Omaha Shootings
 

Just saw the news story on CNBC this morning, and thought I'd check CNN to get the details. Here's the word:

:eek: I'm horrified that this could happen with someone who was described as the "calm, cool and collected one" of a group of friends. Were there even warning signs? Doesn't look like it - other than showing his guardian a gun the night before. What did she think then? Did she assume it was fake?

Do you see shootings like this one and those at Columbine and Virginia Tech as a trend among disgruntled young men, or just a singular instance to be thrown in with all the rest of the horrible things of this world?

I definitely see a trend. I can't assume conspiracy theory or underground movement... but more a terrible behavioral trend of mistreated young people trying to be heard. What can we do to improve things? Were shootings this run-of-the-mill in the past, or is this a recent trend?

i don't' see it as a trend. it's horrible, yes, but it's not new.

do you remember the song "i don't like mondays" by the boomtown rats? that song was about a 16 year old girl in 1979 who opened fire at a school ,when asked why she did it, she replied "i don't like mondays." in 1975, ottawa canada, some dude shot up his school.

as awful as it is, kids have been violently "acting out" for quite some time. maybe not all school shootings, but murders.

i saw a video of an interrogation of a kid who killed another kid (they were both under 15 years old) and i also remember a story (don't know if this is true, but we all talked about it) about a kid who killed another kid "because he was fat and i didn't think anyone would miss him." kids have been fucked up for years.

there has probably been a good number of similar acts by youths in the past, we just didn't hear about them because there was no internet and immediate cell phone picture coverage of the event.

Can't say I really care. Just more of white folk being white folk (Yeah yeah... Save me the grief that I will undoubtedly get when someone decides to quote me).

the only trend i see with these types of shootings is the increasing power of the weapon of choice. no more .38s or 9mm. they all seem to be using AK's and TEC's.

The guy used an SKS.

...

No, seriously... the weapon issue? It doesn't really matter. The body count from a handgun vs. an "assault rifle" vs. whatever you pick isn't going to fluctuate all that much considering the total amateurs who wield them and the bovine-like reaction of those who are getting slaughtered.

Columbine? VT? This crap? Way different weapons. Same effect.

I'd suggest letting more lawful citizens legally carry firearms. It would have taken any average joe two shots to end that... could have saved a lot of lives.

...

TEC? I assume you are referring to the Intratec TEC-9 series 9mm semi-automatic pistol. The thing is a big piece of junk at best and to top it all off? You'd really have to dig to find one local these days. They're rare thanks to all sorts of legislation that picked on the manufacturer specifically.

Statistically? The only criminals that use the Tec-9 are the ones you see on the idiot-box.

Hahaha... *cranks some 50 Cent*

The race card isn't even funny, dude.

again, another mass murder/shooting occurring in an area where guns are not allowed. what's the world coming to when criminals and psychopaths won't obey the rules?

I see more and more people not keeping track of their emotionally unstable family members.

this guy was shooting from the third floor according to one report i read. a handgun wouldnt have done as much damage from that distance. i'm not a big gun person but i do believe the muzzle velocity of an assault rifle is a bit higher than a handgun. not to mention the ammo design.

what are you referring to as a bovine-like reaction?

thats making the assumption that the "average joe" is a better shot.

People who are angry/disgruntled/upset, and yell, have an outlet for their hostility to blow off their negative energy...

It's the quiet ones you really have to worry about.

The third floor is only 20-25 ft up, I'm pretty sure that most hand gun ammo (we'll say a 9mm) has an effective range of around 150 ft.

I can hit expert marksmanship at 25 yards with a 9mm or .45. 25 feet to 45 feet is not very far at all.

Did I read that the guy's girlfriend left him and he was fired from his job at McDonalds? Wow. Talk about hitting bottom.

Why didn't he just turn to drugs and alcohol like all his peers?

good shooting.
still doubt the average joe is that good.

I doubt the average joe walks into a mall and starts shooting.

he'd already done that with a few misdemeanor drug convictions, one felony, and a charge of minor in possession of alcohol, where he was due in court in 2 weeks.

what happened here then?

I haven't seen Bill O around. I hope he's ok.

I'm not military trained, nor do I shoot for sport, and I can't imagine I'd have much trouble at that range. Hell I can do it with paintballs and those are a hell of a lot less accurate.

I wouldn't call this kid an "average joe".

I'm sure it'd be the same if you've played enough first-person shooters. It can't be that difficult to shoot a gun.

They're talking on the news about needing to install metal detectors at the doors in all malls.


I find that to be the most absurd thing I have ever heard.

I got a chuckle out of this comment.

Brother, brother, brother! Whoooo! You'd be surprised. Oh, the things I've seen on the training ranges... and the toes I've nearly lost to dumb privates.

The metal plate in my head would ban me from reaching Hot Topic and J Crew?!

OH NO!

...

Metal detectors are stupid. Kinda like gun exile laws.

Hmmm... there has to be a joke in there somewhere about your expertise with the Desert Eagle chambered in .50 AE.

People have been homicidal since the beginning of time. We have had teen killers in this country since its inception - like Lizzie Borden.

Pretty soon you'll have to take your shoes off and throw out your water bottles.... Americans will put up with anything (and anyone *koff George Bush*) if it makes us feel safer.

Fact is, random shit like this happens. It's huge news--as it should be. But the odds of being part of this is even smaller than the odds of being a victim of terrorists. Which is to say, vanishingly, ridiculously small.

My school is relatively close to the mall. We were held in our classroom after school as our school was in lockdown. Within 5 minutes we knew that there had been a shooting(cell phones).

They put warning labels on electronics in regards to water. I think my point still stands. :)

Does anyone know if the gun used was a legally registered, lawful gun or an illegal gun?

Swimming pools and drunk drivers are waaaaayyy more dangerous than guns.

So is walking. And cancer. What's your point? :)

Probably a legally registered SKS. They're very lawful in normal states... boring, even. Back in the day (1995) you could buy a crate of 10 Yugoslavian for $1500.

Walking isn't dangerous! Hah, I do it all the time! *knees pop*

I'm a good shot, and grew up with a bow in my hands, guns are like cheating ;)

*imagines UsTwo as the Nicholas Cage in The Weatherman*

Dude, that could be your life. Bow and all.

...

Maybe we should ban guns and force citizens to learn archery.

Let's do it.

Crompsin, I love you.

You don't love me, you just love my Crompy style.

*watches for Pig*

I kick ass with the archery stuff. Only problem? Can't hide a bow in your pants.

*waits for predictable cock jokes*

I wonder if McDonald's people had to do any CYA press releases for this guy... since he was fired from their fine establishment.

grammar....
 

That's exactly it!! :p

Actually, I can beat that. I once hurt myself falling down while on a payphone (for those of you old enough to remember payphones).

I got a hotel hairdryer for you and I took the warning tag off.

WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO NOW?! HUH?! HUH?!

...

Guns have similar labels engraved into the receivers / slides.

"Don't stick this in your ear and pull the trigger. It may harm you."

Hmm....toss you a hairdryer and we'll have a duel. I hear you're a good shot onthe range, but how fast can you draw?

...
I have the same label on my penis.

*sigh* This is why I'm still single

Wow, you guys are making me laugh. So glad you can infuse such a depressing topic with some silly humor. I don't know about you guys, but I had an entire quarter of mandatory archery lessons in 8th grade PE class.

They actually banned archery at my high school because the parents protested it and said it was too violent.

The next month we had a student abducted from a classroom and killed by gang members.

Not related but ironic.

...

Man, I feel all bad that nobody got my sarcasm regarding the drugs and alcohol thing. Oh well. Lemme give a shoutout to all six teenagers in the country who, like me, somehow managed to be nerdy enough to never engage in said recreational inebriation. Ya know, those substances are merely gateways to heavier things... like purchasing old 7.62x39mm Russian semi-automatic rifles and engaging in sad, pointless mall shootings.

Instead of yelling fire in a theater... all you have to yell these days is: "Angry white teenager!"

You don't even have to get deployed to get shot at by these weapons anymore... you can do it outside The Gap!

We all jest, but I would have taken a bullet to keep that dumbass from killing all those people. I wish somebody had done something. I wish mall cops had guns.

Like rats in a cage... the more rats you got the more crazy they become
I guess we all have become a tad desensitized to violence......

Will all the gangsters like I_L have to fire their bows sideways?

A few notes on this tragedy


I feel that a lawfully armed citizen could have stopped the guy a lot sooner-

that mall banned any concealed firearms, and while nebraska had legal CC, cities could ban it, and omaha had (though they MAY have overturned it recently- cannot find updates on that)-

note that the weapon used by the bad guy was stolen, and not concealable, and , if it was an sks, as the reports seem to indicate, not even on most of the ban lists as it only holds 10 rounds unless it is altered, (many are, but it is generally a bad idea as it tends to make it look "cool" but function poorly) The SKS fires a 7.62x 39 round, and is very popular because it is cheap, rugged, and as the cartridge is about on par with the 30/30, it is often used as a deer rifle (this is in part because the ammo is relatively cheap, so it is easy for someone to practice enough to actually hit the deer they are shooting at)

What really pisses me off is that in the assailants suicide letter he stated that he was going to be famous, and the media has granted his wish- I would really like it if the media stopped using his name, and instead imortalized the victims- it sucks that many of us remember the names of the guys that did the columbine shootings, but no one remembers a single victims name.....If I owned a major news outlet, I would start the story with a brief description of the bad guys suicide note and desire for fame, and then go on to describing what happened, and the lives and accomplishments of the victims - no mention of his name, no pic of him- just call him the gunman or the failure or something derogatory- and do that for all the "i am a worthless piece of shit notice me killings" make sure the victims are known, and glorified, and leave the bad guy as anonomous as possible......

A quick lesson on gun identification
SKS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sks
AK47:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47

Notice the vague similarities, but also notice that a five-year-old with five minutes of being shown the differences can tell which is which.

He had a drug possession conviction and a felon conviction. He couldn't have legally owned a gun.
I haven't shot anyone, but I think it's safe to say that it's a little bit harder to take aim and fire on panicking live targets than it is to move a mouse and click when the cursor is over the other guy's head.
Your trolling is getting tiresome.

i have to say that i find the gun posturing here to be kinda creepy
everyone is quite sure of their potential heroics as they sit in a chair staring at a monitor.
sitting in a chair in front of a monitor, no=one would miss: everyone's a marksman.
and i do not doubt that on a firing range, having entered that kind of zen state that is aiming, that everyone who practices can shoot quite well.
but in a mall?
while panic unfolds around you?
who knows, maybe you'd have hit the target.
maybe there'd have been "collateral damage".
maybe that collateral damage would have made you famous as well, as the vigilante who mowed down x or y while trying to prevent this kid from mowing down other x-es or other y-s.
or maybe you'd be famous for having hit your target like a sherrif in a western.

either way, i am not sure i see the difference between these fantasies of vigilante action and the motives of the shooter in omaha.

nor can i imagine feeling any safer, reading through these gun-toting fantasy narratives, thinking about what might have happened in 3-d ---that is, had they not been written by folk sitting in a chair, staring at a monitor in controlled conditions physically, unspooling wild wild west stories in their imagination.

i read them and i see more chaos, more destruction, more death: multiple centers rather than one or two.

it is curious.
i happened to be near a television tuned to that endless stream of nothing that is cnn while this was happening.

the coverage seemed mostly about enabling network functionaries to use that tone they have developed to indicate commiseration on the one hand, and to present the illusion of having eliminated arbitrariness on the other.

the only trend there is is news coverage of this kind of action, which links them together because you see them in the same basic way on the same television outlets. you confuse television coverage and the narrative that is imposed simply by continuity with something that explains what happens in the world outside the reach of local news action team helicopter footage and strangely coiffed people in suits providing you with punchy little sentences as "explanation."

from the viewpoint of larger causal patterns, this mall shooting is arbitrary.
you wouldnt have been able to do much to change it were you there, were you strapped, were you locking and loading blah blah blah.
and i dont think the fact of coverage explains anything.
it just provides a complication of narrative.

there is arbitrariness.
you have to deal with it.

Mens rhea, perhaps.

Would you do nothing?

...

I've been shot at before.

Turns out: It sucks.

Bravery isn't defined by heroic activities.

Bravery is defined by taking action when others don't.

...

I concur with your post and it saddens me... and it saddens me because I concur with it.

Hahaha, maybe it was a Tec-9! Or a plasma blaster! :rolleyes: I honestly don't care what it was, the media can't figure it out and in the end it matters about as much as the car he used to get to the mall. The media are gun experts: they're five year olds with more education than I'll ever have.

What is the proper reaction for those who were targeted? Or is there nothing that they could have done? keep in mind the context, that these are average people shopping in a mall.

Military training says: Getting face down (either flat on the ground or behind concealment / cover) with your forearms crossed over your head has been proven to be more safe than running like a headless chicken when suddenly someone is firing rapidly from a fixed position. It has worked for me before several times. Your mileage may vary.

As roach said, who knows what would happen if you were actually in the situation. But sitting here in front of my monitor I tend to think I would do as cromp says, my first reaction seems to me that if I get down on the ground the gunslinger will ignore me and probably shoot for the targets that are grabbing his attention.

PC run amok! It doesn't bother me what you think. I'm not gonna' apologize considering white men and women constitute over 90% of suicides as well as the vast majority of public shootings.

*Shrugs*

Don't like it? Too bad. Hence why I said save me the grief I was undoubtedly going to get.

Although there are many that would dispute it...I am in fact..."ok". ;)
Although the media saturation, in Omaha at least, is wearisome. It's to be expected, though. Little Omaha is growing up, and people have this need to try to make sense of something senseless. I will say that the low point, with the media, came as a local anchor team actually seemed proud of the fact that this was the lead story on the BBC.

Westroads is still closed today. It will reopen tomorrow. But, Von Maur will remain closed. There are too many..."repairs" that need to be made, and the investigators have not yet released the crime scene. In other words...there's still a lot of blood to scrub off of the floors, and carpeting to be replaced, before holiday shopping can resume.

As a bit of an aside. My daughter took my grand-daughter to Von Maur on Tuesday, to visit Santa. 24 hours later...
Oh well, can't dwell on it. A lot of people were in that mall, and in that store.

I am inclined to agree.

What school is that, icevrething?

and then again, you might only see that because some of us have no fear of being shot or killed. I learned not to fear death as a marine. That's not to say I want to die, I just don't fear it. It's been said that people are dumb, panicky animals....and that may be true for a vast majority but it certainly doesn't hold for everybody, just as if someone said that because people are dumb and panicky animals, all they would be capable of doing is dropping to the fetal position and shitting their pants from fear. Would that hold true for everyone? of course not. Some people react calmly, some react irrationally.
You see more chaos, destruction, and death as a result of people being armed because you've come to view your fellow man as that dumb panicky animal who is totally incompetent in the face of danger, or you view yourself this way and are doing nothing but projecting that inward feeling outward so as not to feel impotent.
Many people feel strongly that adding armed citizens in the mix will just increase the death rate exponentially because they aren't 'highly' trained like law enforcement officers. Truth be told, I'd rather be around armed regular people than armed police officers. In my experience, cops are more dangerous and unpredictable than wild dingos.

I can't speak for every man, but I'd rather be armed in this situation than just another target. Some people are naturally victims I guess.

You know loser, as a white male my chances of getting murdered are less than a lot of European countries, yet, the US has a higher murder rate per capita. Its pretty easy to fill in those blanks. We really don't need to go there and you are just trolling. Its tiresome because people aren't even bothering to respond. They have become desensitized to your blathering.

Hey IL person, you must not be seein as much red as you used to,
Your pink eye clearing up?

(now do I get away with that type of insult because I put a disclaimer
on it before saying it?)

That seems to be a first rate form of passive aggressive behavior that might have served you well in the past, but I have a sneaking suspicion you
are rapidly evolving past that and change can be scary sometimes.

I'm blacker than you are, and I am so pale I'd blind ya (JOKE)

You are the only one who can grieve you.

I am positive you can spark us all to question long held Ideas.

As we do for you, Thank you.

Now Die. (joke) see how old this gets?

Oh, but being a victim is civilized. :oogle:

Absolutely excellent response. We are what we do, what are what we do. There is a balance to be obtained, though. The experiences that you and I have from the military... not something that can be easily summed up in words for others to understand... it must be experienced. No way around it. Textbooks and movies and teevee are jokes and insults to the cold, messy reality.

I think Roachboy was expressing his side of the philosophy as someone who probably hasn't been hammered into a combative shape and I concur with it to the extent that a lot of people pet gun egos and that must be tempered with proper training and certification and the confidence that comes from both having a big pair of brass balls and knowing when to utilize them.

...

I'd hate to think I live in a country where so many of my fellow citizens are peachy-keen-a-okay with dying without defiance.

dk and crompsin--but dk's no. 50 in particular----point to something else, though, and i find that actually interesting.
when you imagined yourself in the scenario of the mall, you imagined yourself immediately as in a position to react with a weapon.

i imagined myself as---counter-intuitive as this is to me--walking around the mall, not thinking of anything in particular, and finding myself in the vicinity of this kid at the moment he started shooting.

so in your scenario, you imagined yourself as in a position to assert a degree of control, and then filled in other possibilities because of your disposition and background--it is at that point that i found no. 50 interesting.

it made me wonder why exactly my immediate reaction was to put myself imaginatively in the position of someone who just happened to be wandering around in a mall at the wrong time.

the difference seems to me that you reduced chaos by the way you chose to insert yourself into the scene. but i did the opposite: i multiplied the origin points. so i projected myself as a spectator.

i dont have a particular argument to make about this, but it is an interesting sidebar.
actually, i understand the desire to feel as though you could have done something in such a situation.
and it makes sense that anyone, really, would be inclined to project that desire into scenarios that one constructs.

where things grow strange is the moment one starts to conflate the content of a scenario/projection with something more than that.

i dont agree with your argument that you built on the basis of the scenario that you generated, dk, but that's to be expected i suppose: i just find the choice each of us made, which i take to be a kind of reflex choice, and the difference between them, to be interesting.

Dear Guy Closest To The Psycho In The Mall: Please don't just curl up and die.

White men and women also make up 90% of the population of this country. Your point?

Demographer checking in here...Halx, the percentage of the US population identifying as white-only (as opposed to 2 or more "races") is almost exactly 80%, as of the latest population estimate (July 2006), done by the US census. You can download an Excel file from their website to check the actual numbers... http://www.census.gov/popest/estimates.php

/Now returning to our regularly scheduled thread...

You want to mention that blacks constitute a little over 50% of all homicides in the United States (Most due to gang related violence)? Go right on ahead. Since it's a true statistic, I can't really take offense to that statement because I might not like, now can I? No, I can't (Not that I would anyway). What's true is true.

*Shrugs*

With that being said, you can say/think whatever you want about my initial statement-- It's not as if you disagreeing with it makes it any less valid :D You, as a caucassion, are statistically more likely to 1.) Commit suicide and 2.) Go on an unabated rampage (If you wanna' call it that) before committing suicide than I am. I fully well expected someone to try to jump on my case, which is why I initially said to spare me the grief I was undoubtedly going to get. It's amazing how bent-out-of-shape some people can get because of statements they don't necessarily like.

I agree with Crompsin a lot, I think the media is all over it for RATINGS and the hype of an "assault weapon" when in reality a semi-automatic browning 3006 hunting rifle with a nice scope on it (Deer season) would have been even more accurate, no doubt if the teenager had stolen his dads AK/SKS variant or his hunting rifle, they both would have the label: "ASSAULT" in it to get attention.

I Also recall reading about the VT shooters ASSAULT handgun. In fact, everything can be worded that way but the anti-gun people in the USA like to add it to congressional bills with the endgame in mind. That of banning all guns for the ultimate in safety illusions, a violence free society, where without evil guns, teenagers would be peaceful, calm and serene.

It makes me mad that mall banned the concealed carry of guns, some innocent people died so the mall could keep that utopian illusion of safety.

Here is a good one by the Author of "more guns less crime"

-------------------


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,315563,00.html

The horrible tragedy at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb. received a lot of attention Wednesday and Thursday. It should have. Eight people were killed, and five were wounded.

A Google news search using the phrase "Omaha Mall Shooting" finds an incredible 2,794 news stories worldwide for the last day. From India and Taiwan to Britain and Austria, there are probably few people in the world who haven’t heard about this tragedy.

But despite the massive news coverage, none of the media coverage, at least by 10 a.m. Thursday, mentioned this central fact: Yet another attack occurred in a gun-free zone.

Surely, with all the reporters who appear at these crime scenes and seemingly interview virtually everyone there, why didn’t one simply mention the signs that ban guns from the premises?

Nebraska allows people to carry permitted concealed handguns, but it allows property owners, such as the Westroads Mall, to post signs banning permit holders from legally carrying guns on their property.

The same was true for the attack at the Trolley Square Mall in Utah in February (a copy of the sign at the mall can be seen here). But again the media coverage ignored this fact. Possibly the ban there was even more noteworthy because the off-duty police officer who stopped the attack fortunately violated the ban by taking his gun in with him when he went shopping.

Yet even then, the officer "was at the opposite end and on a different floor of the convoluted Trolley Square complex when the shooting began. By the time he became aware of the shooting and managed to track down and confront Talovic [the killer], three minutes had elapsed."

There are plenty of cases every year where permit holders stop what would have been multiple victim shootings every year, but they rarely receive any news coverage. Take a case this year in Memphis, where WBIR-TV reported a gunman started "firing a pistol beside a busy city street" and was stopped by two permit holders before anyone was harmed.

When will part of the media coverage on these multiple-victim public shootings be whether guns were banned where the attack occurred? While the media has begun to cover whether teachers can have guns at school or the almost 8,000 college students across the country who protested gun-free zones on their campuses, the media haven’t started checking what are the rules where these attacks occur.

Surely, the news stories carry detailed information on the weapon used (in this case, a rifle) and the number of ammunition clips (apparently, two). But if these aspects of the story are deemed important for understanding what happened, why isn’t it also important that the attack occurred where guns were banned? Isn’t it important to know why all the victims were disarmed?

Few know that Dylan Klebold, one of the two Columbine killers, closely was following Colorado legislation that would have allowed citizens to carry a concealed handgun. Klebold strongly opposed the legislation and openly talked about it.

No wonder, as the bill being debated would have allowed permitted guns to be carried on school property. It is quite a coincidence that he attacked the Columbine High School the very day the legislature was scheduled to vote on the bill.

Despite the lack of news coverage, people are beginning to notice what research has shown for years: Multiple-victim public shootings keep occurring in places where guns already are banned. Forty states have broad right-to-carry laws, but even within these states it is the "gun-free zones," not other public places, where the attacks happen.

People know the list: Virginia Tech saw 32 murdered earlier this year; the Columbine High School shooting left 13 murdered in 1999; Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, had 23 who were fatally shot by a deranged man in 1991; and a McDonald's in Southern California had 21 people shot dead by an unemployed security guard in 1984.

All these attacks — indeed, all attacks involving more than a small number of people being killed — happened in gun-free zones.

In recent years, similar attacks have occurred across the world, including in Australia, France, Germany and Britain. Do all these countries lack enough gun-control laws? Hardly. The reverse is more accurate.

The law-abiding, not criminals, are obeying the rules. Disarming the victims simply means that the killers have less to fear. As Wednesday's attack demonstrated yet again, police are important, but they almost always arrive at the crime scene after the crime has occurred.

The longer it takes for someone to arrive on the scene with a gun, the more people who will be harmed by such an attack.

Most people understand that guns deter criminals. If a killer were stalking your family, would you feel safer putting a sign out front announcing, "This Home Is a Gun-Free Zone"? But that is what the Westroads Mall did.

---------------------

80%-90%... who cares? We all look the same anyway, right? :D

Q: What do you call a mall cop without a weapon?

A: Anything you want... they're as useful as a toddler or senior citizen.

Fine fine. 80%. My point is that white people make up a vast majority of the population, so the fact that a vast majority of _______ crimes are committed by white people is irrelevant. There are more effective ways to look at numbers.

Translation: "Had the victims had guns, they'd magically be alive". Same old tune, eh? If I had a gun, could I also fly?

Here's a nutty idea: no one save for military officers had a need for an ak47. You don't hunt with them (deer pate, anyone?), they will destroy your house during a home invasion (read: OVERKILL for self defense) and you can't exactly walk around with one.

There are three reasons for a civilian to have an ak47: small penis, wanting to fight the government, or wanting to go on an insane rampage. Cept Crompsin. He's the exception.

Certainly, it IS irrelevant. Not disagreeing with you... just checking the numbers, as they were pounded into my brain by several demography professors. :p

I'm not even sure why skin color is considered relevant into this discussion, period. It might be interesting, though, to talk about how the news coverage would be different if the shooter had been black. Did anyone perceive a difference when the VA Tech guy was revealed to be Asian?

*Points to the thread regarding the VT shooter*

Way ahead of you.

I don't recall there being much discussion about the skin color of the sniper(s)--incidentally, both black men--who opened fire on random people right after 9/11... but if there was, I am sure you'll remind me.

What, exactly, is your point again?

Read post #59.

Edit: Actually, I change my mind. I will say something. These threads are dumb because they generally degenerate down to one of those "Gun control" debates. As far as I see it (And the statistics don't lie) the problem ain't getting the guns; It's the group of people who generally do the shooting. I feel no remorse in pointing out that the majority of people who go on killing rampages through the general public are white in decent.

...But, you know, apparently that's not so PC to say >_>

It wouldn't have been different. Remember when Colin Ferguson went on his rampage through a Long Island Railroad commuter train?

Or the D.C. sniper?

Race has nothing to do with anything. Why are people feeding the troll?

A voice of reason speaks.
Thanks Willravel.

Carry on.. sorry I have nothing else to add.

I don't arm myself in the hope that I will be able to kill someone if necessary, I arm myself in the hope that if I am in a tragic situation, that I can save lives.
The ideal reaction is the preservation instinct. If you are in no position to stop the attack, get yourself and as many others as possible to safe locations. In the unlikely situation that you are properly equipped to deal with an armed threat and located where it is possible to do so, it would be proper to attempt to stop the threat.
It's not PC run amok. You made an inflammatory statement with the intent of producing a negative reaction. You also seem to have defined "public shootings" to suit your view; the unfortunate circumstance is that young black males are the predominant perpetrators and victims of gun violence in the US. I'd hate to think of how I'd be treated if I dismissed Philadelphia's homicide rate as "black folk being black folk."
I'm more likely to commit suicide and go on a rampage, and you're more likely to throw your life away in a gang or die of a crack overdose. This can go on and on. Let's make this about the bad side of human nature, not the way in which the bad apples particular demographic groups go about indiscriminately bailing water out of the gene pool.
Good thing I have an AK-74, I don't want that kind of judgment made about my penis.

K fine,
"cept Crompsin and MSD"

again, it's about having a chance, however small, instead of no chance at all. It just might also minimize the lives lost.
you're right. that is definitely a nutty idea.
did you know that the same size and power cartridge is used in popular hunting rifles? The only difference between an AK and some hunting rifles is the look.

the popular argument for those people who don't like it that other men are comfortable around weapons while they are not.
or trying to keep the government honest and non-tyrannical. another argument used by people who don't trust freedom.
which is why the VT killer used one, wait, no he didn't. It must have been the guy at the amish church. no, he didn't either. guess you were wrong? maybe?
or were you just generalizing BS arguments from the middle hole of your ass?

they will destroy your house during a home invasion (read: OVERKILL for self defense)

Sometimes I don't understand a liberal mind set, this is one of those times....

They will destroy your house?

:confused:

I have this image of your imagination working with some guy spraying in a circle wildly on full auto.

ok. here is a theoretical scenario.
someone has started rampage shooting in the mall. several people with concealed weapons draw and start looking for the shooter.
people running everywhere. one of the several comes around a corner and sees what they think is a gun and blasts away.
what happens if one of them accidently shoots someone other than the rampaging shooter?

cops accidently shoot people they mistakenly thought were carrying guns.

Not at all. Have you ever shot at someone who didn't want to be shot? They move. Moving targets aren't always easy to hit. What happens when you miss shooting at someone in your house?

theoretical, hypothetical, it's all thetical.
One of the things I've noticed is the disparaging difference between those that practice with guns and those that don't. Those who practice tend not to be kneejerky and impulsively reckless while those who don't, think everyone else can be no other way.

Here is how I see your hypothetical...
three or four people in the mall are carrying. gunfire erupts from the balcony overlooking the food court. As everyone else flees for the doors, three of the four carrying start moving quicly but cautiously towards the gunfire. The fourth person was down in the food court and is now behind the cover of the center pillar of the food court because he did NOT panic and bolt for the door, instead finding the nearest impenatrable object to place between him and the shooter.
Of the other three, two turn a corner and sight each other, carrying a gun in their hands, and stop momentarily facing each other preparing to shoot, if necessary. Upon STILL hearing gunfire from the food court area, they are quick to figure out that neither of them are the assault weapon bearing insane murdering rampager, and continue on toward the food court working in tandem to cover each other. This part can happen easily, mainly because we're wild west wannabe sherrifs looking to be the big heroes and have thought of nothing but killing bad guys since we got our concealed weapons permits. The third person carrying comes around a different corner and realizes that the shooting is coming from the balcony overhead. realizing that there is no way he can make it to the shooter, satisfies his heroic urges by waving the dumb panicky human animals past him as he gallantly covers their collective cowardly asses. The two guys on the second floor look out from behind separate columns to see the murderous crazy dude gleefully laughing as he sprays a lead curtain of death down upon the fleeing customers from the food court and each fires three times, two to the body and one to the head. no wait, got that wrong. In their zeal to be the saviors of the day, they empty two magazines of 9mm randomly through the mall areas killing more innocent bystanders than the insane rampaging murderer was able to do with his fully automatic military style assault weapon that he would not have been able to obtain, had the evil republicans not let the 94 AWB lapse.
It's at that time, about 6 minutes after the first 911 call to the police, that the local police enter the food court area, see four armed men with handguns, and expertly snipe their brains through the backs of their heads while the real murdering crazy says 'oh shit, coppers' and eats the flaming barrel of his street corner bought machine gun. :orly:

all i can think of is charlie sheen in Hot Shots back in the ealy 90's doing rambo where he keeps firing until he's standing in a mound of ammo...

I got this from another forum so no sure how credible it is, but they reported this dude kicked out 30-40 rounds, yet hit only 7. I'd call that a bad shot.

LMMFAO..he just probably mistook the mannequins for another bible thumping pole up the ass Midwesterners..just sayin' :)

the report i read said he was just randomly shooting. probably a good thing he wasnt aiming. after all, he was a teen who probably played first person shooters before so it couldnt have been that difficult. ;)

out of curiosity, have you ever been under fire and if so how did you react?

You and I could have wrote the same post. Agreed!

yeah..and then one rogue reporter will finally spill the beans and make the most money for doing the exclusive...

which reporter is going o put benjamins in someone elses pocket? of course they are gonna report his name and detail his life...

ure not a reporter if u dont

And probably made the scene ten times worse..

Do you really think a "lawfully armed citizen" would have been been able to accurately gauge where the shots were fired from, and not shoot randomly, possibly causing more harm than good? Gut reaction would have made this situation worse...in my opinion.

Please. I'm not a troll in the least. So sorry I actually-- You know-- Bother to do a bit of research on things (Which, you know, appears to only be applicable when the majority wants it to be applicable. Oh well...).

*Ahem*

To quote myself from a couple of responses back:

See. I already acknowledged that fact a while ago. It doesn't exactly bother me, because there are statistics to back that claim up. Furthermore, I really don't care what you or anyone else thinks about what I have to say. Simply because you willingly choose to ignore it doesn't make it any less true. But, hey, whatever. Doesn't bother me in the slightest lol. Carry on :thumbsup:

Wow did this thread get absurd ever fast.

Too many guns makes everyone crazy.

Adding more guns will solve the problem, right?

So:
...is the result of research? That's a magnificent crock of shit, dude. It's baseless racism in the form of something that has nothing at all to do with the thread.
It's.
A.
Troll.

Give it up, willravel. Infinite_Loser doesn't realize that White isn't even a race. It is a crisis of identity that can only be defined as a "race" to which all other races are compared. There is no other way to define Whiteness. He doesn't understand that, so he doesn't know what he's talking about.

But you're right about his research. He should tighten that up a bit.

What does this have to do with too many guns again?

This is a thoughtful and interesting post, thank you roachboy. I think you could expand a bit more. I especially like your compare and contrast of your view and that of DKs. Perception does have a role to play and each one will have it's own narrative. At some point, these narratives will have to converge. I think it would be all how you frame it. There has to be something more endemic than just "guns" to the human experience. We are still a relatively young species; evolving, growing socially, mentally, and physically. Violence is very much a part of our nature (I know you hate that term roach, but lets use it and engage it). The point or frame of reference as a starting point in my mind would be: Everyone has guns and over time, some sort of detente, or deterrent effect would be achieved. No one has guns but then one person manages to get one and tips the balance of power. Etc..so on and so forth. I think an effective debate should start with these premises or something like it. I think current gun debates are overly simplistic and do not explore the issue enough in depth.

"white" also includes so called latino or hispanics, Arabs, Persians, etc Central Asians, North Africans, even south Asians,

Race truly is the dumbest label ever.

Yet people use this same type of logic all the time.

C'mon now Baraka, this is a cop out. You usually have awesome, well thought out posts (even though I don't agree alot). Surely you have something to add to the discussion?

Is there any surprise that where there are humans there is human suffering? I can’t even honestly say I am fazed one bit anymore. It’s been the case that a type of malaise usually comes in tandem with the report of news such as this, and maybe hint of that feeling like right before you throw up. Luckily, though, that goes away pretty quick when I see what else is on TV; I don’t know whether to call that growing up or giving up.

You know, you're right. I was simply disappointed by such follow-up to roachboy's engaging posts, which I hoped would have geared up a decent thread. The thread not only fell into the usual gun rut, but now we have the usual race thing going on, too.

What?

Seriously. I hope roachboy responds to you, and I will continue reading. I don't usually add anything at length unless I see it adding something of value. I didn't see the point in doing so yet.

But thanks for calling me out. I appreciate it. I just think it's pointless to try and oppose things like the what-if scenarios we see here all the time. Roachboy is right. They're a bit silly. And the race thing I didn't want to touch at all, but I saw the opportunity to point out that absurdity in a concise fashion.

Thanks, jorgelito, but I'll await roachboy's response to your legitimate concerns before seriously engaging. I suppose I often make the mistake of letting others engage with his posts instead, but since I tend to agree with him or learn something from him, I'm not sure it would be a debate so much as a concerted treatise.

I wouldn't run toward gunshots, if they were out of sight I would be trying to get people away from there. If a situation unfolded in which I could reasonably expect my actions to save lives, I would take action; in the unlikely circumstance that I was in line of sight of the shooter and felt that I could end a shooting spree by taking him down, I would do so quickly and decisively, then get back to doing whatever I could to make sure innocent people didn't die.

I find Rambo and vigilante fantasies as absurd (and frequently disturbing) as non-gun-owners.

i had thought about posting something further, jorgelito, but accidentally put that one up and then wandered away to do something else--when i got back, i read some of the stuff that followed and got disgusted with the thread. most of the gun toting fantasies i read seemed to me funny until i began to think that folk seriously imagined they'd act that way in 3-d, at which point they just seemed psychotic. that lead to one of those "who the fuck are these people?" moments...

now the ringing in my ears from a show is loud enough that i dont think i can sleep quite, so i checked in. glad to see your posts and barakas...

one other preliminary--the post i put up was cut up, so the direction i was heading in got blurred.
=========

i wasn't so much thinking about guns and gun fantasies per se---i was thinking about no. 50 because i dont remember reading anything from dk that tipped the written persona to the side a little and gave a glimpse of dispositions/background, which i thought opened up another way of thinking about, well, politics first and then responses to stuff like the mall shooting second (there's little difference, really, apart from scale).

alot of politics is about projection--people gather/cut up/organize information around frameworks that "fit"--and this fit seems often to have more to do with temperment, dispositions and experience than argument---it seems that what makes argument compelling past a certain point is this sense of fit--which means that political premises are evaluated aesthetically, not logically. or rather, that these aesthetic evaluations and logical evaluations get tangled up--the degree of entanglement is a function of self-awareness.

i'm interested in what motivates people to order their understanding of "the world"--which is everything outside their immediate experience--as they do.


why is it that someone would imagine a compensatory scenario about something like the mall shooting and would project themselves into the position of a guy with a gun who was in a position to start shooting?

why would i immediately project myself into a role as someone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

at one level, the former is obvious: to take 50 as a point of departure because i found it interesting.... the fantasy is about control, its compensatory character derives from a fear of chaos, it seems background functions to generate a war-scenario as the paradigm for a chaotic situation, and from it kinda follows that if everyone had a gun, and everyone reacted the same way to chaos, then the result would be an inverted war. war without the war part--a kind of stand-off.

chaos doesn't particularly bother me---i generally understand it as ordered in ways that are outside my usual perspective, so not as chaos. so i'm in general more curious about fluid situations, and partial structures etc, than i am put off by them.

but violence bothers me, because i dont understand it as an abstraction, but i also dont have a frame of reference for war, not experientially--so i think of violence as immediate...personal. i link violence to the most primitive and unthinking types of dominance--this follows from my experience--i find it repellent, stupid, a last resort available of all thinking fails.

so it follows i would see the idea of someone with a gun as someone who is using a crude instrument to avoid looking at a situation that lay outside expectations----and my frame of reference prompts me to see violence as particular--so maybe that explains why, when i imagined the mall thing, i without even thinking about it projected myself as distanced from it.

but because i see violence as primitive and a gun as a crude instrument, the combination seems to me an expression of a simplistic, unthinking attempt to impose a primitive order on a chaotic situation. so i see it as doomed, as failing, as impotent and ultimately as weak. but as i am writing this, i realize that i already slid from the mall scenario into more political situations--distancing myself from violence again.

so i imagine people with guns shooting and missing--i dont believe that anyone faced with an unexpected violent situation on the order of the mall shooting would remain calm. they aren't calm in a war situation---people miss alot, and folk who are killed as a consequence are folk who are in a war zone--however in a war, violence is itself not arbitrary----while a kid who opens up with a gun in a mall does so arbitrarily.
the distinction lay in how the situation is defined up front.
you might not expect exactly what happens to you in a war, but you know in a general sense that its possible because the situational definition tells you that.
shopping in a mall does not tell you that violence is something you should be thinking about.
it just doesn't.

so it seems to me that the percentage of people who would remain entirely cool and collected in a mall shooting situation is pretty fucking minimal---because i think that folk who are strapped are tempermentally the least likely to be able to handle arbitrariness--if they were cool with unexpected situations in general, they wouldnt be strapped in the first place. so i imagine innocent people getting shot up.

on the other hand, it seems that others have a different relationship to violence. i can see how it functions in what they write, but i dont understand it. i dont understand how anyone embraces violence. in this bizarre-o thread, you see alot of posturing on this. you even get treated to some folk ridiculing the imaginary scenarios of others, as if their ability to imagine themselves acting in a sociopathic manner in a violent situation means that they are more manly. i found, and find, that to be surreal.

the trick is that neither type of projection is more rational than the other.
both are shaped by disposition, preference, background.
how powerful these factors are in shaping your views still manages to surprise me.
that's more what i was thinking about.

i suppose its unnecessary to say that i find anything good or desirable in the idea of lots of people wandering around with guns.

Mr SD is the sound of reason. i find nothing in his response that any ordnary non military person wouldnt do.

to find yourself out of harms way but to then ensure u get yourself into it is nutty. sure, some people may do it, but the lay person would want to go home safely to their family and let the authorities do their job.

if u find yourself in the cross hairs its a different story. but to put ureself in it, especially if u have a family and kids to go home to at night is just crazy. sure, you'll make the news..dead or alive you'll make the news. but i'd rather not makethe news unless it was necesary. i guessitslike the 'would you cut ure arm off thread'.. u wouldnt do it unless its necesary

rb I think I can help you understand and the way to do that is to stop analyzing a situation and live it as best you can without really getting into danger.

http://www.cpxsports.com/

Its close by, not overly expensive, great exercise, and may put you in touch with your long slumbering survival/hunter instincts.

You know, it's possible that having many armed people around could have taken that asshole down while he had killed less people. It's also possible that more people would have died of random shots.

But, having many people carrying weapons all the time, concerns me. Because there will be cases where people fight over random stuff, and it's possible that someone will use a gun then.

I don't have any data to back this up. But I feel the deathtoll caused from having many people armed all the time would be higher than the amount of lives saved in specific cases like this one.

I agree with your reasonable gut feeling. For example, just think of all the chaos and insanity that is caused by Black Friday and American consumerism. Now imagine that everyone is armed.

Overall, it's a very sad story that unfortunately, but not surprisingly, has rewarded infamy.

outside of the corps, i've been around a shooting once. my reaction was to grab my wife and get her out of the firing line. I was unarmed and could do nothing else.

are you basing your opinion on any relevant experience or factual information? or is it simply how you feel?

roach, believe it or not, I was following your post quite well for once, until I got to this part....

Upon reading these two paragraphs, I could only see your projection of your inner feelings and emotions again.

I don't like violence. I don't like how it hurts people. I don't like how it makes me feel afterwards, especially if I've had to hurt others using it, but most of all, like you, I see it as the result of failed thinking.....most of the time.

8 people in an omaha mall probably agreed with you. So did 31 VT students. Millions of people all over this country agree with you. But as we've seen numerous times, there are others who view violence as either an enjoyable hobby or as a last escape from a world that they can't control anymore. It is these particular times when I'm reminded that we should ALL be thinking about the possibility of violence occurring, because it can...and does.

I see this as being entirely based upon your own perceptions and projections. I interact everyday with people who are carrying a gun and i've only had one person who didn't 'feel' right and left me disconcerted about this person having a gun. Otherwise, everyone else has always acted calm, rationally, and deliberately with all of the actions and reactions. This must be because of life experiences and the differences between ours.

I embrace it because it's real. violence exists and there is nothing you, nor I, can do about it. By ignoring it or pretending that it's not there is, to me at least, denying part of reality, living in denial, or just plain not being aware. That is surreal, ignoring reality.

This has been claimed every time a gun law is relaxed in a state. While there have been a couple of incidents to occur, there has been no blood in the streets.

dk--i was aware that once the post shifted into the mall scenario that it crept up into my particular world.
i ran with it because i got kinda interested in how the distancing from violence repeats itself inside the scenario i had in mind.
so i went with it, despite the fact that the language became polemical as i did so, because i decided to do a little recursive exercise with the post.

the bottom line statement in your last post is :

"violence is real"

and the problem with that statement is at least two-fold:

violence is no more or less real than non-violence.

your category "real" is strange, because at bottom it means "what i choose to privilege when i project an idea of the world for myself"

it's entirely inside the loop my last post was trying to talk about.
what you attribute the status "real" to is an aesthetic matter.
you dont see it because you use the category of "reality" in a one-dimensional way--you act as though it is not problematic, that it is given in the way you take you chair to be or your hand to be. reality is an object, then. i think that view is----to be charitable---naive.

but you invoke it, as a thing, and act as though it gets you out of a circuit of projections, when the fact of the matter is that your use of "real" is what protects your circuit of projections.

you also seem to have missed this:

which was the point of the entire post.



what we are involved with in this kind of thread, then, is the exchange of mutually exclusive imaginary constructs.
you see the real as something primitive, linked to instinct that you imagine by-pass all social controls.
i imagine human beings as capable of self-limitation in a meaningful way, enough so i can entertain the hope that we, collectively, can control these primitive instincts.

neither is more "real" than the other.

but riddle me this: you write on a computer, linked via a telecommunications infrastructure to a nebulous space of packet exchange called the net. if violence was all that was real, how would go explain that we are communicating in this format at all? are we making it up, what we are doing?

you engage in debates on a messageboard, and in those debates you try to persuade people of your positions using arguments. if violence is all that is real, why do you bother?

not only that, but you have a normative vision of how we should organize society that you see as possible and preferable to what exists. that means you HAVE TO have some faith in the deliberative capacities of human collectives to organize themselves--and to change that organization--which means that you cannot actually understand reality as a thing, you have to see it as something that human beings make and remake collectively, and that you HAVE TO attach some importance to deliberation as a process.

you argue for constitutional fundamentalism in many contexts--the core of the 18th century american experryment was collective deliberation at the local level. you seem to find something valuable in a vision of small-scale direct democratic types of self-organization--but if the "real" is some hobbesian space of endless civil war, then your belief in democracy is a delusion--because it does not can not and will no ever change anything fundamental. because we, as human beings, are slaves to our drives.

i dont know why you would find that a compelling view, particularly since it works against everything you write, here and elsewhere, about democracy, about the constitution, about the possibilities that you see for some libertarian alternate future--none of it means shit if you really think that we are condemned to simply repeat patterns imposed on us by our primitive drives.

if your conception of what is "real" is accurate, we would still be in caves. we would only be capable of that. anything else would be unreal, dreaming.
so we could not possibly be comunicating, now, in this medium.
and maybe we aren't.