Feuerwaffe Kontrolle
Ten innocents were gunned down today by a crazed madman in Alabama.
A gunman on a terrifying rampage across two southern Alabama counties killed at least nine people Tuesday, including members of his own family and apparent strangers, and burned down his mother’s home before shooting himself at a metals plant, authorities said.
Police were investigating shootings in at least four different locations in several communities, all of which were believed to be the work of a single gunman who had not yet been identified by investigators.
The afternoon of bloodshed began in Kinston, near the Alabama-Florida border, where the shooter burned down his mother’s house, according to the Coffee County coroner, Robert Preachers. Officials located the woman’s body inside the house, but they had not been able to get inside the still-burning house to determine if he shot her first.
The gunman then headed east, into Geneva County, where he shot and killed five people—four adults and a child—at a home in the nearby town of Samson. Then he killed one person each in two other homes. The identities of all the victims were unknown, but Preachers said they included other members of the shooter’s family.
“He started in his mother’s house,” Preachers said. “Then he went to Samson and he killed his granny and granddaddy and aunt and uncle.”
“We don’t know what triggered it,” Preachers added.
The gunman also shot at a state trooper’s car, striking the vehicle seven times and wounding the trooper with broken glass.
He then killed someone at a Samson supply store, and another person at a service station.
When, oh when, are we going to learn the abject stupidity of allowing so many guns in America? When are we going to adopt a more logical, civilized, rational approach to guns? Why don’t we just ban them like they do in Europe, so that this sort of thing can never happen?
At least 10 people have been killed in a shooting at a school in south-west Germany, police say.
A number of people are also thought to have been wounded in the attack at the Albertville school in Winnenden, north of Stuttgart.
Police say the gunman, who was reported to have been wearing black combat gear, has fled into the town.
A major search is underway, and police and rescue workers are at the secondary school.
“We have at least nine dead and numerous injured,” a police spokeswoman said.
The editor of the local paper, Frank Nipkau, told television channel N-TV that eight pupils and two adults were among the dead.
It’s the latest gun control success!
Comments
very interesting Tripper, i also wonder about something, i know this is a site dedicated to “reveal” Moore´s wrong conclusions, but how is it that in such a situation like that, Lee decides to turn his sight at Moore´s statemetent about guns instead of proposing a solution to the problem?; even scarier, should we think Lee aprobes the use and normal distribution of guns, for considering it NOT the reason of so much violence? here´s my point, if you are going to dicredit Moore about something, i´d love that the reason for that is that people here have a much better and certain VIEW AND SOLUTION of problems… i end up replying like Moore: When, oh when, are you (i´m not from u.s.) going to learn the abject stupidity of allowing so many guns in America? When are you going to adopt a more logical, civilized, rational approach to guns?
When, oh when, are you (i´m not from u.s.) going to learn the abject stupidity of allowing so many guns in America? When are you going to adopt a more logical, civilized, rational approach to guns?
When every man, woman, and child in American no longer has to worry about defending their home, country, and government from criminals. That is when I will advocate a harsher limit on guns. As it stands now, we do have strict gun laws. The majority of gun crime is not committed with legally purchased weapons.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/guns.htm has an interesting statistic among those inmates interviewed about the possession of their gun. Note that 80% gained their weapon through means other than a legal supplier. In other words, among criminals, most got their gun by, surprise surprise, illegal means.
http://depression.about.com/b/2008/07/01/half-of-gun-deaths-are-suicides.htm speaks of CDC statistics that over half of all gun deaths are self-inflicted/suicide. So chances are, the gun isn’t entirely relevant in that case as true suicides will always find a means of killing themselves.
Let’s compare the 16,000 or so homicide gun deaths (keep in mind, most of those guns were illegally purchased) with the 16,000 or so drunk driving deaths for the same year. http://www.alcoholalert.com/drunk-driving-statistics-2005.html
How many of those deaths do you think involved alcohol illegally purchased? And yet, which is there a bigger outcry about? Interesting, isn’t it.
abject stupidity of allowing so many guns in America
Spoken like a true liberal who believes the government always knows best. When is the rest of the world going to learn that the Constitution is based on Freedom. The Constitution does not give the people rights, it gives the government rights. It was not meant to limit government, the government was to be considered entirely limited from the start and was to only have the very very few abilities as expressly laid out in the Constitution.
When are you going to adopt a more logical, civilized, rational approach to citizen’s rights?
To be fair, Jim, I don’t think Notic was asking for an actual solution or opinion from you—I think s/he instead merely wanted you to agree with him/her on the stupidity of guns.
On a somewhat-related note, am I the only one who’s noted that when liberals say, “Why can’t you be more open-minded?” they really mean “Why can’t you believe like me?”
When, oh when, are you (i´m not from u.s.) going to learn the abject stupidity of allowing so many guns in America? When are you going to adopt a more logical, civilized, rational approach to guns?
However, the flaw in the question is, I think, that you’re seeing a symptom and trying to act as though that is the problem itself.
That there have been warning signs ignored in many of the shootings is, I think, a problem in how we deal with these situations LONG BEFORE they pick up a gun. Or build a bomb. Or lash out in any other fashion.
I think its worth noting that on Wikipedia’s list of school massacres, two of the top 12 (numbers 11 and 12) both used only knives. One killed 9 and injured 3, the other killed 8 and injured 15. Now, if the responce to a massacre using a gun is “How can you possibly have guns” simply because a massacre used a gun, then the same question should be applied to knives in response to a massacre using a knife. However, I don’t think anyone is asking China or Japan how they can possibly allow knife ownership.
General gun violence is something that I’m personally of the view is tied much more to the stark demographic differences in some areas, such as that in Los Angeles, a large number of the murders have been interracial, and there has been several stories over the last, say, two years, where the focus has been how race-based gangs are trying to purge other racial groups in some areas of Los Angeles, and these areas have significantly higher murder rates than Los Angeles as a whole.
Presuming that removing guns removes the problems is akin to having a broken bone and just taking enough pain killers that you can’t feel the pain and never looking into what the cause is.
Germany banned guns twice—once after WWI and again after WWII. The last ban was lifted in the mid-1950’s. (These were total bans, not just restrictions.) The German government today estimates there are around 20,000,000 ILLEGAL firearms in the country. Other estimates run as high as 40,000,000. That’s one firearm for every other German.
So how can Germany—a country with some of the most strict firearm laws in the world—rid itself of all those ILLEGAL weapons?
I’m sure notic can tell us.
Buzz : So how do you say that the US “rid itself of all those ILLEGAL weapons?” Or is that not really a concern?
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Ah yes, very good, except guns are not banned in Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Weapons_Law#Current_laws
Facts are still scarce in this specific case but one of the reports I read was that the shooter was using a gun which his parents legally owned.
That said, it’s certainly true that there are gun control laws in Germany, (listed in the above link), which clearly this shooter broke, so there can be some legit debate about the gun control differences between Alabama and Germany.
Both cases are tragic however you look at it.