A gunman dressed in military gear killed 16 people Wednesday in a shooting spree in Germany before he was shot dead by police, police spokesman Rainer Kloeller told CNN.
Tim Kretschmer, 17, began his rampage at a school where he used to be a student in Winnenden, a small town about 20 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of Stuttgart.
Three teachers and 10 students were killed at the Albertville-Realschule Winnenden school in the shooting, which began around 9:45 a.m.
One thing that immediately comes to mind is these incidents aren't limited to the United States. In fact, we've discussed shootings before which took place in Europe. In all these cases I get the impression the disturbed young men in Finland and Germany are influenced by America, by the films, by the news, by the culture. What do you think? Does that make sense to you?
Unlike many of these reports, this article mentioned the provenance of the gun.
Police raided his parents' home later and found they had a collection of of 14 guns.
The pistol used in the killing was part of the father's collection, authorities said. The guns were legally owner by the father who is a member of a gun club. German gun laws are fairly restrictive and require owners to control access to them. Do you think the gun control issue is taken seriously enough?
I suppose this is more or less what happened in Germany this morning. The 17-year-old psycho took a gun from his dad's collection. He then proceeds to kill a bunch of people. Does the dad bear some of the responsibility for this bloody mess? Do gun owners in general? I say yes to both propositions.
What's your opinion? What conclusions can be drawn from the fact that incidents like this happen also in Europe?
Please feel free to leave a comment.
"What's your opinion? What conclusions can be drawn from the fact that incidents like this happen also in Europe? "
ReplyDelete#1 There are murderous crazies in Europe and America.
#2. More proof that gun control doesn't work. Germany has incredibly strict gun laws and they still didn't prevent this from happening.
The number of guns the father has is entirely irrelevant to the story. Whether he owned 1 or 100 doesn't matter. The son took one from his father, broke a whole bunch of laws, and killed 16 people.
I don't blame the dad for his kid taking his gun and committing crimes. Why? The same reason I don't blame the parents if some kid without a license takes their parents car and ends up killing someone.
ReplyDeleteThis "kid" is 17 years old. He's responsible for his actions.
In all these cases I get the impression the disturbed young men in Finland and Germany are influenced by America, by the films, by the news, by the culture.
ReplyDeleteof course they are. so's everybody else in Europe, too.
somewhere in an as yet uncontacted native village in the very depths of the Amazon jungle you might perhaps find one or two senile old fogies who haven't yet been influenced by the USA, but not anywhere in Europe. disturbed or not has nothing to do with it; satellite TV has much to do with it.
I just watched some very complete coverage of this on Al Jazeera....
ReplyDeleteI think a significant point is that this is the first time this has happened in Germany in 7 years.
Think about it.
You and others here have raised the influence of American culture as a factor here, but in spite of it, the incidence of this kind of violence is still a real anomalie.
So far, there has been no motive or statement left by the kid as to what inspired this act, but he seems to fit a pattern.
Aside from that, Mike, are you concerned about the imminent attempt by the Italian government to register bloggers?
I find this highly disturbing living here in this country ruled by Berlusconi's only friend....
Aside from that, Mike, are you concerned about the imminent attempt by the Italian government to register bloggers?
ReplyDelete...well, hell, they register guns don't they?...
Mike W., You're absolutely right the number of guns doesn't matter. If the dad had 1 gun or 100 guns, if wouldn't have made any difference.
ReplyDeleteBut, how about if he'd had no guns? Do you think that might have made a difference?
I've heard all that business about how a killer will always get a gun if he really wants one, but I also realize that many of these killers are just messed-up people who are using weapons of opportunity, so to speak.
So when you consider the difference between having 0 guns and 100 guns in the home, I say the dad has to take some of the responsibility. And further, if he damaged the kid in any way, if he raised him badly, that responsibility goes way up.
Micro, I haven't heard much about that lately. Is it imminent?
ReplyDeleteNomen, Do they register guns in Italy?
But Mike,
ReplyDeleteBut, how about if he'd had no guns? Do you think that might have made a difference?
I didn't think you for banning guns, just "reasonable restrictions".
Sure sounds like you are focusing on a gun ban, doesn't it?
Jesus, Mike, as if Bob hadn't kicked your ass hard enugh.
ReplyDeleteGame, Set, Match X2!
'Bout time to give it up, Maybe?
Sin abounds. Scholars have since found that Margaret mead was wrong to conclude that native peoples of Samoa were free of the usual criminal and immoral tendencies of modern society --she didn't know their language and much was lost in translation. In fact, later scholars found that Samoans were just as selfish, adulterous, jealous, and vengeful and murderous as any other group.
ReplyDeleteHOWEVER, no question that TV and movies and pop culture influence youth and give them ideas they might not otherwise conceive.
How big is Germany compared to various states in America? Do we not have any states of size similar to Germany where such crime has not occured for 7 years? Has Indiana had any mass shootings of this type?
Are there some cultures wherein the people are emotionally volatile and less self-controlled than those of other cultures? Where shouting and erratic, impulsive behavior are modeled daily? intergenerationally? Such that they act on emotion without thinking of ethics or consequences as a pattern of human behavior? such that, when forming the neighborhoods of America's urban areas, they experience and perpetrate more crime than in other more "buttoned-down" repressed peoples? (Repression being a positive thing, in this respect.) Are some groups of people more prone to mass hysteria --and looting and impulsive violence, e.g. ---than other groups, causing their nations' stats to be higher in this sort of antisocial behavior?
Parents should lock up their guns, period, and bear blame if they don't, but kids can get around parents. The kid is the one at fault --and maybe his parents did a poor job in his childhood --or not. Sins of parents ARE passed on to following generations, but sin isn't always the fault of the parent. We are all responsible for our own actions.
Adolescents are volatile and parents should always safeguard against the worst possibilities.
Actually my comment about what if he'd had no guns does not indicate that I really want to ban guns. It has to do with the responsibility gun owners have in general and this German gun owner in particular for situations like this. That's what we're talking about here, the responsibility. As you love to continually point out, I haven't proposed a solution.
ReplyDeleteSo Mike, if a 13 year old kid took his dad's car without permission and ended up killing someone would you blame the dad for failing to secure his car keys?
ReplyDelete"Actually my comment about what if he'd had no guns does not indicate that I really want to ban guns."
Bullshit Mike. You said if he had no guns this wouldn't have happened. Your "solution" it to limit gun avaliability, yet here just ONE gun was all the killer needed. What number comes before 1Mike?
Mike,
ReplyDeleteIf a kid steals medicine from a pharmacy, is the pharmacist responsible?
If the kid steals a knife from the kitchen, is the mom/dad responsible?
How about if the kid steals his sister's car, is she responsible?
I've heard all that business about how a killer will always get a gun if he really wants one, but I also realize that many of these killers are just messed-up people who are using weapons of opportunity, so to speak.
If there are no firearms, will the killer use something else? Probably.
There were murders long before firearms were invented. There are plenty of murders without people using firearms, right Mike?
What law, what storage requirement, what level of protection can be put in place to stop people from taking things that don't belong to them and using them in crimes Mike?
Bob said, "If there are no firearms, will the killer use something else? Probably."
ReplyDeleteYou sound like me, now, or like the me you keep accusing me of being.
Aren't you just going on your feelings there? Your feelings, don't forget, are forged in the crucible of personal responsibility. That's the place where everyone is responsibility and knows what they're doing. Bob, that's not the world I live in. In mine, most people, especially the ones who commit crimes, are all mixed up. You keep talking like these are all cold-blooded hit men who are determined to get the job done. Yes, that type will use a baseball bat to do the job, but I say the majority aren't like that.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteAren't you just going on your feelings there?
No, I'm going on statistical evidence, interviews with criminals and common sense!
England has had strict gun control laws for decades.....to reduce the violence. Guess what? It hasn't, people have moved on to the next most lethal weapon they can find. Knives.
Now the big push is "knife control". Even to the point where they want to start registering kitchen knives.
Your feelings, don't forget, are forged in the crucible of personal responsibility. That's the place where everyone is responsibility and knows what they're doing. Bob, that's not the world I live in.
Mike, you don't live in Never Land, you don't live in the land of "Chutes and Ladders". You live in the same land as I do.
The problem is you want to coddle the criminals and not hold them responsible for their actions.
In mine, most people, especially the ones who commit crimes, are all mixed up
Mike, we are all are mixed up. Some of us control it better, hide it better, deal with it better. It really is that simple. Ask a psychologist,
What torques me Mike is how you insult the people with serious problems that don't commit crimes. You excuse the criminal actions of "addicts" as they aren't in control of themselves but there are millions of addicts that don't rob, steal or murder. How is it those people are in control of themselves but the criminals aren't?
To excuse people as not being culpable for their actions because they were abused as children, diminishes the millions of people abused as child who go on to live product, useful, NON-CRIMINAL lives.
How dare you insult the millions of people who have triumphed over their "problems". We all have problems Mike, but to use that as an excuse is complete and utter horseshit.
You keep talking like these are all cold-blooded hit men who are determined to get the job done.
No, Mike I don't. I talk like these are people who are capable of determining the consequences of a decision, making a decision, following through with a decision and knowing if that decision was right or wrong.
That is what I'm talking about.
Yes, that type will use a baseball bat to do the job, but I say the majority aren't like that.
YOU SAY You say because you don't research anything, you don't see anything but what fits your narrow world view.
There are 9 NON-FIREARM crimes for every violent firearm related crime.
So tell me again how people won't use what is available?
You say because you don't know the truth, won't see the truth, and don't want to see the truth.
That is sad.
Again Mike, facts prove you wrong.
ReplyDeleteIn Delaware in 2007 there were more strong-armed robberies (no weapon used) than there were robberies with a gun.
Click the link to the 07 FBI Uniform Crime Reoport in my post here.
http://anothergunblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/ucr-data-is-out.html
Bob, I've never been convinced about that reasoning of yours that to make excuses for the people with addictions who commit crimes we somehow hurt the ones who are addicted and don't go criminal. How does it harm the law-abiding when we show compassion to the law breakers?
ReplyDeleteMike W., You said more unarmed robberies than armed ones proves me wrong. About what exactly?
about all your BS about gun "flow" and reducing avaliability being the answer.
ReplyDeleteThere were more strongarmed robberies than robberies with a gun, so how exactly are GUNS the problem?
Mike,
ReplyDeleteI've never been convinced about that reasoning of yours that to make excuses for the people with addictions who commit crimes we somehow hurt the ones who are addicted and don't go criminal.
If two people start out in the same place, with the same skills, same money, same intelligence and etc; to what do we attribute the difference when one succeeds and the other doesn't?
Luck? Not usually, as the old saying goes, luck favors the prepared.
When one person succeeds and another doesn't, we attribute the difference to the decisions made, right?
To make excuses for the criminal addict is to tell the NON-CRIMINAL addict that their decisions didn't matter. It was all a matter of luck, or chance, or kismet.
It completely dismisses the hardwork, the dedication, the effort, the consistency, the commitment of the person who didn't commit a crime.
To me that is a great injustice. To excuse the actions, the decisions of a few criminals because they have problems completely negates the efforts of millions of others who didn't commit crimes.
While this quote talks about poverty, it could easily be talking about drug use or other addictions:
The majority’s responsible behavior has a much greater likelihood of leading many of them out of poverty; but the minority’s irresponsibility is an almost sure path both to continued poverty, and to criminality. Irresponsible youths tend to be self-indulgent and short-range in their thinking. They disrupt their classes, drop out of school, develop criminal associations, drink, gamble, get involved with drugs, malinger on the job, or simply refuse to work at all. These are hardly habits that lead to upward mobility or which keep one out of trouble. Also, the ranks of the poor are infused daily with new members: people who were once better-off, but whose irresponsible attitudes and actions have caused them to lose their jobs or families, to become addicted to drugs, or to associate with people of bad character.
If good people have a much greater likelihood of ascending from poverty, and if bad people have a much greater likelihood of sinking into or remaining in poverty, is it any wonder that the ranks of the poor contain a disproportionate number of criminals? Character, it has been said, is destiny. It should come as no surprise that prisons are filled disproportionately with people who are both criminal and poor. But it was their criminality which caused their poverty, not the other way around.
From this site: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/crime-and-consequences-3/
It is a great read. I would suggest reading all three sections of his columns dealing with this issue.
What makes the difference between addicts, especially those that commit crime and those that don't. Again, this is talking about poverty but could be addiction:
There is empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. In a classic study of male criminality, Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck conducted in-depth surveys of 500 young delinquents, matching them with 500 non-delinquent boys of similar ages, ethnic backgrounds, I.Q.’s, and housing in comparable slum neighborhoods. Even so, the delinquent boys’ homes were more crowded and less tidy, and had lower average family earnings, fewer breadwinners, lower educational levels for parents and grandparents, greater histories of family discord, higher incidences of public welfare support . . . and crime.[17]
These facts may be characterized as symptoms of irresponsibility. Since the boys’ impoverished environments were virtually identical, the chief differentiating factor between the two groups seemed to be exposure to differing sets of attitudes, values, morals. Even though all the boys came from the slums, the “bad boys” more frequently came from homes in which irresponsibility and criminality were prevalent; and those factors were correlated with even lower income and living standards. This bears out the “crime causes poverty” hypothesis.
It isn't the addiction that causes criminality, it is the values and morals that caused the addiction and the criminality.
To deny that people can choose their actions is to deny people their morals, their ethical standards and reduce everyone to the level of animals.
This sums it up quite well:
The point is simple. In various places at various times, there may arise a statistical correlation between crime and any number of socio-economic factors. But criminality cannot be causally attributed to external social and economic factors alone. To excuse criminals because of poor social environments leaves unexplained the crimes of those from good social environments. And the sociological excuse is an insult to millions of others from the poor backgrounds, who have not turned to crime.
No response to my last comment MikeB?
ReplyDeleteMore posts, more comments, but no response....way to "further the dialog" there Champ.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame Mike refuses to answer simple questions and offer solutions of his own, because it actually would be interesting to hear his POV.
ReplyDeleteI'd still like to know at what point he thinks we will have sufficiently reduced the all-important "flow" he speaks of. How many American citizens must be disarmed before we reach an "acceptable" number of private arms for the anti-gun crowd?