Shooting in Binghamton NY
 

Watching CNN now, several have been shot, possibly several dead, maybe 20 held hostage at the American Civic Association building.

Terrible news. :shakehead:

here's an update...

N.Y. Governor: At Least 12 Killed in Binghamton - washingtonpost.com

i used to work right around the corner from that building at the Broome County DSS.

Ah. I was born in Binghamton. Broome County. I know the hockey.

i'll be dipped...grow up there?

This is an horrific occurrence and I hope nobody here was directly (or indirectly) affected.

When this was on the news last night, my daughter (nine years old) said "why did a soldier kill people?",

"It wasn't a soldier, it was just a person with a gun - in America, people are allowed to buy guns, the government has a law that lets them, and it's very important to them that they have that right"
"Why doesn't the government just make sure that only soldiers can have guns, nobody else needs them - that way all those people would still be alive"

As much as anything this highlights to me the seemingly non-reconcilable differences in the view of gun control in the Old World and the New World.

sad day in new york.

/not turning this in to another gun control thread.

it's starting to hit home down here...

i taught with this marvelous lady for a few years before we came south for the fall/winter/spring. words cannot express my sorrow at the chain of events that led to her very untimely death...

Beloved English teacher among deceased | pressconnects.com | Press & Sun-Bulletin

More gunfire today in the US. Something gotten into the water supply or what?

BBC NEWS | Americas | US father 'shoots his children'

A father is suspected of having shot dead his five children at a trailer park in Washington state, then himself, after hearing his wife was leaving him.

Police were called to the mobile home on Saturday after a visiting relative found nobody answered the door and saw a child's body through a window.

Reports say the mother walked out during a row with her husband hours before the shooting.

The youngest of the three girls and two boys was aged seven, and the eldest 16.

Four children were found shot in their beds and one in the bathroom inside the mobile home outside Graham, Pierce County.

Their father, James Harrison, 34, was found dead from an apparent rifle-shot to the head in his car, with the engine still running. No note was found in the vehicle.

"This was not a tragedy. It was a rotten murder," said Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor.

"This appears to be the terrible work of the biological father. If that doesn't break your heart, I don't know what does."

And a list of the shootings of the last week:

Sat 4 April: Father is suspected of shooting dead his five children, then himself, near Seattle

Sat 4 April: Gunman kills three policemen in Pittsburgh before being wounded and captured

Fri 3 April: Gunman kills 13 people at an immigration centre in Binghamton, New York state, then apparently shoots himself

Sun 29 March: Gunman kills seven elderly residents and a nurse at a nursing home in Carthage, North Carolina, then is shot and wounded himself

Sun 29 March: Man kills five relatives and himself in Santa Clara, California

Sadly, we are only going to see more of these due to the economic times I'm afraid. These shootings will be used to bring the gun control debate the front burner again. We need more responsible citizens carrying weapons to stop these shootings whenever possible. Even at 5 minutes the police response was too slow. How else are we to defend against such attacks?

Holy crap! Phil I'm so sorry.

Sorry, even dksuddeth is setting a better example than I am here, but I just have one response to this... Are you suggesting that if the five children killed by this man: ... should have been carrying weapons, and ought to have been expected to defend themselves in that manner? Or the 90-year old residents of the nursing home who got shot down? Seriously? I guess I just cannot fathom a world in which that would be a remotely good idea.

... I realize we don't want to let the thread get out of hand. Feel free to send me a PM in reply, if that's the case. I just had to get that question off my chest, because it's been bothering me ever since I heard about this latest slew of shootings.

*sigh*

no words here, just disappointment in the human race.

thanks, steve...

again, without getting in to gun control politics, samcol is certainly right about one thing. As the economy gets worse, we will see several more of these unfortunate tragedies. Sadly, this is really the result of people having become dependent upon their government instead of learning to be self sufficient. These people who committed these horrible acts of senseless violence found themselves in a helpless state where they felt that their government would not or could not help them. my thoughts and well wishes to the victims and family members.

No of course I'm not suggesting children should carry weapons. Concealed carry can't stop every shooting, but neither can police. It sure could help in some instances such as if the receptionist at the immigration office was armed, or if some of the nurses were armed at the nursing home.

If doctors and nurses are able to make life and death decisions in the hospitals and nursing homes, I think we can trust them to defend themselves and others from these maniacs.

Whether guns are readily available or not I do not feel is the issue here. The idiot that shot those people in New York, just as easily could have walked in with a bomb in a back pack or use any number of other destructive methods. Applying our rational thought to this situation doesn't work. The killer was clearly irrational, he had guns. If he didn't have a gun, I'm sure he would have found some other method to be equally as destructive.

I'm sorry for your loss Uncle Phil. She was definitely a special person.

---------- Post added at 08:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:14 AM ----------

CNN is just now running a piece on the victims and is focusing on Mrs. King.

"So let's just lay down and die. We can't do anything anyway."

Maybe I read this wrong, but it gave me lotsa bad juju.

Dr. Phil suggests that we own our issues. And I concur.

...

I wouldn't apply rational thought, friend. I prefer blunt force trauma, myself.

The reaction solution set for a situation where someone has already escalated to lethal force overwhelmingly consists of lethal force responses.

...

I get the feeling that spree killers reveal a whole more lot about our society in both their actions and our responses that we acknowledge.

You can't rationally analyze spree killings, there's a very specific psychology behind it that is frequently difficult to predict, sometimes even for the perpetrator (in the case of people who "just snap.") It is safe to say that many people who do carry out this specific type of violence will find a way no matter what weapons are available and no matter how hard we try to stop them. All we can really do is help to pick up the pieces.

Uncle Phil, you have my sympathy.

MSD said it much better than I. Thanks

All my parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents did. I was just a summer visitor after the age of 2.

I'm proud to live in a nation where masses of able-bodied youth hide under desks like scared puppies when confronted by a pair of armed goth kids. I'm proud to see an elderly man respond to a college shooter instead of the dozens of college kids that were next to him. I'm proud to tell others about how box cutters and pocket knives with blades smaller than my middle finger brought our country to its knees.

We make a lot of excuses.

Perhaps I shall: Excuse me if I don't see the "It just happens" philosophy as acceptable.

Most of the people in our nation have been led to believe that we are mere sheep and that the only ones capable of stopping or preventing crime are those that have been trained to do so by our benevolent government. One wonders, what did we do before we had militarized police departments?

It's astonishing that these people were able to get guns. After all, aren't law-abiding citizens prevented from owning them?

Oh right... the law only stops the law-abiding.

which law? and who was stopped from owning guns?


In fact, these instances are piss poor examples to use in any argument, be them anti- or pro-gun. Kids under their desks aside, the vast majority of those killed don't realize what is going on until its too late.

I beg to differ. I'm reasonably sure that after the 3rd person was shot, everyone knew what the hell was going on.

I'm not saying that armed citizens are a bad thing, just that spree killers will always be around and it's likely that we won't be able to stop one from at least starting a rampage in most cases. My unwillingness to compromise on the second amendment is pretty well known around here.

Oh, great... I get lumped into the gun debate again. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. I'm not talking guns. I'm talking mindset.

Mentioning firearm use, much like using "sheep" in reference to US citizens, is a great way to murder a perfectly good thread.

In which incident? In the NY the people in the first classroom had no idea of what was going on when they were shot. The people in the following classrooms ran and hid knowing there were shots, but without any idea of what sort of shooting and who was the shooter. Just as possible as the "if so and so had a gun he could stop the shooter" scenarios are the "people get trigger happy and shoot anyone they think is the shooter" scenarios.


Point being that random acts of random violence are not basis for policy shift. There are many and valid arguments for and against gun control, as there are many and valid arguments for and against gun ownership and concealed carry or open carry.

Stopping random acts of violence by people intent on doing as much harm as they can before they off themselves is not one of them ( and that goes for people advocating gun control because of them too).

mindset.......sheep........hide under desks, jump out windows, just give them what they want, don't fight back, etc........how does that kill a good thread? it all seems accurate to me.

If a significant percentage of folks were armed, it would simply be a matter of time until two of them shot each other instead of the bad guy, leaving him better armed and more motivated.

You guys think that arming folks will make the world idiot-proof. I'm here to say that as soon as you do that, someone will build a better idiot. As MSD said, there's no predicting spree killers. Better armed citizens might lead to few dead or it might lead to more better armed citizens dead when they shoot each other by mistake. If Navy SEALS and Army Rangers kill each other in friendly fire, it can certainly happen if I happen to be the one packing when the bad guy opens up on the nuns and orphans.

Just sayin...

Jazz, to simplify what I think you're saying is that anyone, day or night, can make a mistake, right? I'm assuming that you are also including police officers in that category, since you've included highly trained military personnel. So if anyone, including police officers, can make mistakes, why is it detrimental to restore the right to effective personal defense in public settings?

/trying real hard not to step on the gun control rant.

well, this is a curious exercise in self-restraint at this point, isn't it?

we live in a space of surveillance--closed circuit television systems to satellites to television---and the idea of surveillance is to render visible and the motive behind rendering visible is rendering predictable--but somehow it just seems to be the case that there's no amount of prosthetics that can make arbitrariness go away. the more arbitrariness freaks you out, the more likely you are to substitute for situations which allow it (arbitrariness, unpredictability) to surface these other scenarios in which one (everybody is strapped) or another (everybody is "hard" is more manly in their manly man-ness) functions to eliminate arbitrariness or unpredictability.

msd already said the main point, i think: people will snap. sometimes people when they snap will have access to a weapon. sometimes when those factors converge, some lunatic Mission will take shape and a bunch of people going about their lives not thinking in any way about the possibility of some lunatic Mission will end up dead or wounded or traumatized.

the reason it's good that this thread has remained characterized by self-restrain is that nothing general speaks to this kind of situation.

these are particular people in a particular town who had this particular action visited upon them. it could have been anywhere i suppose, and it could have been anyone, but it wasn't and it wasn't.

it's hard to know what to do with a thread like this really.
it makes more sense than they often do because uncle phil knew someone who died there, and my sympathies go out to him.
but there's not a whole lot more to be said that that, is there?

Yes that about sums it up really. The only new issue imo is the likely hood of these events increasing due to economic depression and what if anything can be done to prevent them.

Clearly it seems there's nothing particular to look for in an individual to prevent this. Many of the people who do this are seemingly normal for whatever reason something puts them over the edge and they handle it in the most extreme way possible like MSD mentioned.

Uncle Phill, I'm sorry for everything.

first things first- to phill, sorry for your loss

To the anti gun people- its not the item used, its the mindset that causes violence, if not guns, then bombs would be used- we have to change the mindset here, and banning anything just creates a black market-

To the pro gun people- arming more people will not help- changing peoples mindset from sheep to being responsible for their own safety- at that point they can decide to arm themselves or not....

either way it sucks, and I feel we will see more of it due to the economy, and the4 friction of times that are dramatically changing for a lot of people.....

Wow, yet another horrible thing happening when I was on vacation. My heart goes out to their loved ones. Including Uncle Phil.

Methinks we're focusing overmuch on the wrong side of the issue--the outcome and not the source.

* * * * *

You have my condolences, uncle phil.

It turns out that this was planned weeks in advance, not a guy who just snapped one day. It's a slightly different take on the spree killing mentality, but he felt like he wasn't in control, and taking as many people with him as possible was the one sure way to put himself back in control. He mentioned in his letter that he didn't speak English well, so it may be the case that he was a recent immigrant and targeted people like him who had done better than he did (they were taking an English as a Second Language test.)

For anyone in the camp of not wanting people to be armed because of accidents, i leave you with this little report,

Ohio trainer makes the case for single-officer entry against active killers

take if however you'd like to.

dk, what does any of that have to do with the topic? We all know you live and breath the topic. But congrats on the minds you've changed.