This one is a mass shooting in all but the body count. And that was only an accident.A supermarket worker left his overnight shift here then returned with an AK-47 assault rifle and killed two co-workers before fatally shooting himself, officials said on Friday.The gunman, a former Marine, re-entered the Pathmark Super Center on Route 9 about 4 a.m., firing the rifle wildly and shattering the store’s windows, the authorities said. The co-workers he killed appeared to be random victims, said Bruce Kaplan, the Middlesex County prosecutor. One was an 18-year-old woman, and the other was a 24-year-old man, officials said.Local authorities identified the gunman as Terence Tyler, 23. He was discharged from the Marines in 2010. The victims were identified as Christina LoBrutto, 18, and Bryan Breen, 24.Mr. Kaplan said the police did not know what precipitated the shooting in this community about 30 miles south of Manhattan. He said the gunman, who lived in an apartment building just behind the Pathmark, had been working the overnight shift with more than a dozen other employees before he left and returned with the rifle and a handgun.
The shooter, like they usually do, chose the place of his grievance regardless of whether that place might allow guns or not. There was no attempt to select a carefully chosen gun free zone in order to have the advantage of sitting ducks.
Of course there are those who will argue that New Jersey is one big gun free zone. But, the truth is random spree killers don't care about that one way or another.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
mikeb says: "But, the truth is random spree killers don't care about that one way or another."
ReplyDeleteYou don't know that and there's been no studies to make a claim one way or the other, however, the truth remains, people that are killed in gun free zones have no chance to protect themselves.
Bill, you're assigning magical powers to having a gun. Sometimes an unarmed person is able to protect himself and sometimes an armed person is not.
DeleteBecause there are no studies to prove what I said, why don't you go out on a limb and tell us what you think. Does it make sense to you that the spree killer does not target gun free zones particularly but rather the place of his problems?
I'll agree that someone who intends to kill a lot of people often will go to the place where his troubles lie. There's good sense in that assessment. The trouble is that many of these crazies don't have good sense. What I do insist on, though, is that gun-free zones in no way protect me or anyone else from harm--anyone, that is, except someone who either has a grievance or a weed up his ass.
DeleteThank you MikeB for illustrating the complete ineffectiveness of gun-free zones. The attacker (once he decided to kill a bunch of people) went back to his apartment, retrieved his gun, returned, and shot the place up. All the "gun free" zone did was guarantee that all the victims were sitting ducks as you stated.
ReplyDeleteNeither New Jersey's nor Pathmark's "gun-free" policies stopped the criminal dirt bag ... just like assault-free and murder-free "policies" (laws) didn't stop the attacker. And yet you still advocate for "gun-free" policies.
If you want to go about life unarmed and feel good doing that, more power to you. The odds might very well be pretty low that either of us would ever face such an attack. Nevertheless, such attacks do happen and I want to have the means to effectively defend myself if such an attack ever happens.
I am not forcing you to be armed in case such an attack ever happens to you. Don't force me to be unarmed if such an attack happens to me.