The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

NBC is reporting the Orlando bar shooter was a security guard with CLEET certificate, gun licenses and a lot of homophobia.


Because of his name and heritage, there were immediate questions about Mateen's possible ties to Islamic fundamentalism — but his father said it may have been a recent incident involving two men showing each other affection that set the gunman off.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/orlando-nightclub-massacre/terror-hate-what-motivated-orlando-nightclub-shooter-n590496

Radical Islamic Terrorist.....

And it only took Obama 2 minutes into his remarks about this to use the words "gun control". Gee, like the control he and W had in the gun walking scandals.

We need less prayers and more action.

(http://offnews.bg/images/events/2016/06/12/630947/phpk5hjwj_310x290.jpg)

Too funny!!!!!!!!! He never had anything to do with the NYPD.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/06/12/orlando-nightclub-shooting-nypd/ (http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/06/12/orlando-nightclub-shooting-nypd/)

(http://i.imgur.com/Aaukius.jpg)

Too many entities have a political need for this to be Islamic terrorism to take everything at face value. 
But a hate crime, yes, without a doubt.

Too early to know for sure, but it appears he was a homophobe using religion as his excuse. His ex-wife immediately said he was Muslim but wasn't that into it. The FBI looked into him 3 times and couldn't find any connections to extremist groups.

It's almost like if you tell people through laws, speeches, and every other avenue possible that a certain group of people is undesirable, a slim minority of unstable people will take that as permission to act. Delusions of being a hero. He isn't some Isis cell, just a homophobe hateful person with an arsenal of weapons who decided to use them. In a country loaded with firearms, there is almost nothing you can do to stop it.

(sarcasm font)
But I demand a full denouncement from all the usual suspects who run around spouting hate at LGBT people. The American Family Council, ALEC, the Oklahoma legislature...I also didn't hear them denounce the Target bathroom bombing. They must support the terrorists! (/sarcasm font)

Honestly though, can we skip all of this and just get right to doing nothing? That's the best case scenario in these things. When we pass knee jerk legislation it almost never address any of the actual problems.

Interesting though, I noticed yesterday that the OPD reported he called 911 and claimed his allegiance to the leader of ISIS before he did this, then after that was reported I believe ISIS took credit for it.  Sounds too convenient.

He apparently tried to identify with ISIS, but he also tried to identify with police. Professing my worship for a fire hydrant doesnt make me a fire hydrant.


Fla. Gov. Scott: 'There will be swift justice'
Really?  Are you going to put the shooter's head on a pike?  Prosecute his family?

There's a reason many residents refer to him as *P*rick Scott.

We have a violence problem, no doubt, as Americans use guns and knives, or simply bludgeon other Americans with cars. The sad part is that we can't even begin to address the problem at the federal level. The NRA won't discuss ways to reduce the killing and their paid mouthpeices in Congress stifle any attempt to study gun violence. The CDC is expressly forbidden to do so. I've never heard of a problem being solved by NOT talking about it.

Sure.  Children do this all the time.  That's what they all are.  Children.

Pulse patrons: Mateen hung out at the club 'for years'

FBI and ISIS heartbroken

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/06/13/pulse-patrons-mateen-drank-club-before/85852008/

Too much of this is falling neatly into different group's laps.  ISIS gets to make claims.  Homophobes get to make claims.  Anti-gunners get to make claims.  Everybody is positioning to get a piece of the action.  The real story is gonna be much less 'exotic'.  He was an a$$hole with a gun - just like Timothy McVeigh was an a$$hole with a big yellow truck.


Don't know if this girl is real or not...don't care, actually.  The message is real.  And we are falling into the oversimplification trap again - like we always do...!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnEKEfkdrOU


One thing though - NOBODY hates us "because we are free"!!  That is absolute gospel fact.


Edit....

Talking about this a little bit with people in an office I visit with the good ole' Okie frame of mind.  Same guys who are having a really tough time trying to decide who to "side with" in this Orlando shooting like in the picture above - the Muslim Terrorist or the Gays.  The consensus seems to be that it is a "win-win"....

"where did she get her philosophy? The Matrix Movies?"

"crackerjack box analysis of global politics"

"everyone has an opinion"

In regards to the video, my take is that she seems to believe there are two good sides, where I could argue that is hardly the case. Of course, there may not be one good side either, but that's a whole other argument.

Not at all.  She is saying there are two sides.

But that the other side (ISIS) fancies themselves the hero/savior. Let's just hope they don't have their fairy tail ending, or Orlando will be a drop in the bucket.

I am ready to drop a bomb on the real source of inspiration and in particular funding for this.  It's Saudi Arabia - as we have always known.  But then we are going right down the rabbit hole again with that action.


Drop in the bucket...you mean like the genocide/extermination program practiced against Native Americans for so long?   I don't think so.  ISIS is not an existential threat.

So, why DO they actually hate us so bad??   Does anyone ever actually think about that in particular as it relates to American policy?  (It's a long, convoluted story of mystery and intrigue with plenty of nastiness and depravity on both sides.  That is one of the things she is getting at.)

Like I said, I am not trying to white wash America's history, which I am familiar with. The reason events like you mentioned aren't common place is because the general populous is repulsed at the thought. Whereas the general populous in other parts of the world is perfectly fine with throwing homosexuals off of buildings or stringing them up in the town square. Please try to not to draw comparisons between two civilizations that have virtually nothing in common when it comes to human rights.

General population repulsed at the thought....  Of Sharia law type stuff??  You mean like what our extremist right wing has been advocating for years?  As manifested most recently in the Trump candidacy endorsed by what,...way more than 30% of the US population?  Socially liberal - or even moderate - people are a minority in this country - always have been and are likely to always be for at least mine and my kids lifetimes.

Or the virtual entire population of the US buying into the idea that torture, waterboarding, extraordinary rendition are viable means to an end??  All war crimes, by the way.  And within the last decade.  That's very recent history.

Virtually nothing in common??  Hmmm...interesting idea, since we are the ones who perfected the ideas of genocide and ethnic cleansing.  Like the video shows, they have their idea of what is justice and right, even if it is medieval 10th century, and we have our idea of what is justice and right.  And we have Trump and all his supporters...

What you are talking about is only the most recent of recent history for not "stringing them up in the town square".  I am old enough to remember news reports pictures of people actually being strung up in this country.  And the lame-a$$ clowns in their pointy little white hats and sheets.  And Jim Crow laws.  And Trump fans want to bring it back now!  And feel that it is right and proper to do so.  Have you seen any of the 'cheering section' yet praising this act?  The dilemma presented by the Muslim guy dead versus all those dead gays...?  There are people praising what he did, even if he was Muslim.


I have said it before and repeat - no other country in the history of this planet has done as much good as the US.  And no other country has done as much evil.  Maybe that's why we are so politically schizoid....

The SWAT praised themselves for "saving thousands of lives" by storming the place with explosives and automatic gunfire, so brace yourselves for when you start hearing "friendly fire" numbers

You're so full of it your eyes must be brown.

He's only in ankle deep.  Unfortunately he's in head first.   ;D

Just stop

The building isnt that big  ;)
 I think the number they tossed around was 30-ish.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/police-tactics-expert-rips-orlando-response-club-shooting-article-1.2671907

So now we are comparing Conservatives to Shari law? We are saying all Trumps supporters are KKK members and are pushing to have the old Jim Crow laws back? Not only do they want that back but feel it's proper to do so? Oh wait, I have to pick a side, either I hate Muslims or I hate gays.

I hate the Fark Tard that committed this horrible act of violence. I don't hate gays nor do I hate Muslims and if you knew me as a conservative that has both in my immediate family you would know this to be true. Instead we roll everyone up into a nice little Trump package just because we hold conservative values?

If you think the USA has performed more acts of evil than any other country then you need to look back at History a little bit more. Have we had our "evil " moments, yes of course, Native Americans and African Americans are solid proof to the evils that have happened here, but nothing near to what history has to teach us. In the last 100 years you could start with Germany, Russia, Italy and the list goes on.

No.  Trump Conservatives are comparing themselves to Sharia Law and advocating it.  That is the old law of Abraham that you see manifested in all the illegal acts they do such as putting the 10 Commandments on the capital property.  Listen to the people around you at work - I would bet that most of them are all about "going back to the good ole days."  What Bible based things do you want to see put in place in this country?   I would bet money that it isn't New Testament stuff.  And anything from the Old Testament is, by definition, the old law...Sharia Law.  The Old Law of Abraham IS Sharia Law.  Another one of those points of historical fact that is somehow getting lost in the extremist right propaganda stream.

Why would you have to hate anyone?  You don't have to unless you choose to.

Why would Trump work so hard at holding up the 'mirror' to the Hijacked Republican party - all he is doing is verbalizing what they have been working toward for decades - while spewing glittering generalities of "conservatism" ala Rupert Murdoch, Koch Brothers, Faux News.  Every Trump supporter/advocate - and that appears to be closing in on about 25 to 30% of the US population - IS not a real conservative...they (true conservatives) are something else!



I need to look at history??  That is rich....I have.  What is more interesting and borderline appalling is how anyone can possibly think that Germany, Russia, and Italy at their worst can even be at the same table compared to the extermination of 90 million + Native Americans in this country?  Or 300 + years of slavery/torture/brutality/murder of Africans?   Wow!  Cannot even begin to wrap my head around that one....  Those 3 looked to us for example and inspiration and even with their "best" efforts, were unable to achieve more than a fraction of what was done here.  All of them added together!

Hyperbole much?

90 million native American's. First of all, at most it has been estimated there were roughly 15,000,000 in all of North America prior to European arrival. Second, most were not "exterminated" (although some were in Connecticut). They died mainly because we forcibly took the country from them, and in the process brought diseases that they were not accustomed to. You can thank those European murderers later for the existence of this miserable land called the USA.

While slavery was horrific, it is not something we invented, and the forefathers had brains enough to write a governing document that allowed for the ending of the practice. American's are hardly the sole group to blame for this practice, and in fact if you were so unfortunate to be a slave, you were lucky to be sold west (as opposed to east). If we did it the way they did, there were be no people of African decent in the US today. It's all relative.

Apologist.

And yeah, about 15 million at one single point in time.  Then look at the reproduction of generations for the next 400 years and you get a VERY low guess of 90+ million who were killed by action of 'settlers', out of what probably was close to 175 million - probably more - who lived over that time.  Dismissive minimization of atrocities.


"you were lucky to be sold west..."   WOW!!   Channeling President Jefferson Davis today, are we??  So one abomination is better than another.  Yeah...slavery was all for their own "good"....  I seriously hope you don't fall into believing the lies that the Civil War was not about slavery??   


Jefferson Davis.  From his memoir, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, 1881.  Vol 2, pg 161-162.

"Let the reader pause for a moment and look calmly at the facts presented in this statement. The forefathers of these negro soldiers were gathered from the torrid plains and malarial swamps of inhospitable Africa. Generally they were born the slaves of barbarian masters, untaught in all the useful arts and occupations, reared in heathen darkness, they were transferred to shores enlightened by the rays of Christianity. There, put to servitude, they were trained in the gentle arts of peace and order and civilization; they increased from a few unprofitable savages to millions of efficient Christian laborers. Their servile instincts rendered them contented with their lot, and their patient toil blessed the land of their abode with unmeasured riches. Their strong local and personal attachment secured faithful service to those to whom their service  or labor was due. A strong mutual affection was the natural result of this lifelong relation, a feeling best if not only understood by those who have grown from childhood under its influence. Never was there happier dependence of labor and capitol on each other. The tempter came, like the serpent in Eden, and decoyed them with the magic word “freedom.” Too many were allured by the uncomprehended and unfilled promises, until the highways of the these wanderers were marked by corpses of infants and the aged. He put arms in their hands, and trained their humble but emotional natures to deeds of violence and bloodshed, and sent them out to devastate their benefactors. …"

You do know that less than 7% of Black Africans sold into slavery in the Americas ever came to what is today the US? The vast majority went to South America where conditions were even worse, in some cases, much worse than here. Almost 40% went to what is Brazil today alone. In some of what was the Spanish Empire's sections of South America they didn't really practice hereditary slavery because they simply worked all the slaves to death and then replaced them. That's why those countries today don't have substantial black populations even though they took in more slaves than we did. This is not meant to mitigate the awfulness of human slavery in the US, but just to show that what happened here was far from unique, or the worst.

The same is true of in the treatment of Natives throughout the Americas. Your numbers for Native Americans in the US seem way inflated, the actual larger populations of Natives in the Americas were in Central and South America and again the treatment was no better than here and in some cases, worse, continuing into today. That does not change the fact that Andrew Jackson was a monster and should not be revered in any way at all.

90?? 90 MILLION?? You have lost your mind. If you think for one second that 90 million were killed by European settlers then you really are nuts, and I mean NUTS. There wasn't even 90 Million at that time. I have had mass respect for a lot of things you have said in the past, but now I think you have jumped off the cliff. I stand by my initial statement, over all of history this country is not the most evil as you have stated. Just slays me that people think as you do, just slays me. I give you the mass murder of Native Americans, I give you the slavery ( United States was the least of all throughout the world at the time) and you still think this country is the " most evil of all time in all of history"?? ALL OF HISTORY???

This is the thinking that will doom this country. This is the thinking that is getting TRUMP supporters and you don't even realize that. 90 MILLION. SHOW ME THOSE FACTS.

I'd have to agree here.  Research suggests that for the entirety of the Americas (North, Central and South), there were probably about 56 million indigenous peoples before European settlers got here.    Almost half of that number resided in what is now Mexico (~25mil).  North America (United States and Canada), estimates show, had about 4.5 to 6 million, of that 3 to 4.5 million lived in what is the USA.

I looked it up and the population of North America in 1500 was 3 million and Latin America was 39 million. Europe at that time was only 84 million. By 1700 North America's population had fallen to 2 million and Latin America had fallen all the way to 10 million.  

The native population of what is the US today peaked at what was probably about 2-3 million in 1500 and fell to about 250,000 by 1800, mostly due to Smallpox, mostly natural but certainly sometimes used by both the US and the British as a biological weapon. Today there are about 2 million natives in the US.

I understand that true genocide (on a small scale) was occurring with Native American's in the Northeast, but if you are referring to the "genocide" committed by the European settlers, that in my opinion is severely mislabeled. They were not exterminated, they were conquered. This is something that has gone on since the beginning of time, and in fact it is something the North American Native Americans practiced on a regular basis. Europeans just happened to arrive with bigger sticks, and therefore took the land from them. Call it what you will, but I have no regret or ill will toward them. Besides what other nation has offered the conquered their own sovereign lands after they conquered them?

Spoken like a true paleface.   :)

With Cherokee ancestry, yes. Assume away.

The winners always get to write the history. If they could have annihilated the Europeans, they would have. And then what would you say about the "genocide" the Indians committed against the Euros?

Anybody read "1491", by Charles Mann?   Great book on pre-columbian civilizations, and how they were affected by contact with Europeans.  There is a pretty thorough discussion of pre-columbian population numbers, wth the various positions of the "high counters" and those that think the numbers were much lower.

Well, I guess this thread demonstrates exactly why we as a nation can't actually solve any of our problems.  Every conversation devolves into an incoherent shouting match about irrelevant bullsh*t.

Here are topics to consider instead:
1. I have to get a license to operate a car, a motorcycle, a boat, to fish, and to shoot a deer, but not to purchase and operate a deadly weapon designed solely for killing humans.  My drivers license and my car tag do not infringe on my right to own and drive a car.  Why are guns different?  There is a problem when our laws make it easier to buy a gun than to vote.  When the founders talked about a well-regulated militia and the right to bear arms, it was because they did not want the United States to have a standing army.  They needed to know who the able-bodied men were, and who owned a gun...so they kept track!

2. Military weapons belong in the military only.  Average citizens have no reason to own military grade weapons. Again, the founders were dealing with a reality where people had muskets, the same guns were used for hunting as war, and it took about 15-20 seconds to re-load and fire again. We live in a different world, and our laws need to adapt to that reality.
 
3. In general, we underfund mental health services and health care.  Better access to mental health services and support might help prevent people who are suffering from taking last resort, batsh*t crazy, lone wolf actions.

4. Homophobia is real and is fed by the political right and far too many members of various organized religions for reasons that have nothing to do with Christ.

My father was a gun collector and I was raised around guns.  My first lessons took place when I was in 3rd grade, and safety was paramount.  Back then, being a member of the NRA meant that you cared about the safe and responsible operation of guns.  It wasn't about gun manufacturers fueling a paranoid campaign of fear to instigate gun sales.  And it wasn't a political ploy.

Do you really think those 15 million in 1492 all stayed alive in a static situation until about 1900 when most of the bounties were lifted??  Leaving only 15 million to die over those 400 years???


When one thinks about how populations grow - let's make some rough estimates...  Maybe 1/3 were breeding age?  (Plus 1/3 kids and 1/3 old)  If ya wanna argue a little more or little less, that is fine with me, but I will start there for this example.

So 5 million were having kids probably at least once every 2 to 3 years (actually would have likely been more often), so in 3 years we have the original 15 million plus 5 million kids - 20 million.  Say 20% die in every 3 year group.  Consider adulthood of 21 years old just to make the math come out a little more even - letting many of that generation actually have kids.  End of first 3 year increment, we end up with 20 - 1 million....19 left.  

If spread the kids growing up over the 21 years (5% per year-ish reaching maturity) and old people dying at about same rate - 5% per year, and current breeding people leaving the breeding ages at 5% per year.

Repeat 6 more times to 21 years - the typical "end" of one generation time and start of another.   That gives a total rough number of 43 million people who have lived during that 21 year increment of time.  Take out for death rates from all causes, and let's keep it simple and say that the population stays steady near that 19 million point of the first 3 year time.

Repeat every 21 years.  In 210 years that is 430 million people.  315 years is 645 million.  420 years would be 860 million who would have been born, lived and died in those 400 years.  My estimates for birth rate may be high - maybe they only had babies every 5 years and stopped after 3 or 4 instead of 7 in 21 years which would cut these numbers to fewer but still hundreds of millions of people over the time frame - still probably much higher than my 175 number earlier.

Which takes me back to the 175 million total population spanning that time.  And the estimate of 90 million - that is an extermination/genocide/ethnic cleansing event.  Think about this for a while - you are a sharp person - and even if you aren't good at math, I would bet that your family, or at least the family of a friend will give you a kind of small version of this population path.  I know there are huge variations - in my family, it ranges from only-children to families with 14 kids born, 13 of which survived to adulthood.  I haven't gone in depth into the make up of the typical tribal extended family unit, but 250 to 400 people seems to be kind of a critical mass that guarantees survival of the group, all other things being equal, without the 'meltdown of society' issues from a much larger group.  (Mormons have recognized this critical mass phenomena and organize their churches into groups of about 250 - I think they are called 'stakes'...??)

If we use Wounded Knee as an example of a typical tribal unit, there were around 350 Native people in attendance to be butchered.  Army reports said that about half were women and children (175).  This gives a slightly higher percentage of breeding age people than I used but may be very close due to many of the men having been already killed or still off the reservation as a group to fight.  Other accounts I have read say that this was kind of a typical group and mix, if you add in the missing men.  Or about 1/3 having babies as I used above.

So of that 175, if we say that each woman averaged 2 kids at that particular point in time, there were roughly in the ballpark of 60 women and 120 kids.  If they each had 3, it moves those numbers around a little - fewer women, more kids.  So the estimates I use above may not be exact, but are pretty close to typical.  Which means that 860 million over 400 years may not be far off.  I will stay with my 175 and 90 just to be EXTREMELY conservative and if engaging in any hyperbole, for it to be in underestimating the numbers....  If anything, I have not jumped off a cliff - I have stepped off a very short curb.



As for most evil country - please reread what I said.  I did NOT say we are the most evil country in all of history.    I made no judgement about our relative moral position - just stated facts.    THIS is what I said....not the same.

"I have said it before and repeat - no other country in the history of this planet has done as much good as the US.  And no other country has done as much evil.  Maybe that's why we are so politically schizoid...."

I have less than zero interest in what other parts of the world were doing...it is OUR abominable behavior that is the topic.  Yeah, the Dutch first learned about how to engage in slavery from other Africans.  Followed by all the other Europeans (except for the Irish).  That argument says that since we were only 7%, that somehow makes us "better" by 93% than all the others.   BS !!  We were 100% evil on that topic. 

As we were 100% evil on the topic of extermination and genocide of the Native American population.  Same thing there - it doesn't matter if Central America had twice, 3 or 4 times the population - it just means that Spain was even worse than we were, but takes NOTHING away from our culpability! 

It is difficult to know what the numbers were - in great part because so many times, new settlers would come into an area of neat, orderly park like forest where the original population had lived, but been eradicated by disease brought by mostly Jesuit priests acting as missionaries.  They would look around and say, 'look at this great area...we will take it!"  And with only cursory wonder at why there were no people living in such an ideal location. 

The Natives did manage the eastern forests using fire to allow transportation, encourage/manage game populations, etc.  They weren't just the "savages" that your history lessons and John Wayne would have you believe.

Because none of those other things are expressly protected in the Bill of Rights. And yes, they didn't want a standing army, hence civilians were armed with firepower equivalent to what a standing army at the time would have had. This hits on point 2 of yours. I think I might be able to make a stronger case that the original intent of the second amendment was to have citizens carrying "military grade" weapons, in case raising a militia became necessary.  And you're right, that it would seem that a militia in this day in age seems unnecessary, but I know several civilizations that likely thought the same thing. And it didn't turn out well. And you are right we live in a different world. The military is carrying around precision extreme capacity weapons and the civilians are carrying around semi automatic rifles. I think we already don't carry what the military has.
 

I totally agree that this whole "never let a crisis go to waste" mentality no matter how repulsive has gotten way out of hand. Look, I don't even own a gun, may never own one, but I will continue to advocate for the second amendment till the day I die.

You realize that's like saying "we won" when your favorite sports team wins...

And the topic is "more mass shootings".

Never assuming, nor unassuming.  I'm four generations removed from my 3rd great grandmother who was full blood Cherokee, however since she lived in Kentucky and married my 3rd great grandfather, she wasn't forced on the walk and never got on the rolls, so I have no card (nor do I care to have one).  I also have Lakota Sioux lineage.

I guess sarcasm never translates well over the internet.

It doesn't for me apparently. No problem. Honestly, it doesn't give me a leg to stand on anyway or somehow validate my opinion. For the record, my Grandmother's Grandmother was full blood. And no card for me either, not that I care.

This devolvement evolved from the idea being advanced by the historically ignorant - or maybe just the intellectually dishonest - premise that this Orlando thing was the worst shooting we have ever seen.  It is not, as has been covered.


1.  I agree completely about the voting thing - it is too hard to register - it should be automatic!  As soon as a person reaches 18, they are immediately eligible and automatically registered to vote unless they choose to opt out.  This is a right of citizenship and in the exact same way as the right to free speech accrues fully at 18, so should voting!!

As for the second amendment part - well, you have re-written plain English.  The first part is a subordinate clause.  Meaning that it cannot stand alone as a sentence because it does not provide a complete thought.  It is used to explain, clarify, or add additional detail to the main clause, which must be a complete sentence and the main reason the sentence is written.  It is saying "why" the right of the people exists.  The SAME "people" of First Amendment fame....   As for the redefinition of the word 'militia', well that argument goes on and on into the future - but it was NOT then as so many are trying to define it now.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

2.  Yeah...and the First Amendment should be adapted to our instant media world in much the same way.... they also did not have cell phones, ipads, internet, or video cameras, so Free Speech should probably be regulated - or better yet, eliminated.

And I use my 'military' gun as a hunting weapon - it is the ideal solution to a particular thorny problem evolving in Oklahoma.  And it is also very good for deer!  Right now in particular, with the explosion of the feral hog population in the US, it has become important to try to get that under control by whatever means necessary.  Even Oklahoma is looking at allowing night hunting in addition to open daytime hunting - no limits, please kill as many as possible.  Feral hogs have not been seen much - relatively speaking - from Collinsville to Nowata and either side of highway 169 for at least a few miles.  I was in Talala a few weeks ago, just walking along a county road enjoying a nice spring day and found a dead feral hog in a ditch.  There are many more where you see the one - like cockroaches.  Talking to some of the neighbors, there have been sightings this year where there have been none before.  What that tells me is that I will have some good hunting opportunities very soon and the only safe way to approach that is to either trap them or have a rifle with enough power to stop them and enough capacity to possibly deal with 6, 10, or more really cranky wild hogs.  Ever seen those tusks up close??  Whew!!  I am in process of getting an AR-10 type rifle with multiple 30 round magazines (7.62 x 51), since the 5.56 isn't quite up to that job.  Anyone want a hog for a cookout??

3.  100% alignment and agreement.  Maybe 200%...I would probably say that more emphatically.

4.  100% alignment and agreement.  Maybe 200%...I would probably also say that more emphatically.  If anyone has their rights abridged, then no one really has any rights.  And Jesus even addressed that...don't remember if you are religious or not, but this fits....

"Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me."    -Matthew 25:45.

I read that as 'do unto others as you would have them do unto to you".  (Another Matthew quote.)


As for the NRA, well, that hasn't changed much - that is still their main goal - safety in the shooting sports.  What has driven the political side, the ILA, is the incessant, ongoing efforts by extremely well funded organizations like the Brady Bunch Clown Show to eliminate private ownership of firearms in the United States.  It takes only the most modest review of their propaganda to see what their agenda is....

She probably hid out in the hills so she didn't get rounded up.  That's what some of my family did in southern KY and TN.  No card either, but the kids have theirs through the female DNA donor.

I wouldn't mind having the card for health care upon occasion...one can never get enough of waiting in line!!



Sorry...just couldn't resist the temptation to be just a tiny bit sarcastic....

Forgive me but maybe I can't understand plain English. In your statement you said no other country in the HISTORY of this planet has done so much good AND no other country has done as much evil. Your words.

This idea that the FL shooting was the worst ever on American soil p'ssed me off as well since I know we have had worse dating back to the Native American days and I would also say that certain events in the civil war would also surpass such a statement of being the worst.

I still can't agree with the 90 million figure, but I will do my homework and research this more to see how accurate you may be.

Your math is just a tad off. No civilization including ours could sustain a growth rate of 27% every three years. Unchecked a population of 15 million growing at the rate you propose would result in a population of more than 367 quintillion by 1899. That’s only 122 trillion times more people than the 7 billion people on earth today.

And I am not ignorant to the history of Natives in America. I guarantee you I am closer to native issues than just about anyone on this board and my education is not through John Wayne movies. Even though I am very white.

Are you  surprised?

That he was wrong? No.

That he was wrong on the order of 122 trillion times more people than the 7 billion people on earth today, yeah. That's not exactly a rounding error.

Show some better math, then.  Just 'speculating' about "a tad off" is just 'trolling'.  And peanut gallery posts from others who also have a math background, but provide no alternative calculations.  Well, that's just Republicontin....

And actually read what is written.  Trillions??  Geez...come on - that's not you.  At least I didn't think so...

This is a pretty rough estimate - just a quick 'off the cuff' through the numbers - as a starting point.  Making a discussion of it would mean presenting other information.  But these numbers would reflect a pretty steady 15 to 30 million absolute max at any given point in time.  No one said anything about unchecked - except you.  The one thing all the population people seem to agree on is that world population was relatively stable and slow growing for a long time - ranging from a couple hundred million to under 1 billion from thousands of years BC until about 1800.  Came up with an upper limit of 800 million possible living people spread over that 400 year time.  Not at all implausible.  Could it be 300 million?  Sure - easily.  Could it have been 400 million.  Maybe.  What we DO know is that by 1900, the entire Native population had spanned 400 years of 15 to 30 million average, with large exterminations due to European Conquerers introduction of Weapons of Mass Destruction to the continent.  And it pretty much all European - English, Dutch, Spanish, French, etc.  All illegal immigrants.  (Maybe the Natives should have built a wall...!!)

With an ending population of about 350,000 by 1900 - when, as I said, the bounties were mostly removed from killing of Native Americans.

If you know so much about Native history, give some numbers that you feel are more representative of the extermination and genocide.


More info - that you could have found easily...

"World population has experienced continuous growth since the end of the Great Famine of 1315–17 and the Black Death in 1350, when it was near 370 million."

Since there are only 6 continents that have full time populations, a simple divide by 6 would put 60+ million in North America.  So there are likely to be differences in population density, lets say that it was 1/2 the density of every other continent - or 30 million in 1350.  I wouldn't be surprised if that were still a little high, but am always open to new information.  Got any??




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

And since so many are dismissive about Wikipedia...

https://www.guibord.com/democracy/files-html/world-population-growth-through-history-graph.html

http://homepage.smc.edu/buckley_alan/population/worldpop.htm

Exactly.  Not the same as saying we are the most evil country in history.  One must balance evil with the good.  Not on a 1:1 basis though.  Come on...read it some more.


If I were gonna place the label of most evil, it would probably be a transitory 'title'.  Maybe some of the religious human sacrifice societies...that's just catering to a seriously sick, societally self destructive, fetish.  But then one runs into a semantics issue since we did a little bit of what could definitely be called religious human sacrifice, even leaving the Native extermination out... (Witch trials.)

Maybe Cambodia with Pol Pot?  Russia with Stalin?  More evil as percentage of total population, even if smaller absolute numbers.  Not really sure that a "most evil country in history" could be named.

Got any ideas for the title??  And reasons why you would choose that?

Your estimate was a growth rate of 15 million to 20 million minus natural attrition of 1 Million or actual growth from 15 to 19 million in three years. That’s a growth rate of 26.6667% in three years. Again, your numbers:

You forgot that half the population would have been men, roughly.  But this is your growth number, 15 to 19 million in three years. That again is 26.6667% in just three years.

Run that out over four hundred years and that’s where my numbers come from. It’s your growth rate, not mine.



Personally, from what I have read 15 million is way high for the US. The largest civilization in North America in pre-Columbian times was that of the Mississippian people that were centered at Cahokia Mound east of St Louis. Cahokia collapsed in the century before the European invasion, probably due to war. Cahokia had a population of about 40,000 at its peak and with it being by far the largest city in what is today the US does not lead someone to think that there were anything like 15 million people by 1492.

As for how many people died because of the European invasion in what is the US today? All I can reliably say is “millions”, but nothing like 90 million.

Your numbers are out of sight. The trail of tears resulted in something close to probably 20k dead out of about 75k people that were forced to Oklahoma. That is a terrible death rate but that also shows how small the Native population was at the time. That huge collapsed Mississippian civilization? The descendants of the Mississippian people are the ones who made the march minus the Cherokee. The Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaw and Chickasaw are the descendants of the Mississippian civilization, along with a few other smaller tribes like the Osage. The Cherokee, the Sioux, the Navajo and the various descendants of the Mississippian people make up the large majority of the Natives living in the US today and also in pre-Colombian days. Those civilizations simply didn’t have millions of people back then and if they didn’t, then the idea that there were 10-15 million people in the US in 1492 makes no sense. 2-3 million makes much more sense and most of those people died early on leaving a very small population, one like the 75k that went on the trail of tears.


There were 2-3 million at the time of contact, and probably something like 2-3 million were killed, mostly in the first or second generation after contact. Disease works that way as the people that don’t die build up tolerance and dead people don’t have kids.

An easier way to do the math would be this: First off, let’s say there were three million people in the US in 1492 and only half a million were left after all the those killed by the diseases and by settlers that spread after initial contact. That’s about 2.5 million people killed in say the first 50 years. That’s sadly probably about accurate.

Let’s assume that there was a median population of say 500,000 people over the next 350 years, that’s probably a little high when by 1900 the population was only 350k, but it’s round number. Let’s then assume the average lifespan was 45 years during that interval of 350 years. That means that about 3.9 million Natives lived during that 350 year period. If you want to assume that 25% of that population was killed by Europeans in some way then that’s about 970k deaths. 970k plus 2.5 million, call it 3.5 million deaths due to European invasion.

Even if your 15 million number in 1492 were correct, the death toll still only goes to 16.5 million. Nowhere close to 90 million. There just weren’t enough people for that to be true.

Well, this thread took an interesting turn.

ON NATIVE AMERICANS, a brief fact finding mission...

I have had the pleasure of being in great discussions with a person very knowledgeable on this issue. The person advocates for the tribes on a professional level. We do not see eye to eye on many of the issues, but he knows his stuff. This is only relevant because I've (we've) gone back and forth with data on the issue.

Direct action in "Indian wars" in North America resulted in the death of as many as 20,000 "white people," and the deaths of as many as 30,000 Natives. When you think of Custer, Wounded Knee, or the much hyperbolized "Indian attacks" on white settlers... we are talking about 50,000 deaths over 350 years. You can use any number of sources (https://books.google.com/books?id=qX0GAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT38&lpg=PT38&dq=30000+indians+died+in+indian+wars&source=bl&ots=T8SxGqpMNJ&sig=hW91uXDkql-hmc6Y64SCKBtMEwI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjYueaBka_NAhVM8GMKHbyiAGsQ6AEIUzAH), and I'm sure you can find varying numbers (though the 30k number is wildly used), but the number of "fighting" deaths were relatively low given that it occurred over ~15 generations.

How many Native's were there to start with in North America (North of the Rio Grande)? Estimates range from 900,000 to 13,000,000 (http://www.bxscience.edu/ourpages/auto/2009/4/5/34767803/Pre-Columbian%20population.pdf). Central America was densely populated for the era, with some estimates saying more than 50,000,000 people (or as few as 3.5mil). South America has estimates from 4mil to 48 million. 

So if we are talking about Natives in the entirety of the Americas, 90,000,000 is a possibility. If we are talking about total native deaths over the 350 years of conflict between natives and Europeans, including disease... 90 million is possible. But the land was not depopulated, even if the Spanish gave it their best efforts. So if the argument is Europeans intentionally killed 90 million Natives, that's very likely false.

Was it a genocide?  No, I don't think in the sense of the Nazi or Armenian genocides. There was not a concerted effort to kill all Native Americans. They certainly suffered horrible abuses, in some incidents groups certainly were massacred, and there is evidence that disease, exposure, and malnutrition were disregarded in some/many circumstances, if not passively used as a tool of oppression against some Native Populations (Trail of Tears anyone?). In North America, there was certainly a concerted effort at cultural genocide - to eliminate Native languages, religions, and ways of life. An effort that was hugely successful (see, e.q., every Tribal Member you know practicing their conqueror's religion and speaking English).

There are US government transcripts detailing plans for the cultural genocide. Of course, at the time, they spoke in terms of forcing them to assimilate. But it was a concerted effort. And even when they did assimilate nearly perfectly, the US Government was happy to facilitate theft of their lands if it suited the "white" population. Its so easy to abuse "them" when they aren't "us."

I think so.  (Interesting turn...)

It is massively difficult to predict actual populations - there just aren't any real records to find out for sure.  It's almost like the argument of how many people does it take to build the Giza pyramids?  And were they slaves or valued craftspeople?  

Some of the Aztec cities were said to have been able to support populations of 200,000 people.  Who knows for sure - there was no census that I can find evidence of.  The infrastructure was there to support that number based on what we see in similar primitive cultures today.  

DNA studies will probably give us better insight into what populations have done in the past - I read about a DNA investigation that said the earth's population suffered a mass extinction somewhere in the 150,00 years ago range that left as few as 10,000 to 50,000 humans alive on the planet - total!!  That's an event!!

Nat Geo has some interesting insights into this fairly new field of study (from 2011 - compared to traditional methods) and may get us a better view of the entire planet someday.  And this is pre-Rupert, so it is more likely to be real science!!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/12/111205-native-americans-europeans-population-dna-genetics-science/

When you look at the number of tribes in North America, and the minimum population required to maintain a discrete population (there were said to be 120,000 Jews taken to Egypt by Ptolemy, leaving many behind and we know that was a very healthy tribe) it would seem that at least a few thousand per tribe would be required just to maintain viability...maybe as low as 10,000 total per tribe?  I don't know...any geneticists out there who can enlighten?   (Oh, wait - I forgot...the minimum number is 2.  Plus the wives from other lands.  Or 8 after a big flood.)   And there are over 600 known tribes.  How many more have been forgotten?  (Feds recognize 592 at last count).  Maybe twice that??  That would amount to about 6 million at any given time, and as big as the "holding capacity" of North America is, I bet it was a lot higher - closer to the 15 or maybe even 30 million.  We pretty much know there were many millions running around a much smaller, much less agriculturally productive area - the mediterranean/Europe.  The Roman Empire was estimated to have 85,000,000 people in Augustus' time.  Why would we think that this land would have so much smaller a population than that?  I think the people that advance the hundreds of thousands numbers have some background agenda going on - probably to minimize the perceived impact.  

The DNA evidence that shows a dramatic drop in population (about half), eventual recovery to pre-decline levels (for a while), and no real reduction in genetic diversity (still a lot of different tribes....).  No number estimates given yet.

Map of tribes.
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/06/24/323665644/the-map-of-native-american-tribes-youve-never-seen-before


http://www.bible-history.com/maps/roman_empire.html

Sorry, but no.

Recognized tribes is not the same thing as distinct different groups of people. By far most of those “tribes” are tiny bands or villages. The majority of natives today belong to just 10-15 tribes and even those are not completely or historically distinct.

There today, per Wiki, there are 2.9 million registered tribal members with the 566 federally recognized tribes. The 2010 census has it as 3.4 million people identified themselves as being part of a particular tribe. But of those 3.4 million 2.2 million indicated they belong to just 11 tribes. And that’s not the complete story either.

Here are the tribes with more than 50k people according to the 2010 census:
1   Cherokee   819,105
2   Navajo   332,129
3   Choctaw   195,742
4   Chippewa   170,742
5   Sioux   170,110
6   Apache   111,810
7   Blackfeet   105,304
8   Creek   88,332
9   Iroquois   81,002
10   Pueblo   62,540
11   Chickasaw   52,278

http://www.census.gov/history/pdf/c2010br-10.pdf


But that’s not the whole story. In the Pre-Columbian era the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Creek on this list would have seen themselves as a single people. The Blackfeet and the Chippewa are closely related, as are the Navajo and Apache. Today there might be “500 Nations” but 500 years ago you would have seen six or so large “Civilizations” that covered huge areas larger than modern states with related bands or towns speaking similar languages or dialects living in similar fashion to each other. After that there were several dozens of smaller civilizations that were sometimes autonomous or semi-autonomous from the larger civilizations. Wars were fought, land and resources captured. A really cool idea among some was that games could be played to take the place of destructive war. The games often could be deadly, but they didn’t kill entire cities or towns. Lacrosse is a derivative of this. Often these civilizations acted as countries with very sophisticated political organizations and trade, especially for example The Sioux Nation, Cherokee and The Muscogee Confederacy (Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw, Choctaw).

The division into “500 Nations” is a construct of Europeans to divide up, define and name tribal groups that they might want to steal from. Divide and Conquer.

This one probably got lost in the last post.  Hundreds.

As peer reviewed by Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.   

http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2014/06/Tribal_Nations_Map_NA.pdf

It’s a cool map to be sure. It has the larger groups and then even some towns. But every name on this map is not a distinct people or tribe, by far.

We can talk about the section I am more familiar with, in what is modern Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and into Florida and South Carolina. In the middle of this area of the map they have Mvskoke Etvlwv which is today The Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and the surrounding names are of towns and other related people like Chahta and Chickasha (Choctaw and Chickasaw), Mikasuki (Seminole), Koasati and Albaamaha (Alabama-Choushatta).  This is the region that was the Creek Confederacy that today is a dozen or more federally recognized tribes and tribal towns. Historically it was one civilization, a country really in all ideas of the term, in the pre-Colombian area. Look at the name of the towns they have included such as Ocmulgee and Coosa. The only distinct non Muscogean people in this region of the map is what they have as Tsoyaha, which is the real name of the Euchee tribe who came out of Florida and were massacred by the Cherokee and then taken in and protected by the Upper Creeks. Dozens of names on the map across five modern states, but only two distinct people, and only one of which had a substantial population. These people along with the Cherokee to the north became the modern Five Civilized Tribes, which today are made up of probably two dozen federally recognized tribes.

This can be repeated across several areas of the map. Go look up The Great Sioux Nation. It was the size of a large European country.

Ahem...

(http://marshallbrewing.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Eric_TW.jpg)

Along that same line, are you going to the DA festivities on Friday?

On Monday, Chief Mina answered in a way that left open the possibility that some of the 49 people killed and 53 wounded were, in fact, hit by police gunfire.
“That’s part of the investigation, but here’s what I will tell you: Those killings are on the suspect,” he said.
Norman Caisano said that after hiding and then making his way toward the club entrance, “I poked my head out, and the police actually shot at me.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/fbi-transcripts-orlando-shooting-omar-mateen.html?_r=0

OTOH, in the aftermath of last years Twin Peaks/Waco massacre, police also heaped praise on themselves for saving X-amount of lives without disclosing they might have been responsible for about half of the casualties.

A man who says he was the shooter's lover says he flipped out when he discovered one of his latino bois had HIV:
http://www.univision.com/univision-news/united-states/orlando-massacre-was-revenge-not-terrorism-says-man-who-claims-he-was-gunmans-lover

...but the FBI says they cant find any evidence he was gay; apparently by not interviewing anyone who says he is.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/officials-no-evidence-orlando-gunman-omar-mateen-was-gay-1.11963327

That makes it ISIS for sure.
/s

Rich and powerful setting the discussion so all the sheeple fall in and stay in line.

Yes, back to the mass shooting of beer!!


But, yum!!

(https://i.imgflip.com/uflgb.jpg)

Helping?  Why would I want to do that?    Huh...interesting concept, though...!  May have to try it sometime.

I am just channeling my inner Donald Trump today!   Taking the sauerkraut/Breadburner path to inner peace and cosmic consciousness!


And now this from our sponsors!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emA-IK2RcKY

I saw on another thread where were not supposed to discuss shootings that involve cops, which is ironic that for the last couple of days the rash of "officer involved shootings" has been most of CNN's news cycle. 

Im not going to question the moderator's quest for list purity, but as another poster eloquently stated earlier, we cant stay insulated from national trends.

That’s not what I read.  I believe it was more along the lines of we don’t need multiple threads addressing police brutality in various places around the country.  I can see where it becomes "mission creep” from hosting a forum which was founded as a Tulsa development forum.  I did manage to see the meme Vashta had posted of a perp who was beaten beyond recognition before it was taken down and it was beyond disturbing.  There are plenty of places to post stuff like that like a personal FB page if someone is so inclined.

I have to agree with the moderator on this one.  TN wasn't formed to discuss police beatings.  It was formed to discuss Tulsa Centric subjects, specifically development.

Some folks go overboard and in that case...enough is enough.  We get it...some cops do bad things...I'm not logging on here to be reminded of it day after day.

Ill have to take your word for it since it apparently wasnt up long.  As for TNF, we've almost elevated mission creep to an art form.

Speaking of creep, have you ever run a Google Image search for "snake wearing a hat?"

https://www.google.com/search?q=snake+wearing+a+hat&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_u92Fj-LNAhVG6SYKHUd_B-EQ_AUICCgB&biw=1280&bih=619

I attempted to add Plissken with no success

Well we're sure going to miss the "Sports talk," "Entertainment," "Chat and Advice" and "Restaurant Reviews" that arent part of the TulsaNow Forum mission.

Let's be clear. This is not a publicly owned site. It's private property and we use it by permission. Tulsa Now would be within their rights if they insisted the only permissible subject was neutered, left-handed Tom cats. When you play in someone's sand box, it's best to play by their rules.

Plus the locking of the other thread had more to do with how many posts, there are already threads for police misconduct, there are other topics for other incidents. No point in flooding the forum with new topics every time, when updating current ones works just fine.

I'll just leave this here.

(https://i.imgur.com/Plar40N.png)

OMG you too?!  It's my favorite thing to do!

sarcasm off...

Ok, what were you doing that it even remotely occurred to you to google that?

I cant see how some people laugh at this discussion.  Very disrespectful.


When you attack random members of a large group (be it police, Muslums etc.) because of the bad actions of the few, you empower the few to escallate their behavior because they can hide behind their new victim status.

Wash, rinse, repeat.  The cycle continues.

In this case it serves to focus on the failure of police training, the fallacy of some pro gun arguments, (specifically how everyone being armed in this case would have lessened the death toll) and a serious examination of what decades of war and declining education have done to the psyche of our population. We have problems with race, gender, anger, religion and income inequality in our country. That doesn't diminish our greatness. Recognition of these problems and addressing them is what makes us great.

Prosecutors and judges have given their blessing to deadly force whenever there is only a a "perception" of a threat, so when police are daily bombarded with the unions' "Soldier they are all out to get you so do whatever you have to do to make it home alive" brainwashing then what do you think the outcome is?

The there's Chief Jordan saying "Im a target just because I wear this uniform."


But the truth, according to statistics, is that it’s not any more dangerous to be a cop now than it has been in years past. In fact, 2015 is on pace to have near-record low levels of deadly violence against police.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-police-reform_us_56002672e4b0fde8b0cefcdd

(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/usatoday/editorial/graphics/2016/07/070816-All-Police-Deaths.jpg) 
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/07/08/police-safeguards-dallas-shootings/86847240/

Kinda scary isn't it??   It was like someone was crawling around in my head....!!

Apparently the Minnesota man killed in the live-streamed traffic stop's fatal mistake was telling the officer he had a legal conceal carry.   Its a no-win.
http://www.startribune.com/philando-castile-had-permit-to-carry-gun/386054481/

Catch 22. 

Just playing Devil's advocate, but I'm seeing a potential cause and effect here.

Out of the box solution.

New Police Academy for those that "want to make a difference" in how police do their jobs. We'll even deploy them to the neighborhood of their choosing.

I believe most have that intention but just get swallowed up by the culture.   A residency requirement might still be worthwhile.

The rate at which whites are killed by cops in this country is astounding. Dozens of times worse than other developed countries.

And the rate that blacks are killed by cops is double that of whites.

And the rates Native Americans and the mentally ill are killed is even worse then blacks.

Put this in perspective. Last year in Oklahoma 28 people were killed by cops. 12 of them were black, when blacks are less than 10% of the population.

Oklahoma has 4 million people. Germany has 80 million people, 20x the population of Oklahoma and in the last five years German cops have killed 31 people. Oklahoma's cop kill rate is 80 times that of Germany, and our kill rate of blacks is 10 times higher than the overall population. 800 times higher than Germany. 800 Times!!!.

We have a very serious problem and race is an important factor, but even that aside, something is very, very wrong with how police act in this country.

The problem exists, however one must also take into consideration the crime ratios.  Black Americans are about 12% of the population nationwide but that small population continues to represent a larger ratio of violent crime.  Consider table 5. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fdluc09.pdf  1/8th of the population is committing nearly half of all violent crime. You will also notice the study found 258 black victims of police shootings in 2015; in 188 of those cases, the victim was armed with a deadly weapon at the time of the shooting.

Your statement:
Is incorrect.
Cops killed nearly twice as many whites as blacks in 2015. According to data compiled by The Washington Post, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/  The 'ratio' of blacks killed by cops is indeed about double, but the language is important.  This issue is being blurred politically because people are not using accurate language.

Your statement:
Cannot be validated with existing data.

We do indeed have a serious problem.  We have social structures that have grown to excuse, ignore, and in many cases admire thugism, and criminal activity as a form of status and survival. So much so, that a culture has developed.  Music, language, and dress has evolved to elevate such activities as positive symbols.  Within that incubator, children are taught that police are their enemy, because they see their friends and family arrested or worse.  As a result, police become habituated to an expectation of violence when they are in those communities.  They feel a need to keep their guard up.  It's a vicious circle.

Policing this won't fix it. Lectures from politicians won't fix it. Gun laws have nothing to do with it. Ignoring the problem and blaming the police will just make it worse.
The solution will need to come from within the community. The social illness will need to be diagnosed. The culture will need to change.  Until that happens, it will continue.

Setting aside the race issues, the Dallas mass shooting shed interesting light on the gun debate.

A) We know know what happens when a lone wolf with an assault style weapon attacks a well armed and well trained crowd. He shoots lots of them and they have to resorts to explosive robots to stop him.

When army combat units are ambushed they suffer disproportional casualties. That's the entire point of an ambush. Particularly when the abushor/murderer can shoot with little disregard for other consequences and the responders are worried about their safety and that of others (ie., can't randomly shoot at anything they think is a threat).  It is anecdotal evidence and/or an illustration that a more armed society is not necessarily a safer society.

B) It showed the problems with open carry. Those who were open carrying were not helpful in the crisis. They got in the way as police had to investigate reports of multiple gunman, find random people with guns and detain/question them, or as it mislead their investigation. Not one open carry person benefited the situation.

All off set by proper training.....

Perhaps consider that the Dallas situation is the anecdotal evidence. How often does that really happen?

Part of that crime ratio thing goes to how blacks are prosecuted versus others for the same crime - it is not a level field, nor proportionate.  Beyond that, though, your last two paragraphs are dead on right.  One piece is that we have moved as a society to the point where the cop becomes the "catch-all", go to guy for everything from dog catcher to drug counselor to revenue generators to child comforter (teddy bears in cop cars).  We will have to take responsibility as a society to get them back to doing the job they should be doing - law enforcement.  It's gonna cost a little more than we want to spend to do this right.

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/141027_iachr_racial_disparities_aclu_submission_0.pdf


One prime example of how this has gone so far off the rails - traffic stops for "broken tail lights".  That should be covered by the state inspection program!  .....  Exactly - we don't have one.  If it is noted by an officer, then take a picture, send the car owner a note and don't waste all the time/energy, and in this last weeks activities, lives, with a broken tail light!  This is stupid stuff.

This once.  So far.

Unique response to an ongoing condition.  It is symptomatic of some very bad things going on - both sides - not new things, just being brought to light better with current technology.

I don't think it is, or will be anecdotal or simply related to an American culture gone berserk.

http://gizmodo.com/norways-lovely-memorial-to-the-worst-mass-shooting-in-1536842749

"It's been almost three years since a gunman detonated a bomb in Oslo and then stormed a small summer camp off the coast of Norway, killing 77 people and cementing a record as the worst mass shooting in modern memory. This month, the country revealed plans for a memorial to the tragedy—and it's beautiful.

 
Designed by a Swedish artist named Jonas Dahlberg, the plan is more land art than architecture. On the island of Utøya, where the gunman gained access to a summer camp by dressing in a police uniform and showing a fake ID on July 22, 2011, Dahlberg proposes creating a massive gap of water and air. By slicing a huge section of the island's landmass away, he would create a steep fjord through the site where the shooting occurred—a void that he describes as "a wound or a cut within nature itself."

And that with some "tough" gun laws.   Ya can't stop sh$t from happening - but you don't have to penalize all law abiding people for the crimes of the few.

Spot on!
Unfortunately, it's now a chicken/egg argument.  I agree that police likely target minorities more frequently.  Unfortunately this is logical. Police go to where the crime is.  They are assigned based on statistical information, heat maps, and CI information.  When they fail to focus on these hot-spots, they get blamed for the resulting crime.

I enjoy fishing.  I have learned that I catch more fish when I go where the fish are.  If the fish leave that spot, I don't go there any more.

So, as I said before, this is a community issue. The police do not have the power to change the community (nor should they). Change will need to come from within.

I also agree with you, that police 'powers' have expanded far beyond what they should be.  There is far too much blurred landscape under the guise of 'Public Safety.'   Unfortunately, we live in a culture that attempts to solve problems by demanding legislation, and legislation requires enforcement, and enforcement delivers disproportionate power.

I would hazard to say, that more people have lost their lives (in a sequence of events) after being pulled over for a broken tail light, then have lost their lives in an accident due to a broken tail light.  The power to pull someone over for a broken tail light opens the door to all kinds of other powers.

Often its more of a euphemism than an actual vehicle defect. 

Norway has had what, one mass shooting incident ever? While it was tragic and the scale was disgusting - this can happen almost anywhere.

Incidentally, the shooter in Norway used a .223 caliber semi automatic rifle with a 30 round clip he bought from the US on the internet (functionally the same weapon used in most mass shootings in the US). He had a bolt action 308 for 7 years before the massacre, but wanted a lower caliber and high capacity magazine for the mass shooting. He said he needed it to hunt deer (hint if you miss with the first 29, give up).  Turns out he was a paranoid schizophrenic trying to kill Marxists.

How many people would he been able to murder with a 5 shot bolt action rifle? How many American mass-murders wouldn't survive the scrutiny this guy did, or have the patience to plan and wait for months and months? You will never stop every wack-job-murderer, but you can make their job harder.

That’s why I said the rate was double, reading is fundamental!

Overall rate at which Americans are killed by police, 2013 to present: overall 12.19, blacks only 25.2. That would be double, as I stated.

Oklahoma is far worse:
Tulsa overall rate 20.41
Tulsa black rate 49.0

Oklahoma City overall rate 51.22
Oklahoma City black rate 163.3
http://public.tableau.com/profile/ssinyangwe#!/vizhome/PoliceViolenceperPD/RatesperCapita

Also, your study is from large urban counties only which are going to have a far high black population than the overall country. Overall blacks (including black Hispanics) are 12.6% of the total population and make up about 36% of violent crime arrests while whites (including white Hispanics) make up about 60% of violent arrests.  But that’s not the whole story, the rate that blacks are arrested is in itself is an example of bias. As an example black drivers that are pulled over are three times more likely to be searched than a white driver that gets pulled over, but those black drivers that are searched are 30% less likely to have drugs or illegal guns than the few white drivers that were searched. And that doesn't take into account that blacks are pulled over so many more times than whites.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/27/police-are-searching-black-drivers-more-often-but-finding-more-illegal-stuff-with-white-drivers-2/

http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.cfm#





But it can. Natives are the group most likely to be killed by cops:
http://www.cjcj.org/news/8113

And 25% of all people killed by cops are mentally ill:
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/04/420019849/paper-finds-one-quarter-of-those-killed-by-police-are-mentally-ill

That’s a whole bucket of stereotypes from your own bias that isn’t based in reality. In the real world most black people are middle class and the actual number of violent crimes committed in this country are at the lowest point in several decades. The number of police that are killed in the line of duty are at a 50 year low, and that’s with almost twice the population of the 1960s.  We are becoming a far more peaceful people. So shouldn’t police be getting less violent as violent crime continues to drop and their jobs become more safe, why is that not the case?

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Kind of goes to what I have said about our mass shootings versus just the Chicago shootings this year.  Our mass shootings are tragic and disgusting.  In the overall scheme of things mass shooting here don't have nearly the same overall impact, except in the public mind, that just Chicago shootings have.  Difference?  Well, there are several - Chicago shootings are spread over days instead of hours.  Mostly blacks killing blacks in Chicago, versus crazies killing kids and white people in most of the mass shootings.   Chicago - June 16th, they were at 1,689 shootings for the year.   Today - not even 1 month later - they are at 2,110.  421 more.  And 344 dead total.   Overall, that is about 700 more than same time last year.   13 yesterday.  3 so far today...quiet day, but not nighttime yet, either.   JUST Chicago!!

http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/shootings/

We still insist on looking for the answer where "the light is better"...


As for hunting deer - well, he may have wanted to...may not.  Hard to say.  In Oklahoma we allow .223 as a deer cartridge.  Cannot have more than 7 rounds in the gun at one time.  If you have another magazine, you can reload another 7 in a few seconds.  When I started hunting, that small a bullet was not allowed.  I still don't think it is adequate for a good clean killing shot, but that's just my opinion.  I like .308 a lot.  Can also get an AR style in that caliber that will hold 30 rounds, too.

As for bolt action rifle - well, it really isn't all that time consuming to reload a bolt action.  I have a .30-06 WWI military rifle that I can reload 5 shots in about 10 - 15 seconds.  And carry a couple hundred rounds easily in a rather small shoulder bag (man purse??) or belt pack.  Some of these guys are walking around shooting for 10, 20, 30 minutes - an hour.  One could do pretty much the same damage with a WWI rifle as the AR15 if you concentrated just a little bit and planned it out ahead.  If you have a "target rich" environment, like I have heard Ted Nugent talk about, and no law enforcement for a long time, bolt action is easily just as effective as AR.   What is the infatuation with AR ?  I don't know - maybe it's all the Bruce Willis, Arnold, and others action movies...

I have talked about the one very good place for the high capacity magazine - hog hunting - which has been dismissed by some who have never been hunting and have no clue about how it is to be in close proximity to a group of wild hogs.  I want all the firepower available.  And it is almost 'anything goes' with hogs now since they are such a big problem.  I also carry a handgun with extra magazines.  

Five shot mags with the need to stop and reload are far, far less effective than high capacity clips - at least 50% slower if you are an absolute rock star. Your target rich environment quickly diminishes when you start shooting.  Eventually the Norway guy was targeting people swimming out to sea because they had all fled.

The reason for the AR-15 obsession is because it is one of the most effective weapons to kill humans ever designed. There's a reason the US military's "new" rifle is essentially an AR-15 (knock an inch off the barrel and add burst fire to some models), it's the best tool for the job. If the United States armed forces thought they could significantly improve on it, they would have.

I would argue that anyone that points a gun at the police is mentally ill.    ;)

If it is an unarmed environment with no resistance, it really doesn’t matter what gun the shooter is using other than a muzzle loader.  You would have time to tackle or beat the assailant with a chair while he/she reloads.  You should be able to rack off a shot every 2-3 seconds if you are really methodical with something like a five shot Mauser, quicker if you are a well-practiced marksman.  Re-loading isn’t very problematic either if your intended victims are unarmed and hiding in stairwells, closets, or under desks.  Same with five or six shot revolver.  Someone can do plenty of damage with a .357 or .38 special and reload rather quickly if they have a sachet of bullets in a fanny pack.

Getting rid of certain weapons doesn’t change the intent of a sick mind.  They simply plan it out another way.  How many people were killed in the Iraq car bombing last week?  Over 175 or so?  I’m actually surprised there still has not been another massive bombing like the Murrah on US soil since then.  You don’t need a bunch of fertilizer just fuel and plenty of shrapnel.  Note: This is not something I’ve spent a lot of time considering in case anyone is worried.  ;)

Just some random observations about how you really cannot curb violence by taking away certain weapons and expecting it to go away.  It just doesn’t work that way.

Swake, generally speaking it is extremely difficult to draw too many inferences from any of this data due to the unreliability in reporting. Second, drawing conclusions from such small sample sizes is also quit difficult. Particularly the deaths from police. It is difficult to point out trends when the survey respondents are held to account per se.


It is difficult to me to see that we have an issue with the police. You should take a look at the killings on the site below. I know it is anecdotal, but I reviewed all in Oklahoma, and nearly every one seemed to be a situation where the victim was not going to "go quietly" if you get my drift. It is no less tragic, but what is a cop to do in a situation like this. And in general, should they not patrol to stop crime, or should they just be the mop up crew. They're damned if the do, damned if they don't in my opinion. Even in most of these cases they were responding to an incidents that I would hope they would be responding to.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-map-us-police-killings#

And yes, mental disease appears to be on the rise based on those mug shots.

Oklahoma, population 4 million had 28 people killed by police in 2015.
Germany, France and The UK, combined population 200 million had 4 people killed by police in 2015.

What are the cops over there doing to diffuse situations that we are not?

Interesting.  I generally feel like I am in alligment with you almost all the time, but I respectfully think that while you are technically correct, you are missing the "ease of use" angle to this whole thing.    Yes,  if a person is determined to kill a lot of people, they could figure out a way to do it. (I happen fly a lot in my job, and I am certain that I could take over a plane if I really wanted to.  Hey, I'm an engineer stuck on a plane and bored.  I think about stuff...)   Along with you, I am also surprised that we have not had another Murrah-type bombing in the US. But we haven't, and I suggest a simple reason for this:  It's a big hassle to go through the planning to do it.  It's the same reason airplane highjackings fell out of favor after years of them seeming to be commonplace.  First, some basic securities were put in place, and second the "bang for the buck" (pun sort-of intended) just wasn't worth it anymore to those thinking about trying it.

So yeah,  a person can devise a grand plan like Murrah and carry it out.  Or they could figure out how to poison the water supply of NYC, or whatever.  But most of your budget-concious crazies won't do that.  Most of them want an easy play, and while a basic 9MM pistol can do some damage and really a tactical shotgun is probably best in close quarters, nothing is easier and sexier than going out and buying (with minimal checks, or even bypassing those and buying second-hand) a really cool looking semi-auto with big clips that was designed fundamentally to do exactly for what they want to do.  It's easy. It's cool. It's "so hot right now". It's the low-hanging-fruit of the psycho class.

No it won't stop everybody, and anyone who thinks so is a fool.  But put up some more "barriers to entry", and 80% of these go away.  Is it worth it?  I don't know.  There are a lot of big questions here.  But to suggest that removing easy access to these type weapons will have little affect is not appreciating the situation for what it is.

The old bolt action I am talking about is hand loaded - push down into the receiver from the top, one at a time.  It takes is much more than 50% slower - 15 seconds versus probably 3 or 4 seconds for the AR magazine change....I am guessing 500% slower.  But 15 seconds to have 5 more rounds is still pretty fast in that context.

Swimming out to sea would be a horrible choice - just running or even walking on land - would be faster way to get away.

AR is designed for that all right.  In most combat situations I think I would still like the AK.  Or Ruger Mini 30....!

I disagree.

As you are aware, I am proficient with a 30 round AK-47 and with a 5 shot bolt action Mauser. With the Mauser 5 rounds on target at 50 meters (generally an old propane tank or tire rim) takes me about 10 seconds, to pull down and reload with an oiled stripper clip will take me about 5 seconds (unless I get the stupid clip caught in the bandoleer, like I always do). So to put 30 rounds on that target would take me 1:30 - and I feel like I'm hustling when I'm doing this. With the AK I can put 30 rounds on in under 30 seconds, and I feel like I'm being methodical. Even faster with a .223 AR-15 style weapon (vs. 7.62 x 39mm with the clunker bolt mechanism). I'm happy to go out and time trial this, and not to brag (I'm sure many, many people are faster)... but because its fun.

Much of the additional time is in resetting the rifle after the pounding from an 8mm cartridge, but resetting the bolt also requires an extra half second and some degree of losing your site picture. Reloading the magazine is self explanatory, I simply have to do it 6 times more often. Obviously, if the target was close enough to "feel" it out instead of carefully aiming, I'd be able to spray and pray much, much faster with the AK as the time between trigger pull would be nil.

In many circumstances some of the victims will be unable to flea and will hide. But if it takes someone three times longer to shoot them, help has three times longer to come to their aid (be it on-site help or otherwise). They also have three times longer to hide, barricade themselves, bust out a window, or find an avenue of escape. Additionally, in many instances the initial burst is the worst of the carnage: the bar area in Pulse, the cafeteria in Columbine, or the first couple of minutes in Dallas. If that first burst is limited to 5 or 10 shots, that's 20 people less people shot. If there is someone with a concealed carry, they have a much better opportunity to respond and defend themselves against someone who has to reload, vs. someone with an assault rifle (again, as we saw in Dallas - being armed isn't a magic panacea). And while the extra time may not provide (much of) an opportunity to assail the attacker --- but it triples the amount of time available for alternatives.

Not sure how else to put it - the entire point of assault style weapons is to shoot as many people as quickly as possible. They aren't designed for hunting, they are lousy home defense weapons, and they aren't used for serious target shooting above plinking or speed competitions. Everyone owns them for the same reason I do - they're fun and they're cool.

While mass shootings are a minimal part of our problem with gun violence, their impact is disproportional to their actual death toll (I think because the victims are so much more likely to be impersonal people that were wrong-place, wrong time vs. most murders being a personal dispute of some kind). Surely we can find some sort of trade-off that makes these types of mass shootings less frequent.



They were on an island that is about 24 acres large. The mainland was ~600 meters away. By "out to sea" I assume most of them were actually swimming for shore. Hitting a swimmer that's any distance off shore would be very difficult anyway (mostly submerged, waves, glare, etc.). If you are a strong swimmer, not a bad option.

Actually we are more in agreement than you think.

I’m simply speaking from the aspect of a gunman’s quarry.  If he’s firing a 30 shot Kalishnikov chambered for 7.62 x 54 rounds it sounds just the same as if he’s firing a Russian bolt action Mauser.  Most people, unless they have military training, have the instinct to run and hide, not rush the shooter.  Most people hear a loud bang, they aren’t thinking is it a semi-auto or bolt action, .38 revolver or double stack .40.  I’m probably not going to be bold enough to bum rush the shooter regardless what he is firing.

I’m just saying, you can do all the destruction you like with a firearm until someone who is better trained or better skilled finally intervenes.  IMO, it’s not the weapon that determines the quarry, it’s the sickness of the assailant and knowing they will meet little resistance.

In the 5-10 minutes it will take for someone to quit texting their family and call 911, for the cops to arrive, for the cops to figure out where the shooter is and get a tactical shot on them, 20-30 souls could be lost regardless of the weapon of choice.  That’s not really an exaggeration.

Someone else posted about public transportation hubs and their security.  I’m not going to mention the place, as people I interacted with are working within the local and federal guidelines for public safety and I’m not trying to denigrate people doing their job as being careless.  All I will say is it is within 250 miles of Tulsa and I suddenly don’t feel so safe flying, riding a train, bus etc.  I was called out to look at replacing several heating systems in a multiple locations within a transportation complex. 

Once a representative from a prospective contractor is with one of the on-site maintenance people it would be easy to walk into locally and federally-controlled areas completely armed.  I most definitely was not armed, but let’s just say, the metal detectors are for passengers only.  I’m really surprised we don’t have more domestic incidents on rail, air, or bus. 

Really just shocked me to my core.  There is a HUGE sense of false security.  For the billions or trillions we have spent on supposed homeland security since 2001, it still has gaping holes.

See:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/

Now as far as police shooting people, well lets just say the cops are not the ones loosing the "War on Cops."








Seriously, If 1,134 Americans were dying every year from terrorism (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/31/the-counted-killings-by-police-editorial), you would demand something be done. 

Where are the Bengazi Police Accountability hearings on the Hill?




Ouch.  Look who's Number 2:  (http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/5680d841190000190178aa8b.jpeg)


Seems there's no solution.  Not so.  Just not an easy solution when powerful groups dont want to give up any power.

Nice, France.  84 dead so far, killed by a delivery truck.  The driver was armed with a handgun, fake rifles, and fake grenades according to police.

Note, no semi-auto weapon. 

That’s over 250 killed in the last two weeks by a motor vehicle of some sort in mass killings, including the car bombing in Iraq.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/14/europe/nice-truck-attack-live-blog/

The problem is obviously much larger than automatic weapons. 

Our "go to" solution is to go after the guns - because "the light is better". 


It's extremely difficult to face the real problem and try to find a real solution.

I call it intellectual laziness.  It makes as much sense as simply throwing more money at poor school performance without actually doing any sort of analysis or follow up as to how the money will actually help increase performance and help those doing the worst in the public school system.

If there were proven methodology to show that paying teachers more makes them care more ergo our kids do better, you’d never hear any derision out of me when teacher’s unions complain.

It doesn’t matter if it’s poor academic performance or someone is bent on killing a bunch of people.  There are societal problems for which draconian restrictions or dumping billions of dollars down squirrel holes will not cure if we aren’t going to be bold enough to seriously deal with root causes.

I am fiscally very conservative, and also want assurance that we will get some added value for the money.  At this point, we know for a fact that the class sizes are increasing, and that is a known predictor of reduced learning opportunity. 

We know for a fact that we are way below all our 'contemporary' surrounding states in teacher pay.  That should be an immediate correction so that we at least have a chance of holding our own with the surrounding states.  Both in retention and attracting comparable new recruits.  We can even leave TX out of it, since they are such a huge population compared to ours.  When we compare unfavorably to Mississippi, that alone should just scare the dog-slobber out of us!!


And one thing we should at least put some 'seed money' into is looking into one of those societal issues - until we try it, we won't know if it is another Colorado style success path or not.  It is how to get parents engaged and participating in their kids education and future!  This was a problem when I was a kid.  When my kids were in school.  Grandkids, and now the great grandkids.  We have NEVER even looked at it beyond a lamentation or two and wringing of hands/gnashing of teeth!!

Kaiser has funded what appears to be some really good pre-school stuff in the area.  Maybe some of their people could provide input into the school arena?  In a non-threatening manner so that the school people won't "raise their shields".  Yeah...I know...dreamland stuff there...  We have silos built around these things that should have open, wide based communications and discussion.

France is going to have to register trucks, possibly banning those with large capacities that are popular with terrorists.

Maybe its the "Im above the law" privileged mindset.  
How about a nice, Tulsa-centric example:


It appears the 59-year-old kicked Montgomery in the head while he lay prone on the ground.
The camera emerges on the other side of the car, and Montgomery can be seen holding his left hand to his head.

"F--- you, I'm suing you," Montgomery said while on the ground.
"Good, I'm a cop," the man with the gun responds, later saying he's retired.
"Next time I'm going to shoot him right in the back of the f------ head," the armed man said.

A bystander responds, "No, you can't do that, he's not armed."

(TPD Spokesman) Ashley said he couldn't comment as to whether the armed man might have committed a crime because he doesn't have information regarding what took place prior to what the video shows.  (Interesting since TPD usually doesnt make excuses for most gunmen.....)
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/video-alleged-golf-club-thief-held-at-gunpoint-in-tulsa/article_182bc694-25e1-5b5c-97a9-a5905db27140.html



“I’ll shoot your dick off.”  Police have not yet responded to an open records request for the 911 call or incident reports.
https://www.readfrontier.com/tpd-spokesman-man-pulled-gun-alleged-thief-claimed-cop-not-cop/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ9xCemELew

Aside from YouTube comparisons between U.S. Police and European, there are some empirical theories:


The key element that ensures the legitimacy of law enforcement and makes people willing to cooperate with police is something called "procedural justice." That includes the "quality of decision-making" -- such as when the police let a suspect have his say without interruption -- and the "quality of treatment," or the respect for a person's dignity.

People don't generally cooperate with the police out of a fear of retribution, according to Tyler, but rather because their sense of "procedural justice" is satisfied.

Based on that concept, it's easy to explain why Russia, where people perceive the police to be unfair and feel little obligation to obey officers, has a much higher crime rate than Denmark, where people report the strongest obligation to obey the police among European countries.

Fryer's recommendation is an economist's take on Tyler's idea: "Increase the expected price of excessive force on lower level uses of force." The Harvard professor wrote:

    The appealing feature of this type of policy experiment is that it does not require officers to change their behavior in extremely high-stakes environments. Many arguments about police reform fall victim to the “my life versus theirs, us versus them” mantra. Holding officers accountable for the misuse of hands or pushing individuals to the ground is not likely a life or death situation and, as such, may be more amenable to policy change.

It's much easier, however, to raise the price of using a gun -- movements such as "Black Lives Matters" do so by increasing pressure on police departments -- than to fix the problem of lower-level violence. It's a matter of cop skills as much as motivation. Karl Klockars of the University of Delaware wrote,

    Force certainly need not result in serious physical or mental injury to be deemed excessive. Moreover, it need not (and usually will not) be the product of malicious or sadistic behavior. It can spring from good intentions as well as bad, mistakes and misperceptions, lack of experience, overconfidence, momentary inattention, physical and mental fatigue, experimentation, inadequate or improper training, prejudice, passion, an urge to do justice or demonstrate bravery, misplaced trust, boredom, illness, a specific incompetence, or a hundred other factors that might influence an officer to behave in a particular situation in a less than expert way. Excessive force should be defined as the use of more force than a highly skilled police officer would find necessary to use in that particular situation.
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-11/focus-on-police-shootings-obscures-larger-problem


Contrast this with the inflammatory rhetoric from Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who is "at war"
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/david-clark-blames-black-lives-matter-police-shootings

and some of that "nonsense" data, from Harvard University:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html

Harvard was mentioned, so I thought this was a good place as any to insert these couple of items.  It can be easy to get caught in traps of convenience that maintain stereotypes, prejudices, etc.  Can lead us to extreme events like we are seeing recently across so many areas.  Horrifying in that they are similar to events that I witnessed in the 60's over similar issues.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-i-said-when-my-white-friend-asked-for-my-black_us_578c0770e4b0b107a2415b89


https://goodblacknews.org/2016/07/17/fred-barley-19-bikes-6-hours-to-get-to-college-sleeps-in-tent-until-helped-by-police-and-community/#more-15979

Maybe, maybe not.

The truth is that the raw statistics can't tell us whether the police are treating African Americans differently from white people. To understand that, we'd need to look at more details about what happened in each incident.

"In fact there's been an increase, a 6% increase in fatal shootings when we compare the first six months of last year to the first six months of this year… So that's about three people are dying a day, who are being fatally shot by officers."
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826297

Think of how much this would have cost

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/07/21/colorado-town-thc-in-water/

Maybe it was financed by the Saudi Royal Family?   ;)

We talked earlier about Native American genocide...found this interesting little tidbit of history in another search theme I was doing today.  Fills out the story some more.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/scalpin/oldfolks.html

...which probably fits better in a more appropriate heading.

Maybe...but this is the follow on to part of this thread.

Its in bad taste but they have a point.


Dallas Cops Called Radio Podcast to Complain About Colleagues on Night of Dallas Shooting

“Quit hiring cowards, they are hiring cowards … my partner says they are hiring cowards,” Officer Watkins reportedly said of the academy. “They are hiring ex-military and they don’t see people as human.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/07/30/report-dpd-cops-called-radio-podcast-to-complain-about-colleagues-on-night-of-dallas-shooting/

Follow-up to a posting here.  It was a textbook example of how to act around police, but the victim died after informing the cop of a Concealled Carry, and the officer was acquitted of manslaughter after an "I was never so afraid" defense.  Dashcam released just today... NRA strangely silent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ac7Zblqyk

A detective nearby agreed:

I have been a police officer for 19 years. I love my job and serving my community. I have learned over the course of my career to never assume anything. As I watched the events unfold on July 6, 2016, on a Facebook Live feed, I thought that there must be more that happened. There must have been such a threat that wasn’t captured on this video, that forced Officer Yanez to feel his only option was to shoot into a vehicle with a child in the back seat.

Over the past two days, I have listened to the audio interviews. I have read the documents. And then I watched the dash cam video. And it broke me. Officer Yanez was in a position that if he perceived a threat, he could have disengaged. He could have taken other steps to ensure everyone’s safety, and not have forced this outcome.

Shooting a seat-belted man, with a child in the back seat, was not the only option. Until those of us who wear the badge are willing to stand up and speak out when we see things that are wrong, and lead hard conversations, how can we ever expect change? How can we ever expect to rebuild trust within our communities? Barbecues and pick-up basketball games are nice, but that’s not going to do it.

So today, I stand up and speak out, even if it means standing alone. To the family of Philando Castile, to those that loved him, and to everyone who watched that video and felt broken inside, I am sorry. This shouldn’t have happened. His life mattered.

Detective Angela Kamoske, Madison, Wis., Police Department.
http://www.twincities.com/2017/06/25/letters-this-shouldnt-have-happened/

But it didnt stop a repeat performance:

Three sources with knowledge of the incident said Sunday that two Minneapolis officers in one squad car, responding to the 911 call, pulled into the alley. Damond, in her pajamas, went to the driver’s side door and was talking to the driver. The officer in the passenger seat pulled his gun and shot Damond through the driver’s side door, sources said. No weapon was found at the scene.
http://www.startribune.com/woman-killed-in-officer-involved-shooting-in-south-minneapolis/434782213/

First, my heart is with those that were hurt and the families of those lost in Vegas. What happened is truly a tragedy, and could never have been expected in a situation such as that.

That was in all seriousness. The next part is too, but far less delicate...

So now that another event has happened, so too have the calls for gun control. And what do I see the focus is on yesterday. Any guesses...

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/04/how-silencers-became-the-next-gun-control-fight-215679

Yep, silencers, or in other words those things that work in movies nothing like they work in real life. It even cause Politifact to do something that I am sure it pained them to do.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/oct/04/hillary-clinton/no-gun-silencers-wouldnt-have-worsened-las-vegas-s/

But they are going to hang their hat on silencers. smh w/ a face palm

Did Vegas guy have silencers??   Hadn't heard that.  You can tell from the video soundtracks that they don't work that well - there was plenty of "firecracker" noise going on. 

A silencer will NOT make a shot inaudible.  It only reduces the sound level about 20 - 30 db.  When you are talking about "silencing" something that has 140 - 150 db noise, you still have something that is 10 to 100 times louder than a gas lawn mower (about 100 db).  And yeah, I do understand this is all distance related...

Silencers ONLY reduce the level enough to reduce hearing damage to ears.  They do not make it quiet by any stretch of the imagination.  Hollywood movie fantasy.

To my knowledge he did NOT. However Hillary, for whatever reason, decided to tweet that it would have been worse if he did. Again, no idea why, or why they are in the forefront of politicians minds at the moment. Kind of like banning guns because of how they look and not how they actually work (ie because they are black).

Silencer legislation was close to being up for a vote so its really just a convenient "target."  Yes, Hillary acted stupidly.
The focus now is "Bump Stocks" which are little more than springy shoulder rests that use recoil to pull the trigger faster than normally possible, creating the effect of a fully-automatic weapon without actually having a fully-automatic weapon.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-trump-white-house-has-a-new-bump-stock-strategy-blame-obama/article/2636604

Two things from the whitehouse.
a) It's too early to politicize this event.
b) It's Obama fault for not regulating bump stock availability (http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/10/05/kellyanne-conway-vegas-gun-control-trump-newday.cnn).

Then: "Obama's going to take all yer guns!"
What happened: Obama didn't take guns.
Now: "Obama didn't take yer guns!"

You can do the same thing if you loop your finger through your belt loop.

Keep in mind, if you let them take your "bump stock," next they may come and take your rubber bands.

(https://s1.postimg.org/6qgwgvxm8f/ATF_Letter.jpg)

Yeah, well she is just stupid.  Doesn't understand physics at all and has no interest in learning anything about reality beyond her agenda.  Still, to a lessor degree than the RWRE and their total denial of many types of reality.


If one listens to the tapes, shots can easily be heard - and those were a hundred yards++ away.  Silencer - they still would have been heard easily and would also have been recorded by the phones.  Little difference.  As for bump stocks - I can fire a rifle as fast as any of the shot sequences heard on those recordings - have done it often.  Just shows physical laziness, much like Hillary's comments show intellectual laziness.  Lots of noise/commotion/BS about nothing.   And even with all that, she would still be better than Trump.

What's your definition of an "automatic" weapon or "machine gun"?
Do you think they should be more heavily regulated than a semi-auto weapon?

Not sure who this was aimed at....  but...

I would imagine most everyone's definition is similar...   A gun that will fire more than one round per action (in this instance, the trigger pull.)   If it only fires once per action, then it is semi-automatic.

I don't have a real problem with automatics being more heavily regulated (as they are today.)

That is the only definition - as per ATF - one trigger pull required for each bullet fired.

Sounds more like that's the definition the NRA lobbied for.

"depends on what the definition of is is"


I would argue that definition only applies to gun enthusiasts.    
Everyone else's definition: if I pull the trigger, does the gun continue to fire until I move my finger.

That sounds fine as well.   Still doesn't' change a "bump fire" to a full auto.  Nor does it make a "binary" trigger (the new way to fire faster) a full auto.

Blame physics. Bump stock today, rubber bands tomorrow. They are literally the same thing.

It's just a rubber band.

https://youtu.be/hCCT8JtwQeI

I forget the literal police are on the board...

Your word. And the fact that you don't understand the definition of literal is figuratively shocking.

And....   This technique has been around since semi autos were a thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBQrtzSdVDo

pancakes are you talking about.

Don't misjudge the human capacity for ingenuity. I think you are wildly underestimating it.

That is what fully automatic has always been - pull once shoot many.  Semi-auto - pull once, shoot once.

if your finger is stationary and the gun is moving against your finger to repeatedly fire. Is that pull once?  Sounds like "pull once" to me.
A single pull initiates perpetual pullage with no further finger movement required.

semantics

Love the M1 !  One of the best rifles ever, until the M14.  Have shot literally (and figuratively) dozens of them - still have one.  

In combat, gotta carry an extra empty clip or two to throw while there are still bullets in the gun - fool the enemy - they would listen for the 'ping' of the clip being ejected, then could rise up and advance 'cause you had to reload.


Edit;
Listen for the clip 'ping' at about 3:25.

Yeah, cause you are really pulling the trigger for every round.  Whether your finger is moving or the gun.

You literally don't understand?

NRA comes out in favor of regulating bump stocks.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/nra-white-house-congress-support-review-lawfulness-bump-stocks-190949986.html

“Bump Stock” is just the latest bogeyman kind of like “Assault Rifle” was a made up term designed to create fear in the minds of those who don’t know anything about firearms.  It’s terrorism-by-media if you will.

Listening to the media group grope these events is as meaningful as me regaling a room with my vast knowledge of neurosurgery or nuclear physics- it’s just painful and embarrassing.

Meanwhile the 24 hour wall-to-wall coverage on this is empowering someone somewhere to want to make his statement with 60 victims or more.

Paddock doesn’t seem to fit the pattern from what is known so far, but I’d be curious to know how many other perpetrators of these mass killings might have been institutionalized in the past before we decided in-patient mental treatment was unfair or violated basic civil rights or simply quit prioritizing funding for in-patient facilities.  To that end- a blame game over whether it was Dims or Repugs who effected that change is pointless.  It’s obvious society’s attitude toward our mental health system is failing us on many levels, not just when a catastrophe like this happens.  Other symptoms are chronic homelessness as well as untreated addiction issues.

I though it was the automatic weapons  that empowered someone to kill 58 and injure 500+.
Saying the media causes mass shootings is like saying video games encourage violence.

I'm not sure how this analogy thing works...   If a crazy shoots a crowd, we blame the guns...

So if a drunk kills someone while driving, do I blame the car or the alcohol?

(FYI, crazies with a truck have killed more people than this in a single incident.....   Do we discuss banning the rental of U-Hauls next?)

Or how about crazies with large airplanes?  When are we gonna outlaw 737's ??

Son of a grumble!    I didn't realize that those were even a thing!   Now that I am aware of them, I think we should have ban them.

We need a brief "cute" break... this should do.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=rRi8LptvFZY

I though we blamed the media?


AR-15's are made to kill people, Trucks are not.  Perhaps if there were some mods available on the market designed to make trucks more lethal, then yes, there should be regulations on the lethal truck mods..  

Gun nuts give me a headache.

Americans own more than half the worlds guns. Only 1/3 of American adults own a gun. Half of the 300 million guns in the US are owned by just 3% of adults. What on earth could that 3% be compensating for?

I have shot several AR-15s.   Strangely none of them ever killed anyone.   A deer or two maybe.   Lots of paper targets, silhouettes, cans, etc.    Never a person.  (And before you say it, I have never killed anyone with a truck either.)  

That being said, I would bet, even with this incident, there are less deaths per year attributed to the AR-15 in the US than to trucks.  


(FYI The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimates there are roughly 5 million to 10 million AR-15 rifles owned in the United States.)

We have two different issues. Gun deaths and mass murders. First, overall gun deaths. By far most people that die by a gun are shot by a handgun. More than half of those are suicide. A plurality of the rest of gun deaths are murder between people that know each other. If a gun wasn't present a large percentage of those people wouldn't die each year. Some people would still succeed in killing themselves with pills or kill their spouse with a knife, but a handgun is so much a better tool to kill in a crime of passion or depression.

Assault rifles aren't used very often in crimes or self defense. So banning assault rifles again wouldn't change the overall statistics of gun deaths in this country. But assault rifles ARE used in mass murders. These ugly mass killings almost always are committed with assault style rifles.

Banning assault rifles probably would help with these mass murders, at least to make them less deadly. But addressing gun violence is going to take other measures. It's too bad Republicans at the direction of the NRA have banned the government from studying gun violence. The NRA is more dangerous and has killed far more people that terrorists and wars over the last 30 years. It's just a lobby for gun makers, and it has a lot of blood on it's hands.

I understand that we can round the edges on corners to make them safer for people, but crazy will always find a way to hurt people. 

Guns are merely a tool, that when used right, levels the playing field.  (ie. If a 300 lb man breaks into your house, intent on stealing your stuff and raping your wife, the only chance many people would have to stop the attack is through the use of a firearm.   Let's be honest, the police would not get there before serious harm could happen.)

If you ban guns, crazy will just move on to the next best thing, whatever it may happen to be.   (The truck attack in Nice, France.  Eighty-six people were killed, all but three of them at the time of the attack. The dead included 10 children and teenagers....  The Filipino laborer that went berserk and killed 17 with a machete...  etc.)

You won't remove all threats by banning all guns. But the fact does remain that the single best thing you can do to lower your odds of being killed by a gun is to not have a gun in your home. The idea that you are going to protect your family by having a gun is extremely remote, but having the gun present increases your own risk greatly. By suicide, accidents and family violence.

We need to have real studies on how to mitigate gun violence. The American public at this time has no appetite to ban guns, excepting assault rifles, so that's a non-starter to really address overall gun violence. But there may be other workable solutions to lessen risk We need to study those ideas.

Here is some summary data from Brookings.  Very stark data there.  Black men are killed 33 per 100k.  White men at about 17 per 100k.  Two to one ratio.   Blacks are 12% of the population.  That is an 8 to 1 ratio.   The effect is that 16 times as many blacks can expect to die from gun violence as whites.  There have been laws written for over 100 years to specifically target gun ownership by blacks.  If you keep guns out of the hands of blacks, there will be 2/3 of  the gun deaths eliminated.  It is the same kind of short sighted stick your head in the sand approach as the concept of blanket gun prohibition.  Does not find, let alone address the root cause of the problems.    

It's called the "drunkard's search".  Google it.   On second thought, I will just put it here.

"A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, "this is where the light is".


https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2015/12/15/guns-and-race-the-different-worlds-of-black-and-white-americans/


As for your comment about NRA being terrorists.  bull sh$t.  

Another meme highlighting what a crock of carp that is.

Legal gun owners have over 200 million guns in this country and about 25 trillion rounds of ammunition.  Seriously people, if we were the problem, you would know it.

We do know it.

33,000 deaths a year. ten times the number of Americans killed by terrorists ever. Each year. More Americans have died from gun violence this decade than all the wars in the last 100 years. It's fracking problem.

Talk about sticking your damn head in the sand.

In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S.     You won't stop suicides, you will just change the method...   You may as well discount those.  

Of the 2,596,993 total deaths in the US in 2013, 1.3% were related to firearms.    Take out the suicides and you are at a paltry 0.42%.    Even including the suicides, guns kill fewer than are killed each year from diabetes, Alzheimer's, pneumonia or nephritis.  I didn't even know Alzheimer's was terminal.  (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_05.pdf    page 17)

*  I used wiki's numbers, supposedly they are cited, but I hate to trust it as a source.


Your numbers are also off here....   Extrapolating on your numbers, you have 330,000 dead in the last decade. (33,000 * 10)   There were 405,399 American military casualties in WW2 alone.

(http://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/newshour/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/01-military-deaths.jpg)

My fault, I went by memory, I thought we were at ~250k in WWII and ~60k in Vietnam. And I don't fully agree that all gun suicides would be equally successful using other methods. That doesn't bear out in other western nations.

I was confused too, because nearly every statistic available says there were 58,220 US Military deaths in the Vietnam war. The Vietnam memorial wall has 58,193 names on it. The US archives say there was 58,220 US military deaths in Vietnam.  The Department of Defense agrees. The VA also agrees.

https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics.html
https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/pages/report_vietnam_sum.xhtml
https://www.va.gov/opa/publications/factsheets/fs_americas_wars.pdf

The 90,220 number includes all deaths of United States Military personnel between 1955-1975 from whatever cause inside and outside Vietnam.  If a soldier crashed a jeep in Germany in 1955 and died, he is a "other deaths in service (non-theater)" in that statistic. To reach it they add the battle deaths and "other deaths" caused by in theater action, then add exactly 32,000 "Other Deaths in Service (Non-Theater)." See the VA statistic above.

Other than what I posted above,  I couldn't find any more  information on that specific statistic. However, more recent data suggest most of those deaths are likely training exercises, motor vehicle accidents, and suicides.   Between 1990-2011 traffic accidents not in a combat zone were 37% of all deaths.  Suicides were 20%.  Then other accidents at 10%.  I feel comfortable assuming a similar pattern held up from 1955-1975, probably even heavier on the traffic deaths statistics while suicides were probably unreported or poorly tracked by DOD.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22694586

Not a judgment in any way on the sacrifices of any of those people, I was just curious about the statistic.

I think the 58, 193 figure was for in-country deaths while the higher one included those who were evacuated and died of their wounds in other hospitals outside Vietnam. I could be wrong.

I don't know....   I assumed that PBS was a reliable source.  It could be my bad for trusting the liberal media.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/many-americans-died-u-s-wars/

I don't know if you are being obtuse on purpose, but disenfranchised people wanting to make a statement to as many people as possible is a known reason for many and even stated reason in some mass killings.  The killer or killers know they will gain national or international notoriety for their act.  Why else would you select a large crowd in a public place, other than to send a message?

As far as video games, off the top of my head, that was a known tie between Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the Columbine killers and largely suspected as something which escalated into real violence.

That's the sole purpose when it comes to terrorist attacks.  They know the 24 hour news cycle will strike terror in people and disrupt lives and routines.

Reading your comments on this thread, I do want to compliment you on a much more reasoned approach on guns than I've sensed from you in the past.  The only thing I'd tend to disagree with is about keeping a gun in the home.  Having a gun in the home is not the problem, irresponsible gun owners are the problem.  If guns are properly locked up and all members of the household are properly trained in the use and respect of firearms or in the alternative restricted from access to them, it's not an issue.

One of the sons of a family I've been very close friends with for decades was killed a few weeks ago by his own gun in Tulsa.  He was in a conflict with his GF, left the house and left his gun in the house.  When he returned, he was shot with his own gun.  That's an example of irresponsible gun ownership.  Chris had been taught better but none of us know the exact circumstances (i.e. where the gun was kept how she knew about it, etc.) other than he was shot with his own gun by his girlfriend.  It's pretty safe to say though that had he left the house with his gun in his possession or it had been locked away out of reach of the crazy girlfriend he wouldn't have been shot by his own gun.  Had he not owned a gun in the first place, we can't say for certain she wouldn't have found one elsewhere but by reasonable deduction, we can say he wouldn't have been killed by his own gun.  Not having a gun in the house when there's an unstable relationship is probably a very good idea.  He lived in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood so it's likely he had a gun to try and even the odds in a home invasion.

In contrast to that, had the Broken Arrow teacher who was murdered in front of his family last weekend by a 16 year old punk been armed, his chances of not being killed would have gone up dramatically if he had been armed and properly trained in such a confrontation at the time of the attempted robbery.  Random deaths like that one are pretty rare but your chances of survival in a home invasion or burglary go way up by being armed.  

People have to use good discretion when deciding if keeping a firearm or firearms in the home are a good idea.  If they decide they want to have them, they need to take the proper precautions to assure they are not used in ways they are not intended to be.  If someone has a child with emotional issues or they are in an unstable relationship, they might want to re-think the idea of having firearms in the home or at least make damn sure they cannot fall into the wrong hands at ANY time.

https://www.va.gov/opa/publications/factsheets/fs_americas_wars.pdf

According to the VA it was 58k in Vietnam and 291k in WWII.

Accurate data is not important when you are trying to make a point.

Correct....look at the current occupant of the White House.

An obvious example but he is not the only one.

My data was not that far off, I was going by memory when I wrote the post. This isn't a term paper.

Real statistics:
All wars in the last 150 years, Spanish American War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan - total killed in action - 442,776
Gun deaths in the US by all causes 2003 to 2016 - total deaths 446,997.

Total number of deaths due to terrorism in the United States the last 20 years, including 9/11 and Oklahoma City - 3,264
Total number of gun deaths in the United States in 2016 - 30,470

https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_AmericanTerrorismDeaths_FactSheet_Oct2015.pdf
https://gun-control.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=006094
https://www.va.gov/opa/publications/factsheets/fs_americas_wars.pdf

Mass shootings the last 10 years have killed far more people than terrorism. In fact, the vast majority of terrorist related deaths in the United States the last 10 years are due to mass shootings. They largely overlap, it's just there are also a lot of mass shootings that are not terrorism.

We have one death ever due to terrorism from a group of Muslim countries and we ban travel from those places. We have almost half a million deaths from guns since 2003 and there's nothing we can or should do, it's just too bad.

Is this not a problem?

I don't know how to best argue this... 

I could point out that inanimate objects are only as evil as the person using them, I could try to show that writing more laws and banning more things is pointless (war on drugs, statistics of people killed by drunk drivers, etc.)

I guess the real problem I have is that I grew up around guns and responsible gun ownership.   I understand that guns are a tool and I don't understand why life would be better off if they were hard to get.    I just can't wrap my head around your argument.

Just out of curiosity...   Have you ever held or fired a gun?

Oh yeah. My dad, while he was an conspiracy theory loving uber-liberal semi-reformed hippy with a PHD among other degrees, he was from Oklahoma and always had guns. Heir on here always reminds me of my dad. One of his guns was a sawed off shotgun in the closet for self defense. the only living thing he ever shot with it was a goat he bought when we lived in rural central Florida (he was teaching at U of Florida at the time) so he wouldn't have to the mow the yard. The damn goat wouldn't eat grass but always ate all the bark off my dad's beloved Kumquat and Orange trees. And the goat was mean. So one afternoon after too many beers watching football he decided to shoot the goat. Ran around the house chasing the goat with my mother screaming at him to put the gun down. Bad day for the goat. We got a riding lawnmower after that.

My mom's side of the family all the men were career military officers. Air Force, but they still had guns.

I was a Boy Scout, got all the gun related merit badges, won a lot of marksmanship awards too. I've shot most everything. All kinds of hand guns, AK-47, AR-15, but I won't have a gun in the house while we have kids in the house.

I'm not saying we should ban all guns. But there need to be actions we can take. Let's study the issue.

It has been studied to death.  2/3 of gun deaths are suicides - and if they are going to that extreme, a handful of the right pills will do the same thing and a prescription of oxycodone is easier to get for most.  And then when you actually look at the numbers that I referred to, when you take black on black crime out, there is a huge decrease again.  That 16:1 ratio is real.  Which tells us that the REAL problem is NOT the guns but the lack of opportunity - all opportunities at all levels - for a huge portion of one race's young men.  As we have also studied to death with NO real action being taken to correct any of the well known issues.

When all the "success" you see around you is related to drug profits, what lesson does one learn?  Drug business.  It is insane.  And we continue the insanity at every level. 

It ain't the guns - that is a way too obvious symptom - but NOT the root cause!   And we still try to choose the Drunkard's Search solution.

First, the government is specifically banned from studying gun violence.

Second. It IS the gun when it comes to suicide. You mentioned pills: overdose/poisoning is the most common way to attempt suicide. Guns are the most common way to be successful.

When a person attempts suicide with a gun they are successful 82.5% of the time.
The two most common ways to attempt suicide are overdose/poisoning, which is successful only 1.5% of the time; and cutting/piercing, which is successful only 1.2% of the time.

70% of people that survive a suicide attempt never attempt again and 93% will end up not dying by suicide.

Suicides in the 15 U.S. States with the Highest vs. the 6 U.S. States with the Lowest Average Household Gun Ownership (2000-2002)

                                High-Gun States       Low-Gun States,
Population                     39 million                   40 million
Gun Ownership                  47%                            15%
Firearm Suicide                 9,749                           2,606
Non-Firearm Suicide          5,060                           5,446
Total Suicide                    14,809                          8,052

The lethality of the attempt method is a huge driver of our number of successful suicides.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survival/

Are we banning guns to stop suicides now?   This argument has gone off the rails somewhere.

It seems like no matter the argument to ban guns, it seems to be a treatment for the symptoms, not the root cause.

I'm not advocating banning guns, just pointing out the risk of having a gun in the home and in particular the impact the presence of a gun has on suicides.  Several thousand people die a year because they have access to gun during a suicide attempt that would very likely live if they did not.

Several hundred people die each year in gun accidents.

For homicides 35% of victims are related or in a relationship with the killer. Most of those wouldn't end in death without a gun present. Another 5% of homicides are between friends. Most of those likely wouldn't end in death without a gun. Another 40% of murders the victim knows the killer as an acquaintance, coworker or neighbor. Some of these would not end in death without a gun present.

Only a small minority of gun deaths have anything to do with criminal activity. 75% or more are suicide, accident or crimes of passion that the presence of a gun makes you less safe.

https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4557

Many drug-related suicides are likely called “unintentional overdose” when the intention is completely unknown to the writer of the death certificate but was completely intentional by the decedent.  In my personal experience of people I’ve known who couldn’t take it anymore, 100% of the attempted suicides by hanging were 100% successful and they seem to be about equal with the number of successful gun suicides of people I’ve known who chose that route.  People who chose to go about it at a slower pace with years of alcohol or drug abuse have so far been pretty successful at ending their painful life not quite as abruptly as other quicker methods they could choose.

People who are looking for attention take a handful of Tylenol or a shallow slash across the wrists.  People generally choose a gun, a jump from a high object, jumping in front of a vehicle, or hanging because they are just done.  I’m sure there’s people who given 24 hours to cool off without a gun in reach might not have done it.  There’s probably equal numbers who chose an alternate method of suicide we could be talking about in the present tense if they would have only taken 24 hours to cool off.  Yet again, there are people who commit suicide by years of deliberate poor life choices which finally result in their death, perhaps not as quickly as they would have liked.

The fact of the matter is, some people are completely committed to going out and some are seeking attention.  According to this article from Psychology Today which I believe we can all agree is not typically a publication stained by political bias, Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and one of the lowest gun ownership rates.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-new-brain/201607/fact-check-gun-control-and-suicide

This argument is much like how to deal with poor educational outcomes.  The easy answer on education is to pour more money into a system where many indicators of student failures lie within the family structure, failed social structures, or students with emotional and mental issues.  Increasing teacher and administrative pay doesn’t seem like a logical solution when there are bigger social issues at hand but social issues take hard work and hard choices American society doesn’t seem to have the fortitude to deal with.

Restricting gun ownership is somewhere between a lazy and irrational solution to deal with mental illness.  People are literally dying every day because they cannot get the mental health help they need and because we have probably made the bar too high for invountary commitment for inpatient treatment.  It is an embarrassment that we make mental health services hard to obtain or that we consider forcing treatment on the most mentally ill to be some sort of civil rights violation while we argue about limiting a single manifestation of mental illness while paying lip service to actually dealing with the underlying disease.

This is from the study I linked to:
Fatality rate by suicide method:
Gun – 82.5%
Drowning – 65.9%
Hanging – 61.4%
Poison by gas – 41.5%
Jump – 34.5%
Poison Ingestion – 1.5%
Cut/pierce – 1.2%
Other – 8%

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-fatality/

Not to discount the effectiveness of the method, but maybe gun suicides are just more serious.   (ie. Not just a cry for attention, but rather really trying to kill themselves.)   Who's to say that without guns, it wouldn't just raise the death percentages of the other methods?

I can't imagine that those shooting themselves are EVER just a cry for attention.

That's what this data was trying to determine:
Suicides in the 15 U.S. States with the Highest vs. the 6 U.S. States with the Lowest Average Household Gun Ownership (2000-2002)

                                High-Gun States       Low-Gun States,
Population                     39 million                   40 million
Gun Ownership                  47%                            15%
Firearm Suicide                 9,749                           2,606
Non-Firearm Suicide          5,060                           5,446
Total Suicide                    14,809                          8,052

Higher gun ownership led to more successful suicides overall for relatively the same population. In states with fewer guns there wasn't substantial rise in successful non-gun suicides.

USA
Drug overdose, the most widely used method in suicide attempts, is fatal in less than 3 percent of cases.
(From your Harvard source.)

UK
Apparently hanging is much more popular...   35% of women kill themselves by overdosing.   Unfortunately I can't find anywhere if that is higher (or lower) than the 3% number.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2016registration

Still, the point remains: guns don't cause suicide, mental illness and depression does.  Clearly, we have a mental health epidemic we are not properly addressing.

Japan started an initiative to combat their high suicide rate and stats show they have made progress:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/30/national/social-issues/preventive-efforts-seen-helping-2016-saw-another-decline-suicides-japan-21897/#.Wdv_qEyZPq0''

The #1 method in Japan is hanging.  Gun ownership is quite low there.  Is it because it's hard to regulate belts, rope, garments, sheets, etc. or that the government of Japan realizes it's a mental health epidemic and not ownership of things one can hang themselves with so that is why they went after the root cause and have made progress.

Guns don't cause suicide. But suicidal crises are almost always transitory, that's why if you can survive an attempt 93% of the time you will not end up ending your life with a suicide. But guns in the hands of a suicidal person ends a life more than 80% of the time instead of less than 2% of the time with the most common attempt methods, pills and cutting. The gun doesn't cause the suicide attempt, but it damn sure makes it successful almost every time.

If you have a gun in your home you are at risk of a gun accident, the risk of which is basically zero without a gun.

If you have a gun in your home you are three times more likely to die of suicide.

If you have a gun in your home you are two times more likely to be murdered.

A gun in your home does not make you safer. It makes you much, much less safe.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gun-suicide/gun-access-tied-to-greater-suicide-murder-risk-study-idUSBREA0J1G920140120

Guns in the hands of responsible owners DO make them more safe in the event of a home invasion or an attack out in public.  Guns when not in the hands of their responsible owners are unloaded and locked up.

Guns in the hands of morons and irresponsible gun owners results in accidental deaths and injuries.  Someone who really wants to end it and doesn't have access to a gun will have good chances of success with a rope.

Hanging is a very successful method of suicide.  If guns didn't exist on a large scale in the U.S. I suspect hanging would become the #1 cause as it is in Japan. 

You can keep repeating this meme, but it doesn't apply to all gun owners.  From the article you cited, the expert on injury prevention from Hahvahd says most people are NOT murdered with their own gun.  I also note from your story that the latest analysis involves previously published studies from 1988 through 2005.  So the latest research seems to be about 12 years old.


Certainly the gun homicide rate in Chicago would be a lot less with less guns on the streets, but even with tough gun laws in Chicago, the guns are making it to the streets.  Guns are only the tool by which people are dying in Chicago.  There's an underlying issue which is causing all these deaths.  Much as there's are underlying issues which account for our high suicide rate.  But you want to keep ducking that issue and apparently so do our policy makers.

You missed the study then that I have cited twice. ~40 million people live in states with the highest rates of gun ownership and ~40 million live in the states with the lowest rates of gun ownership. There are 46% fewer deaths due to suicides in the low ownership states and it due to the vastly larger number of suicides by gun. These aren't small numbers. It's thousands more deaths.

Again:
                               High-Gun States       Low-Gun States,
Population                     39 million                   40 million
Gun Ownership                  47%                            15%
Firearm Suicide                 9,749                           2,606
Non-Firearm Suicide          5,060                           5,446
Total Suicide                    14,809                          8,052

You may not like the facts, but this what the facts are. And a responsible gun owner can become depressed, or angry or drunk and turn into an irresponsible gun owner very quickly.

As for Chicago, The gun laws in Chicago are irrelevant when the south side of Chicago is just 10-15 miles from Indiana, where gun laws are very, very loose.

But yes, let's study. Overturn the laws that make it illegal for the CDC to study gun violence.

Exactly.  As I have mentioned repeatedly here and elsewhere.

You are trying very hard to come around to the right way to look at this, but just can't see to quite get over that last little step to enlightenment - gun deaths ARE a symptom - NOT the cause!

You bring up suicides and how less successful they would be without guns, but the reality is MUCH different.  Conan posted a link about Japan's suicides - huge problem.  They have MORE per year than we have gun suicides (21,000+ in 2016) and they have essentially no guns in the country comparatively.  We have about 19,000+.  They have 125 million people - or about 1/3 our population.  So they have 10% more successful suicides by actual count with 1/3 the people - guns aren't the problem nor the solution.   To paraphrase a Jurassic Park comment - death finds a way!


We do an abysmal job of addressing mental health issues in this country, and not likely to change.  The big lie behind all the gun regulation clown show is that IF the gun regulators were truly concerned about real people and real problems, they would be working to address the big problem - NOT just try to treat a symptom.

But they aren't - they have an anti-gun agenda and are full steam ahead regardless of reality.

Different cultures commit suicide at different rates. Japan's culture is not the same as ours.

Here is a list of suicides per 100,000 population.   Strangely, the US is only barely in the top 20.

Lame.   I would have thought with all our guns we would have been way higher.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html

I am guessing that eating at Taco Bell is part of the 8% other.

DING! DING! DING!

It's still very much a result of mental illness, regardless the method or culture.  Normal, happy, well-adjusted people don't just simply commit suicide.

Suicide is NOT a cultural thing.  If it were, by definition, that culture would not exist.  It has definite, identifiable, often times treatable, causes that are grossly ignored here.  Japan has struggled with it for many years and that 21,000 number represents the lowest number for a long time.  The whole point - again - is that guns are irrelevant to that discussion and death finds a way regardless.  And at a much higher rate there with NO guns than here with plenty of guns.

And the anti-gunners are still trying to pull their BullSh$t Drunkard's Search approach on the US!  They need to just go sit down and color.

Had to come back to this for a minute...since we are just spewing 'stuff' around.

Jim Jones killed more than 900 with a pitcher of KoolAid.  We gotta outlaw both pitchers AND KoolAid now.

Portugese Priests started the tradition, continued by official US policy, of spreading blankets and smallpox to the First Nations people here - killing in the vicinity of 100 million.  Guns were the tiniest bit of that, killing only thousands - we had to have a much more efficient method to clear out the "debris"...    I suspect Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot were green with envy of our efficiency...   We gotta outlaw blankets now.

Hundreds killed by US Cavalry and "settlers" at Wounded Knee, Canyon Del Muerto (1805), Battle of Tallushatchee,  Yontoket Massacre, Washita River.  And many more.   But I guess maybe you have at least one point - all of these and more were done with guns, so maybe the US Cavalry and any "settlers", aka land thieves, should be outlawed from having guns!

Not taking a side on the overall topic, as I think the point is moot as long as the current Supreme Court makeup stands.

But, the arguments here aren't logical:

"Jim Jones killed more than 900 with a pitcher of KoolAid.  We gotta outlaw both pitchers AND KoolAid now."

It wasn't pitchers or KoolAid, it was the cyanide mixed in.  And cyanide is a very controlled substance.  So, that reference would suggest that guns could be more agressively controlled.

"Portugese Priests started the tradition, continued by official US policy, of spreading blankets and smallpox to the First Nations people here.."

Again, not the blankets, but the SmallPox.  And since the SmallPox virus is one of the most controlled viruses in the world, this again would argue for more control of guns.

"Hundreds killed by US Cavalry and "settlers" at Wounded Knee..."

This is a general diatribe against the way the US prosecuted the Indian Wars, and related.  And this is a very valid topic, but is not directly related to individual ownership of guns, particularly given that this discussion is directed mostly to "person to person" deaths.  (i.e., not military or related activities.)

I think you may have missed the point. Death is what was brought. The kool aid, blankets, and yes, the guns, are just the tools for the messenger. A gun never killed anyone, neither did kool aid, or blankets.

The why regulate those methods at all?

The better question is (that no one seems to be able to answer) is what regulations could have stopped the event from happening?

So that's my point, let's study that. End the ban on CDC studies.

So it's the bullets then, not the guns?  (Kidding, and I'm not for banning bullets.)

No, I didn't miss the point.  Nor was I discussing the greater point, but rather the validity of the arguments as they apply to gun control.   Specifically to KoolAid and blankets, the attempt was/is to go to the absurd and suggest that KoolAid and Blankets are responsible for those deaths, and should be regulated.  But that is obviously not the case.  Cyanide and SmallPox are the actual instruments of death in those examples, and both those substances are highly regulated.  So, that angle would actually be arguing FOR regulation, not against, because those two instruments of death ARE regulated.

Which was kind of my jab above about bullets.  Technically guns themselves don't kill, unless used as a club. Instead, they are simply a delivery mechanism for the bullets.  That analogy would be more applicable to the KoolAid or the Blanket.  So, let's ban the bullets.  (Sarcasm)

But, as I said,  I think this discussion is moot.  Nothing of substance is going to happen (for good or bad) until the makeup of the current SCOTUS changes. 

Not that I really care, but have any CDC studies on hanging, drowning, or overdoses ever taught us anything?    I don't know what a study will prove, nor can I understand wanting to spend taxpayer dollars on it.

Can you cite any CDC study on suicide that showed practical, positive results?

https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/index.html

Yeah, those are studies...   Did they do anything to help prevent or lower suicide rates?

(Answer - No.)

It did however spend lots of money giving jobs to researchers!

U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High

WASHINGTON — Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-surges-to-a-30-year-high.html

That's why I wrote, "Had to come back to this for a minute...since we are just spewing 'stuff' around."   The argument for gun control is ALL about illogical arguments.  It's the Drunkard's Search.

When suicides and "drug-deal-gone-bad" crime related deaths are dialed out of the calculations - which must be done following your logic here to keep the root causes valid - our death rate from firearms, while still somewhat higher than world averages, are nowhere near death rates from other activities that receive extremely casual concern and attention.  Which leads us back again to the concept of perspective that I have talked about repeatedly - why would society devote so much time/energy/propaganda/lies/distortion to a topic that affects 1 societal unit while simultaneously effectively ignoring topics that affects 10 or 20 or 100 societal units?  (see Laura Bush reference for one...)  It is illogical, disingenuous, mentally deficient, and intellectually dishonest.

Here is a great start on that study - as posted by TeeDub;

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html


We are 18th in the world for suicide rates.  And looking at those countries one would intuitively wonder how is it better healthcare (of all types - including mental), better standard of living, good societal environment, and good quality of life, would make one want to commit suicide.  So by the argument methodology being advanced in this country - they should outlaw good healthcare.  Cut everyone's wages.  Make society suck more.  Require hovels all around with only the richest enjoying the largest fruits of societies labors.  THEN they can cut their 'despair quotient' leading to suicide, to as low as ours...


Oh, yeah - since they ALL have onerous, prohibitive, gun control laws - as in outright bans, that must be part of it, too!  Get rid of their gun control laws so they can "gun-up" and cut their suicide rates!

I know two things:

1.  Shooting is a great way to reduce stresss, and
2.  Nothing can make a person smile like shooting something fully automatic (as long as they are not paying for ammo or being shot back at.)

Full auto is definitely in the top 25 of fun things to do...  And only top 25 because of that cost.

Gotcha.  Makes more sense.

Also, I'm not arguing for gun control and it's not going to happen, anyway.

It won't happen but it's always topical.

When is the real discussion about mental illness and how we balance civil rights of the criminally insane against that of the public at large going to take place?

I'm pretty impressed with the strides Japan has taken to confront their suicide issue, I think that could be a model for other countries to look at an adapt to their own culture.

We won't have a real discussion.  Been waiting for decades (centuries??) and it just doesn't and isn't gonna happen.


The NYT article TeeDub linked was interesting - I knew how many gun suicides we have, but have not paid close attention to all.  42,000 in 2014 is horrendous!!  That is more than drunk drivers kill every year!!  23,000 using other than guns - also more than drunk drivers!  So, yeah, death does indeed find a way.
  

It makes sense...   We have a well financed and active campaign against drunk drivers.   We don't have any campaign (to speak of) to let people know that when they get down, or life gets them low, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.   Everyone has times that life gets shitty...  It's realizing that if you push through, it will eventually get better.

Not sure which Monty Python song to insert here...  But there are two that are both poignant.   
Universe Song   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWVshkVF0SY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWVshkVF0SY)
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M)

And the suicide numbers are just the very tiny tip of the iceberg of people dealing with mental issues to one degree or another.  Millions more just keep plodding along with no hope or support structure or any possibility of real help to achieve better quality of life. 

I heard this platitude probably half century ago - when much much younger than today...  suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.  Trite but true.  Way too much of the time, the problem is how to push on through?  Get past that 'temporary' problem.   I have family, friends, and co-workers who experience these issues - and as I look at just the most simplistic symptoms like time away from job and loss of productivity - there is no way it is cheaper for us as a society to just let it ride - better mental health care is not a cost, it's a highly cost effective investment.

Have a guy in the office who is fresh out of Marine Corp - still doing the monthly weekend campouts - who has literally stated on several occasions that people who cannot stand up to the stress "just aren't strong enough"....  He is literally talking about guys, with PTSD, that he has served with who were in combat, while he wasn't... he was busy pushing beans and bullets around the arena of action in logistics.  This "rugged individualist" bullsh$t is one thing that is preventing us from doing anything.  Even though the reality is there is no such guy - we are social animals and without societal support/help/interaction, we are Ted Kuzinsky.  And even he got 'help' from society in the form of stuff (infrastructure) that allowed him to continue with his anarchistic psychosis.  (Could Mick Jagger have been right?  "Anarchy is the only slight glimmer of hope.")


We will continue in our tradition of "fail"....

Not trying to throw conspiracy mumbo jumbo out there, but does anybody else not think it strange that the only public apperence the security guard is making is on...Ellen? Ellen?

Don't get me wrong, I like Ellen and all, but she's not exactly the first person I think of when I think about some of the most important interviews of our time.

I understand the resort may be trying to save face. All though reasonable people would realize that you can't blame that particular hotel, it very well could have been any of them, it will forever be linked to that event, and not in a favorable way. But Ellen? Just keep him quiet.

The security guard works for Mandalay Bay which is owned by MGM. MGM  owns the production company for Ellen's show, and also has her under licence for a number of slot machines and video poker and she preforms at MGM and Mandalay Bay so they are trying to do damage control that doesn't shine a bad light on them.

"The Sheriff's Department has an expectation of its sworn members to take whatever actions are necessary to preserve life wherever they're at," said Tom Dominguez, president of the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs. "If they deny the claims, then the message that they're sending to their peace officers is not to take action when it is certainly warranted."  (Statement from police union after worker's comp claims were rejected for off-duty cops who were partygoers at the Vegas festival)

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/claims-rejected-california-police-injured-las-vegas-50722258

Trump Signs Bill Revoking Obama-Era Gun Checks for People With Mental Illnesses
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-signs-bill-revoking-obama-era-gun-checks-people-mental-n727221


A congressional bill could allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to own guns
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/03/22/a-congressional-bill-could-allow-veterans-deemed-mentally-incompetent-to-own-guns

First, the Air Force (aka Chair Force by the 2 AF vets I know...) failed miserably - literally did not do their job.

Followed by the fact that Trump failed miserably - as he is doing so regularly - by making it just fine for people with mental issues to get guns.

About right for a Sunday morning romp in church....  At least that maggot had the decency to die from his wounds.

Consistently, it seems.

Texas church gunman escaped from mental health facility in 2012 after threatening military superiors


The far-right fantasized about a gun battle with Antifa, but got another mass killer in Texas
https://www.salon.com/2017/11/07/the-far-right-fantasized-about-a-gun-battle-with-antifa-but-got-another-mass-killer-in-texas_partner/

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DOIxFwQUIAAinNe.jpg:large)

I've got nothing...

The best comment on this went something like this:

Media can't show it's ignorance of guns any more than it already has. USA Today: Hold my Chainsaw Bayonet.

Geez...you had to go there, huh??   Now I want a chainsaw bayonet...!!!

Might be a bit muzzle-heavy, but think of the possibilities!

(http://s3.amazonaws.com/content.washingtonexaminer.biz/web-producers/110817_TL_3.jpg)

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/chainsaw-bayonets-are-real-guys/article/2640109

I'm not sure if it is more sad that USA Today included chainsaw bayonets in the video, or that they actually exist...

The end of the article is actually pretty funny:

What are the chances I can buy a chainsaw bayonet this weekend?

Expecting company?
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/28/17/3FB55B0500000578-4456108-image-a-22_1493398721474.jpg)

Perfect accessory to my deer or hog hunting rifle - how many times have you climbed into a tree to set up a stand and had to fight branches all the way...??  Always have to carry a folding brush saw with me - this would eliminate the need for another piece of hardware.

Suicidal? Depressed? Here, have a gun and a uniform!
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/11/12/army-lifts-ban-recruits-history-self-mutilation-other-mental-health-issues/853131001/

Tattooes and piercings are just another form of self-mutilation.  

Also proscribed Biblically...



Let's see how many jump on this one...!

Another mass shooting today. So far five dead at a home and school in northern California including at least two children.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/national/3-dead-2-wounded-in-california-school-shooting

So here we had an unstable individual no one did a damned thing about well in advance of this incident.  This is a failure of our mental health system as well as a failure to put the safety of the general public ahead of the civil rights of the mentally ill.

We can keep talking about gun control all we want, but it would have made no difference with this guy.  He should have been on lock down a long time ago it appears.

This was what was going on at a friend's neighborhood with Mark Allen Eaton, the clown I have talked about in the past - shooting around in the yard for over a year, then trying to kill the two kids across the street, then pleading guilty and getting his good buddies in the Tim Harris DA office to find a judge to NOT accept the guilty plea.  And then he keeps shooting from time to time in the back and front yard of his house.  He used an assault weapon, too, and a Glock.  But since there is only a note in the record admonishing him to be a good boy, he can STILL own a firearm! 

It's good to have friends in the swamp!

Exactly the kind of 'FAIL' that leads to this type event.

It looks like he is in the area much less than previously, but left a couple of his buddies there to keep his place....

I did see his truck one time had a "NOTW" sticker on the back window, so he now hides behind the premise of repentance.  But that is obviously just for show because he hasn't bothered to even talk to the family and at least apologize for attempted murder of the kids.

Law enforcement Operation Blue Thunder takes 48 illegal firearms off the street, nets 102 felony arrests, including one very heavily armed helicopter.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/crimewatch/law-enforcement-operation-blue-thunder-takes-illegal-firearms-off-the/article_200da49b-a418-5b94-bbb5-2f5bf093f2a4.html

OK, part of that headline I made up...

I didn't like it when Lymangood was killed.

"Check you later"

(http://cinetropolis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/large_blue_thunder_blu-ray6-1024x576.jpg)

At least he found out what JAFO meant before he died...

Not understanding how the video surveillance system worked, sitting on a radio transmit key, and now this

A Florida sheriff says the deputy who was on duty at a high school where 17 people were massacred waited outside the building for about four minutes without ever going in.
Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel announced during a Thursday news conference that Deputy Scot Peterson resigned after being suspended without pay.
https://www.michigansthumb.com/news/education/article/The-Latest-School-security-camera-delays-misled-12632857.php

Cops to Start Carrying AR-15 Rifles on School Grounds
http://news.wgcu.org/post/broward-school-cops-will-carry-rifles-including-ar-15s-school-grounds

Tell me again why it is we don't have armed guards at schools...??

We do, at least most schools do around here. I see them all the time at my son's school.

The Florida school did too, there was an armed Sheriff's deputy on site when the attack happened. He hid outside.

And then summarily dismissed today.

I'm not sure if criminal charges, something along the line of "dereliction of duty resulting in death", or similar, can be filed against him.  I hope so.  You take the job, you do the job.   I'm certain that their will be lawsuits, but I want him personally to go to jail for a long time.

OK Guido, something we can nod ONE TIME in agreement with Trump on:

Cop who didn't enter school during Florida shooting resigns, has home guarded, is slammed as 'coward' by Trump
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/02/23/police-officers-guard-home-deputy-assigned-to-florida-hs-who-never-went-in-during-shooting-report.html

And if he had shot and killed the kid you would be wanting to crucify the deputy and have him brought up on murder charges and screamed for his head.

I wonder if his dereliction of duty opens both himself and the department up to potential liability.   I am not a lawyer, but I have seen cases brought up for less.

Oh, if I am one - or all - of those families I am already getting the paperwork started for lawsuit.  Exactly who to sue?  Not sure yet, but somebody is getting sued.    But per my comment above, I hope there is some kind of actual criminal law that applies to put this guy away on real charges.

No worries. He'll invoke that magic phrase, "I was in fear for my life" and he'll walk.

Now it's coming out that it wasn't just the onsite deputy that didn't go into the building. The next three deputies also stayed outside and pointed guns at the building from their cars.

It wasn't until city police showed up that anyone went inside.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/23/politics/parkland-school-shooting-broward-deputies/index.html

Sounds about right.

I'm not saying right or wrong, but is it possible doors were locked and they couldn't get in?  My personal belief is if you took the oath to protect others that means going into the line of fire.  Whether or not I could have done it, I can't say because I've not been put in that situation.  None of us know our true values or what our actions would be until we are faced with the actual situation.  I believe there's a bit more information needed before I'm going to pass judgement and call these guys cowards.

It might be a bit worse that one chicken security guard.

https://nypost.com/2018/02/23/four-sheriffs-deputies-hid-during-florida-school-shooting/

I take no responsibility if the Post is dead wrong, but I did hear from CNN as well (which I certainly won't vouch for).

It wont come voluntarily.

Israel said surveillance footage of Peterson captured during the massacre may never be released.
http://www.businessinsider.com/scot-peterson-sro-parkland-shooting-resignation-reaction-2018-2

One cop does it, that could be a bravery issue. Four? That's training.

And I've really been thinking that all these cop shootings are mostly due to all these "training" companies that teach cops how to deal with active shooters and other scenarios and scare the crap out of the cops thinking that they are constantly in more danger than they really are. Combine that with the innate and some active racism and you have our overall problem with cops killing people and why it skews to killing minorities and the mentally ill.

The female cop that killed the guy on PCP in north Tulsa was convinced he was going to reach in his car and get a gun and kill her because his window was down and he wasn't following orders. It was her training that convinced her she was in danger before she ever had a hint of a weapon. A weapon that was never present.

So more than a week later the deputy's union decided on a story they want to be the narrative:  That the deputy hid outside because he thought the shots were coming from outside.

That story is asinine.  Guy is outside school.  Hears shots.  Kids are running out of school, etc.  Yeah,  shots aren't coming from outside.   I really, really, try to see both sides of arguments and appreciate opposing views, etc.  But I am livid at this guy.  He needs to go down.

Makes sense.  The officer thought the shots were coming from somewhere else, so he diligently went to investigate the other location where he thought the shots were coming from.  It makes sense why they want to release the video to vindicate the department.

Wait, they don't want to release the video?  That's strange...

I don't know the truth of the matter in this instance, but here are two truths:

1) An officer has about a 50% chance of being shot themselves if they confront an active shooter; and

2) Not all officer's are heroes.

I know we've been told officers are highly trained and effective, and they are.  But they hit their targets as little as 18% of the time when they have to shoot at people.  And that's pretty high compared to actual combat statistics, so I'm not bashing officers.  This isn't the target range, bullets flying in the real world it's stressful, targets move, and stuff happens.  Particularly if the other guy is shooting back.

Also, there is a story line that all soldiers, firefighters, and police officers are heroes.  While many are and the line of work certainly is conducive to heroics, it's simply not true that they are all heroes.  There are jerks, cowards, and even villains among those professions as there are in any other.  I doubt this shatters anyone's worldview, but our common rhetoric has led some to adapt the montra as a truth.  So respect them for sure, but don't expect them all to be heroes.  That's a special term even among challenging professions that serve the public.

All that to say - I would love to jump to conclusions and judge the hell out of the people who failed to protect children when in the best position to do so.  Particularly when they took a job and swore an oath to do just that.   I really think if I were in a similar situation I would automatically react by trying to help (and later stop and think "oh my God, that was so dangerous").

But I have never been in that situation. So my scorn is reserved.  If an officer really coward instead of aiding someone, then they deserve our scorn.  But it's bluster to say "I would have charged in and saved the day" if you've never been in that position.

I'm even more hesitant to excoriate this guy when I here from multiple sources that there was a stand down order due to the sheriff's department not being equipped with body cameras. Something isn't adding up in a lot of different areas. The officer in particular is refuting the sheriff's interpretation of what happened. I know that doesn't mean it happened his way, but at least he is taking a stand, that to me says at least something. He says he was in another building (which I'm sure could be documented). Whether or not he should have gone outside, I don't know. But I would dare say by the time he did reach the shooter, too many would have died.

The sheriff was incredibly quick to throw this guy under the bus. A sheriff that has let his political aspirations guide his decision making in the past. Again, I'll reserve judgement at this time in regards to this one single officer who was responsible for a high school roughly the size of Jenks high school (one of the larger in the state that is).

You know there was radio traffic during that 4 minutes. Those deputies did not act on their own initiative, instead communicating with a supervisor for instructions. There's a tape...somewhere.

After Columbine, the police there changed their policy of stopping to determine the location and number of shooters before making entry. Delay costs lives. I would expect that not all departments made the change.

Pop culture has spent decades showing police officers acting cool under gunfire, an image starkly at odds with dash-cam and cellphone videos that show police officers panicking and killing civilians.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2018/02/26/trumps-gross-action-star-fantasy-is-the-last-thing-school-shooting-victims-need/

As for Columbine being the reference teaching tool, they dug police bullets out of kids there, too.

Stop hiding the surveillance video of the Parkland shooting
https://nypost.com/2018/02/27/stop-hiding-the-surveillance-video-of-the-parkland-shooting/

I have a deep seeded fear that if that video is released, the focus on guns is going to disappear pretty quick. That anger and disgust may be getting re-routed in record time.

I only fear it because I tend to think the best of people, that when called to act they would do the right thing.

But many this sheriff just wreaks of CYA so bad. Particularly curious is his change of tune on "good guys with guns".

https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2017/06/09/brevard-county-sheriff-wayne-ivey-is-incredibly-wrong-about-good-guys-with-guns

Here's the oath
“I, do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of constable with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality,and that I will uphold fundamental human rights and accord equal respect to all people, according to law.”

There's nothing about protecting others.  
The supreme court has ruled that "protecting" isn't something police are required to do
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html

I worked with BA and Tulsa Cops years ago and a BA cop told me "to protect and serve" "...ain't on our cars."

Interesting.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Three bills that would greatly loosen restrictions on who can carry guns and where in Oklahoma made their way through the House Public Safety Committee on Wednesday afternoon, with voting largely along party lines.

House Bills 2918, 2951 and 3192, all by Rep. Jeff Coody, R-Grandfield, strip away handgun licensing and training requirements and make it easier for school districts to arm personnel.

HB 3192, filed after the deadly school shootings in Florida two weeks ago, would allow districts to develop their own policies for arming school personnel. The only requirement would be a handgun permit.

HB 2951 would permit carrying of firearms anywhere they are now legally permitted without a license or training
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/capitol_report/house-committee-votes-to-lift-most-gun-training-and-licensing/article_c66b3b4e-b552-530a-81dd-a740c8593afb.html


They are teachers; skip the rules.  What could go wrong?


Armed ‘Teacher of the Year’ Opens Fire in School
https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-second-teacher-of-the-year-fires-a-gun-inside-his-school


Well at least we stop the violence by getting the guns out...

11-year-old arrested after pulling knife on Oklahoma City elementary school students
http://newsok.com/11-year-old-arrested-after-pulling-knife-on-elementary-school-students/article/5585120

And now another narrative emerges where the deputies were allegedly ordered to wait it out.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article203015289.html

Whatever the case ends up being, it ain't being portrayed accurately in the public square.

So what do you believe is accurate?  The union has one version of reality, the sheriff another.

The Broward Sheriff’s Office captain who initially took charge of the chaotic scene at a Parkland high school where 17 people were killed told deputies to form a perimeter around the deadly scene — which they did instead of going in to confront the shooter, according to a partial BSO dispatch log obtained by the Miami Herald.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article203015289.html

Commanding officer initially ordered responding deputies to 'stage' not enter Stoneman Douglas, sources say
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/02/28/commanding-officer-initially-ordered-responding-deputies-to-stage-not-enter-stoneman-douglas-sources-say.html

Apparently the sheriff was re-elected with the help of false-flag robocalls where he pretended to be his opposition.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/02/scott-israel-broward-county-sheriff-nra-217220

TPD’s Oath of Office includes references to protecting the rights and lives of all citizens and obeying the law. The rules and regulations establish a standard of conduct for officers professionally and privately, which includes not committing crimes.

The oath in part states that “I will ... obey the Constitution and laws of the United States, the State of Oklahoma and the Charter Ordinances of the City of Tulsa.” It also states that “I will protect the rights, lives, and property of all citizens...”

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/crimewatch/former-tulsa-office-shannon-kepler-keeps-pension-payments-despite-manslaughter/article_608ad328-34dc-5543-833b-2a4c17570e59.html

Lawmakers seek change in police lethal force standard
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/03/us/sacramento-stephon-clark-shooting-legislation/index.html

From your article...

http://www.cnn.com/style/article/amalia-ulman-instagram-excellences-perfections/?iid=ob_lockedrail_bottommedium

This is horrible. I admit that.  But dang it, the Onion nailed it:

Black Father Gives Son The Talk About Holding Literally Any Object (https://www.theonion.com/black-father-gives-son-the-talk-about-holding-literally-1825024938)

So a customer or another employee with Concealled Carry walks in and discovers this "armed robbery" in progress.  How would it likely end?

http://ktla.com/2018/05/04/off-duty-buena-park-police-officer-caught-on-video-pulling-gun-on-man-he-mistakenly-believes-is-stealing/

That's why a basic training session is so important. Under Oklahoma's law, you can use lethal force only to defend yourself, a family member, or your business. Nothing permits you to intervene in a hold up or a domestic dispute.

That was an off duty cop.   Regular people are trained not to get involved in these instances in the concealed carry classes.

So basically Oklahoma is doing away with the "trained not to get involved" part and some Carrying individual stumbles across the guy pointing the gun at people at the register.  He reacts.

"others" is specifically mentioned in the law.

If a rational person saw a transaction in process, with change being exchanged, one would hope that that rational person would not be as stupid as that dumb sumab$tch cop.  And it is always a little bit surprising that people don't understand some groups issues with police.

 

Sorry Patric...Rough and Bumpy week for you.....

http://www.newson6.com/story/38188703/tulsa-police-achieve-100-solve-rate-for-2018-homicides

I know you are just trolling, but do you really think Patrick is anti-police?  He's not anti-police.  He's anti-anyone who is abusing their power and subverting the public trust.  There is a line there, and we can argue it, but I think everyone here will applaud the police solving crimes.  Good for them, and us.  But we can, and should, insist they do it within certain bounds of operations.

Patrick does however paint with a broad brush, either wittingly or unwittingly implying that police forces are by design problematic. Or at least that is my take on most of his ramblings.

Most people see that, others fixate on criticism of cliques they identify with.  That says more about them than me.

The right and privilege to hold government accountable and to petition for redress of grievances is the foundation of our nation.  There is never a need to "make it great again" as long as we dont allow politicians and public servants to make an end run around the constitution and the rights it guarantees.

Its hard to believe in this day and age people still have to make a case for that.

Well, yeah, that's true for a lot of people on this board.   ;D

(https://i.giphy.com/media/3o7qDEq2bMbcbPRQ2c/giphy.gif)

Not too hard to believe when one recognizes that over 40% of the country believes Trump is a good idea.  Still.


Looking back over the history if the 20th century, one thing is very clear - how except for some pure blind luck, at the time we had just as big a possibility of siding with Germany in the 30's as we did going against them.  Hitler's ideals and ideas resonated with this country much more that one would hope.  The depression propelled him to power and got us a different kind of President - arguably the single biggest factor in going the way we did and not becoming even more fascist than we were.

You have to admit though, you do come off as being pretty critical of LEO's quite often.

Ya gotta fight crazy with crazy....


Seems to be the only way to get people to "hear".   Most are too busy 'listening' to reply rather than 'listening' to understand.    (Yeah, I know that is a trite cliche, but it is also true.)

Hundreds of rounds of ammo found in OKC shooter's apartment; shooter was CLEET certified
FBI investigated twice, shooter said he was 'under hard-core demonic attack'

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/state/hundreds-of-rounds-of-ammo-found-in-okc-shooter-s/article_924f727c-a23c-5947-a89b-f8e5f99637f6.html

What is your point here?   

Investigators found three boxes of Winchester Luger 115 grain bullets inside a shopping bag, according to a document itemizing what police found while serving the warrant. The box of that type of bullet listed on the manufacturer’s website contains 200 rounds.

Yeah... finding hundreds of rounds isn't the least bit concerning. Finding thousands of rounds isn't a big deal. You could raid many (most) homes in Tulsa and write a scary sounding article about all the guns and ammo that was found.

How in the hell was he cleet certified? He should not have been allowed to even own a gun.

Sounds like he should have gotten professional help.   Perhaps this grew as he got older (he was 28.)

Lol..Pull your head out..He's spam's the bucking forum constantly....

Says King Troll...

Within seconds of learning Thursday about a shooting inside the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland, Fox News host Sean Hannity laid blame at the feet of Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sean-hannity-immediately-blames-maxine-waters-for-capitol-gazette-shooting



Trump Calls the News Media the ‘Enemy of the American People’
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/trump-calls-the-news-media-the-enemy-of-the-people.html

At least Trump tweeted his Ts & Ps....

What did you tweet Chubby...???

Capital Gazette writer Selene San Felice

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has ordered that his state's flags to be lowered to half-staff through sunset Monday.

http://thehill.com/homenews/395253-trump-denies-request-to-lower-us-flags-to-honor-capital-gazette-shooting-victims

Awww...how cute!!   Holding on desperately to the lowest class position one can find!!   Good for you!  Everyone needs something they are competent at!!

In December 2016 a man drove his guns from North Carolina to Washington D.C. to "investigate" rumors that Hillary Clinton and her Democratic Party ran a child sex ring in the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza parlor.
After shooting up said pizza parlor with his AR-15 he surrendered to DC police after failing to find the secret torture tunnels where "Hillary personally murdered thousands of children."

Of course, the pizza shop doesnt even have a basement...

( or does it?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjmOkqU6Roo   /s)


The "lone wolf" nut was not alone, as violent conspiracy theorists stepped from the shadows into the spotlight at a Trump rally in Florida last week.

...our president is secretly working with special counsel Robert Mueller to purge a powerful deep state cabal that has exercised criminal control over the United States, and the wider world, for decades. In this sprawling story, the Russia probe is actually a clever ruse meant to distract the country while Mueller’s team conducts an investigation that will eventually sweep up thousands of villains from inside and outside the government, including figures like Barack Obama and
Hillary Clinton. The entire saga has been driven by an anonymous poster (or group of posters) named Q, who claims to be a high-level government official and drops gnomic clues on message boards like 8Chan that followers then sweatily parse. Like Pizzagate, it involves a child sex trafficking ring, controlled by possibly satanic Democrats. Some versions also mix in retro nuttery about the JFK assassination and the Federal Reserve and the Bilderberg Group and false flags. It’s like if you Vitamixed every lunatic idea that grew out of America’s fringes during the past 60 years and poured the puree into a MAGA mug.
What makes QAnon a little a different, and little bit scarier, than many of the conspiracy theories Americans have latched onto through the decades, is that it’s fundamentally authoritarian.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/qanon-how-i-got-sucked-into-its-alternative-universe.html

Patriot Prayer Members Armed With Snipers Positioned Themselves on Roof Ahead of August Protest, Police Reveal
https://www.newsweek.com/patriot-prayer-members-armed-snipers-positioned-themselves-roof-ahead-august-1171862

Portland Cops Knew The Fascists Had A Weapons Cache. They Kept Silent And Attacked Protesters.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/portland-oregon-cops-knew-fascists-had-weapons-cache_us_5bc5e853e4b0d38b5871be1b

Portland Police Chief Says Protesters Went Off to “Whine And Complain” Last Week Because Officers “Kicked Your Butt”
https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/08/15/portland-police-chief-says-protesters-went-off-to-whine-and-complain-last-week-because-officers-kicked-your-butt/

‘They shot the wrong man!’: Police said they killed a mall shooter — then said they made a mistake

In this chaos, AL.com reported, “several shoppers were seen with their guns drawn.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/24/police-said-they-killed-mall-shooter-now-they-say-they-might-have-shot-wrong-man/

"Man killed by officer was shot three times and that all shots entered his body from the back”
https://www.foxnews.com/us/the-latest-alabama-mans-family-devastated-by-autopsy

Kind of a crazy world ain't it..??


Not long ago, did some travel way to the south where there are extremely tough gun laws...  We were driving along a city street, near the edge of town, but with plenty of houses/businesses all around.  On car repair place had placed an 80's Volvo on a stick - pipe mounted, about 20 ft up.  It was "swiss-cheesed" with an amazing assortment of bullet holes ranging from very old, very rusty, to new shiny holes that were probably made in the last day or two.   Guns find a way.

Same thing two weeks before where a cop also shot the first man he saw with a gun, who was a security guard.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/midlothian-police-shooting-robbins-jemel-roberson-dead/

A gun permit is useless when you dont get the chance to display it.

Extremist right has found the easiest method of voter suppression.

'Coward of Broward' sheriff's deputy arrested for inaction during Parkland mass shooting
Scot Peterson, 56, was arrested Tuesday and charged with seven counts of neglect of a child, three counts of culpable negligence, and one count of perjury, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/former-school-resource-officer-arrested-for-inaction-during-parkland-shooting

Loaded with 'inaccuracies': the sworn statement of deputy Scot Peterson
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-ne-scot-peterson-inconsistencies-20190122-story.html

The governor replaced Sheriff Scott Israel with Gregory Tony, who instituted aggressive "warrior" training to counter the "coward" reputation, and now deputies have to explain being caught on video assaulting minors.  

The Broward Sheriff's Office Deputies union says Krickovich and his colleagues were implementing the aggressive police tactics the new sheriff has pushed. After the Stoneman Douglas shooting, deputies were disciplined for not charging into the school.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/christopher-krickovich-video-shows-florida-broward-county-deputy-slamming-high-school-student-2019-04-20/


One of the officers who was fired over his handling of the 2018 Parkland, Florida, high school shooting will get his badge back.

Sgt. Brian Miller will receive full back pay and seniority when he returns to his duties at the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, the Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association Union said Wednesday.
Miller was one of four officers who were fired last year after an investigation deemed they had "neglected their duties" when they responded to the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead and 17 injured.
An internal investigation found that Miller, who was the first supervising officer who responded to the scene, hid behind his car while shots rang out inside the high school. The union said an arbitration ruled the "BSO violated Sgt. Brian Miller’s Constitutional due process rights and improperly terminated him."
Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina, 14, was killed in the shooting, tweeted that Miller should resign.
"He owes it to law enforcement officers who risk their lives each and every day," he said.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/cop-fired-parkland-shooting-job-back-back-pay/story?id=70678466

Trump attacks local leaders as he visits two cities grieving from mass shootings

EL PASO — On a day when President Trump vowed to tone down his rhetoric and help the country heal following two mass slayings, he did the opposite — lacing his visits Wednesday to El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, with a flurry of attacks on local leaders and memorializing his trips with grinning thumbs-up photos.

None of the eight patients still being treated at University Medical Center in El Paso agreed to meet with Trump when he visited the hospital.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lashes-out-at-beto-orourke-and-the-media-ahead-of-visits-to-el-paso-and-dayton/2019/08/07/b0aa8afc-b8fb-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html


El Paso victims refuse to meet with Trump after he turns Dayton visit into a campaign stop
https://www.salon.com/2019/08/08/el-paso-victims-refuse-to-meet-with-trump-after-he-turns-dayton-visit-into-a-campaign-stop/

Trump brags about crowd size during El Paso visit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJhrQ9ghwo8

“We had an amazing day,” Trump said in El Paso as he concluded his visit. “As you know, we left Ohio. The love, the respect for the office of the presidency.”

So glad he had an amazing day.

The usual first assumption of "amazing" is amazingly good. 

It could have also been amazingly bad.

 ;D
 

Man began spraying the roads with bullets after police pulled him over for failing to use his signal.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/02/us/west-texas-shooting-monday/index.html

Sounds like someone that could have been found with a red flag law.

Gov. Kevin Stitt’s appointed secretary of education, Ryan Walters, said Tuesday’s mass shooting at a south Texas elementary school is “not a gun problem” and called for teachers and students to be able to better defend themselves with “armed support” inside schools.
https://tulsaworld.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/gov-stitts-secretary-of-education-says-texas-school-shooting-is-not-a-gun-problem-calls/article_6fe2102e-dc77-11ec-8f67-abff56e13c33.html

This sort of batshary-crazy thinking could never be a reality without something more insane to drive it...

UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Nearly 20 officers stood for about 45 minutes in the hallway outside the adjoining Texas classrooms where the gunman killed students and teachers this week before U.S. Border Patrol agents unlocked the door to confront and kill him, authorities said Friday.

Little Johnny want to shoot up the school. Now he won't have to worry about finding/buying/stealing a gun, teacher has one waiting for him in her desk!

Perfect!

This thread has been going on for almost 6 years now and nothing has changed. When it was started, the kids at Uvalde weren't even old enough to be in school and now they're dead. Pathetic.

.
Another kid bullied for years.  Broke horrendously.  And Abbott commenting on how we need mental health things, whatever that is he has in his feeble mind.  When it was he and his minions who took $200+ million out of mental health budgets in Texas.   And once again, that would be Republicans.  Of course.


Big question I now have given the response that was seen - we have seen some of the sheriff dept (all white guys in the limited sample that I saw interviewed so far), but there has been very little about the Uvalde cops except for the one that wants to be on the city council.   How many of them were white?  Responding to a much more mixed school.  The excuse was they were afraid to be shot, but could it have been they were "afraid" to get shot for those <fill-in-the-blank> kids?   Just asking.  Beyond Arredondo, who was there?  Quite possible that nothing sinister was at work other than just flat out incompetence and cowardice!  I hope!


There is so much vile and disgusting surrounding this event - seems to be even worse than usual.

I've been to Uvalde several times but admit the last time was around 2009.  If you are white and don't like minorities, you need to live somewhere else.  The folks there were always good to me and my friends.

Why be accountable when you can fall back on secrecy.

The Uvalde Police Department and the Uvalde Independent School District police force are no longer cooperating with the Texas Department of Public Safety's investigation into the massacre at Robb Elementary School and the state's review of the law enforcement response, multiple law enforcement sources tell ABC News.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/uvalde-police-school-district-longer-cooperating-texas-probe/story?id=85093405

I have been seeing more.  Appears as though most of the cops are Hispanic, so not likely something nefarious. 

(CNN) At least three people were killed in a hospital campus shooting on Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, police said.
The shooter is also dead, police said in a Facebook post.
Authorities responded to a call about a man who was armed with a rifle at the Natalie Medical Building, a physicians' office building on the St. Francis Hospital campus, according to an earlier Facebook post from the Tulsa Police Department.

"At this point, we can confirm the shooter is dead," police said in the post, although it is not clear whether the shooting was self-inflicted.

"Officers are currently going through every room in the building checking for additional threats," the post added.

Police were evacuating the building and evacuating victims Wednesday evening, Richard Meulenberg, with police, said Wednesday.
"We have multiple floors... with hundreds of rooms and hundreds of people within the building," he said.
"We're treating this as a catastrophic scene right now," Meulenberg said.
There has been a reunification site set up for family members and friends at Memorial High School west of LaFortune Park, police added.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is assisting on the scene of the shooting, the ATF Dallas Field Division said on Twitter.


Two orthopedic surgeons, a medical office staffer and a patient visitor were killed in a mass shooting Wednesday on the campus of Saint Francis Health System in Tulsa.
The victims were identified by Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin as Dr. Preston Phillips, Dr. Stephanie Husen, Amanda Glenn and William Love.
The shooter, who police say killed himself, was identified as Michael Louis of Muskogee, a patient of Phillips' who had recently been treated for back pain following a May 19 surgery.  
Franklin said Glenn was a receptionist and that Love was a patient, but later a police spokesman said Love was with a patient.

According to investigators, the 45-year-old purchased an AR-15-style rifle about an hour prior to the shooting from a local retailer, Franklin said. Louis bought the .40-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol used in the shootings from an area pawn shop on Sunday.

Officers at the shooting scene found 30 shell casings from the rifle and seven from the pistol rounds, Franklin said.

https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/gunman-bought-rifle-one-hour-before-slaying-4-people-tulsa-police-chief-says/article_950a12be-e27d-11ec-ba92-0ff2bc2e1fe0.html

(https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/07/highland-park-shooter-social-media-11.jpg)

The “person of interest” arrested in the deadly mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade outside Chicago on Monday has been identified as a 22-year-old local amateur rapper with a history of disturbing online posts.
https://nypost.com/2022/07/04/highland-park-parade-shooting-suspect-robert-crimos-disturbing-social-media/

The grandfather of the man alleged to be behind the mass-shooting at a Colorado gay bar this weekend has been named as a MAGA Republican lawmaker who praised the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol last year.
 
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11451491/Grandfather-Colorado-gay-bar-mass-shooter-MAGA-California-lawmaker-hailed-January-6-riots.html


What is it with MAGA and firearms?

https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/politics/government/2022/11/21/oklahoma-gov-kevin-stitt-son-gun-alcohol-charges-halloween/69667288007/

Maybe they replace American Express.... Don't leave home without it.

 ;D