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Going Postal, Pre-Pistol How did mass murderers operate before the advent of modern weapons?
slate.com ^ | 26 July, 2012 | Brian Palmer

Posted on 07/28/2012 2:49:36 PM PDT by marktwain

The shooting spree that killed 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater on Friday has sparked a public debate about the availability of automatic weapons. Gun control advocates argue that mass murder is exceedingly difficult without them. One source told the Washington Post, “It’s kind of hard to be a pseudo-commando with a musket in the 18th century.” How did people commit mass murder before the advent of automatic weapons?

Often with fire. Revolutionary War veteran Barnett Davenport is widely considered the first mass murderer in U.S. history. On the evening of Feb. 3, 1780, Davenport burst into the bedroom of his employer, Caleb Mallory, and began to bludgeon Mallory and his wife with a club. When the club broke in two, Davenport beat the couple to death with Mallory’s gun. If Davenport had stopped there, he would be remembered as just an ordinary killer; most criminologists define mass murder as the killing of at least three people in a single incident. After beating the Mallorys to death, however, Davenport burned the house down, killing their three grandchildren.

Hundreds of other mass murderers have perpetrated their crimes without automatic firearms. Frenchman Pierre Riviere killed his mother, sister, and brother with a bill hook in 1835. In 1932, Julian Marcelino, a Filipino immigrant of relatively small stature, managed to kill six and wound 15 on a Seattle street using only a pair of blades. In 1915, Monroe Phillips shot seven dead and wounded 32 with a shotgun in Georgia.

Guns aren’t even the most lethal mass murder weapon. According to data compiled by Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, guns killed an average of 4.92 victims per mass murder in the United States during the 20th century, just edging out knives, blunt objects, and bare hands, which killed

(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: banglist; co; massmurder; weapon
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To: marktwain
Another Holmes in the 1890's, H.H. Holmes, dispatched many in his murder castle on the south side of Chicago in the Englewood neighborhood. weird&hauntedchicago The book DEPRAVED, written by Harold Schechter calls Holmes Americas first serial killer. DEPRAVED
41 posted on 07/28/2012 5:17:18 PM PDT by dznutz
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To: Iron Munro

From Wikipedia - “The Poe Elementary School bombing was a school bombing that occurred in Houston, Texas, United States on September 15, 1959. Six people, including the perpetrator, were killed.”

This was my elementary school.

You can’t fix crazy. Stuff like this has always happened....always will. Taking away guns isn’t the answer.


42 posted on 07/28/2012 5:17:40 PM PDT by BelleAl (Proud to be a member of the party of NO! NO more deficit spending and government control!)
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To: cripplecreek

Jack Gilbert Graham blew up a passenger train in 1955 so he could collect the life insurance on his mother. He caused the death of 45 people. He used 25 sticks of dynamite, that was wrapped up in a gift package that he had put in his mothers luggage. When asked didn’t it bother him that he killed all those people, he said, no when it’s your time to go, it’s time. He was executed in 1957.


43 posted on 07/28/2012 5:25:52 PM PDT by JimC214
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To: JimC214

Plane not train.


44 posted on 07/28/2012 5:26:52 PM PDT by JimC214
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To: marktwain

ping


45 posted on 07/28/2012 5:29:53 PM PDT by aquila48
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To: marktwain

ping


46 posted on 07/28/2012 5:30:15 PM PDT by aquila48
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To: JimC214

Just a couple of years ago someone in Europe attacked school children with a knife and stabbed more than a dozen.


47 posted on 07/28/2012 5:32:49 PM PDT by cripplecreek (What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
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To: marktwain

This was on Slate?

There must be something in my water.


48 posted on 07/28/2012 5:33:50 PM PDT by <1/1,000,000th%
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To: marktwain

Wasn’t there a killer in the 20’s or 30’s who killed, like, 50 with dynamite? Seems to me he attacked a school or something similar.


49 posted on 07/28/2012 5:39:17 PM PDT by WorkingClassFilth (I'm for Churchill in 1940!)
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To: marktwain

Let us not forget that in the end of Homer’s epic poem
when Odysseus finally returns home after ten years, he
finds his house filled with suitors for his wife’s hand
who have been eating and drinking the fruits of his
estate, he proceeds to draw and string his bow,
shoot through many axeheads then to slaughter them
all with the help of his son.

Poetic definitely.


50 posted on 07/28/2012 5:45:22 PM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: WorkingClassFilth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Kehoe


51 posted on 07/28/2012 5:48:02 PM PDT by cripplecreek (What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
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To: C210N

Jetliners work even better.


52 posted on 07/28/2012 5:58:34 PM PDT by gitmo ( If your theology doesn't become your biography it's useless.)
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To: gitmo

and you don’t even need one... you can just borrow ours.


53 posted on 07/28/2012 6:15:41 PM PDT by C210N ("ask not what the candidate can do for you, ask what you can do for the candidate" (Breitbart, 2012))
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To: marktwain

I don’t think Ivan the terrible or Vlad the Impaler had any trouble.


54 posted on 07/28/2012 6:49:00 PM PDT by yldstrk ( My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: metalurgist

It was forty whacks from Crazy Lizzie, not fifty. I remember jumping rope to that old rhyme. Besides the lines flow better with the words Borden and forty. Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her father forty whacks.


55 posted on 07/28/2012 7:42:11 PM PDT by Ciexyz
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To: Ciexyz
Chad Mitchell Trio: "Lizzy Borden"
56 posted on 07/28/2012 7:48:24 PM PDT by Publius (Leadershiup starts with getting off the couch.)
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To: dznutz
The book DEPRAVED, written by Harold Schechter calls Holmes Americas first serial killer.

I have that book, it is a heck of a read.

57 posted on 07/28/2012 8:07:32 PM PDT by ansel12 (Massachusetts Governors,,, where the GOP goes for it's "conservative" Presidential candidates.)
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To: ansel12
I have that book, it is a heck of a read.

Yes, I couldn't put that book down. Another good book about the Holmes crimes is The Devil in the White City. It goes back and forth between the murders and the city of Chicago's preparation for the 1893 World's Fair.

58 posted on 07/28/2012 8:29:16 PM PDT by dznutz
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To: allmendream

I’m pretty sure women of that era carried their gun in a hidden internal skirt pocket or handbag, not their parasol.


59 posted on 07/28/2012 8:36:38 PM PDT by Valpal1
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To: dznutz

Anyone seeing our posts should know that this is a fascinating story, not a simple serial killer story but history of the second half of the 1800s, he was a doctor, a complicated man, became wealthy and built his own special killing hotel close to the World’s Fair which helped him supply his building of horrors with tourist women and helped cover his tracks.

My copy is laying around somewhere so I am going off memory, if you want to correct me or add something, please do.

I looked it up on wiki. “”In Chicago at the time of the 1893 World’s Fair, Holmes opened a hotel which he had designed and built for himself specifically with murder in mind, and which was the location of many of his murders. While he confessed to 27 murders, of which four were confirmed, his actual body count could be as high as 200.[3] He took an unknown number of his victims from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, which was less than two miles away, in his “World’s Fair” hotel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Holmes


60 posted on 07/28/2012 8:49:11 PM PDT by ansel12 (Massachusetts Governors,,, where the GOP goes for it's "conservative" Presidential candidates.)
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