Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

the whole 'he asked them if they were christian, if yes he pulled trigger, what would you say?' thing emerged with columbine but iirc it emerged to have not really happened in that case. Is the info pretty solid this time that the shooter was really quizzing people?

muddled language there-- basically in the columbine case it was debunked

eyewitness report in the Register-Guard article I linked corroborates that version of events

(fwiw)

this is good too - this guy rushed the shooter, was shot five times, and probably saved a bunch of lives

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/02/forget-oregon-s-gunman-remember-the-hero-who-charged-straight-at-him.html

shooter was also a student at a school for emotionally disturbed/spectrum-y kids in so. cal. so yeah - glad he was able to get a lot of guns.

xpost I get so moved by stuff like that. Like how much clear headedness does it take to not curl up in the fetal position & cry & shit your pants

And just like with Newtown, you have this possible mentally disturbed young adult with easy access to a whole bunch of guns -- this one had three handguns and a rifle on him -- and I just cannot figure out why these families honestly think they needed all these weapons. Because at this point, they've only ever been used for three things: 1) Sitting in a case 2) Target shooting/practice and 3) Killing a bunch of people.

The increasing frequency of #3 means #1 and #2 simply aren't good enough reasons to allow people to own these things anymore. Ban them all. Collect them up, destroy them, deploy all the drug war shit against ending firearm trafficking.

xpost That's amazing, I'm always impressed by guys out of the service, or off-duty, who still step up to protect other people. Like the guys on the train in Belgium, too. I don't know if going into battle makes you a hero, but this kind of intervention sure does. Where's the button to donate to him?

It takes quite a bit of clear headedness, VG, but your two best choices are also the most commonly taken; you either get scarce (run or hide), or else try to negate the source of the danger. If all our ancestors had instinctively curled into a fetal position, we would not be here.

xp there's a gofundme for him.

wtf I remember from my church days about that being pretty shameful in the eyes of god, denying your faith, but if I'd already seen this guy take out a couple of fellow students I'd become faithless as quickly as possible.

In my Hebrew school we were taught pretty clearly that life is the highest value, and if somebody had a gun on you and said "eat this bacon and swear fealty to Jesus or I'll kill you," you eat the bacon and you kneel before Jesus, period.

the whole 'he asked them if they were christian, if yes he pulled trigger, what would you say?' thing emerged with columbine but iirc it emerged to have not really happened in that case. Is the info pretty solid this time that the shooter was really quizzing people?

― banned on ixlor (Jon not Jon),

Dave Cullen's book is definitive imo

read an underground comic when i was a kid about about a boy bullied and asked to deny his faith and finally the bullies just beat him to death and on the sidewalk before he dies he writes in his own blood: i am a christian.

i never forgot that one. i want to say it was a howard cruse comic? but i can't remember.

sounds more like Jack Chick. was Cruse a Christian? that would be... weird

Justin Green maybe?

Kinda hoping it was one of those Christian "Archie" comics, where "bullies" = Moose and Big Ethel, and "a boy" = Reggie.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-hanlin-sandy-hook-truther

roseburg sheriff used to push the sandy hook truther shit that the grieving parents were "crisis actors" employed as a false flag by the federal govt

yep, just saw that. also this:

http://registerguard.com/rg/news/local/33569939-75/shooter-took-six-guns-to-umpqua-community-college-had-seven-more-at-home-officials-say.html.csp

The Umpqua Community College shooter had a total of 14 guns, officials said Friday, including six that he took the college and seven that officials found at his home.

All were purchased legally either by the shooter or his family members, officials said.

In my Hebrew school we were taught pretty clearly that life is the highest value, and if somebody had a gun on you and said "eat this bacon and swear fealty to Jesus or I'll kill you," you eat the bacon and you kneel before Jesus, period.

this is not precisely true. yes to eating bacon but kneeling before Jesus is questionable, depending on whether worshiping Jesus is actually idol worship (and most historical halachic scholars have concluded it is)

nah, it wasn't a christian comic. something i ordered from rip off press with my paper route money when i was a kid. slow death comix or something.

xp people forget that Ruben actually beat jesus in the finale

the bullies just beat him to death and on the sidewalk before he dies he writes in his own blood: i am a christian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB1DIoL8LiM

Kirk Franklin gettin lazy

man the whole "we need to fix our mental health system" is such a red herring, isn't it? it allows people to sound like they are concerned and want to fix something, without actually being concerned or having any real interest in fixing anything.

no "mental health system," short of some sort of totalitarian minority report scenario, is going to somehow weed out anyone who may potentially pose a threat to others. not everybody who is crazy ends up on the mental-health radar. they may simply be wigging out in private, or their relatives protect/enable them, or whatever.

i'm sure there are tons of ways we could improve mental health care in this country, just as there are a million ways we could improve health care in this country full stop. but as answer to gun deaths, this is a red herring (particularly because, outside of the media spectacles that are made of things like the oregon shooting, most gun deaths are caused by loved ones, accidents--- much more "mundane," though no less horrific, events.)

wtf I remember from my church days about that being pretty shameful in the eyes of god, denying your faith

peter got away with it iirc

It totally is. The same people talking about mental health being the real issue are the same people that say suicide is "for the weak" and talk about SSRIs as "mind control" pills.

Xpost yea but Yvonne Elliman gave him the business afterwards

this is not precisely true. yes to eating bacon but kneeling before Jesus is questionable

Huh, that's interesting, this came up in the context of talking about ancient martyrs, and our teachers explicitly told us "that was OK in ancient times but if it happened now you save your own life." From our various discussions I am starting to understand that for an orthodox shul my talmud torah was pretty lax and liberal.

I love(?) seeing all the "Obama is evil for politicizing this tragedy" people on Facebook politicizing the shit out of it as soon as they heard about the Christian-targeting.

man the whole "we need to fix our mental health system" is such a red herring, isn't it? it allows people to sound like they are concerned and want to fix something, without actually being concerned or having any real interest in fixing anything.

Amen to this, as someone who both takes antidepressants and receives outpatient mental health care I am very, very tired of being scapegoated for this. Not only are very truly mentally people violent or a threat to anyone other than themselves, very few violent crimes are committed by the mentally ill.

I found this article, reposted on Raw Story from Newsweek, very instructive:

“If we were able to magically cure schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression, that would be wonderful, but overall violence would go down by only about four percent,” Dr. Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke, told ProPublica last year. He notes a 2001 study of mass shooters that found three out of four had no psychiatric history.

Efforts aimed at keeping the mentally ill from guns have done little to lower the overall crime rate. In 2001, Connecticut added patients who had been involuntarily committed to mental institutions to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The result? Violent crime among those persons dropped by over 50 percent, but since they constitute such a small percentage of the criminal population only 14 violent crimes were prevented—not 14 mass shootings, just 14 violent crimes. That’s good as far as it goes, but Swanson notes: “It's like if you had a vaccine that was going to work against a particular public health epidemic, but only seven percent of the people got the vaccine. It might work great for them, but it's not going to affect the epidemic.”

A better approach, says Swanson, is taking guns out of the hands of those who have demonstrable violent behaviors instead of the very high bar of having been committed.

At this point it's just shouted as a reflexive deflection by 2nd Amendment purists who know deep inside that they are on the wrong side of this issue.

hey immigration opponents and TTIP supporters and Import/Export Bank proponents and stadium builders and anti-abortionists, i really don't think "more government" is the answer yall

We can also thank Saint Reagan for destroying the mental health infrastructure in the 80s

^^^

all this shooting going on and Obama must have been feeling left out! God bless our guns!

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/03/asia/afghanistan-doctors-without-borders-hospital/

otm. violence is in the culture from top to bottom

Phil D otm

Meanwhile...

The deadliest mass killing in the state’s history had taken place a few miles away and to the staff and customers of the Roseburg Gun Shop it was clear they faced a grave threat – from Barack Obama.

Authorities had just discovered a cache of 13 weapons possessed by the shooter, Chris Harper Mercer, but the man they feared was thousands of miles away in the White House, plotting, as they saw it, to confiscate their weapons and leave them defenceless.

“I’ve just ordered some more ARs,” said the owner, Candi Kinney, referring to assault rifles. “There’s always a rush on them after a big shooting. We can’t keep the stuff on the shelves.”

A lifesize cardboard cutout of the president with an Arab keffiyeh scarf stood at the door with a mocking sign: “Gun salesman of the year.”

you might think that after the 100th massacre that didn't lead to a fascist crackdown on gun owners by barack obama, they'd think it was safe. but that's just what barack obama WANTS you to think

yeah the rest of the country that doesn't live in an economically depressed exurb belt has had enough of being ruled by the sick fantasies of former jiffy lube mechanics on disability who live in places with the population density of an autonomous okrug. I really think we've finally hit a tipping point.

i had to google okrug.

Obama & Pentagon go on spree shooting at Afghanistan DWB hospital

which is why i don't care when the motherfucker cries

otm

Jesus crust

Just got an email from my school that ATF are watching an unspecified threat made online against "a school near Philadelphia" for tomorrow. More than a little freaked out tbh

Four students arrested in California for a shooing plot.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/4-students-arrested-for-calif-school-shooting-plot/ar-AAf5xJk

i think self absorption is as big of a factor as gun access with these shooting. of course people will lash out in antisocial ways when they care about no one but themselves and feel the world has slighted them

not a productive observation, maybe, as you can't control for that on a macro scale, but self-centeredness seems as relevant here as the more nebulous term "mental health." these people need to volunteer at a soup kitchen or something

The guy in Oregon seems to have a support system, I'd say...