Posted on 02/02/2024 4:19:02 AM PST by marktwain
On December 21, 2023, a student at Charles University in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, killed about 14 people and injured about two dozen others in a planned and premeditated mass murder.
The killer used a rifle with a telescopic sight and is said to have had a number of other firearms with him. The murderer used the advantage of the height of a multistory building to see the people he was targeting and as a way to shield him from immediate response.
I believe it was on May 30, 2022, in Boise Idaho, Ed Monk and I were presenters at an armed self-defense course. In his presentation about active killers, Ed Monk predicted the world would experience more mass murders conducted from a height advantage. As I recall, Ed said active mass killers studied the active mass murders of others to see what techniques worked.
Ed believed some would use the Las Vegas active mass murder as a template, in part because it took so long for responders to reach the mass murderer in that event.
One of the first mass murderers using a tall building for advantage was Charles Whitman on August 1, 1966. The numbers are similar to what happened in Prague. Whitman killed his wife and mother, then killed 14 more from the University of Texas Tower in Austin, TX, while wounding at least 31. Multiple citizens fired back at Whitman, and an armed citizen accompanied the police to climb the stairs to confront Whitman and stop the killing. Whitman was found to have a brain tumor and was presumed to be insane.
Whitman did not become an icon in the media.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
The USA doesn’t even make the top 10 for serial killers. Or may have one or two out of 10.
Our most prolific two serial killers were black guys who preyed on homeless.
bkmk
Rank Country Number of serial killers 1 USA 3615 2 Russia 196 3 UK 190 4 Japan 137 5 South Africa 123 6 India 121 7 Canada 119 8 Italy 97 9 Germany 88 10 Australia 83
And @marktwain --> Mass murder by public shooting is not limited to the United States. -- it is not LIMITED to the USA, but List of countries with the highest numbers of mass shootings in 2023
Charles Whitman was not the first who killed for the fun of killing. While killing more than one person has been going on for centuries I believe the first Modern one would be Howard Unruh in 1949, using a Luger pistol.
Then Richard Speck murdered six student nurses using a strangling cord and a knife.
Interesting that semi-auto rifles have been on the market since 1903. Yes 1903. Yet no mass murders took place (except criminal gangs killing criminals).
Those who wanted to regulate firearms often said “We ONLY want to ban handguns! Rifles will not be affected!”
In 1981, actress Lee Grant, on Good Morning America screamed that “THE NRA IS A RIFLE ORGANIZATION! THEY SHOULD GIVE UP THEIR HANDGUNS AND THEY CAN KEEP THEIR RIFLES!”
Then in 1984 they made a grab for the rifles.
It was not till the mental hospitals were closed in the 1970s and the inmates dumped on the streets that mass murder for the sake of murder took off like a rocket. Almost every mass murderer has telegraphed their intentions well in advance.
It has become a joke now that after every mass killing the FBI says “He was on our radar.”
True. The news media likes to ignore mass murder in foreign nations. A few years ago a student in Russia murdered several students using a legally registered shotgun. And if you really dig you will find far more that the US news media does not report on, like the one in Serbia a few months ago, and lots of mass murder using knives in China.
That’s mass murders, not serial killers.
The worst school massacre in America didn’t use any guns all.
L
Most would not consider the gang execution killing of seven men in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre as a "mass shooting" as it is considered in modern parlance.
From the NCJA: The FBI defines a mass shooting as when one or more people engage in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. The bureau’s definition excludes shootings motivated by gang violence, drug violence, domestic disputes or hostage situations, or resulting from another criminal act, like a bank robbery.
In 2022, the FBI found 50 active shooter incidents, of which 13 met the federal definition of a mass killing incident.
The FBI has not released the numbers for 2023 yet.
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