DC official's outrage in 3. . .2. . .1. . .

????????

Now we know who the perpetrators are, and I'm not surprised. There's lots of sadness and rhetoric, but nobody is digging to the bottom of the deeper problem.

What about the question that Fenty, Barry, Mendelson, and Lanier, should be asking? Why is the question not on the front page of the news?

It is perfectly clear that the question will not be asked because it's too hard. Instead, we have DC police chief Cathy Lanier talking about how it doesn't make any sense. Ya think? Perhaps it's because the genesis of this madness is not in a bracelet; there's a deeper problem. Until you start asking about that, dragging that problem out into the light where we can all see it and do something about it, then it's not going to get solved.

US AG Eric Holder asked the question, although it was far too wide in scope, and for that reason it was inflammatory. Narrow the scope and we can focus on a lethal issue that is the cause of the deaths of many people in this country every year. This can be prevented. Stop focusing on the peripheral stuff like the type of weapon used or the stupid reason for the argument and we can get somewhere. Not focusing on this question does indeed make us cowards.

Road Rager

Bumped for an update below.

Perhaps, but something tells me that there's more to this story than meets the eye.

Why would the dump truck hit the car twice? It's pretty obvious why he took off afterwords; and if the guy doing the shooting was just pissed off, than that's not very helpful and he will probably spend lots of time behind bars cooling off.

My first guess is that the shooter thought the guy in the dump truck was trying to kill him and his daughter. It takes a very rare sort of person to get angry enough to start shooting for no reason; and if that's the case, how has this guy made it so far in life to have kids and be driving a Jaguar and not have a history of violence?

I hope I can get more info on this one later.

Update: I knew there was more to this story. First of all, the dump truck driver is now being charged with 2nd degree attempted murder. Originally he was only charged with reckless driving. The shooter is also being charged with attempted murder; and from the earlier post he is also being charged with child endangerment, although that post has not been updated. I can't think of why he would be charged for child endangerment, but not the truck driver.

There's some things to point out. The quotes from the VSP in the article make it seem like there was a demolition derby type incident between both drivers, when I can't possible see that as being the case. A guy in a nice sedan with his two year old in the back just doesn't play crash and smash with a ten ton vehicle. It just doesn't work that way. I don't even ride next to a truck with my kids in the car, absent the anger and frustration. My kids lives are too valuable to risk getting in a wreck when a tire blows out on a truck and comes through the window.

What I'm gathering is that there may have been some non-violent provoking, like horn honking and middle fingers, but that the truck driver took it to another level when he struck the Jaguar twice, driving it against a jersey wall. If that's the case, then the driver of the Jag would have reasonable cause to think the truck driver was trying to kill him. However, firing a handgun at the back of a fleeing dump truck is a big no no, especially considering this is I95 during rush hour.

It also appears that the truck driver was somehow following the Jag after the shooting; the details seem sketchy, but the Jag driver's dad said his son called him scared during this "chase", or whatever it was. Why the truck driver would give chase after being shot at is a big question. If it was the other way around, and the Jag driver was chasing the dump truck, then my question again is why? If the attack is over, why would you drive down the shoulder after a vehicle ten times the size of yours?

I may have to eat crow if it turns out otherwise, but my guess at the story is that the dump truck driver was the antagonist who got violent by striking the Jaguar. The driver of the Jaguar was under the belief that he was being attacked with deadly force, but got carried away with his pistol and emptied the thing in anger and/or frustration, after which, the dump truck driver tried to follow the Jag for another crack at his bumper.

What's your thought?

Update: This comment on the article I just posted is from alleged eye witness Joshua Tree:

"Good 4U Sante Clawse! The rest of you that ARE judging from the media...grow your own brain and not what the media wants you to see. I was the closest bystander to this incident. I watched the ENTIRE thing play out. The only thing that the Jaguar driver could have done better, was to shoot the dump truck driver while he was being rammed. I saw the truck smash the car up against the rail on the right. Then, the guy tried to get away in his busted car, but the truck driver turned and rammed him up against the wall. As if that wasn't bad enough, he backed up and hit him again. He was trying to kill this guy. This guy was slow on the draw, but had every right to be concerned the guy would come back and hurt him/his daughter again. The truck driver, without question, was the aggressor and tried to run him down...to the point of following him across 3 lanes! Don't judge until you have been..or at least witnessed."

There is also a newer comment from someone who allegedly knows the dump truck driver, who says that the guy in the Jag pointed his gun at him, which caused him to start smashing into the back of the Jag in what can only be implied as self defense. I find that pretty preposterous, and don't think that would stand up in court.

School massacre in China

A former doctor armed with a large knife rampaged outside an elementary school in eastern China, stabbing eight young children to death and wounding five others Tuesday, a local official and a state news agency said.

Horrific. The killer was apparently captured alive, so lets hope China's prisons are as brutal as they are rumored to be.

Do note at the bottom for calls for more security. That one man armed with a piece of metal can so easily kill that many people before being stopped is a shame.

I'm all broke up about Mexico's tourist industry

Vendors can't possibly understand why Americanos aren't flocking to TJ to buy knockoff Nikes anymore. It's like totally safe and stuff.

Read the comments for some real fun. There are some individuals who are actually comparing murders in US cities to that of TJ. I can see where Mexico's overall murder rate is skewed by the extreme violence in places like TJ and Juarez, but overall, I don't think Indiana can hold a candle to the shootouts going down on the border.

Virginia taketh away

Braggart, murdering rapist scumbag will be put to death via the electric chair today.

I'm generally not in favor of the state executing people, as the criminal justice system has a hard enough time just getting people's name right on the charge; however, this guy is in this precise position because he outed himself in a nasty letter to the prosecutor thinking his recent court win made him safe.

I'm not celebrating it, but I will sleep a little better tonight.

Not so easy money

A law in Pennsylvania to make weaponless bank robbery sentencing more strict.

I often point out these cases where some scumbag passes a note to a bank teller and gets a bag full of money. Banks have become very soft targets. I do understand that banks have a policy of just turning over the money in order to not provoke a violent situation, all while under the guise of the FDIC refunding the stolen money. I get that. I still think this is a bad policy as: a) scumbags have more incentive to steal because the consequences are lessened; b) more scumbags will steal more frequently because of a), thus there is a greater potential for violence; c) regardless if the FDIC have reimbursed anyone in the past, they are using red ink now instead of black - take that for what you will.

In decades past, America had more balls, and dealt with thievery under more severe terms. These days, we can't seem to stomach that type of prevention, which is fine, but there needs to be less incentive to steal. The prospect of spending forever in prison may suffice, but perhaps the thought of getting shot to death would work better; someone who makes a verbal or written threat of violence in order to extort money or property should be considered a lethal threat, whether they display a weapon or not. This is why most bank robbers of yore ended up with more bodily orifices than the Lord gave them. Ammunition is cheap; prison is expensive.

I think this law might just be a step in the right direction.

Stabby scumbag caught

Or at least charged. He stabbed a 20 year old man to death.

Hopefully this guy is put away for ever, and we can forget his name. That's if he's convicted, mind you; if not, then let's hope the real scumbag is dragged in kicking and screaming, and gets what he deserves.

Alexandria is a pretty safe place considering its proximity to DC; this is the first murder in the town in 2010. Cross the Potomac into DC, and things change real quick - DC has had 16 murders already this year, down from 24 the last year.

I don't think it's something in the water.

Big shootout at the Pentagon

Here's the skinny from Fox News.

Not that it matters to me, but it is being noted that the shooter was definitely NOT a Tea Party conservative right winger. So that's out of the way.

He's also dead, which is pretty helpful unless you are really wanting some answers. I prefer crazy shooty people dead. The fact that he is dead is because the Pentagon, while being a "Gun Free Zone," is not completely a gun free zone; it's very well protected by guys and gals with guns.

Not that I agree with their policy to disarm everyone: you can't even bring pepper spray in, because mere citizens can't be trusted to not take control over the entire "Reservation" with that deadly 4oz. bottle of Mace. If you get abducted in the parking lot while on your way to the entrance, well, tough shit. Safety first!

I did hear on the news this morning that there was a ton of rounds fired. From what the reporter said - take that for what it's worth - the FBI was up all night counting shell casings. They may have even recruited the help of two boats full of Chinese immigrants to help count them all. Allegedly, the gunman was carrying two 9mm handguns, and had a bunch of loaded magazines (yes, the reporter called them magazines. Cool huh? Now, if we could just get them to call them "mags," or call shotguns "shotties." That would really be cool!) with more magazines in his car.

That's all I know for now.

Update: Remember the days when I was a gun geek? Yeah, I still am - the cop in the picture on the front page of the Fox News article is carrying a LWRC PSD 5.56mm rifle with an EOTech optic, Surefire M900 series weapon light, and Magpul magazine. Oh yeah, mag - pardon me!

This is some Reba McEntire material right here

A cop is gunned down by his angry wife.

Yikes!

You spin me right round

Wow. Why the press is in some sort of spin mode on the UA shooting is the question of the day.

There is the typical stuff and fluff that we get with every spree killer, like that so-and-so was lonely, depressed, had just lost a whole litter of puppies to famine. There is the also the vain attempt at directing blame at gun laws, like here where AP writer Desiree Hunter notes that Bishop didn't have a permit to spree shoot at a staff meeting. At least that's how I read it. Do you have to have a permit to own a firearm in Alabama? Do you think that if you did, an educated woman like Bishop would be paused at all in finding a gun? What does it matter?

It doesn't. It's spin. There has to be spin, has to be, because Massachusetts dropped the ball at putting a violent sociopath behind bars, and we can't let government failure singe the brain cells of the public.

"C'mon guys, there has to be another direction, any direction, that we can take this thing! Dungeons and Dragons? Perfect! Have it on my desk in an hour!"

We find out in a snippet all the way at the bottom of this piece that Amy Bishop was an Obama loving loon. What does that have to do with anything?

Nothing really. It's just that the press skews the facts about every violent lunatic, to the point where the public now believes that a murderous neo-nazi really is right wing, instead of someone aligned with the national socialist movement. It's right wing all the time, baby. Always will be.

Unless it's not, then it will be something else - like Grand Theft Auto, Slayer, D&D, the NRA.

However, I'll tell you where this shooting has made an impact: Perception.

This Sunday, when you see me OCing my big ol' honkin' Kimber in line at Starbucks after getting out of my mud soaked 4 wheel drive, you can stow that negative attitude, sport. Instead, save your suspicion for the frumpy looking woman sipping at her latte who pulled up in a Prius with a 'I Want To Have Obama's Babies' bumper sticker on the back. Is that a sawed off under that hemp coat, or are you just happy to see me?

Update: You don't need a permit to own a firearm in Alabama, as noted over at Hell in a Handbasket. And I agree with James' logic that the media is just that clueless about firearm ownership, that they have to add that 'permit' qualifier to the story because it involves guns.

Keep your scumbags to yourselves

I haven't opined about the freaky chic who killed three people at the University of Alabama because there is information still coming in.

As it turns out, she shot her brother to death with a shotgun some time ago, and she was also a suspect in an attempted bombing. There are lots of pundits hemming and hawing about all of this, but I want to put things into reverse order to see what I can see.

So we start with the shooting at the University of Alabama. As the press writes it, she is the accused - as in, she has not been convicted yet; and in our justice system, this makes sense as we err on the side of Liberty instead of on the side of guilt. But everyone can see what's at the end of the trial. She is presumed innocent, but she was caught in the act of mass murder, and there is no doubt that the gun was being wielded by her. It was Amy Bishop. The rest is just a process of showing the evidence, because that's what we do.

So this woman is a known violent sociopath. She murdered three people and tried to murder several more. This type of person is remarkably and fortunately rare in the world. You bump shoulders with thousands of people every day, and perhaps one of them is a sociopath, who may or may not be of the type who can pick up a firearm and take lives indiscriminately. Amy Bishop is that type.

So we have an attempted bombing of a Harvard professor. Amy Bishop and her husband were suspects, but were ultimately not charged. The MO was basically the same as with the UA shooting. Of however many people suspected of mailing the bomb to the professor, how many of them were of the type of person mentally capable of committing a bombing murder? Think about that. She definitely has the smarts, and we know that she definitely is capable, and we know that the motive is starkly comparable to the recent shooting. I would say that the ATF had the right person, but not enough evidence. No one was ever convicted of that attempted bombing, so it's not like they found the real violent scumbag.

Third, we have the shooting of her brother which she was also definitely involved in. After an argument with him, she fired a shotgun "at least three times," killing him with a shot to the chest. She then ran out of the house and attempted to carjack a passing motorist at gunpoint. She is a known violent sociopath that murdered three people with a firearm.

I'm not going into the "missing files" stuff. Conspiracy theories should not lose merit simply because they are conspiracy theories, but for the point in this post it is moot. My point was to draw attention to what we know -- that Amy Bishop is known to be capable of horrific and violent acts -- and plug that into past events that she has been a part of.

I also wanted to assert that states that let violent sociopaths walk free endanger the lives of us all. It was local law enforcement that let her slide for shooting her brother, but it is also the responsibility of the state to ensure that justice is served.

Mayors and governors often whine about guns from other states causing crime in their backyard, but they need to look to their own to solve violence problems. Scumbags from their neighborhoods wandering around mine are way more dangerous than any gun they buy in another state.

Keep your scumbags to yourselves.

More on armed mom story

SailorCurt's hunch about the crazy son 'pretending' to rob his mom and getting shot for his troubles looks like it was spot on.

Son has lengthy drug related problems with the local police, and they believe that he was really trying to rob her. Well, that turned out to be a bad idea.

Mom may have some problems of her own since it was her weapon that had the obliterated serial number. Who knows.

Thanks to SailorCurt for the scoop!

It's not safe when someone gets shot there

"It's a horrific event and I hate it, and I wish we could have changed it, but our schools are safe," he told reporters.

So they weren't safe before? Of course not; we all know that. Silly signs with associated laws, and zero tolerance policies created to keep the lawyers off the backs of school officials in such an incident will not stop fourteen year old kids from doing the unthinkable.

This, one would think, would be common sense.

It's a horrible tragedy and my heart goes out to the deceased kids family.

So what point do I have in posting this? That school policy, and local, state, and federal laws are not crafted to prevent this from happening. The sooner we wake up to this notion, the sooner something real can be done to prevent future tragedies.

Banning April

I was browsing through the VSP 2008 Crime Report this morning, and discovered that if we could just get rid of April, the already low crime rate in Virginia would be drastically reduced. Maybe I could petition the governor to just have it wiped off the calendar. Seems simple enough.

Hell, it's for the children, really, so who would possibly be against it.

Some tidbits in there that I thought were really cool:

1. If we locked up all men ages 20-24, we would reduce murders by a full quarter. The impact of this is totally worth it, as we would save not one life, but almost a hundred. You can't argue against this logic, you big meanie.
2. Holy freakin smokes! Black males from 15 to 29 years old make up pretty much half, HALF, of all the murders in Virginia. I won't add any snark here, cos' that's just a doggone shame. This should be a major focus of anyone looking at reducing crime in this state, as it probably should be in others. If someone really wants to reduce crime, figure out why young black men are killing young black men. We've covered this topic before.
   
3. Aggravated Assault. If you don't want to get into a round of fisticuffs, then don't argue with people. Just walk away; that parking space is not worth it.
   
4. Middle aged thirty something year old men burgle in the morning. And they tend to come in through a door.
   
5. Keep your car in the garage in August, and it shouldn't get stolen.
6. Despite what angry, white Republican politicians tell you about drugs and crime, alcohol is by far the most influential factor in violent crime by about six fold. I mean, you're more likely to get fondled inappropriately by a pasty skinned computer geek than a crackhead. OK, that's just one example, but drugs don't seem to be the factor in violent crime that people think.
7. Automatic weapons are rarely used in crimes. I say again, automatic weapons are rarely used in crimes.
8. Assault thingies. There isn't a statistic for the dreaded machines of death mentioned, but rifles in general - which are more likely to be grandpappy's Marlin thutty-thutty - are rarely used in crime. In short, rifles are not favored by criminals, assault or otherwise.
9. Firearms are not the weapon of choice for attacking cops; personal weapons are, which is also true of attacks against us regular folk. The report does not go into detail on what constitutes a personal weapon, but my gut has quickly determined that they are mostly guillotines. Having a guillotine thrown at you is absolutely a deadly threat, and you should respond by moving laterally, drawing your own guillotine, and returning fire. Make sure you do a tactical 180 when the threat is down. Very important.
10. More: Asians, Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and native Alaskans are good people.
    

That's all I've got for right now. Busy day, and a busy week. Sorry about getting carried away with my little tirade yesterday. I get wound up every now and then and go into a profanity laced spiel that serves no purpose whatsoever. I do enjoy some profanity though, from time to time.

Assault thingy violence

Someone needs to inform DA Nola Foulston that the words "sniper" and "SKS" do not belong in the same sentence. Or the word "assault weapon" for that matter as the SKS is not one. Oil and water - you can't make them mix.

Scott Roeder is really freakin creepy though.

Spree shooter on the loose

The story is still developing, but it looks like some scumbag in St. Louis shot about four people with a "large assault rifle," of course, and is wandering around some where.

I'll post more details when I get them.

Update: FOX News live is saying the shooter is an employee and shot at least three people with an AK 47.

The shooter was on scene for at least a half an hour before the "tactical team" showed up. Looks to me like a standard cordone and wait strategy. The building is ABB Inc. which is a company that has power plants and such, and this building is for the manufacturing of electrical transformers.

The ABB corporate Code of Conduct manual says nothing about being a gun free environment, but it does say that "ABB's ground rules for employees are: work safely and protect yourself, your coworkers. . ." Let's hope some of the employees took this manual seriously and are able and willing to do just that.

Update: Foxs News has reported that three people are dead, the gunman being one of them, and eight wounded. That's about all of the details that are available right now. The gunman is believed to have killed himself. I sat on this update all day in order to gain more detail, but I'm sure we will get those over the weekend.

Hey, knock it off over there!!!

Uuum, a little bit too close to home there, sport. Keep the noise down!

A history of violence

More details emerge from the post office standoff in VA.

No doubt there are some people jumping up and down about Warren Taylor's alleged service in the Marines - which may or may not be true - and correlating it to the Homeland Security memo warning about violent, anti-government, right wing veterans who pose a threat on the country.

What has been confirmed is that Taylor is a bona fide violent psycho that served time for shooting his ex-girlfriend three times while she was on her way to work, while he was wanted for having sex with a child. That he was a free man that had the time to plan and execute an attack on a post office instead of being behind bars for the rest of his life is the direction to be focusing the blame.

Someone who is unstable enough to try their damnedest to kill another human being should not be allowed free. How many times does this lesson have to be demonstrated.

It does not matter whether he is a veteran, right winger, left winger, environmental activist, or a transvestite rodeo clown, he had previously demonstrated that he could not be trusted to be among us in society.

My bet is that we will continue to see proven violent people prey on innocent people for years to come, and that all that was needed to stop such an attack was to simply not let them walk out through the prison gates.

MAC attack: the semi-automatic machine pistol menace

There are a lot of questions surrounding this story from a police shooting in NYC. The shooter, Raymond Martinez, was an aspiring rapper wanted for assault, and was selling CDs on the street. A uniformed officer approached him over "aggressive panhandling," or something like that, and Martinez decided to flight and fight.

It seems to me that the cop had a hunch that Martinez was a potential scumbag, and that he did pretty well on his approach to not get shot. From what I can gather, there was a foot chase leading up to the shots fired. The gun that Martinez fired at the cop jammed after two rounds, and was reported stolen in VA.

There is much focus in the article on the gun, as if the thing itself was the source of the violence, and not Martinez. The gun is reported like it possesses a margin of extreme violence due to it's menacing looks, its name - MAC-11 - and the fact that it had a magazine capacity of 30 rounds. It has been identified as semi-auto, not full auto, and thus is not a "machine pistol," but that is what the press is calling it because it sounds intimidating and makes the story much more interesting to some.

There is also much ado about a business card from a VA gun shop that was found on Martinez with a quote from a movie; something about cops and paddy wagons.

Overall I think that the cop accurately relied on his training and gut instincts, and the outcome of that was that he survived the shooting of a scumbag. From the standpoint of Martinez, and scumbags in general, I have to wonder why some of them are fascinated with carrying such a stupid weapon. I think MAC-11s are cool, I wouldn't mind having a real one for my collection, and they would probably work great for a home defense role or personal security detail if it were full auto and had a stock, but as for a weapon to be carried they are inferior to a standard handgun which has important things like ergonomics, light weight, and more reliability. For scumbags to be carrying MAC-11s, Uzis, TEC-9s and the like, semi-auto or not, shows that the current breed of scumbag is not as weapon savvy as scumbags of old.

Scaring the herd

In a scene reminiscent of other school shootings, a Northern Virginia Community College teacher spotted a weapon and ducked to avoid gunfire. Students ran from the classroom building while others barricaded themselves inside, piling desks in front of doors.

Thank God nobody was hurt. And by that I mean that God was the only thing standing in between a gunman and his prey.

I would ask why students and their families, cops, and campus faculty aren't screaming outrage from the rafters about how the only approved actionable recourse in the school's standard operating procedure for this type of violence is to collectively bury everyone's head in the sand and wait for guys with guns who are minutes away, but I think I know the answer to that already.

Students who attend college are still considered kids by all accounts that I'm aware of.

The shame of it is is that the school is busy patting itself on the back for a job well done, considering that their email system alerting everyone to cower in a corner actually didn't seem to fail this time. Just look at how orderly everything looks in that little 20 second video clip of students being calmly escorted out of the school by police, after the shooter had voluntarily given up I might add. If he had been firing down on them with his "high-powered" rifle (as opposed to a low powered one?) then things would have been different.

I am glad that nobody was hurt, but ultimately I don't think this ended as well as the school and the media would have you believe. When the hero of the day gets accolades for ducking when shot at and shouting out "RUN," you have to notice how low we're setting the bar.