Psycho Of The Month Thread

[Johnnny5]

300,000 schools, approx., in the US. One security guard, armed, per school, not including health coverage, etc.? $12,000,000,000/year. where are you going to get the cash for that? One guy, dressed like the guy at Sandy Hook with body armor would have NO difficulty taking out that guard, or just avoiding him/her altogether. One guy with an AK-47 with a couple of 50 round clips would be unstoppable without a SWAT team. It's just as I said, moronic NRA boilerplate crap

I think you are giving these crazy losers more credit than they deserve. The shooters at Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Virginia Tech weren't trained officers or combat veterans. They were all mentally disturbed young men that had very little to no combat or firearms experience. They knew going into these schools that no one there would be able to put up much resistance, and probably wouldn't have had the wherewithal to go though with these sick acts if not for that fact. The proof of that is clear as in all three cases when faced with resistance [[When officers arrived) the first thing these crazies did was put bullets in their own heads. They all left dozens of unfired rounds behind and could have done substantially more damage if not confronted by police.

As for the financial aspect, I don't see it costing anywhere near your estimates [[And honestly so what if it did). First of all, many high schools already have armed police officers on site, so there would be no additional costs there. Secondly, there are many teachers with military experience that could easily be retrained to provide armed security at little additional cost. For those schools without officers or veterans I'm sure there would be a number of teachers willing to go through a police style training program if it meant they would have the ability to defend themselves and their students.

The fastest and surest way to make schools safer is to make it so they are not an easy target. Because right now there is basically just a sometimes locked door and easily broken door size windows keeping our children away from crazies with guns, knives and whatever else they can use to kill.

[rb336]

I think you are overestimating the difficulty of the task. you wouldn't need to be a SEAL to do that, or have any real training. the truth is EVERYWHERE is a soft target, there is mental disease in other countries, there are violent videos in other countries. The ONLY place this happens regularly[[apart from the very rare occurrence in other developed countries) is here. Why? because we allow almost anyone to buy weapons designed for killing large numbers of people very quickly

[oladub]

Johnnny5, I'm basically agreeing with you. If some training guidelines and standards could be set up, it might make good sense to qualify school employees to carry guns. Otherwise, somehow, teachers' guns would more likely get into the wrong hands or otherwise be misused.

With something approaching 300 million guns in the US, guns will always be available on the black market even if some attempts are made at confiscation and buyback programs.

Deterrence: The air marshall program has worked out well. If the bad guys aren't sure that there is an armed air marshall on the plane, planning to hijack a plane is made more complicated. Similarly, while declared no gun zones are easy targets, letting it be know that some school personnel are trained and licensed to carry on school grounds makes planning a slaughter a riskier proposition.

[Whitehouse]

Hand down, this month it's Wayne La Pierre.

[Johnnny5]

I think you are overestimating the difficulty of the task. you wouldn't need to be a SEAL to do that, or have any real training. the truth is EVERYWHERE is a soft target, there is mental disease in other countries, there are violent videos in other countries. The ONLY place this happens regularly[[apart from the very rare occurrence in other developed countries) is here. Why? because we allow almost anyone to buy weapons designed for killing large numbers of people very quickly

There have been relatively recent mass shootings of school children in Germany, Norway, Finland and other Western European countries. All these places have much stricter gun laws than here in the U.S. yet these tragedies still happen. It also needs to be considered that most other wealthy developed countries have substantially better services for those with mental health issues.

Also to put the risk of mass school shootings into perceptive it should be noted that more U.S children drown every month of every summer in unattended residential pools than died at the Sandy Hook shooting. While that doesn't make the loss of those children any less tragic, it does surprise people that their neighbors pool poses a much greater threat to their child than his "assault weapon".

[gazhekwe]

There were trained armed people at many of the mass killings, including Columbine, Fort Hood, Virginia Tech and the Oregon Mall. There were still mass killings at these places.

[rb336]

There have been relatively recent mass shootings of school children in Germany, Norway, Finland and other Western European countries. All these places have much stricter gun laws than here in the U.S. yet these tragedies still happen.

Really? you want to go there? that is exactly the kind of false-equivalence the right wing has been trying to shove down everyone's throats for four years, hoping just enough people are stupid enough to believe it.

From 1996-present [[16 years) 78% of school and mass shootings happened in the USA. in raw numbers it's USA 59, EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD 17. Ask yourself again, what is the difference? Why is it epidemic in the US and NOWHERE else?

Oh, and in the Erfurt, Germany [[April 24, 2006) example, one of the dead was a cop. The ONLY difference having an armed guard at a school would make is that the first one dead would be an armed guard. The person who knows a target is there has a huge advantage over the person who doesn't know he/she is the target.

Feb. 2, 1996 Moses Lake, Wash.Two students and one teacher killed, one other wounded when 14-year-old Barry Loukaitis opened fire on his algebra class.
March 13, 1996 Dunblane, Scotland16 children and one teacher killed at Dunblane Primary School by Thomas Hamilton, who then killed himself. 10 others wounded in attack.
Feb. 19, 1997 Bethel, AlaskaPrincipal and one student killed, two others wounded by Evan Ramsey, 16.
March 1997 Sanaa, YemenEight people [[six students and two others) at two schools killed by Mohammad Ahman al-Naziri.
Oct. 1, 1997 Pearl, Miss.Two students killed and seven wounded by Luke Woodham, 16, who was also accused of killing his mother. He and his friends were said to be outcasts who worshiped Satan.
Dec. 1, 1997 West Paducah, Ky.Three students killed, five wounded by Michael Carneal, 14, as they participated in a prayer circle at Heath High School.
Dec. 15, 1997 Stamps, Ark.Two students wounded. Colt Todd, 14, was hiding in the woods when he shot the students as they stood in the parking lot.
March 24, 1998 Jonesboro, Ark.Four students and one teacher killed, ten others wounded outside as Westside Middle School emptied during a false fire alarm. Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, shot at their classmates and teachers from the woods.
April 24, 1998 Edinboro, Pa.One teacher, John Gillette, killed, two students wounded at a dance at James W. Parker Middle School. Andrew Wurst, 14, was charged.
May 19, 1998 Fayetteville, Tenn.One student killed in the parking lot at Lincoln County High School three days before he was to graduate. The victim was dating the ex-girlfriend of his killer, 18-year-old honor student Jacob Davis.
May 21, 1998 Springfield, Ore.Two students killed, 22 others wounded in the cafeteria at Thurston High School by 15-year-old Kip Kinkel. Kinkel had been arrested and released a day earlier for bringing a gun to school. His parents were later found dead at home.
June 15, 1998 Richmond, Va.One teacher and one guidance counselor wounded by a 14-year-old boy in the school hallway.
April 20, 1999 Littleton, Colo.14 students [[including killers) and one teacher killed, 23 others wounded at Columbine High School in the nation's deadliest school shooting. Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, had plotted for a year to kill at least 500 and blow up their school. At the end of their hour-long rampage, they turned their guns on themselves.
April 28, 1999 Taber, Alberta, CanadaOne student killed, one wounded at W. R. Myers High School in first fatal high school shooting in Canada in 20 years. The suspect, a 14-year-old boy, had dropped out of school after he was severely ostracized by his classmates.
May 20, 1999 Conyers, Ga.Six students injured at Heritage High School by Thomas Solomon, 15, who was reportedly depressed after breaking up with his girlfriend.
Nov. 19, 1999 Deming, N.M.Victor Cordova Jr., 12, shot and killed Araceli Tena, 13, in the lobby of Deming Middle School.
Dec. 6, 1999 Fort Gibson, Okla.Four students wounded as Seth Trickey, 13, opened fire with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun at Fort Gibson Middle School.
Dec. 7, 1999 Veghel, NetherlandsOne teacher and three students wounded by a 17-year-old student.
Feb. 29, 2000 Mount Morris Township, Mich.Six-year-old Kayla Rolland shot dead at Buell Elementary School near Flint, Mich. The assailant was identified as a six-year-old boy with a .32-caliber handgun.
March 2000 Branneburg, Germany One teacher killed by a 15-year-old student, who then shot himself. The shooter has been in a coma ever since.
March 10, 2000 Savannah, Ga.Two students killed by Darrell Ingram, 19, while leaving a dance sponsored by Beach High School.
May 26, 2000 Lake Worth, Fla.One teacher, Barry Grunow, shot and killed at Lake Worth Middle School by Nate Brazill, 13, with .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol on the last day of classes.
Sept. 26, 2000 New Orleans, La.Two students wounded with the same gun during a fight at Woodson Middle School.
Jan. 17, 2001 Baltimore, Md. One student shot and killed in front of Lake Clifton Eastern High School.
Jan. 18, 2001 Jan, Sweden One student killed by two boys, ages 17 and 19.
March 5, 2001 Santee, Calif.Two killed and 13 wounded by Charles Andrew Williams, 15, firing from a bathroom at Santana High School.
March 7, 2001 Williamsport, Pa.Elizabeth Catherine Bush, 14, wounded student Kimberly Marchese in the cafeteria of Bishop Neumann High School; she was depressed and frequently teased.
March 22, 2001 Granite Hills, Calif.One teacher and three students wounded by Jason Hoffman, 18, at Granite Hills High School. A policeman shot and wounded Hoffman.
March 30, 2001 Gary, Ind.One student killed by Donald R. Burt, Jr., a 17-year-old student who had been expelled from Lew Wallace High School.
Nov. 12, 2001 Caro, Mich.Chris Buschbacher, 17, took two hostages at the Caro Learning Center before killing himself.
Jan. 15, 2002 New York, N.Y.A teenager wounded two students at Martin Luther King Jr. High School.
Feb. 19, 2002 Freising, GermanyTwo killed in Eching by a man at the factory from which he had been fired; he then traveled to Freising and killed the headmaster of the technical school from which he had been expelled. He also wounded another teacher before killing himself.
April 26, 2002 Erfurt, Germany13 teachers, two students, and one policeman killed, ten wounded by Robert Steinhaeuser, 19, at the Johann Gutenberg secondary school. Steinhaeuser then killed himself.
April 29, 2002 Vlasenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina One teacher killed, one wounded by Dragoslav Petkovic, 17, who then killed himself.
October 28, 2002 Tucson, Ariz.Robert S. Flores Jr., 41, a student at the nursing school at the University of Arizona, shot and killed three female professors and then himself.
April 14, 2003 New Orleans, La. One 15-year-old killed, and three students wounded at John McDonogh High School by gunfire from four teenagers [[none were students at the school). The motive was gang-related.
April 24, 2003 Red Lion, Pa.James Sheets, 14, killed principal Eugene Segro of Red Lion Area Junior High School before killing himself.
Sept. 24, 2003 Cold Spring, Minn.Two students are killed at Rocori High School by John Jason McLaughlin, 15.
Sept. 28, 2004 Carmen de Patagones, Argentina Three students killed and 6 wounded by a 15-year-old Argentininan student in a town 620 miles south of Buenos Aires.
March 21, 2005 Red Lake, Minn.Jeff Weise, 16, killed grandfather and companion, then arrived at school where he killed a teacher, a security guard, 5 students, and finally himself, leaving a total of 10 dead.
Nov. 8, 2005 Jacksboro, Tenn.One 15-year-old shot and killed an assistant principal at Campbell County High School and seriously wounded two other administrators.
Aug. 24, 2006 Essex, Vt.Christopher Williams, 27, looking for his ex-girlfriend at Essex Elementary School, shot two teachers, killing one and wounding another. Before going to the school, he had killed the ex-girlfriend's mother.
Sept. 13, 2006 Montreal, Canada Kimveer Gill, 25, opened fire with a semiautomatic weapon at Dawson College. Anastasia De Sousa, 18, died and more than a dozen students and faculty were wounded before Gill killed himself.
Sept. 27, 2006 Bailey, Colo.Adult male held six students hostage at Platte Canyon High School and then shot and killed Emily Keyes, 16, and himself.
Sept. 29, 2006 Cazenovia, Wis.A 15-year-old student shot and killed Weston School principal John Klang.
Oct. 3, 2006 Nickel Mines, Pa.32-year-old Carl Charles Roberts IV entered the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School and shot 10 schoolgirls, ranging in age from 6 to 13 years old, and then himself. Five of the girls and Roberts died.

[rb336]

Part two of list:
Jan. 3, 2007 Tacoma, Wash.Douglas Chanthabouly, 18, shot fellow student Samnang Kok, 17, in the hallway of Henry Foss High School.
April 16, 2007 Blacksburg, Va.A 23-year-old Virginia Tech student, Cho Seung-Hui, killed two in a dorm, then killed 30 more 2 hours later in a classroom building. His suicide brought the death toll to 33, making the shooting rampage the most deadly in U.S. history. Fifteen others were wounded.
Sept. 21, 2007 Dover, Del.A Delaware State Univesity Freshman, Loyer D. Brandon, shot and wounded two other Freshman students on the University campus. Brandon is being charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless engagement, as well as a gun charge.
Oct. 10, 2007 Cleveland, Ohio A 14-year-old student at a Cleveland high school, Asa H. Coon, shot and injured two students and two teachers before he shot and killed himself. The victims' injuries were not life-threatening.
Nov. 7, 2007 Tuusula, Finland An 18-year-old student in southern Finland shot and killed five boys, two girls, and the female principal at Jokela High School. At least 10 others were injured. The gunman shot himself and died from his wounds in the hospital.
Feb. 8, 2008 Baton Rouge, Louisiana A nursing student shot and killed two women and then herself in a classroom at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge.
Feb. 11, 2008 Memphis, Tennessee A 17-year-old student at Mitchell High School shot and wounded a classmate in gym class.
Feb. 12, 2008 Oxnard, California A 14-year-old boy shot a student at E.O. Green Junior High School causing the 15-year-old victim to be brain dead.Feb. 14, 2008 DeKalb, Illinois Gunman killed five students and then himself, and wounded 17 more when he opened fire on a classroom at Northern Illinois University. The gunman, Stephen P. Kazmierczak, was identified as a former graduate student at the university in 2007.
Sept. 23, 2008 Kauhajoki, Finland A 20-year-old male student shot and killed at least nine students and himself at a vocational college in Kauhajok, 330km [[205 miles) north of the capital, Helsinki.
Nov. 12, 2008 Fort Lauderdale, Florida A 15-year-old female student was shot and killed by a classmate at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale.
March 11, 2009 Winnenden, Germany Fifteen people were shot and killed at Albertville Technical High School in southwestern Germany by a 17-year-old boy who attended the same school.
April 30, 2009 Azerbaijan, Baku A Georgian citizen of Azerbaijani descent killed 12 students and staff at Azerbaijan State Oil Academy. Several others were wounded.
Feb. 5, 2010 Madison, Alabama At Discovery Middle School, a ninth-grader was shot by another student during a class change. The boy, whose name was not released, pulled out a gun and shot Todd Brown in the head while walking the hallway. Brown later died at Huntsville Hospital.
Feb. 12, 2010 Huntsville, Alabama During a meeting on campus, Amy Bishop, a biology professor, began shot her colleagues, killing three and wounding three others. A year earlier, Bishop had been denied tenure.
March 9, 2010 Columbus, Ohio A man opens fire at Ohio State University, killing two employees and wounding one other. The shooter had recently received an "unsatisfactory" job evaluation and was going to be fired on March 13.
Jan. 5, 2011 Omaha, Nebraska Two people were killed and two more injured in a shooting at Millard South High School. Shortly after being suspended from school, the shooter returned and shot the assistant principal, principal, and the school nurse. The shooter then left campus and took his own life.
Jan. 8, 2011 Tuscon, Arizona Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in an assassination attempt. At least 17 others are shot by a gunman, identified as Jared Lee Loughner, who opened fire on the congresswoman's constituent meeting outside a local grocery store. Six people are fatally wounded, including U.S. District Court Judge John Roll, and a young girl.
Jan. 5, 2011 Houston, Texas Two people opened fire during a Worthing High School powder-puff football game. One former student died. Five other people were injured.
April 7, 2011 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil A 23-year-old former student returned to his public elementary school in Rio de Janeiro and began firing, killing 12 children and seriously wounding more than a dozen others, before shooting himself in the head. While Brazil has seen gang-related violence in urban areas, this was the worst school shooting the country has ever seen.
May 10, 2011 San Jose, California Three people were killed in a parking garage at San Jose State University. Two former students were found dead on the fifth floor of the garage. A third, the suspected shooter, died later at the hospital.
July 22, 2011 Tyrifjorden, Buskerud, Norway A gunman disguised as a policeman opened fire at a camp for young political activists on the island of Utoya. The gunman kills 68 campers, including personal friends of Prime Minister Stoltenberg. Police arrested Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian who had been been linked to an anti-Islamic group.
Dec. 8, 2011 Blacksburg, Virginia A Virginia Tech police officer was shot and killed by a 22-year old student of Radford University. The shooting took place in a parking lot on Virginia Tech's campus.
Feb. 10, 2012 Walpole, New Hampshire A 14-year-old student shot himself in front of 70 fellow students.
Feb. 27, 2012 Chardon, Ohio At Chardon High School, a former classmate opened fire, killing three students and injuring six. Arrested shortly after the incident, the shooter said that he randomly picked students.
March 6, 2012 Jacksonville, Florida Shane Schumerth, a 28-year-old teacher at Episcopal High School, returned to the campus after being fired and shot and killed the headmistress, Dale Regan, with an assault rifle.
March 19, 2012 Toulouse, France Mohammed Merah, a French man of Algerian descent, shot and killed a rabbi, two of his children, and another child at a Jewish school. Police believe he had earlier shot and killed three paratroopers. Merah said he was a member of Al Qaeda and that he was seeking revenge for the killing of Palestinian children.
April 2, 2012 Oakland, Calif. One Goh, a 43-year-old former student at Oikos University, a Christian school populated by mostly Korean and Korean-Americans, opened fire on the campus, killing seven people and wounding several others.
July 20, 2012 Aurora, Colo. During a midnight screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises, a gunman opens fire on the crowded theater. At least 12 people are killed and 38 others are wounded. The suspect, James Holmes, set off a smoke device in the front of the theater before opening fire. Directly after the incident, Holmes, age 24, was arrested in a parking lot behind the theater.
August 5, 2012 Oak Creek, Wis. A gunman opens fire at a Sikh temple, killing six people and wounding three. Police shot and killed the suspect, Wade Michael Page, after the attack. Page, a neo-Nazi, served in the U.S. Army from 1992 to 1998.
December 11, 2012 Portland, Ore. Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, opened fire in the Clackamas Town Center mall, located 11 miles from downtown Portland, Oregon. Using an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle, Roberts killed two people and wounded one other. He then took his own life.
December 14, 2012 Newtown, Conn. Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 children and six others at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. He killed his mother, Nancy, at her home prior to the massacre at the school. Lanza committed suicide after the rampage. The shooting was the second deadliest in U.S. history, behind the 2007 shooting at Virginia Polytechnic Institute that claimed 32 people.

Read more: Time Line of Worldwide School Shootings — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A07779...#ixzz2FoPsz2DA

[oladub]

rb: Really? you want to go there? that is exactly the kind of false-equivalence the right wing has been trying to shove down everyone's throats for four years, hoping just enough people are stupid enough to believe it.

From 1996-present [[16 years) 78% of school and mass shootings happened in the USA. in raw numbers it's USA 59, EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD 17. Ask yourself again, what is the difference? Why is it epidemic in the US and NOWHERE else?

Oh, and in the Erfurt, Germany [[April 24, 2006) example, one of the dead was a cop. The ONLY difference having an armed guard at a school would make is that the first one dead would be an armed guard. The person who knows a target is there has a huge advantage over the person who doesn't know he/she is the target.

rb, Just for the fun of it, I added up all the deaths in your lists because you asked us "what is the difference?" . They totaled 199 dead Americans and 188 dead foreigners. For some reason, the foreign list didn't even include the two Netherlands' mass shootings I mentioned on the LIBOR thread. Including them would make the score
199 dead Americans
203 dead foreigners

If I am allowed to include those Dutch tragedies, the difference is four more dead foreigners.

That doesn't even include the muslims shooting up kids at a Russian school and whatever else goes on in most of the Muslim world [[9/11 wasn't guns so we can't count that).

What was you point again about how the US is so bad?

[Johnnny5]

There were trained armed people at many of the mass killings, including Columbine, Fort Hood, Virginia Tech and the Oregon Mall. There were still mass killings at these places.

There were no armed officers on site at Columbine when the shooting started. There was an officer assigned to the school, but at the start of the shooting he was out of the building and multiple blocks away [[On his lunch break). Either way, I'm not in any way suggesting that armed security would somehow eliminate mass shootings and I don't think the NRA is either. The rational behind security is not to prevent all attacks, but to discourage them in the first place and minimize the damage when they do occur.

The reality is we live in a country where there are 300 million firearms, and there is no magic wand that can eliminate them. That being said, what actions can we can take to immediately protect our children? Should we pass laws that existed before and made almost no difference or should be proactive and actively defend our schools?

[Johnnny5]

.
From 1996-present [[16 years) 78% of school and mass shootings happened in the USA. in raw numbers it's USA 59, EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD 17. Ask yourself again, what is the difference? Why is it epidemic in the US and NOWHERE else?

Total malarkey! I'm not even going to bother posting a list, but needless to say yours excludes hundreds of mass shootings that took place elsewhere in that time frame and includes many that while horrible do not in any way qualify as a "mass shooting".

[rb336]

Total malarkey! I'm not even going to bother posting a list, but needless to say yours excludes hundreds of mass shootings that took place elsewhere in that time frame and includes many that while horrible do not in any way qualify as a "mass shooting".

Prove it. mine includes exactly what I said it includes school and mass shootings. You claim that the number of these events isn't disproportionately high in the US [[compared to other developed countries, which is my main statement. and no, Syria doesn't count because it's a civil war)? PROVE IT

[rb336]

rb, Just for the fun of it, I added up all the deaths in your lists because you asked us "what is the difference?" . They totaled 199 dead Americans and 188 dead foreigners. For some reason, the foreign list didn't even include the two Netherlands' mass shootings I mentioned on the LIBOR thread. Including them would make the score
199 dead Americans
203 dead foreigners

If I am allowed to include those Dutch tragedies, the difference is four more dead foreigners.

That doesn't even include the muslims shooting up kids at a Russian school and whatever else goes on in most of the Muslim world [[9/11 wasn't guns so we can't count that).

What was you point again about how the US is so bad?

First, the attack on the House of Orange was with a car - not a gun. Second, your count includes one huge outlier, the Norway incident, which accounts for more than 1/3 of the deaths.
Third, it isn't the body count that sets the US apart, it is the shear number of incidents. Show me ONE developed country that even comes CLOSE to the US.

You can try to twist the facts, but they are so crystal clear only someone blinded by a moronic ideology wouldn't see the huge difference.

[Johnnny5]

Prove it. mine includes exactly what I said it includes school and mass shootings. You claim that the number of these events isn't disproportionately high in the US [[compared to other developed countries, which is my main statement. and no, Syria doesn't count because it's a civil war)? PROVE IT

Please point out where I ever stated or implied that these types of events do not happen more often here in the U.S than in other countries.

As for filling in the glaring holes in your list, neither of has the time to list all the mass shootings that have happened over the last two decades, so I will only mention one. In 2004 377 people were murdered in the Beslan School Massacre near Russia [[186 of them children). If the statistics you provided are based on a list so biased that it includes U.S shootings where people were injured but not killed, yet leaves out a massacre where almost 400 innocent people were murdered in cold blood then I don't see how they can be taken seriously.

[oladub]

First, the attack on the House of Orange was with a car - not a gun. Second, your count includes one huge outlier, the Norway incident, which accounts for more than 1/3 of the deaths.
Third, it isn't the body count that sets the US apart, it is the shear number of incidents. Show me ONE developed country that even comes CLOSE to the US.

You can try to twist the facts, but they are so crystal clear only someone blinded by a moronic ideology wouldn't see the huge difference.

rb, good point about the car used in the House of Orange slaughter in the Netherlands. If we counted that we would also have to count 9/11 fatalities although they were caused by mostly illegal aliens our government chose to ignore. That brings the tally back to
199 dead Americans
195 dead foreigners
from your list that was supposed to show how much worse things are in the US. However, to make what ever you are trying to prove work, please note that 19 of the listed US "mass fatalities" are single fatalities. Why not just include whatever happens in Detroit or Chicago every Saturday night? So what's your verdict, should be count the Breivik thing as an anomaly and discard it because it contradicts whatever you were trying to prove? Seems like if a couple of camp staffers had weapons, the Breivik count might have been less. Then the survivors wouldn't have had to wait for the police to arrive from Oslo and find boats.

It must not be the number of people killed that concerns you, it must be the "number of incidents". Got it. I've got a statistic that addresses that.

"The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by law enforcement: 14. The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it started.

The teachers are there already. The school staff is there already. Their reaction time is measured in seconds, not minutes. They can serve as your immediate violent response. Best case scenario, they engage and stop the attacker, or it bursts his fantasy bubble and he commits suicide. Worst case scenario, the armed staff provides a distraction, and while he’s concentrating on killing them, he’s not killing more children.

But teachers aren’t as trained as police officers! True, yet totally irrelevant. The teacher doesn’t need to be a SWAT cop or Navy SEAL. They need to be speed bumps."

-Dennis G who claims to have trained hundreds of teachers in Utah where schools are not gun free zones

"You can try to twist the facts, but they are so crystal clear only someone blinded by a moronic ideology wouldn't see the huge difference".

[rb336]

I don't give a rat's ass about isolated incidents in other counties. the Chechen massacre was horrible, but part of an insurrection, a full-on terrorist attack that the Russian security forces grossly mishandled. In fact, many in Beslan as well as outside observers blamed those forces, who went in with tanks, missiles and incendiaries, for the majority of deaths.

You keep bringing up these false equivalencies because your position has absolutely no basis in anything approaching reality.

[oladub]

I don't give a rat's ass about isolated incidents in other counties. the Chechen massacre was horrible, but part of an insurrection, a full-on terrorist attack that the Russian security forces grossly mishandled. In fact, many in Beslan as well as outside observers blamed those forces, who went in with tanks, missiles and incendiaries, for the majority of deaths.

You keep bringing up these false equivalencies because your position has absolutely no basis in anything approaching reality.

That's funny. This is what you posted in post #31 [[below) and what I responded to. You wrote that 78% of mass killings happened in the US but when I added the killings in your three lists, it turned out that there were about the same number of killings rather than 78% as you falsely claimed and you have since been trying to wiggle out of that. If you don't give a rat's ass about other countries, why did you bring it up? Now you are blaming the rescuers in Russia for the gun killings there? Do you also blame the Norwegian authorities for their tardy response? What about that statistic I brought up that there are more victims when the police have to be waited for than when a civilian responds immediately? Why, in your post Russian school massacre [[not on your list), post Breivik, and post CT killing sprees thinking, do you instead think everything works out so much better when left to the authorities? Your statistics don't work unless you cherry pick them as you, or whomever put your list together, did.

Really? you want to go there? that is exactly the kind of false-equivalence the right wing has been trying to shove down everyone's throats for four years, hoping just enough people are stupid enough to believe it.

From 1996-present [[16 years) 78% of school and mass shootings happened in the USA. in raw numbers it's USA 59, EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD 17. Ask yourself again, what is the difference? Why is it epidemic in the US and NOWHERE else?

Oh, and in the Erfurt, Germany [[April 24, 2006) example, one of the dead was a cop. The ONLY difference having an armed guard at a school would make is that the first one dead would be an armed guard. The person who knows a target is there has a huge advantage over the person who doesn't know he/she is the target.

[Jimaz]

... it isn't the body count that sets the US apart, it is the shear number of incidents....

Well, body count is significant in its own way but, yes, striving to decrease the number of incidents seems more reasonable than, say, requiring school children to wear body armor just to decrease the body count.

It seems to me there was a time when these incidents were far more rare. That point is being ignored.

I've been searching for data regarding the rate of change in the number of incidents in the U.S. alone. It's difficult because there are many different criteria for including or excluding incidents in any one tally and some lists admit they're incomplete.

It might help to identify when the rate of incidents increased the most [[a maximum of the second-order derivative in calculus-speak) then look for possible causes for the increase about the same time. Granted, correlation does not prove causation but it can narrow the scope of the search for the cause.

The following data have been selected for incidents occurring only in the U.S. and sorted by year from List of rampage killers: School massacres. The first column is the year of the incident. The second is the number of years since the previous incident [[a reciprocal of the rate of incidents — lower number means higher rate).

1927 ?infinite?
1966 39
1974 8
1984 10
1989 5
1992 3
1998 6
1998 0
1999 1
2001 2
2001 0
2005 4
2006 1
2007 1
2008 1
2012 4
2012 0

So from that [[admittedly paltry) amount of data, it looks like the rate of school massacre incidents increased most during the 1980s.

What related policy changes occurred then that we might consider rescinding to accomplish a reversal of this tragically accelerating school massacre trend?

[Whitehouse]

It doesn't stop...


Now they're killing firemen!!


What next?? Arming those heroes as well???

[GOAT]

According to the verbal puke-fest of some here...yes I guess that's what has to happen. Everyone should have guns...fuck, give them to babies because some parents actually kill their kids. What a bunch of BS!

Get over yourselves you gun-toting, hipster wannabes. More guns don't equate to safety and NEVER have. Because, I will re-iterate again, the USA would be teh safest fucking country in the world if that were the case...hell, so would Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and every other country that has more variants of weapons available to it's population than do the truly safe ones.

I find it ironic [[and sad) that we spend $30,000+ per machine on safety so some idot doesn't put his hand in a press when operating but the same idiot can have 20+ handguns....You fuckers need to be saved from yourselves!

[old guy]

It doesn't stop...


Now they're killing firemen!!


What next?? Arming those heroes as well???

I'd have to vote for this one as the psycho of the month even with all the other crazy shit that's happened. Well.... I guess it's a toss up. Tough month.

[Papasito]

January 2012
The Psycho of the Month is awarded to : Barack Obama

....according to icasualties, as of the 13th of October, 2012, 1,567 of the 2,136 US troops killed in Afghanistan have died since Obama became president of the United States. That is, 73% of all troops fatalities there happened in the 45 months since Obama took office. The number of wounded has also gone up an incredible amount: almost 5 times the number of people have been wounded under Obama as under Bush.

http://errantacademic.wordpress.com/...e-they-killed/

http://icasualties.org/OEF/Nationality.aspx?hndQry=US

Civilian Afghan Casualties Since 2009:

2009:

2009 was again the most lethal year for Afghan civilians in the American-led war since the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001. According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan [[UNAMA), 2,412 civilians were killed by the war in 2009, a jump of 14% over the number that lost their lives in 2008. An additional 3,566 Afghan civilians were wounded as a result of the war in 2009

2010:

2010 was again the deadliest year for Afghan civilians ...
According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan [[UNAMA) and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission [[AIHRC), 2,777 Afghan civilians were killed in the war in 2010, a jump of 15% over the civilian toll in 2009.

2011:

For the whole year of 2011, the United Nations reported that the civilian death toll numbered 3,021, a record high. In addition, 4,507 Afghans were wounded.

2012:

Over the past seven years, the Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly pleaded with the foreign military forces in his country to stop killing so many Afghan civilians in their operations.^[

Barack Obama promised to bring the troops home when campaigning in 2008. Today they fight on, and American, International Forces, and Afghans are still dying.



As Commander In Chief, the responsibility for the killing lands squarely on his shoulders.

In March 2011, Karzai rejected American President Obama's and Gen. David Petraeus' apologies for U.S. helicopter gunners killing 9 Afghan boys ages 7–13 who were collecting firewood. "The apology is not enough," Karzai said. "Civilian casualties produced by the military operations of coalition forces are the cause of tension in relations between Afghanistan and the United States of America. The people of Afghanistan are fed up from these brutal incidents and apologies and condemnation cannot cure their pain."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilia...ies_.282008.29

[Papasito]

JANUARY 2013
Double Pyscho Month:


JAKE EVANS

Evans, who was home schooled, said he argued with his 15-year-old sister, Mallory, that day after she made a racist comment, and he felt his family were becoming people he hated.

'The people who are racists, bullies, and who are full of themselves are the really evil ones. And it amazes me because those three qualities are extremely common today.

'I was very sad because I felt like my own family were becoming the people I hate', he wrote.
After hitting golf balls, running errands with his grandmother and watching television at home, Evans put a knife in his pocket and thought about killing Mallory, according to the statement.

But he decided to kill his mother and younger sister with a gun stolen from his grandfather so they wouldn’t feel pain, he wrote.

'I then spent probably over an hour walking nervously around the house thinking how life will never be the same and how I would never see them again,' he wrote.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2J0JJJUD2

Sounds like the kid was mentally ill and is blaming it on the movie. And for that, I reward him with Psycho of the month of January 2013.

[Papasito]

February 2012

Christopher Dorner

Thousands of officers had been on the hunt for the former Navy reservist since police said he launched a campaign to exact revenge against the Los Angeles Police Department for his firing. They say he threatened to bring "warfare" to officers and their families, spreading fear and setting off a search for him across the Southwest and Mexico

.
http://news.msn.com/us/ex-cop-exchan...th-authorities

Dorner joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 2005, completing police academy training in 2006.^[12]
Dorner was terminated on September 4, 2008, for filing a report concerning the conduct of fellow police officer, Teresa Evans [[now a sergeant), for excessive force, which the police claim is false. Dorner accused Officer Evans of kicking suspect Christopher Gettler in the face while he was handcuffed and lying on the ground. An internal review board concluded that Dorner had falsified his report despite the corroborating statements of the kicking victim and of Gettler's father.
.....
Before embarking on a series of alleged shootings and eluding police, Christopher Dorner was purported to have posted a detailed communication discussing his history, motivations, and plans. KTLA, a Los Angeles television station, published a redacted version of his manifesto. This redacted version elided the names of all parties mentioned in the other version [[including notable media figures), making the document difficult to comprehend. Unredacted versions are viewable as well as an annotated version with acronyms, abbreviations, and terms-of-art.
On February 12, 2013, Christopher Dorner tied up two cleaning maids who had discovered him in a residence located in the 1200 block of Club View Drive south of Big Bear Lake, California, which is close to Snow Summit and Bear Mountain Resort. He then left the place in a stolen vehicle. One of the women managed to get free and alerted the police at 12:20 PM PST.^[16]
At 12:45 PM [[PST), wardens from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife identified Dorner traveling down California State Route 38 near the crossroad of Glass Road, which is east of Angelus Oaks. Dorner responded by firing shots at a marked vehicle. A game warden in that vehicle reportedly returned fire.^{[17][18]
.......}
Dorner was cornered by San Bernardino County deputies in a rural mountainous area northeast of Angelus Oaks. During this time gunfire was exchanged and two deputies were wounded, one fatally. At 4:20 PM [[PST) the cabin [[34°11′12″N 116°54′53″W) at 40612 River Road, Angelus Oaks, where Dorner had taken refuge following a subsequent exchange with officers, was observed to be burning^[19] with ammunition stored inside exploding.

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

[noise]

Next month we can highlight the trigger happy LAPD cops who shot up the ladies delivering the news.