Is it the same shooting as the other day or is it a new one? I’m either losing touch with reality or there’s been a whole cluster of shootings in the past couple of months.
Love you, Americans, but this is totally messed up.
Messed Up
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Clarissa's Blog 
Brave New World!
If your daughter should make her 20th birthday take her out to dinner at an elaborate wine-and-dine restaurant and celebrate her being a “survivor” for “making it all the way from grade school through high school in one piece”.
(The U.S. should be so proud of maintaining such a high cultural/social climate)
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It’s more about if I’m going to make it because when she’s 20, I’m going to be almost 60. The dream of my life is to live long enough to see her get married and have a kid. I need to stick it out until then.
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This is a different shooting. A particularly deadly one. I’m so disgusted and saddened. I can’t believe this is something that we as a culture and decided to accept.
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I haven’t been able to follow the news much but it seems like whenever I turn on the TV there is news of another shooting. It feels like it’s gotten worse than usual. Even though the usual was bad enough.
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It’s not just you. It’s crazy. There have been about five in the last month or so.
This is a new one—it happened yesterday afternoon in Florida.
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I don’t even want to know because I suspect that the only response are the usual inanities about thoughts and prayers and this gets really old after a while.
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This one was in Parkland, FL. The gunman circumvented the active shooter drills by waiting until just before the last bell of the day and pulling the fire alarm. Kids were tweeting and posting cell phone videos from the lockdown because apparently they were told to stop calling 911, flooding it with calls. News organizations were asking the kids for permission to use it in their broadcast. Apparently a white supremacist group is claiming the 19 year old shooter trained with them. Mentally ill, loner, got kicked out of school, an abusive stalker to his ex girlfriend whatever. I don’t know why the fuck that group isn’t in federal custody, but hey Jeff Sessions isn’t tracking white nationalists as terrorists! Let’s take money from the NRA but thoughts and prayers from all these Republican fucknuts like my senator, Rubio, who took lots of the NRA’s sweet cash! Who the hell gives a shit about stalking, it’s just women, amirite?
Of course mental health care is a fucking joke in this country, but let’s cut all funding for even the bandaid shit by gutting Obamacare.
What has Trump done? Signed a bill revoking an Obama era measure that would’ve made it a tiny bit more difficult to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill people.
Guess what else he wants to slash in his proposed budget?
Anyways, nothing will happen — nobody blinked when Steve Scalise, the House Whip, was shot and Lara Trump is safe from suspicious white powder, so whee!
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I don’t think he’s mentally ill. I think he’s just a bastard. How crazy can he be if he went around the active shooter drills so effectively, as you said.
I definitely hope he doesn’t try a mental illness defense.
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He might be mentally ill, but it’s highly unlikely he could mount a successful legal insanity defense.
He’s hitting all the squares on mass shooter bingo
“He is a deeply troubled child who has endured significant loss. He fell between the cracks,’’ said Gordon Weekes, executive assistant public defender.
“He is also saddened by the loss of those family members, by the loss of those children. He has expressed that.”…
Cruz and his biological brother Zachary were adopted at birth by an older couple. His father died 13 years ago and his mother Lynda died from pneumonia on Nov. 1 after Cruz had tried to persuade her to seek medical help….
Assistant public defender Melisa McNeill said Cruz has suffered from mental illness throughout his life and that it’s possible he is autistic….
Right after his mother died, Cruz lived for a few weeks with a family friend at the Lantana Cascades Mobile Home Park west of Lantana. About Thanksgiving, he was taken in by the Snead family in Pompano Beach, where he had his own room….
“The family took him in. They knew his mom had died. They got him a job at Dollar Tree. And they helped him continue his education. They’re totally shocked,’’ said attorney Jim Lewis, who represents the Sneads.
The Sneads have a 17-year-old son who is a junior at the high school and was there during the shooting, Lewis said.
“They didn’t have any clues,” Lewis said. “They didn’t see anything in this kid, that he was a danger or that he harbored any ill feelings toward the high school.”
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This is a tragic life, and my heart bleeds for abandoned sad kids. But only up to the time when they start shooting into the crowd.
What a horrible tragedy.
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Now I’ve got to call the Senate and hope that this bill gutting the ADA doesn’t pass.
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What’s absolutely maddening is all of the people reporting that they absolutely saw this coming for a long time and made repeated attempts to alert law enforcement.
But honestly, if we aren’t going to restrict access to firearms, the least we could do is take domestic violence and stalking seriously. I feel like at least 90% of these shooters have a documented history of violence that is overlooked, because in this country, assaulting and threatening people you are supposed to love is considered much less serious than assaulting or stalking a stranger.
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I also just heard that this shooter was in some white supremacist militia. This is a nightmare because these groups are on the rise and they do military training.
I’m.not sure what could put a curb on this right now because there are already tons of weapons out there.
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But I think the shooter’s weapon was newly purchased?
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I know this is completely heresy in the US but I believe there should be a concerted effort to create a registry of the ones that are out there and to start removing them from those who are unstable or have been menacing. And yes, I know, nobody in this country would ever get behind this. I’m just saying this is what I think would make sense.
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About 40% of us want that I would guess. I heartily agree. A large scale registry is desperately needed.
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Not in America, not now or ever. This country has a Constitution that spells out certain rights that the government can’t take away. The second amendment in the Bill of Rights allows for essentially unfettered gun ownership, and the fourth amendment forbids illegal searches and seizures.
That’s the law — change it or live with it.
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“The second amendment in the Bill of Rights allows for essentially unfettered gun ownership,”
That’s an extreme intrepretation of the second amendment.
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Read the Supreme Court decision “District of Columbia vs. Heller (2008).” Do you think that decision is going to be overturned as long as Trump is appointing justices?
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Yes. Abuse of women seems to be the trademark of these mass shooters. I don’t know why we can’t decide that perhaps domestic abusers should be restricted from access to weaponry. And I know Im not saying something profound here…..but how is the weapon he used legal–especially after Sandy Hook??? It is so deranged that we think that it is somehow rational or acceptable for an average citizen from a developed country to purchase, stockpile, use, and carry about these military grade weapons. Every time something like this happens I feel like I’m watching an alien society make strange and incomprehensible descions.
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I just read this AR-15 is easier to buy than a handgun.
I’m not getting this, to be honest. So yeah, I’m with you, this is completely deranged and ridiculous. But we never hear anything but hypocrisy in response.
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This is so uniquely American. Other than totally failed states, people in other countries don’t think it’s normal to walk about with these crazy guns. I don’t understand it. What part of our collective psyche does this appeal to?
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Oh, the fantasy that we are out in a jungle and we have to have a gun. I discovered one night that even I have this fantasy. I shocked myself. It was winter and bad weather and I thought it was a lot later than it really was. My neighbor, who was in the habit of knocking on my door to borrow the vacuum cleaner, came to do that but was dressed in all these winter clothes and I did not recognize him. I did not answer so he knocked again. I thought, this is someone who wants to burst into the house. I went to the phone and the line was dead (weather). At that point I found myself reaching into the drawer in the phone stand for the gun I do not have and have never considered getting. I actually thought: now I see why people want guns (although it is of course irrational, it would not actually have made me safer) (and at this point I heard the neighbor calling my name, don’t be scared Z, it’s only me). If I had actually been armed and been more deeply steeped in the mentality of shooting, I do not know that I would not have shot right through the door… !!! This experience really shocked me, I didn’t know I had that reaction in me, but it turned out I do — I am American —
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Yes. The jungle/frontier mentality is definitely part of it. But still, even in the situation you describe, you probably wished you could reach for a handgun–not some military grade weapon that’s designed to kill hundreds in seconds.
Like you, I think (know) handguns make us less safe. Still I can somewhat understand the appeal and can accept (albeit reluctantly) that they are legal. I simply do not understand how AR 15s and similar weapons are considered normal possessions for civilians.
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Of course. You have to be 21 years old to buy a handgun in Florida,
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Dumb media.
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Like this Republican, Tyler Tannehill, running for Congress in Kansas: he’s raffling off an AR 15. Putting aside the issue that it is tone deaf to the point of cruelty to continue this raffle in the wake of the Florida shooting, it just floors me that ownership of this type of weapon is not only governmentally sanctioned but celebrated. This is not the Congo or Venezuela for God’s sake. We still have a functioning government!
http ://tylertannahill.com/giveaway.php
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Well the man does live in Leavenworth county, which is home to a military base and several prisons, state, federal and military. The biggest employers in the town proper are the base, the school district, the VA, two defense contractors, USP Leavenworth, the county government, the VA’s collection and billing agency, a Walmart Supercenter and Hallmark.
An AR-15 raffle would be wildly popular with the voters there.
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He’s doing it right now? After the shooting??? That’s a total sociopath.
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Yes. Right now. Insanity.
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Oh it gets better:
A Kansas candidate for Congress is continuing his AR-15 giveaway, despite backlash
Tyler Tannahill, a Marine veteran, on Tuesday posted on his campaign Facebook and Twitter pages: “As an avid sportsman, I’m excited to announce our first AR-15 Giveaway! You can earn multiple entries and no purchase is necessary to win! Enter today: http://tylertannahill.com/giveaway.php.”
That was one day before a 19-year-old former student killed 17 people inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The gunman used his own AR-15 to carry out the mass shooting.
“No individual is for school shootings. It’s heartbreaking … being a parent, our thoughts on that, for me personally, I am a strong believer in the Second Amendment,” Tannahill said in an interview with The Star. “I think we need to have a discussion of what can be done and throwing out comments of displeasure isn’t going to solve it.”
Tannahill said his campaign was giving away the gun in support of the Second Amendment. He also said the contest was planned a month ago to coincide with the Kansas Republican Convention this weekend in Wichita.
There’s this tweet:
https://twitter.com/TannahillTweets/status/963975458604945413
He plugs an organization. If you go to the link it purports to train educators to handle firearms and first aid in the event of a mass shooting. There’s an upbeat video and the org claims to have sponsors from a couple of gun ranges, training, a medical supply company and a gun story blog all based out of Ohio. I wonder if he’s invested in any of the “sponsors” — it’s all very slick. There’s links to white papers and the Amazon Smile program to support them.
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I’m opposed to physical violence. But when a colleague suggested we abolish our “no firearms on campus rule” and start arming professors, I was dangerously close to socking him in the jaw. The idea of armed teachers is despicable, is all I can say.
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Israel arms its teachers, and has armed guards at a secure fence around all its schools.
The last school shooting in that country was in the mid-1970s.
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Using Israel as an example of safe existence is. . . inventive. But a little desperate. 🙂
Did I share that my relatives ran away from Israel back to Ukraine because they couldn’t deal with the environment of fear and hatred any longer?
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Whatever the internal politics and social environment within Israel, that tiny little democracy has spent its entire existence surrounded by rabid dogs who lust only for its destruction.
As long as that’s the case, it will have my support — and America’s.
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\ Israel arms its teachers
Not true.
\ has armed guards at a secure fence around all its schools.
True.
Gun laws in Israel are much stricter than in America.
Some combat soldiers can be seen on streets with their military weapons (M16 usually) and sometimes take them home, but it’s all during their active military service.
From 2016:
// ANALYSIS: ISRAELI GUN CONTROL WOULD HAVE MADE ORLANDO MASSACRE HARDER, BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE
…
Though visitors to Israel are often struck by the high number of firearms visible in public – especially in Jerusalem and the West Bank – the country has the sort of stringent gun control that would make the average NRA supporter shudder. While these restrictions have been eased somewhat as a response to the “Stabbing Intifada,” gun ownership in Israel still remains a privilege – not a right like in the United States.
Israelis looking to arm themselves still must jump through a number of hoops, including a mental and physical exam, background checks, shooting exams, and must show they have a security reason to have a firearm – such as a job in security or law enforcement – or that they live in a high-priority security area.
These restrictions are largely to blame for the high street value of firearms in Israel, which has helped a highly-lucrative black market thrive in the country, mainly in the Arab sector.
While an AR-15 similar to the one Omar Mateen used in Orlando can be purchased in the US for as little as $500 (or less at a gun show or auction), an M-16 assault rifle in Israel sells on the black market for around NIS 55,000 ($14,000) or more, while a Kalashnikov smuggled in from the West Bank can go for significantly less, ranging from around NIS 25,000 to 35,000. The gun restrictions also drive an inflated black market price for handguns, which can go for as much as NIS 20,000 depending on the make and model. Ammunition is also exorbitantly expensive.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Analysis-Israeli-gun-control-would-have-made-Orlando-massacre-harder-but-not-impossible-456741
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Found something interesting about US police in an article from 2012. Is the following true?
\ US police, perhaps to a greater extent in suburban areas and on college campuses, have in several instances refrained from charging at gunmen, setting an example of passivity for civilians. Rarely has this been more evident than in the 1999 Columbine, Colorado, shootings in which 13 people were killed while the Jefferson County police waited for a SWAT team to arrive.
Similarly, during the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, in which 32 people were killed, police rushed to the scene and sought to make contact with the killer but still waited outside the chained doors of the university hall for five crucial minutes while Seung-Hui Cho murdered people within.
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I’m sure nobody just rushes in without planning and coordinating. Five minutes is actually extremely fast to start this kind of operation. If the police just rush in uncoordinated and haphazardly and start shooting, that would be worse. And yes, of course, the police leaves it to SWAT professionals because they have the equipment and the training.
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// of course, the police leaves it to SWAT professionals
I have never heard about police leaving it “to the professionals” in Israel. The expectation is that a soldier on leave with his rifle or an armed guard will interfere and stop a terrorist, not run away. I know, Israel is unusual in many aspects, but still …
If police aren’t professional enough to stop a single shooter, how are they supposed to deal with armed criminals? Or are SWAT teams invited for that too?
I read many articles about the militarization of police in America and also other articles about police shooting innocent minorities. May be, the problem is that police aren’t really militarized but just given military “toys.” Military is supposed to be able to kill.
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Hostage taking is a special situation because the goal is to take down the shooter while avoiding doing harm to the hostages.
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