Yeah - Heh.
I think this sign might have been directed at me for that comment.
Just need a photo shop: GET A BRAN MORANS
Posted on 11/11/2009 10:40:24 AM PST by Star Traveler
November 9, 11:33 PM
by Rebecca Heath
When Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan went on his murderous rampage killing 13 and wounding 30 others Thursday at Fort Hood, Texas, he became the latest perpetrator of a uniquely American phenomenon of mass public shootings.
One day later, alleged gunman Jason Rodriquez, walked into the Orlando FL., engineering firm where he had been terminated two years before. He left one person dead and 5 injured.
These latest U.S. shooting sprees add to this year's deadly toll of workplace violence. Although the anecdotal evidence seems to belie the figures, homicides in the workplace are actually down slightly overall, despite the recession. There were 517 workplace homicides in 2008 and that was the lowest level since the Labor Department began tracking this 16 years ago.
Law enforcement now must sort out the details and in Texas army officials go about the huge task of comforting more than 600 people affected by this one horrible act. A memorial service is scheduled for Tuesday and public donations are being accepted to help victim's families (Fort Hood website)
In the both cases, as investigators examine the aftermath motivations are still a mystery. When Rodriquez was taken into custody he was asked point blank by a reporter "why?" "They left me to rot," said Rodriguez, who had recently declared bankruptcy.
Hasan had been allegedly trying to get out of the military since 2001. He has told his family that he had been taunted for his Middle Eastern ancestry since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Hasan's relatives have issued statements saying they were shocked and mortified by the shootings. "… there is no justification, whatsoever, for what happened. We are all asking why this happened -- and the answer is that we simply do not know."
The modern era of mass shootings started in 1966 in Texas when Charles Whitman opened fire from the top of a 27-story tower at the University of Texas in Austin , killing 14 people and wounding 40.
Since then more than 105 Americans have gone on killing rampages.
In the just one month of this year more than 53 people were murdered in high-profile shootings: On March 10, Michael McLendon killed 10 people before committing suicide in southern Alabama. Police say he had struggled to hold down a job and targeted employers and co-workers.
On April 3rd, Jiverly Wong, a 41 year old immigrant from Vietnam walked into an immigrant language center, killed 13 and wounded 20 before killing himself. He told family members he had been harassed for his poor English. He dropped out of language classes at the American Civic Association. It was to his former classroom that he returned with two handguns, wearing body armor to terrorize the people who had tried to help him.
At the time, an acquaintance of Wong described him as "a very nice guy, but he seemed very, very depressed." Wong's wife and kids had left him and he told this friend, 'I did everything good for everybody, but nobody ever did anything good for me.'"
What is it that causes someone to make this ultimate act of hate and retribution. To become completely devoid of compassion and empathy, to take the lives of other people's sons, daughters, mothers and fathers? Is there something about our society that drives people to do things like this?
In the wake of the Fort Hood massacre, US media pundits and politicians will again follow the expected sequence of events, offering theories and examining consequences. Expressions of sympathy and outrage for the victims will precede inquiries and promises that changes will be made. But will they?
It's been 10 years since the Columbine High School killers left 15 dead, and two years since the Virginia Tech shooter murdered 32. What more do we know today than we did then?
Here's one fact:
One of the only other countries that has had a similar violence problem has been Australia which saw a string of mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, in 1996, armed with a semiautomatic rifle, Martin Bryant shot and killed 35 people at a Tasmanian historical site. Australian lawmakers reacted with tough gun control legislation banning semiautomatic rifles. The result? No mass shootings since the ban.
A base spokesman said one of the reasons Hasan's actions were so deadly was that he fired at least 100 rounds in a small space. He was armed with two pistols, one a semiautomatic FN-Five Seven tactical pistol capable of firing up to 20 rounds without reloading.
As officials untangle the reasons for Thursdays carnage, attention is focusing on the psychological consequences of a drawn out war. Fort Hood statistics show that base personnel are under increasing stress and reportedly are not getting the mental health resources they need. There have been 76 suicides since 2003 and domestic violence has risen by 75 percent since 2001.
And this is not the only recent shooting at Fort Hood. Last year upon returning from Iraq, Staff Sgt. Gilberto Mota, 35, shot his his wife and himself. In September, Spc. Jody Michael Wirawan, 22, shot and killed 1st Lt. Robert Bartlett Fletcher, 24, at a party. Both had just returned from the war.
An ironic footnote: Killeen, Texas, the nearest town, to Fort Hood.,was scene of one of the deadliest shooting mass murders in American history. On October 16, 1991, George Hennard drove his Ford Ranger pickup truck through the front window of Luby's Cafeteria and began shooting, killing 23 people and wounding 20. Before taking his own life Hennard yelled, "This is what Central Texas did to me!"
Some US mass shootings...
Here is a glance at some of the worst U.S. mass shootings:
April 3, 2009: A 41-year-old man opened fire at an immigrant community center in Binghamton, N.Y., killing 11 immigrants and two workers. Jiverly Wong, a Vietnamese immigrant and a former student at the center, killed himself as police rushed to the scene.
March 10, 2009: Michael McLendon, 28, killed 10 people, including his mother, four other relatives and the wife and child of a local sheriff’s deputy, across two rural Alabama counties. He then committed suicide.
Feb. 14, 2008: Former student Steven Kazmierczak, 27, opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, fatally shooting five students and wounding 18 others before committing suicide.
Dec. 5, 2007: Robert A. Hawkins, 19, opened fire with a rifle in Omaha, Neb., at a Von Maur store in the Westroads Mall, killing eight people before taking his life. Five more people were wounded, two critically.
April 16, 2007: Cho Seung-Hui, 23, fatally shot 32 people in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, then killed himself in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
Feb. 12, 2007: Sulejman Talovic, 18, killed five and wounded four at the Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City. He was then shot and killed by police.
Oct. 2, 2006: Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, shot to death five girls at West Nickel Mines Amish School in Pennsylvania, then killed himself.
March 21, 2005: Jeffrey Weise, a 16-year-old student, killed nine people – his grandfather and his grandfather’s companion at home, and then five fellow students, a teacher and a security guard at Red Lake High School in Red Lake, Minn. – before killing himself. Seven students were wounded.
March 12, 2005: Terry Ratzmann, 44, gunned down members of his congregation as they worshipped at the Brookfield Sheraton in Brookfield, Wis., slaying seven and wounding four before killing himself.
July 29, 1999: Former day trader Mark Barton, 44, killed nine people in shootings at two Atlanta brokerage offices, then committed suicide.
April 20, 1999: Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before committing suicide in the school’s library.
March 24, 1998: Andrew Golden, 11, and Mitchell Johnson, 13, killed four girls and a teacher at a Jonesboro, Ark., middle school. Ten others were wounded in the shooting.
December 1, 1997: Michael Carneal, 14, opened fire on a group of praying students killing 3 young women, injuring four young women, and wounding one young man at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky.
Oct. 16, 1991: George Hennard, 35, smashed his pickup through a Luby’s Cafeteria window in Killeen, Texas, and fired on the lunchtime crowd with a high-powered pistol, killing 22 people. At least 20 others were wounded.
Aug. 20, 1986: Postal worker Patrick Henry Sherrill killed 14 people in an Edmond, Okla., post office, then killed himself.
July 18, 1984: James Oliver Huberty, 41, an out-of-work security guard, shot and killed 21 people at a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, Calif. He was slain by police.
Aug. 1, 1966: Former Marine sharpshooter Charles Whitman climbed the stairs to the observation deck at the University of Texas Tower and began a 96-minute shooting spree, killing 14 people and wounding 31 before he was shot and killed. He had stabbed his mother and wife to death earlier.
—
Mass shootings/killings have been part of our society for a long while now... On and on it goes...
I blame the Guns for the shootings obviously they decided to hop out of the law abiding owner’s hands and start squeezing off rounds on their own.
Ban guns, save lives, of criminals....
Dear Rebecca Heath
You are a bran-dead moron.
_________________________________
...a uniquely American phenomenon of mass public shootings.
_________________________________
Unique? Well, maybe. As in we don’t blow ourselves up as is the common daily custom in Islam nations.
Why don’t you look into that, you liberal POS?
So, is this author saying that this is all the fault of Killeen? Garbage!
“Although the anecdotal evidence seems to belie the figures”
By “anecdotal evidence” they mean MEDIA HYPE.
You can’t forget the Cleveland School shooting in Stockton, California, where DiFi’s poster boy, Patrick Purdy, killed five elementary school students and wounded a dozen or so more. It led directly to the Assault Weapons Ban which we still live under out here in California.
Barf alert tag! Yeesh.
Yet another libtard solution of “Ban guns and there won’t be mass shootings”. How about banning murder? oh wait...
What most of those have in common is that at the time and location of the shootings, law-abiding citizens were prohibited by law from carrying a firearm and the shooter was able to continue his rampage until either (1) he ran out of ammo, or (2) law enforcement arrived, or (3) somebody else ended the rampage through the use of force (or threat of armed force).
If 50% of the population carried concealed these nuts wouldn’t get off three shots before they went down and most wouldn’t even try knowing they’d be taken out so soon - all I can say is anyone pops up on a table screaming allah akbar better be ready to meet his maker. ;-(
And in looking through the history of mass/public shootings, I found that one ironic, too...
Oct. 16, 1991: George Hennard, 35, smashed his pickup through a Luby’s Cafeteria window in Killeen, Texas, and fired on the lunchtime crowd with a high-powered pistol, killing 22 people. At least 20 others were wounded.
Heh.
On May 18, 1927, 45 people, mostly children, were killed and 58 were injured when disgruntled and demented school board member Andrew Kehoe dynamited the new school building in Bath, Michigan out of revenge over his foreclosed farm due in part to the taxes required to pay for the new school.
What most of those have in common is that at the time and location of the shootings, law-abiding citizens were prohibited by law from carrying a firearm and the shooter was able to continue his rampage until either (1) he ran out of ammo, or (2) law enforcement arrived, or (3) somebody else ended the rampage through the use of force (or threat of armed force).
Look through that list in post #2 and you'll find that most of them ended the shooting themselves and ended up killing themselves and/or simply gave themselves up (waiting for police to arrive)
And, in the two latest two public shootings (listed above) after the Foot Hood killings -- you'll see that one killed himself and the other simply waited at his mother's house for the police to arrive and gave himself up.
Just need a photo shop: GET A BRAN MORANS
Rebecca Heath left out Pearl Harbor: The most terrible mass shooting in the workplace in American history.
Ah, the collectivist gun-grabber makes the most of the spilled blood of the Islamic terrorist murders AGAIN. Don't want to waste a good crisis, eh?
However, as I told you previously:
In America, sometimes people try to shoot a bunch of other people. Invariably, they are stopped. And the liberal media and anti-gunners try to increase the emotional impact of these tragedies in any way possible. One of those ways is to hammer on the use of the word "mass" - like you have.
But in communist countries, there have been true mass killings. Not thousands, or hundreds of thousands, but millions and millions of people killed. In fact, over a hundred million people killed. Those are true "mass" killings.
So when some "observer" like you describes and emphasizes a multiple shooting as a "mass killing," you are knowingly and deliberately trying to create an equivalency comparison with the genuine communist "mass killings" of millions of people.
And to help this comparison, you don't contrast the people who die in a multiple shooting with the hundred million gun owners in the U.S. who did not participate in that shooting, or the two million people each year who use guns to warn off a threat of physical violence without ever firing a shot.
So what's my point? Simply that you aren't anywhere near neutral, and you aren't a mere observer of statistics. That you have a very devious and sinister agenda - to play with words and concepts to try to poison people's understanding of their "culture" and "society," and thereby get a free and good people to think of themselves as the moral equivalents of mass murdering communists.
So to me, you not only slander peaceful, sane, gun-owning Americans, and endanger millions who are safe from threat each year because of their gun ownership, but you also slander and violate the memory of over a hundred million people who were victims of genuine mass killings.
That's just my way of saying that my "we" is not your "we."
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