Free Republic

<p>THE widow of a victim of the US theatre massacre is suing a psychiatrist for neglect, for failing to have the alleged shooter arrested despite him having "fantasised about killing a lot of people."</p> <p>The lawsuit, also citing the University of Colorado, alleges that Dr Lynne Fenton advised campus police about her concern regarding James Holmes, after he told her about the fantasy in June last year.</p>

The way the media branch of the government salivates over shootings, you would think another theater shooting not long after Aurora would be big news, especially if it offered the added excitement of beginning in a nearby restaurant before moving into the theater. Yet we never heard much about last month’s Mayan Palace 14 shootings in San Antonio, in which two innocents were wounded. Detective Louis Antu, spokesman for the Bexar County Sherriff’s Office, said the shooting began at a nearby China Garden and “carried on into the theater.” At one point, the suspect fired at a San Antonio Police...

President of the National Assocation of Police Officers and Boston Police Officer Thomas Nee is a member of Vice President Joe Biden's gun control task force, which was created by President Obama in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Nee's son, Joseph Nee, was convicted in 2008 for planning to commit mass murder of students and teachers at Marshfield High School in Massachusetts, similar to that of Columbine in 1999. After spending nine months in prison, Nee's conviction was upheld by the Supreme Judicial Court. Nee told police the plan involved taking ammunition and explosive devices into...

In response to last week's massacre in Connecticut, Mother Jones has put together a "study" on mass shootings that makes a pretty bold claim: In the wake of the slaughters this summer at a Colorado movie theater and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, we set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 62 of them, and one striking pattern in the data is this: In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun.  There are a couple of major problems here with arguing...

According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2011, there were 12.664 total homicides. 8,583 of those murders were committed with firearms, a number that has been trending down for years. In 2011 there were 3 mass shootings that produced 19 deaths and many more injured. The FBI defines mass murder as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders. We have had 61 mass murders in the last 30 years (since 1982). In 2012, we have had a banner year with 6 mass murder events totaling 63 deaths. Our latest mass...

If you are reading any opinion column during the Christmas season, you are likely an individual who seeks out information and observations, and comes to your own conclusions. In other words, you are a "thinking" man or women, and whether you ever agree with a single word I write, I nevertheless both congratulate and give thanks for you. And this column is for you. Most politicians and many in the media truly believe we are stupid. We are the masses. We are those meant to receive a pat on the head, an empty promise and a warm feeling --- that...

There are now calls from the Left for gun control legislation in response to Adam Lanza's unconscionable mass killing of innocent children at Sandy Hook Elementary. However, very few people seem to be asking the most basic question of all before getting started: What gun control legislation could have stopped Adam Lanza? The answer is "none." Let's consider a few alternatives: 1) The school was already a "gun free zone;" so obviously that wasn't effective. Of course, the sort of people who would respect a "gun free zone" in the first place are the very ones you wouldn't have...

Professor Glenn W. Muschert of Miami University, Ohio, is a sociologist. He published, in 2007, in Sociology Compass an online peer-reviewed journal, a study he conducted of school shootings. Some of his conclusions and revelations were astounding. Why it has not attracted more notice is puzzling. Muschert noted the lack of a holistic approach to analyzing school shootings. He wrote, “Studies of school shootings have been conducted in a variety of disciplines, including sociology, psychology, and media studies. However, to date there is no unified body of knowledge about such events.” His study made recommendations “to synthesize past studies, and...

Gun-free zones are invitations to mass murder, gun-rights advocates argued after a lone gunman's shooting rampage at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, Friday left 20 children and six adults dead. John Lott, author of the controversial 1999 bestseller More Guns, Less Crime, said in an interview with Newsmax.com Saturday it is no coincidence that mass shootings with multiple victims occur repeatedly in designated gun-free zones such as schools, shopping malls, and movie theaters. "The problem is, whether it is the Portland [Oregon] shooting earlier this week, or the Connecticut shooting Friday, or the Sikh temple attack in...

<p>We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. [...] Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief [...] then surely we have an obligation to try.</p>

Adam Lanza (Connecticut School Kid Killer), Jared Loughner (Killed and wounded, including Gabby Giffords), T.J. Lane (Recently killed fellow classmates in Chardon Ohio) ,Brogan Rafferty (Teen conspired to kill Craigslist job applicants), James Holmes (Shot up theater dressed as orange haired Batman Joker), SeungHui Choi (Virginia Tech Massacre), Anders Brevik (2011 Norway Attacks) I cannot recall a time in U.S. history where there was such a proliferation of younger conscienceless males, who created so much death and destruction in one generation  in American society - outside of war. Even during the Vietnam Era, many of us returning vets were admittedly "not quite right," but we were...

For those of us who came of age in the 1970s, one of the most shocking aspects of the last three decades was the rise of mass public shootings: people who went into public places and murdered complete strangers. Such crimes had taken place before, such as the Texas Tower murders by Charles Whitman in 1966,1 but their rarity meant that they were shocking. Something changed in the 1980s: these senseless mass murders started to happen with increasing frequency. People were shocked when James Huberty killed twenty-one strangers in a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California in 1984, and Patrick Purdy...

If you're the biblically minded sort, then the trouble began when a jealous Cain clubbed Abel to death, but if you're evolutionarily minded, then it's a 'chicken and egg' question. Violence had no beginning, except perhaps in the Big Bang, it was always here, coded into the DNA. If people are just grown-up animals, more articulate versions of the creatures who eat each other's young, and sometimes their own young, there is as much use in wondering about the nature of evil as there is in trying to understand why a killer whale kills. But debating how many devils can...

Banning gun-free zones and allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons could help eliminate mass shootings at schools, gun-control expert John R. Lott told Newsmax in an exclusive interview Saturday. Lott, an author and college professor, told Newsmax that gun-free zones become “a magnet” for deranged killers who hope to burn their names into the history books by running up a big body count. Lott’s landmark book "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws" is in its 3rd edition. He told Newsmax there is a “very good chance” the Connecticut school shooting could have been averted, if teachers...

There are several documented cases where armed citizens have stopped mass attacks by gunmen. Let me list a few: The Pearl, Mississippi school shooting was stopped by the vice principal Joel Myrick with a Colt .45, The Appalachian School shooting was stopped by two students with handguns. Both of the above incidents were stopped by the armed citizens threatening the shooter without firing. Pearl High School Link Appalacian Law School Link Plans to slay everyone in the Muskegon, Michigan, store and steal enough cash and jewelry to feed their "gnawing hunger for crack cocaine" fell apart for a band of...

The horrific mass murder at a movie theater in Colorado on July 20 and another at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on August 5 are the latest in an epidemic of such gun violence over the last three decades. Since 1982, there have been at least 58 mass murders* carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. We've mapped them below, including details on the shooters' identities, the types of weapons they used, and the number of victims they injured and killed. Of the 134 guns possessed by the killers,...

From Reuters:March 13, 1996 - BRITAIN - Gunman Thomas Hamilton burst into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot dead 16 children and their teacher before killing himself. April 28, 1996 - AUSTRALIA - Martin Bryant unleashed modern Australia's worst mass murder when he shot dead 35 people at the Port Arthur tourist site in the southern state of Tasmania. April 1999 - UNITED STATES - Two heavily-armed teenagers went on a rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Denver, shooting 13 students and staff before taking their own lives. July 1999 - UNITED STATES -...

Just received text from my BFF in Omaha that the principal of Millard South High School has been shot in the back of the head. The shooter apparently killed himself. All Millard schools were on lockdown. Her sons are in the Millard district. Haven't seen this posted or on any national news.

New details revealed Friday about the university's response — from the time the victims were found to when they alerted the campus of a gunman on the loose — brought angry reactions and questions from some victims' families about leadership during the massacre that ended with 33 people dead.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Police in Orlando say a gunman has been apprehended after killing one person and injuring five others at a downtown office building where he was let go two years ago. Police Chief Val Demings says 40-year-old Jason Rodriguez surrendered to police at his mother's home after officers saw him through a window and asked him to come out.