and concise…thank you for your clarity.
Having lived and worked on the southern border for decades I offer the following in response to one of the points you raised: “Is there any lawless well-armed force operating near the US border?”
Unequivocally > Yes <.
There are reported border incursions dating back to the 80's (when I still lived in Texas / New Mexico) by units of the Mexican Army. The commonly held opinion of the LEO's I talked with at the time was that they were "scouting" and providing "protection" for drug / alien loads in-bound to the US. C&P the following into your search engine: "mexican army incursions into the us". Take the time to scroll through the multitude of pages that return to understand how often this armed force incursion occurs. The Mexican authorities say that it is an accident every time and their troops, vehicle and weapons are all escorted back to Mexico without any consequences. Yet, decades ago an El Paso PD officer was in pursuit of a car thief and crossed into Mexico over the Bridge of the Americas…Mexican Customs allowed the thief to cross unhindered while the officer was arrested and paraded around like a POW…his vehicle, uniform, weapons, etc were all seized by Mexican authorities. El Paso PD eventually got the vehicle (no uniforms, personal possessions or weapons) back in negotiations…the officer was repatriated to the US only after high-level diplomacy intervened.
Rational, yes. Concise, no. Too long. Didn’t read all of it.
You should read all of MarkPA’s comment…it is worth your time.
@Old Guy: Thank you for your support.
I have long ago written off the “TLDR” crowd. They have spent too much time on Twitter; they can’t be redeemed.
It’s up to the rest of us who can still read and think rationally about how to solve problems. I make no special claim to profound insight. Still, occasionally an idea occurs to me that I think worth sharing.
Do we PotG think we might get somewhere “preaching to the choir”? If we could focus for more than 30 seconds on one issue – mass shootings in public venues – wouldn’t we quickly come to the conclusion that “gun control” has the least likelihood of preventing deaths? Wouldn’t we come to the conclusion that returning effective fire (often with carbines or rifles) is just about the only effective response? IF this were so, what audience would be the easiest to convince of our analysis? Wouldn’t it be LEOs and vets? Aren’t these folks our “choir”?
Look at it the opposite way. Suppose we conclude that we can’t convince “the choir” of the wisdom of our viewpoint? Were that our conclusion then shouldn’t we conclude that our political cause is lost?
If we COULD get LEOs and vets to discuss this one narrow issue – mass shooters in public venues – and come to their own rational conclusions, what might that mean to the political situation? If LEOs and vets testified before Congress and their state legislators that shooting back is the only effective – and economical – solution, then wouldn’t that undermine the cry for more gun-control?
As a Vet and retired LEO I approve your message…campaign speak for you’re correct.
This is a discussion my regular range group has frequently immersed ourselves in (we are all former LEO’s of one flavor or another, two of us were tactical Paramedics and four of us served sometime between 1963 and 1982 in various DoD agencies).
@Old Guy: Thank you again.
Do you and your group believe (or doubt) that it does any good to encourage vets and LEOs to discuss this line of reasoning?
Admittedly, if 1 or 100 or 1,000 LEOs and vets reach the right conclusion it can’t possibly make a difference. But what if the awakened eventually numbered 10,000 or 100,000? Could that happen? If it did, could chiefs and mayors and legislators keep them all silent?
Or, would their neighbors learn of their seditious thoughts?
Mass shootings are a terrible thing. So much worse than bombs and arson; to say nothing of poison. The difference among these is that – apparently, possibly – there IS something we can do about mass shootings. We the People can shoot back. How do we stop a bomb; or a Molotov cocktail? How do we stop poison?
Our thoughts are that the more good guys with a firearm the better the survival chances become for whatever group or venue is targeted during a wanton shooting spree. We encourage non-shooters and Fuddy-type shooters to join us for informal tips on improving their situational awareness, marksmanship, weapon handling, etc. It is a slow process…many shooters believe that they are “doing it” correctly and it is a balancing act to offer coaching that does not “offend” them. I was recently in the Seattle area and being bored looked up several Ranges that I could get to fairly easily (traffic sux along the I-5 corridor). Just about all of the Ranges I contacted do not allow human silhouette or photo-realistic law enforcement targets. At one store / range I asked the clerk “what reason do most people give for purchasing and practicing with a handgun”, response “self-defense”. To which I replied that shooting paper plates and mag dumps into splatter targets are a poor training substitute for learning to engage a human target, he agreed and said that “the anti-gun fanatics in King and Snohomish counties would go apesh*t if they saw people practicing on realistic targets”.
When I was in Management at a LEA I purchased copies of Lt. Col Grossman’s two excellent books: On Killing and On Combat. I made them available for my officers to checkout and read. The general consensus was that On Combat was a better book for LEO’s in that it deals exhaustively with the aftermath of a shooting incident. One of my guys was in an OIS and had read the book…he told me after the investigation that the book gave him an understanding of what he was going to go through and that knowledge helped him cope with the self-doubt, fear of losing his job, stress (work related and home), etc.
The short answer to your question is Yes – the more LEOs and Veterans who carry responsibly the better the overall safety will be and possibly more non-LEO and non-Vet firearms owners will consider their own safety and (maybe) start carrying the means to protect themselves and their families.
Thanks again. Even so: “Yes – the more LEOs and Veterans who carry responsibly . . . and possibly more non-LEO and non-Vet firearms owners will consider their own safety and (maybe) start carrying . . .” But that answer is NOT what I was asking about.
I assume that LEOs are mostly carrying when not on shift. I assume that lots of Vets are carrying. I doubt that these practices would improve much from an active discussion.
What I’m expecting (hoping for) is a realization that “the only thing that stops a bad man with a gun . . . ” It ought to be obvious; but it isn’t soaking in. After every public venue shooting the calls for gun control are deafening.
Look at Mandalay Bay. I’m shocked that there was virtually no discussion of the most important fact: the shooter had the high-ground position. I’m shocked that there was virtually no discussion of the fact that he (a millionaire) could have gotten a gun no matter how stringent gun control might be.
Focusing narrowly on mass shootings – especially in public venues – there is nothing in the gun-control list of proposals that could help at all. The only thing our society can do about mass shooters is ensure that 2A-able people are properly kitted up. This means – first and foremost – getting rid of GFZs. There aren’t enough cops to cover all public venues (nor all schools or Post Offices, etc.) And, whenever there are high-ground positions in a very large public venue, we need the cops (and maybe civilian volunteers) to be on-duty with counter-sniper capability.
If cops and Vets could just focus on this proposition – “Focusing narrowly on mass shootings – especially in public venues -” then that realization would take the wind out of the gun-controllers’ sails politically. At least with respect to magazine and “assault weapon” bans.
There remains the doubt – legitimate – that all cops and Vets could be thoroughly convinced, yet remain silent in public debates. A few sheriffs would speak their minds but most would remain silent and all chiefs of police would continue to testify in favor of gun-control. Is this so? Or, with enough momentum from the rank and file, would most chiefs find that they can’t continue to testify in favor of gun-control as a means of preventing mass shootings in public venues?
Can a consensus in the rank-and-file make it impractical for chiefs to testify nonsense? – THIS is the core question.
“I have long ago written off the “TLDR” crowd”
If you can’t be brief that’s for the best. This is a site for comments and chat, not dissertation.
Nothing personal, there are plenty of internet randos who want to waste peoples’ time with their screeds and none of them are worth reading either.
“I have long ago written off the “TLDR” crowd.”
God help them if they ever stumble upon a “book”. No, really, they’re kinda worth writing off. People who just skip something are one thing but people who skip it and then bother spending the time to tell you that they skipped it because they can’t be bothered to read it are another kettle of fish.
As for the rest, I would point out something. Vet and LEO are different. The vet doesn’t have anyone in authority telling them to STFU for political reasons. Many LEOs do, which makes them a tougher nut to crack. If their opinion, right as it may or may not be, goes against that of the Chief and isn’t backed by the union, you probably won’t hear about it.
City and municipal police generally report to a Chief who reports to and serves at the pleasure of a politician, usually a mayor.
“The vet doesn’t have anyone in authority telling them to STFU for political reasons. ”
Not really…if the Vet is hired or contracted by a Federal department or agency as a civilian then the Hatch Act may apply to them during election cycles. If they work for a DoD component then DOD Directive 1344.10 may apply to their political activities, opinions and freedom of speech.
Do not forget that there are many large businesses and corporations that restrict their employee’s espousing personal political opinions or beliefs in the workplace.
Old Guy:
That’s a valid point. Overall I think my original comment is more or less correct though. Vets who’ve separated don’t generally have to worry about the military apparatus coming after them for saying something but, as you point out, depending on their subsequent employment they may have other concerns that fall within this general realm.
It’s a bit different than a LEO speaking in a manner that is meant to change the behavior of their current employer and going about trying to effect that change in an overtly political way, but it’s still a valid concern on their part.
I probably should have worded the original post a bit differently since I basically thought something that I didnt really explain and for which there was no good context for a reader to pick up on. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
This isn’t going to be popular but to address an issue the root cause of it must be attacked. In this case that is mental illness & overcoming the stigma associated with it. I’m betting this is another person that the mental health care industry has failed. That system needs to be revamped from the bottom up. The very idea of doctoring needs to be changed from making themselves rich to the care of their patients. Top notch non-politicaly biased care needs to be of no cost to the patient with goal of getting them to be a happy & content productive person. Not shoving meds down their throat & hope for the best. If restricting guns from them during that time is necessary then so be it. As long as that is done in a proper legal manner by at least a judge or a jury of their peers. If the doctor & patient decide they are safe to have them immediately restore that right.
One thing we’ve lost as a country is we used to do this for each other. If Jim down the street wasn’t safe around guns neighbors would hold them until he was OK again. We knew & cared about each other then. We don’t anymore. Think about this, how far down the block do you have to go before you don’t know people’s names? My backyard neighbor is as absolute ass whose mouth has nearly gotten him into trouble. Do I know the guy’s name? Nope.
A valid point. I haven’t looked at the statistics personally, and I don’t remember where this comes from but…
Just yesterday I was listening to a podcast debate about marijuana (JRE 1246 for those interested) where the two guys were throwing out stats from various studies so fast that you’d need to constantly pause the podcast and right it down to remember all the citations.
Point is this: there are studies that indicate that serious psychosis and schizophrenia increase the overall likelihood that the person suffering delusions is violent towards another person by something on the order of 20x (2000%). Now, this was in the context of how that chance might be increased by the delusional person also using street drugs with no supervision, but that’s kinda wandering here.
The other associated points of interest were the rate at which psychosis and schizophrenia occur in a population. In the US, due to HIPAA, we don’t really know but tracking seems to indicate that schizophrenia is something like 0.3% to 0.7% of the population while psychosis is probably about 3%. However, about 10% of the population will experience short-term psychosis (a mental breakdown basically) at some point in their life.
Now the key point the one guy made here is as follows: where we do have good data on this it’s suppressed by the professional groups because they’re afraid that most people won’t understand it and it will lead to further stigma against the person with the problem. Therefore we can’t even really talk about it, never mind actually act in a rational way.
“Is there any lawless well-armed force operating near the US border?”
Was that sarcasm? I’m seriously asking. Tens of thousands of people have been killed over the last couple of decades near the US border. Within the first 6 months of just this year, cartels killed 700 people in Juarez alone.
I have watched news reports of border land owners patrolling their property with AR15s for the last 15 years now. And I remember when the ACLU helped illegals aliens confiscate one man’s property. Because in today’s world you can’t protect what is yours in 2019. It’s just crazy.
I wish you guys would really wise up! I am an active shooter. I go to the range, I am a safe and responsible gun owner.
That guy is a murderer. Not a gunman, not a firearm owner, people like that are freaking murderers. You fall into the trap of saying assault rifle, shooter, active shooter, gun man etc. Wake up, you’re being programmed.
I understand and agree with the basic sentiment of what you’re trying to say, but the term “Active Shooter Event” is an LE phrase to denote a situation in which an individual (or group) is firing upon innocent people. In such a case, shots have actually been fired and the lives of innocents are at stake.
Whether we like it or not, the term “Active Shooter” is with us to stay. It refers to a criminal action, and most people recognize it as such.
I myself have attended ASE training, as I’m part of an armed volunteer security team.
“Here’s the latest on the shooting yesterday at the Gilroy Garlic Festival southeast of San Jose. The shooter(s) has still not been apprehended.”
“…before police fatally shot him…”
it’s different out there.
With three fatalities, will this event not qualify as a mass shooting in FBI statistics? I thought the threshold was four casualties.
Fake news. Only three people died in this shooting. Not four. The police shooting the perpetrator doesn’t count. Yes it’s sad that three people died. But the definition of a mass mueder is four or more.
The anti-gun media is simply lying to change the status of this shooting for statistical purposes.
And it was a “gun-free zone”. And apparently he used wire cutters to cut a hole in the fence to get into the fair area. So now the state government can ban Wirecutting tools.
That will certainly help to make the world much safer for democracy.
Yes, by strict definition it may not be a ‘mass shooting’.
But the people doing the bleeding and dying say it’s the best imitation they’ve ever seen.
By your logic any given weekend in Chiraq would count as a “mass shooting”.
pwrserge
Mass shootings happen in Chiraq all the time. But when Mass murder happens in Chiraq one one cares about that either.
“At Least 58 People Shot In Chicago This Weekend; 6 Dead, 52 Wounded”
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/08/20/chicago-weekend-shootings-gun-violence-violent-crime/
“72 people were shot, including 12 fatally”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/08/06/chicago-violence-leaves-71-shot-11-dead-weekend/914141002/
Miner49er
Its not mass murder. Yes its a mass shooting. The distinction is important.
I haven’t said it was murder, murder usually requires premeditation of particular victims. So far, this seems like a random act committed by NeoNazi white supremacist.
miner49er
You are correct! The people who shot up the california christmas party a few years ago were in fact NeoNazi white [Arab] supremacist. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is a best seller the the Arab world these days.
You may not know it but the “white” arabs look down upon people with darker skin than themselves.
So now we’re talking about the San Bernardino shooting from a few years ago? Yes those were Arabs, I don’t know if they were lighter skins or not. I suspect their motivation was a layer of fundamentalist religion on top of a basic mental illness.
I would even postulate that the San Bernardino action was indeed mass murder, the perpetrators apparently knew most of the victims and had a long-term plan.
Again, I believe it was motivated by religion. There are millions of people across the world and in and in this country who believe their sky daddy tells them to kill particular people or groups of people. I believe that a belief in religion without evidence is a mental illness in itself, self delusion
miner49er
“I believe it was motivated by religion.”
You atheists are in a serious mental health status when you forget Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc, were all atheists as well. The New Zealand mass murderer is a self declared atheist.
I can give you a Link to his manifesto if you like?
The crime of murder does not require premeditation of the victims. First degree murder requires premeditation of the act. A person who plants a bomb in a train station has no idea who he will kill, but has the mens rea required to charge first degree murder for everyone who dies.
Lesser degrees of murder don’t require any sort of premeditation at all.
Miner49er
The 15(?) year old who murdered two of his classmates and shot 5 others was also a self declared atheist. The shooting was at a high school 60 miles from my house in kentucky. It happened 3 months BEFORE the Parkland FL shooting.
It seems if you are an atheist murderer your story disappears very quickly.
Please stick to the historical facts.
Neither Stalin nor Hitler or atheist.
Do you know what was in graved on every German Army uniform belt buckle?
Did you know Stalin attended the Gori church school as a youngster and then later attended the spiritual seminary of Tiflis? Stalin’s switch to atheism was more about consolidating power rather than any religious conviction. And you would think, after attending many years of priesthood training, he would be one more really moral SOB. But apparently all those years of religious studies led him to be the dictator he turned out to be, fascinating.
Chris, the atheism of the 15-year-old had nothing to do with his crime, I believe he had a mental illness caused by years of abuse. And you will find that approximately 95% of all killings in the USA are committed by Christians, only because there’s a whole lot of them around here.
BTW, I’m just across the river from you in WV, and we’ve never had a mass shooting. Of course, for about 80 years this is been a democratic controlled state so I expect that’s the reason. Now that Jim justice has switched parties to Republican and the state legislature is controlled by the Republicans it probably won’t be long till we do have a mass shooting.
I’m sure you think the belt buckle thing is a clever way to link Christianity to nazism but the in motto dates back to at least old imperial germany, and even to the kingdom of prussia.
miner49er
“BTW, I’m just across the river from you in WV, and we’ve never had a mass shooting.”
You need to read more about the state history you live in. I’m currently reading this fascinating book. It’s about how american citizens and legal immigrant workers used their 2A civil rights to defend themselves against government tyranny AND THE tyranny of a big corporation. Coal companies. I was taught this history even in my california high school history classes. It seems you missed out.
Also it’s sad how some atheists have a “religious belief” in the lie that Hitler and Stalin were somehow believers in some form of christianity.
“The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom”
https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Here-These-Hills-Virginias/dp/0802123317/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=wv+coal+mine+wars&qid=1564428885&s=books&sr=1-1
BTW
They used everything from black powder muskets to machine guns.
As Extra, Adolf Hitler was deeply religious, as he said both publicly and in his book my struggle.
“Mein Kampf also shows a bizarrely racialized interpretation of Christianity:
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. . . . And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God.”
The first treaty Hitler signed with a foreign power was with the Vatican, and he enjoyed a special relationship with the church, which said a special mass on his birthday every year until 1945.
Even more interesting, no Nazis, even the concentration camp guards, were ever excommunicated by the Catholic Church.
No oven operators, no gas chamber technicians, no one. Except for Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda manager.
And he was only excommunicated because he married a non-Catholic, sad.
Chris, I am very familiar with the battle of Blair mountain, I’ve been there several times.
And yes, I approve a private ownership of firearms and the use of those private firearms to prevent Tyranny by the government or in this particular case, big business in the form of King Coal.
I am against the glorification of guns and the worship of weapons we see in our culture today, I’m concerned that it leads to senseless violence.
I’m not against 2A, I just like a more rational interpretation of its provisions and obligations.
miner49er
“I’m not against 2A, I just like a more rational interpretation of its provisions and obligations.”
You are either lying or are just stupid about the history of “Industrial Wars” in this country. You would never support the private ownership of machine guns for working class people. Because then the cost would be much lower and they then could afford to buy one or two.
But privately owned coal companies did in fact purchase thompson sub machine guns, BARs, as well as tri-pod mounted heavy MGs. And then they used them against the miners. It was the government and the private companies that together, conspired to acquire bomb layned aircraft. And then drop those bombs on american citizens. Every american neighborhood should have a Quad 50 at their disposal. And a family bazooka as well.
TTAG is sprinkled with Left wing hypocrites like you.
It’s mass VIOLENCE. Some more so than others but everyone in the country has been affected by this murder’s violent act.
Probably couldn’t stand the stench and lost the plot.
At the risk of sounding callous, hope the guy was over 20, didn’t use a suppressor, and didn’t have any trigger modifications or anything else the president doesn’t understand. POTUS needs the pr points right now and “common sense” gun control would be an easy move for him. And yes I understand he’s basically competing with insane clown posse on the democrat side.
I read white guy, 25-30. Probably not Islamic terrorist. He was wearing a “green vest”, but I don’t know if that meant load bearing or something like a Vietnam-era flack jacket. Probably not an armor or plate carrier given the speed at which he was dispatched. If it was one of the latter, maybe they can use it as an excuse to ban them.
It is most likely completely homegrown terrorism, but we should await the results of the investigation.
Unofficial sites now claiming the dead loser is 19-year-old American of Italian and Iran descent. Hatred of sprawl and urbanization, which some are calling “white supremacist,” but comments about “white twats” in Silicon Vallley make me doubt it.
Body armor would be an easy feel good target for the anti-gunners but I’d love to see them rationalise it. And they’re saying the guy was 19 with a rifle and trump already suggested raising the minimum age for long gun in the past.
we still haven’t “peeled the onion” on the mandalay shooting , there was way too many disconnects ,half-truths and mis-directed answers from the feds. way too much “BRENNER” evidence for the good cops to wade through,BLACK HELICOPTERS, Saudi ownership of the top floor of the mandalay building..CIA gun-dealers and smugglers involved . NOTHING WAS ANSWERED.
I think we still don’t know what weapons were used in the VA municipal building shooting from a few months back, and whether the silencer was real/etc
So…
— “Gun control” laws let this guy get armed (while disarming his victims.)
— “Security” didn’t provide a whole lot of, um, that (while burdening the people it didn’t protect.)
— Disarmed people could run and hide (which wasn’t enough for some of them.)
— Bad guy kept killing til somebody stopped him (which took until the designated protectors scrambled n responded.)
— The cops moved toward the carnage. All honor to them. (And it still wasn’t enough.)
— Even hust a minute away, victim count in two digits (which is an acceptable loss?)
Do I have my facts straight?
This festival had literally every anti-“violence” prescription in place, from no arms, to controlled access, to saturation with designated defenders, and it didn’t work.
Until you can get rid of arms n the will to violence *outside* your control, banning for safety *inside*/your control isn’t going to work. Maybe there’s a better answer than Ban All The Things!
Also, while we’re busy being outraged, what’s this carnage measure in Chicagos? Or Baltimores in the competing system of units?
Would the anti-people.please stop getting people killed.
Maybe the murderer was a vampire there seeking revenge for the odor keeping him away from his lair.
Vlad?
Really? Three people dead and you’re throwing stuff like that out there? Don’t quit your day job.
Huntmaster , I guess I have to explain it too you, since you didn’t get it. The comment was just like the rest of the explanations we will hear over the next few days and makes just as much sense as to why some nut case was able to pull this off. Well why do people attend events that are “gun free zones”? I don’t go anywhere my gun isn’t welcome, I assume I am not either. Gun free zones are target rich environments for evil people. Gun control just creates more targets that can’t shoot back. We will now see more gun control in California, a solution that will save lives /sarc Next California bans wire cutters.
You don’t tell a vampire not to quit their day job.
LOL
What really needs to happen is the liberals need to be banned
Gun free zone, plenty of cops, metal detectors at the entrances, the most anti-Bill of Rights gun laws in the country, a libtard’s paradise…but, as usual, a good guy with a gun stopped the carnage.
They had everything covered except the evil in peoples’ hearts.
I can see outright gun bans coming in Commiefornia, and afterwards, a huge increase in shootings. Well, they got what they voted for, and only have themselves to blame. That is what happens when population majorities become sniveling little snowflakes, and mentally regress to their early childhood, becoming offended by every little word or action and scurrying away to hide in their safe spaces.
Mother nature, in her infinite wisdom, is slowly removing the useless excess population.
Early reports are always filled with confusion, panic, rumor and conflating the info of many sources. Takes time to settle it all down and work out what really happened.
Right now it sounds like a disturbed person got around security by cutting thru a fence. Then opened fire on random people.
Because, and only because, police were in attendance at this event their response was uncommonly rapid. Or at least it is claimed to be, some reports say it took a while to kill the attacker while others say the shooting took all of a minute from first shot to dead bad guy.
So then, so far we have a case where the gun laws did nothing. The killer did as he pleased, including making efforts to bypass the security designed to keep guns out. Metal detectors at the entrance don’t help when the attacker makes his own entrance.
Time frame is questionable, Chief says less than a minute, witnesses are all over the map from a minute to up to 5 or 6 minutes.Time is way different when you are under fire a minute can seem like (and sometimes is) a lifetime..
Spent the day outside yesterday set up at an antique show. IN ILLinois. Yep a gun was ready in my car. Rarely do we do events with large crowd’s unarmed. While this doesn’t count as mass murder it certainly COULD HAVE. Commiefornia is so screwed…
@former water walker. What good does your gun do you in your car? Unless it’s in a vault, it’s accessible to any dirtbag with a rock, who just might start shooting up the place with your gun. Have fun trying to explain that to the D.A.
Man this sucks, three dead and multiple wounded in California and one dead with multiple wounded in NYC the same weekend at what should have been a fun weekend for groups of innocent people.. I have attended the Gilroy Garlic festival and hauled truckloads of garlic across the country to NY and Canada. Those people are hard working, down to earth normal everyday folks who did not DESERVE this as suggested by some on here. Not everyone in California is a Liberal, Socialist, Communist like those in SF, LA and cannot be blamed for the way those people lead the state.. It’s been several years since I parked my rig for the last time but I hope this does not affect the attitudes of the people I’ve me in that area…..
“People were throwing tables and cutting fences to get out.” This statement is pretty scary. People caged and panicked.
How were they cutting down fences? Even pocket knives were banned?
If it took the cops 60 seconds to get this guy, and I doubt the press in accurate about that. I bet a law abiding ccw holder who was closer to the shooter could have gotten him in 10 seconds. Because he would have seen him pull his weapon out of the rifle case before the cops would have seen him.
MB: I was LITERALLY a few feet from my car all day. And I am otherwise “armed”. DUH…
We almost went to this.
The garlic festival has been a staple for those of us in the Bay Areas for a long time.
The event promoters did everything right that they would normally do.
Kudos to the LEO’s who did respond quickly although that is little solace to those who died.
Bottom line crazy will find away, if not with a gun, then a bomb, or a large truck, or something to cause destruction.
Shooter is Santino Legan, who self identifies as Italian/Iranian.
Just an update from the press conference just now – they say the shooter used an ‘assault ak type weapon’ but they did say it was an SKS bought in Nevada.
Two things (or maybe three or four) The weapon was described as an “assault weapon” AK-47 type and then confirmed to be an SKS.. The only things an SKS and an AK-47 have in common are a similar gas operating system, both were designed in Russia and both use 7.62×39 ammo (no detachable magazine, no pistol grip).. An SKS has never been considered an assault rifle by anyone I know.. And unless the guy had modified his with custom or aftermarket furniture it doesn’t fit the “SCARY” rifle scenario the gun grabbers look for….
But but it was scary looking!!!! WE MUST BAN IT!!!
Don’t worry I am sure they will fast track a law…
As the immortal Bard once said, a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.
Assault rifle, assault weapon, 220, 240, whatever.
It’s a distinction without a difference, it is a 762X 39 projectile followed immediately by nine more at a minimum. If it was retrofitted with a 20 or 30 round magazine, even more.
I can assure you that the dead and bleeding have no idea whether it was an assault rifle or grandpa’s squirrel gun.
And another group that cares not for the hair-splitting distinctions of definitions is the majority of the American citizens, who are outraged by the carnage and will act soon.
This is a very good time for POTG to act with restraint and dignity, and demonstrate the maturity of the vast majority of America is gone owners.
Okay. Listen up hillbillies. These horrific shootings have nothing to do with gun-free zones or the fact the people should carry guns to protect themselves or even that better fences need to be built. It has everything to do with the number of guns in this country. WE DON’T NEED THEM. We are a country of laws not idiots running around with their enhanced penis’s. 200+ million guns in a country our size is flat out insane. What the hell do you need so many guns and weapons (AR-15’s) of mass destruction for? Every civilized country has stringent laws on guns and who can purchase them. Why don’t we? Why the hell would anyone need an AR-15 (which is a bonafide assault rifle)? Why would you need a pistol that holds 17+ rounds? I can see that an honest, law-abiding hunter would need a couple of bolt action rifles. That is his hobby. I get it. But an assault weapon that holds 30 rounds of the most devastating, carnage induced ammo, that could pierce the hood of a car, is not needed.
You jethro’s will learn a hard lessons in 2021. When assault style rifles are banned and magazines over 10 rounds are banned and when you will need to wait 3 weeks before you can pick up that pistol at the gun shop – if you pass the mandatory background and mental health check. If you don’t think Kamala is going to burn down your crosses of gun culture you are in for a big surprise. Get educated and do something else.
@Vlad: Venezuela.
(Comments from the “TLDR” crowd are welcome.)
Unlikely. Trumpenreich starts this fall and soon all you liberals will be in Trumps secret concentration camps out west. I just applied to be a camp tower guard so I know this to be true.
Wait you applied too??
I met another guy who got hired! hey maybe we can all be bunk mates!!
Bunkmates?
As George Takei would say:
Oh, my!
I’ve applied for a job loading the cattle cars. Beers are on me!
My Brother-In-Law honestly believes Trump will pack off all the liberals to death camps (he protested the inauguration with his pink kitty hat).
It is interesting, they never seem to have problems finding people to load the cattle cars.
This time it’s beer, last time it was schnapps.
It is said history repeats itself, the first time is a tragedy and the next time as a farce.
Funny he thinks we are all hillbillies.
Do I have an enhanced penis??? Oh wait till my wife finds out she will be thrilled!!!
Can someone please explain what a “bonafide assault rifle” is???
OMG ammo, that could pierce the hood of a car!!!! hahahhaa yeah that 22 guage steel is so darn thick there right Jethro??? We probably shouldn’t tell him a 22 plinker will do the same!
My gosh the drive by ignorance on this post is drool inducing.
Oh you must be talking about the illustrious ex California AG/current U.S. Senator that has already promised to make over 350 billion dollars available for “African-Americans” to buy homes and go to school.. The very same who listened to Tupac in college 10 years before he recorded his first album, that Kamala that has admitted that she would be a “TYRANT” as POTUS, the Kamala that covered up staff accusations of sexual misconduct/harassment, and lied about her “bussing” experiences as a small school girl? Once again your ignorance has successfully astounded me and I know you must thank God daily that breathing is a reflex action lest you suffocate as your only available brain cell seems preoccupied with dreaming up your bullshit fantasies..
What do you think is going to happen to YOU when that political whore burns down America’s gun culture? That’s what I want to know.
Vlad, are you projecting your wants onto others? Just because you don’t think you need a firearm doesn’t mean others don’t need one as well. Are you also projecting your lack of self control onto others. If you think you are normal, then everyone must be like you. And that probably scares you.
Zero sympathy for sheeple that choose to keep their heads in the sand drifting through life relying on others when misfortune visits.
We have the internet and access to a wealth of information that people never had before. Zero excuse for not being informed.
Darwinism. Move on.
Who are you talking about?
But, Cali has gun bans and extreme Nazi Gun Laws! How could this happen?
Did this criminals not know about these gun laws and follow them?
Its illegal to kill or shoot innocent people!
Yea murder has been illegal since the beginning!
You just can’t trust a criminal to obey the rules….
I’ll bet you a dollar this guy was pissed off because he was thrown out of the garlic festival for smoking pot in public. I really hate living in commiefornia.
The Gilroy Garlic Festival southeast of San Francisco. SECURITY IS TIGHT — FESTIVAL-GOERS PASS THROUGH METAL DETECTORS AND THEIR BAGS ARE SEARCHED.
Well that Security stopped what?? Oh Yeah it stopped the honest victims……
More gun control fail ..more children and people dead… with their blood on the Commie Gun Control politicians and Anti-gunners hands!
If people there were armed………lives could of been saved!
This will continue to happen until these cowards get shot b4 they ever get to harm another person.
I wonder how many shootings there would be if all the shooters got hanged or executed??
Or every shooter got gunned down by citizen defenders every time they tried to hurt innocent civilians!
Usually hanging includes getting dead. Unless the hangman screws it up. But everyone deserves a 2nd chance. 😉
I agree the public should be permitted to be armed in public places, and Christmas Hill Park is a City of Gilroy park. Banning the carrying of firearms, concealed especially, is un-Consitutional and stupid.
There is no “Commie” gun control anywhere in the USA. Communism is a very specific thing, a specific form of evil. I don’t suppose it will ever entirely die out, evil has a way of holding on that way. But it’s been beaten down very low in this country and for a long time.
Gun Control is damned foolishness perpetuated by the scared, the panicked, the unthinking. There’s even been the odd Republican or Blue Dog Dem that has slipped into that mind trap, from time to time.
Executing criminals would do little to deter others but would at least prevent recidivism. I’m good with that, just have a couple of concerns. Need to know we get the right person, never kill an innocent by mistake. And I want us to be honest about executing the scum of the Earth, we do it for punishment and revenge. When facing up to evil, punishment and revenge are morally just and entirely proper.
So why make up false reasons for doing the right thing?
I say if we capture a mass shooter in the act, got all manner of video and eye witness proof. Got chemical proof from all the fresh gun powder residue. Fingerprints and DNA on the gun and the magazines and ammo. Well hell that ought to cover the bases just fine. Stand him naked on a stump in the center of a hog pen and shoot him in the head.
That’s it, job well done, head out for steak and beers!
(lives could of been saved!) Actually in this case that might not necessarily be true.. This guy slipped in through a concealed section of fence and opened fire into a crowd without warning.. It’s called an ambush and there is little you can do to defend against its initial success.. The shooter might possibly have been engaged sooner and maybe even dispatched much more quickly but the death toll and wounded count would probably have been the same… The FURTHER loss of life would have been the positive outcome of the presence of armed civilians as proven out by the rapid response of the cops which turned the shooter from his cowardly offense to a most likely scared shitless defensive position..
The Stats prove beyond all doubt that the majority of mass shootings are done by Right Wing Nut cases. The kid was more than likely started down the path of racism by what he heard at home when growing up from his parents. Many times such parents are lower income and uneducated and tend to blame societies problems on anyone not of their particular white tribe and religion.
Not that I would doubt your estimable words…however, at this point I have to believe that you are engaging in gross hyperbole since your blatant claim is unsubstantiated. Source(s), cites, references, etc would be appreciated by those of us who do not operate solely on emotion and feelz.
It’s bullshit whether a right winger is blaming it all on lefties or a left winger is blaming it all on righties. Damned near all the claims like these I have followed up on turn out to be blatant lies. The typical mass shooter is not doing it over any factional politics. They are doing it because they have some severe mental defect that over time evolves into violence. That’s it.
There are exceptions, sure. But outside of Terrorism, not that many.
VLAD…. VLAD….VLAD…. Veritable Lies And Deceit … Must be allowance time, got to please the Master or you won’t get yours…
More guns Newt, more guns! Damn it, we need more guns!
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