Breaking News: Shooting at South Carolina Historic Church - Multiple Victims

BBC

A shooting has been reported at a historic black church in Charleston in the US state of South Carolina, with multiple casualties feared.

US media said the incident happened on Thursday evening at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Charleston police later tweeted that they were searching for a white male suspect in his 20s after the shooting at 110 Calhoun Street.

A meeting was going on at the time of the shooting at about 21:00 local time (01:00 GMT Thursday), US media say.

In a tweet, Charleston police wrote: "Suspect in shooting on Calhoun St is a w/m approx 21 slender small build wearing a grey sweat shirt blue jeans timberland boots clean shaven."

A man was later seen being led away by police officers, but it was unclear whether he was the suspected gunman.

"I will say that this is an unspeakable and heartbreaking tragedy in this most historic church," Charleston Mayor Joe Riley was quoted as saying by the Post and Courier newspaper.

How much bullshit are alleged DGUs anyway?

In this case, the DGU that turned out to be false, when someone in Doylestown claimed that the Souderton mass shooter, Bradley Stone, had tried to carjack him.  Instead of making himself a hero, this claim diverted police attention and resources from the manhunt.

"We contend that he performed an enormous hoax that cost taxpayers a lot of money," Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler said at a news conference Friday night. "This is terrible conduct. This is unacceptable conduct."

However  the police officers were suspicious about the claim, according to Heckler.

And well the officers should have been suspicious since the two locations are about 13 miles apart.  Mapquest says it would take about a half hour to drive this, which is probably optimistic given the stop lights and traffic.

Of course, the pro-gun side is happy to look at these incidents as proof that ""guns save lives" when the reality here was that it wasted police resources.

I have to admit curiosity as to how many DGUs are actually verifiable incidents: especially now that the Get Away With Murder laws have stopped any inquiry as to the actual events when someone claims "self-defence".  Short of a major amount of evidence to the contrary, the claim of self-defence stands.  In fact, even with evidence to the contrary, the claim can pass (e.g., Trayvon Martin).

Breaking, it seems that Bath Township detectives believe they have “overwhelming evidence” to prove a former Navy SEAL, Chris Heben, lied when he claimed he was shot during an altercation with three black men outside of a popular shopping center.

"We have overwhelming evidence based upon video, cell phone records and interviews that the shooting did not occur in the West Market Plaza and that Mr. Heben made false allegations to us," said Bath Township Police Chief Mike McNeely.

George Zimmerman recently pointed out that you should have insurance if you are going to go around shooting people due to the legal costs.

Nothing I haven't been telling you, but you all know the law better than I do.

Yeah. right.

See also:

• Bucks man accused of carjacking hoax during manhunt for Bradley Stone
• Manhunt for Shooting Spree Suspect Bradley Stone Intensifies in 2nd Day | NBC 10 Philadelphia
• Bath Twp. Police: Former Navy SEAL Chris Heben lied about getting shot at West Market Plaza - newsnet5.com Cleveland

Who's winning the hearts and minds in the gun responsibility debate?

Second Amendment supporters:

The "armed intelligentsia" at work.

Gun responsibility supporters:

And if it's true that Jared Loughner was openly carrying for at least 15 minutes prior to the Tucson mass shooting, then people carrying guns might not be a good idea.


When the "gun rights" crowd can't pull their sock puppetry, it's pretty obvious the movement is a flop.

Remember?

Operation American Spring falls flat: ‘This is very disappointing,’ Texan says

And if that source says it was a flop, it was a serious flop.

Kroger likes to think of themselves as apolitical. They need to realise that a prohibition on open carry isn't a political statement, rather it is in the best interests of customer safety.

More here:

• www.local12.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/gunpolicy-protest-outside-kroger-shareholder-meeting-19893.shtml
• www.wlwt.com/news/group-against-open-carry-in-kroger-to-take-concerns-to-investors/29401128

Maybe it's because of all the baseball bats...

The only things getting assaulted were baseballs, and the only things stolen was bases.

OK, assume this is correct.  How does this effect the "shootings happen in gun free zones?"

Conversely, it has been said that Jared Loughner openly carried his weapon for at least 15 minutes prior to when he went on his rampage in the parking lot in Tucson.

Why should people be forced to decide who is a "good guy with a gun" and who is a potential threat?

Poe's Law in action

Poe's Law concerns internet debates, particularly regarding religion or politics.

"Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."

In other words, No matter how bizzare, outrageous, or just plain idiotic a parody of a Fundamentalist may seem, there will always be someone who cannot tell that it is a parody, having seen similar REAL ideas from real religious/political Fundamentalists.

Keep up the good work! This is better than anything Ladd Everett can come up with!

Washington School Shooting - 2 Dead - 5 Wounded, 3 Critical

local news

Not good

The first step in dealing with a problem is admitting you have a problem.

Florida Man Kills Six Grandchildren and Daughter in Murder-Suicide

Don C. Spirit

The Guardian

A grandfather shot and killed his daughter and six grandchildren at his Florida home on Thursday before turning his gun on himself, law enforcement officials in Florida said.

The children’s ages ranged from three months to 10 years, Gilchrist County sheriff Robert Schultz said at a press conference in Bell, a small town in central Florida about 30 miles west of Gainesville.
Schultz named the killer as Don C Spirit, 51, a town resident who called 911 at about 4pm making threats against his family and himself. He was alive when the first sheriff’s deputy arrived at the house, Schultz said, but killed himself soon after.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that in 2001 a man named Don C Spirit accidentally shot and killed his eight-year-old son Kyle with a high powered rifle in a hunting accident. Florida Department of Corrections records show he was released from jail in 2006 after serving three years for firearms offences relating to that incident.

Not even they know

I guess Joe Public needs to wait until the shooting starts to figure out if the person carrying a gun is really a good guy or a bad guy.

Which gets us back to the question:

If the shooter ends the spree by killing himself, does that make him a good guy with a gun since good guys with guns stop shooters?

Mass shootings, as American as apple pie?

You would hate to think that mass shootings are incredibly common in the US.  After all, it seems that only the biggies seem to make it to the press these days since the topic is beginning to seem like an Onion Article: "we'll only cover them if 20 people, make that 30 people, no 50 people died".

I thought there actually was a definition of this term, but there doesn't seem to be:

Broadly speaking, the term refers to an incident involving multiple victims of gun violence. But there is no official set of criteria or definition for a mass shooting, according to criminology experts and FBI officials who have spoken with Mother Jones.

Generally, there are three terms you'll see to describe a perpetrator of this type of gun violence: mass murderer, spree killer, or serial killer. An FBI crime classification report from 2005 identifies an individual as a mass murderer if he kills four or more people in a single incident (not including himself), typically in a single location. (The baseline of four fatalities is key) Source

That may be why there is a "mass shooting" where 12 people are shot, but they don't die.  It doesn't really make the news either.

If we are going to come up with a number, there is this site which comes up the the number 200 for the period from 1 Jan 2014 to 17 Aug 2014.  I'm sure that number will be questioned, but it is a lot.

Part of the issue with the open carry movement is how much does it prevent or promote the occurrence of mass shooting in the US?  Actually, we can say that for either open or concealed carry since the big argument for more permissive carrying of weapons is that they somehow stop crime.

On the other hand, if it ends up enabling mass shootings, is it such a great idea?  And let's face it: there is a lot of gun violence in the US.

One thing I've been see a lot in the comments on Kroger's facebook page are the pro-gunners saying that a business could be sued if it is a gun free zone and there is a mass shooting.  Their claim is that the business is liable if an armed civilian could have stopped the shooting.

But, the whole matter hinges on how foreseeable the event would be.  As U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson said in regard to the litigation around the Aurora Cinema shooting "I reiterate that this court is in no way holding as a matter of law that Cinemark should have known of the danger of someone entering one of its theaters through the back door and randomly shooting innocent patrons."

Wouldn't the issue be if the business made it easier for a mass shooting to happen by allowing the instrument of destruction onto their property If the matter hinges on foreseeability?  In other words, if a business allows a person to bring a weapon of war onto their property and a mass shooting happens because of that--it would then be liable for what happened.

Likewise, one would have to be able prove that an armed civilian would have actually stopped the event, which hinges on both the foreseeability that an armed civilian would have actually been present and the actual ability of armed civilians from stopping mass shootings in the past.

Given situations such as the Columbine Shooting where the shooters engaged an armed Jefferson County Sheriff's deputy and other mass shooting incidents where armed citizens were present, yet did nothing to stop the incident (e.g., the shooting in Tucson where Gabby Giffords was shot).  There seems to be a significant evidence problem in proving that an armed civilian would stop anything: even if they were present.

There have never been any school shootings in the US.

They have been over 100,000 gun violence incidents since Sandy Hook of which between 7 and 74 were at or near schools.

But, from what I understand, for a "school shooting" to occur:

1. The shooter needs to be a student
2. The shooting needs to be within the school
3. The shooter intended to kill students in the school
4. The shooting needs to happen during school hours
5. The shooting cannot be related to extracurricular reasons

Wow, that knocks out a lot of shootings.

In fact, using this criteria we can not only knock off a few victims from the toll, such as Rachel Scott who was shot outside the school at Columbine. We can also get rid of a few school shootings!

For example, the 1999 Jonesboro, Arkansas shootings occured OUTSIDE the school!

Even better, Adam Lanza WASN'T A STUDENT!  Even better, we can knock out a few of the victims are not students. This criteria confirms what gun nuts have been saying all along--The Sandy Hooks shootings weren't school shootings, but it was a mass shooting.

Now, if people want to look like dicks, then they have to admit this is the case and they can knock that one off the books.

The real confusion is whether a school shooting is a mass shooting or not.

Some people only want the mass shootings which happen in schools to be considered "school shootings".  That is the fallacy which Politifact falls into in their piece:

For many people, this is the first thing that comes to mind when they hear the phrase "school shooting" -- an incident such as Sandy Hook or, before it, the 1999 Columbine shooting in Colorado that left 15 dead, including the shooters.

But, the people who want to dispute these numbers want to limit the amount of School Shootings to a number which is somehow "acceptable" rather than address the issue that gun violence is far too pervasive in US culture.

On the other hand, The Daily Beast came up with the number 68:

We keep a tally of school shootings at The Daily Beast, too, using a slightly different methodology. We include only shootings that occur on school campuses while students are present. We count shootings that result in no fatalities as well as those where the only victim was a shooter who committed suicide.

We published a report last year using our data to show just what a school shooting looks like, noting specifically: “These events aren’t necessarily the types of tragedies that come to mind when one thinks of “school shootings”—madmen in fatigues roaming school hallways, strapped with automatic-style guns, murdering indiscriminately—nor do they receive the media attention of such mass shootings. But they can be similarly traumatizing for students and staff, and they have led to at least 24 injuries and 17 deaths over the past year.”

The following day, another school shooting at Arapahoe High School added to our tally. As of today, we count 68 school shootings, with 28 dead, and 66 injured.

Oliver Burkeman gets to the point in his post at the Guardian:

(If you think this kind of absurdity is confined to the fringe, see this only slightly less mendacious CNN piece (and Politifact), which brings the figure down from 74 to 15 by excluding, among others, shootings motivated by "personal arguments, accidents [or] alleged gang activities and drug deals". Johnson says the cable channel stole his work.)

What’s especially dispiriting about this flat denial of reality is how little prospect it offers for rational discussion or compromise. Even if you're a supporter of gun control, you can still hold a reasoned discussion with somebody who believes that the benefits of widespread firearms ownership outweigh the harms. You can discuss international comparisons; and how no comparable country experiences anything like this level of gun violence; the other person can seek to establish why those comparisons aren't relevant; or that, yes, violent deaths are actually in decline in the US, and so on. But when the pro-gun side of the argument consists of simply insisting that the gun violence that people are so distraught about isn't real gun violence? Then there's no clear way forward at all.

And let’s not forget the bigger point here. A pro-gun journalist applies the most stringent imaginable criteria to the term 'school shooting'; he rejects every instance he possibly can, for reasons many might regard as spurious, and then triumphantly declares that there have only been … seven bona fide school shootings in America since December 2012!

Only seven school shootings since December 2012.

I hope I never to get to the point at which the word "only" in that sentence makes even the slightest bit of sense.

As I said we can knock the numbers down even further if we want to say there have never been any school shootings in the US.  That should appeal to the people who do nothing to stop the plague of US gun violence.

So, do we want to split hairs or try to come up with a solution to a real problem is the real issue here.What is important is that people died. What category some people choose to put a specific shooting is irrelevant to our mission. Our mission is to stop future shooting, no matter what the location or circumstance.

How many Mass Shootings REALLY HAPPEN in the US?

Let's use the FBI definition=four killed [or wounded] not including the shooter.

That means that incidents like this are mass shootings, but they never make the news:

Tuscaloosa shooting at Copper Top bar leaves 17 wounded

 Seventeen people were transported to DCH Regional Medical Center and five were admitted for their injuries, DCH spokesman Brad Fisher said at 9:10 a.m. Two are in the ICU, with one in critical condition and one in serious condition. Three others are in regular care and are listed in fair condition. Twelve victims have been treated and released.

 How long will it take before people realise that firearms are a problem in the US?

BTW, here are the latest verified GV stats:


Anybody keeping track of the mass shootings?

Please explain to me: If mass shootings only happen in gun free zones...

why have there been at least two mass shootings and a lockdown at a University in Kennesaw,

Georgia?

Come on, you know Kennesaw, GA--it's the Melanie Hain of US cities for gun loons since all citizens are required to own guns.

And, like Meleanie--it hasn't made anyone safer.

On 12 January 2010, Three people were killed and two others critically injured in a workplace shooting at the Penske truck rental business located near the city of Kennesaw, Georgia.

Another mass shooting happened today at a Fedex facility with one person rushed into surgery for serious injuries and five others with less critical injuries.  I guess this will only be a blip on the radar despite the fact that the shooter was described as having an assault-style rifle, knife and bullets strapped across his chest "like Rambo".

It also seems that Kennesaw State University has a campus lockdown last month.

While people such as Glenn Harland Reynolds have pointed to Kennesaw's law as having a significant effect on crime, the actual data shows that any change in crime was insignificant .  Kennesaw's law was purely symbolic and was never enforced so is unlikely to have had any effect on gun ownership in Kennesaw.

Of course, if we listen to the "pro-gun" side, we should want to see more people carrying weapons and not have the police pay any attention to them until after they have killed someone.

They are good guys with guns until they start killing people.

In the case of the Fedex mass shooter, he actually was a good guy with a gun since he ended up killing himself.

Texting during a mass shooting

You should be proud at the level of carnage in the US since that it how your "Second Amendment Right" is expressed (mine would be that you all get to do drill and spend time on a military base).  Anyway, someone said the number of school shootings is around 35, but that is only what gets reported in the news.

BTW, I know people text their families and friends during active shooter incidents, but that as this points out--that doesn't fit your idea of how these incidents go down.

What Was the Motive Behind Paul Anthony Ciancia's Actions at LAX?

According to KTLA, in the days leading up to Friday’s LAX shooting, Ciancia sent a series of “angry, rambling” text messages to family members, including one to Ciancia’s younger brother that made Ciancia’s father think his son was suicidal. 

“Their younger child got a text message from Paul stating that there were some comments in there about his well-being and he wanted to possibly take his own life,” Chief Allen Cummings told reporters. Ciancia was apparently disgruntled about the Transportation Security Administration, saying in a note that they had violated his constitutional rights. He apparently referred to himself as a “pissed-off patriot.” 

According to HLNTV, Ciancia had material on him that expressed anti-government and anti-TSA sentiment. He also may have been a believer in The New World Order, generally considered a conspiracy theory in which a group of elites are thought to be forming a one-world government.

I blame Orlin Sellers and all the other arm-chair government haters who spout their poison continually which every once in a while motivates some deranged young man to act.

2 Dogs killed in latest US mass shooting

Come on people, if you are so heartless that 20 little kids getting pureed by a person with an assault rifle that you realise the US has a gun problem, maybe nothing else will get you upset.

Except there was a mass shooting in Phoenix, forget about the human victims since they are human and human life in the US is pretty valueless in the US.

TWO DOGS WERE FOUND SHOT DEAD!

I don't know about you, but I think it is disturbing that US mass shooters have now moved on to killing dogs.

You lot can't be that heartless and selfish, or could you?

The Sparks Shooting and How Americans are Used to Gun Violence

 Everybody else gets it. Even the official US gets it with VOA posting something called Experts: Gun Violence Is Public Health Crisis in US. Yet, there are lots of people who are in denial that there is a problem and that the current course of action is the wrong one (so, where the evidence of those 3 million DGUs the gunloons keep talking about?).

Unfortunately, the US has a serious case of denial.  It is a nation that has a gun addiction.  The gun lobby enables the addiction because it means more money for them: screw the cost to society.

Anyway, people stage an intervention when someone has a serious problem and they are in denial.  It's time for the US to have a serious intervention with its gun addiction.

Either that, or the US hits rock bottom, which I hate to think about since 20 six year olds aren't enough to get people to show some compassion.

The mass shooting template

Let's face it mass shootings have become so commonplace in the US that they don't get much coverage unless it is something seriously horrific or shocking.  In fact, I've has my suspicions confirmed that the numbers have been twiddled since there are so many of them:

The FBI defined mass murder to distinguish it from serial murder. That definition provides the basis for the unofficial definition of mass shooting that has gained use in recent years. Mother Jones explained the definition in an extensive "Guide to Mass Shootings in America," writing that mass shootings typically involve a single episode in a single location, usually a public place. The Mother Jones definition of mass shooting matches the FBI definition of mass murder in that it includes single incidents that kill at least four victims.
Over on Reddit, the Guns Are Cool community has compiled a list of every mass shooting in the United States this year. The moderators of the subreddit, which doesn't actually appear to be of the belief that guns are cool, use an expanded definition of mass shooting, listing every event in which "four or more people [including the shooter] are shot in a spree." Under the Reddit definition, a shooting spree that wounds at least four people, but doesn't kill them, is still a mass shooting.
Including Monday's mass shooting, the Reddit list for 2013 is nearing 250 incidents. That's an average of one mass shooting almost every day.
With so many mass shootings, even those that fit the frequently used definition rarely prompt a presidential response. Perhaps it's not surprising that many of the violent acts cataloged by Reddit escape national attention.

Let's just make it easy for ourselves, and use this template from now on.

If the above doens't work for you, there's always this one:

Active Shooter Incident and Carrying a gun

This is a picture from the Naval Yard shooting:  note the people with their hands up.

The active shooter protocol:  Police response and you:

•  Police will quickly respond to the area in which shots were last heard and attempt to immediately engage/contain the active shooter
•   First arriving officers will not stop to assist the injured, or evacuate personnel
•   Remain calm
•   Do exactly as police tell you
•   Keep your hands empty and visible at all times
•   If you know where the shooter is, quickly tell the officers
•   DO NOT get in the way of officers

Note:  "Keep your hands empty and visible at all times"

Now what would happen if some idiot is wandering around with a weapon who wasn't part of the Law Enforcement effort?

Meet Aaron Alexis - Washington Navy Yard Shooter

Huffington Post

Aaron Alexis has been identified by police as the dead Washington Navy Yard shooter, NBC News reports.

Alexis, 34, originally of Fort Worth, Texas, recently began working at the Navy yard as a civilian contractor, the station reported. The FBI confirmed his identity in the afternoon.

Alexis was armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, two law enforcement officials tell the Washington Post. One of the sources said he also had a shotgun. All the weapons have reportedly been accounted for. His aunt, Helen Weeks, told the paper that he grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. with his mother, Sarah, and father, Anthony.

At least 13 people were killed -- including Alexis -- and more were wounded at the Naval Sea Systems Command Headquarters building after at least one gunman opened fire after 8:20 a.m. Monday, a Defense Department official said.

UPDATE: At a 10 p.m. Eastern press conference on Monday, Police Chief Cathy Lanier said that law enforcement has "the single and sole person responsible" for the shooting in custody, dispelling rumors that a second suspect is still at large.