Police said a gunman driving a BMW near the university campus went on a rampage that left seven people dead, including the shooter. Authorities described the tragedy as "obviously the work of a mad man."
Seven people remain hospitalized with gunshot wounds or other injuries, including one who has undergone surgery, following the shooting spree Friday night in the beachside community of Isla Vista, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said.
The gunman got into two gun battles before crashing his black BMW into a parked car. Deputies found the lone suspect dead with a gunshot wound to the head, but it wasn't immediately clear whether he was killed by gunfire or if he committed suicide, Brown said.
Apparently the shooter had mental health issues, and was receiving care for those.
ReplyDeleteHe left a video, where among other things, he whines about being a 22 year old virgin, disses sorority girls, and generally acts like a spoiled brat.
He was reputed to suffer from aspergers syndrome.
He left a lengthy 'manifesto' of some kind.
"Alan Shifman — a lawyer who represents Peter Rodger, one of the assistant directors on "The Hunger Games" — issued a statement saying his client believes his son, Elliot Rodger, was the shooter. It was unclear how the son would have obtained a gun. The family is staunchly against guns, he added."
ReplyDelete"He blamed politicians and gun-rights proponents. "When will this insanity stop? ... Too many have died. We should say to ourselves 'not one more,'" he said."
"Attorney Shifman said the Rodger family called police several weeks ago after being alarmed by YouTube videos "regarding suicide and the killing of people" that Elliot Rodger had been posting.
Police interviewed Elliot Rodger and found him to be a "perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human," but noted that he had few friends and no girlfriend, he added. Police did not find a history of guns."
Someone who's family doesn't approve of guns, in a state with universal background checks, and where the police actually had an opportunity to intervene, and somehow its the fault of gun rights advocates. How predictable...
"its the fault of gun rights advocates." I do think that, as I've explained many times.
Delete"Deputies found three semi-automatic handguns with 400 unspent rounds in his black BMW. All were purchased legally."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.startribune.com/nation/260509111.html
And now apparently its been released that he had three handguns, and underwent the proper checks required in a state that ranks at the top of the Brady Campaign's list as having the best gun laws in the nation.
That makes him another lawful gun owner who went bad. You guys love to blame gang bangers and drug dealers, but it's you, you lawful gun owners, who do much of this stuff.
DeleteYUP. Only a fool would make that good guy/bad guy simplistic and false distinction about people. Reality is more complex.
DeleteReality is much better with far fewer guns - as we see in all of the other countries which are smarter than to believe simplistic shit.
Here's a reality fer ya: While you are doing cart wheels over gun deaths you fail to utter a peep about the three men he stabbed to death.
Deleteorlin sellers
You won't consider that he "went bad" before he got the guns. That seems to be the case.
DeleteWhich only goes to demonstrate why our current laws are not strict enough - since we know that lax gun states have more gun violence, and stricter gun laws appear to reduce gun violence, since those strict states tend to have less gun violence.
DeleteSomeone with this guy's mental history should never have been able to pass a background check.
You know -- like they do in all those civilized countries with less gun violence.
"since we know that lax gun states have more gun violence, and stricter gun laws appear to reduce gun violence, since those strict states tend to have less gun violence."
DeleteI'm not really seeing that DG, for example, states like California seems to have a higher gun homicide rate than say Alabama or Alaska. And of course, down at the bottom of the list with the lowest gun homicide rate is Vermont, a state with Constitutional carry.
I thought we had already talked at length about how strict gun laws don't necessarily equal low crime. But we can do it again. For example, we have DC with possibly the strictest gun laws, the lowest rate of gun ownership, and also the highest rate of gun homicides.
But again, I thought we had covered that. There are obviously other factore that have a larger effect on gun homicides since using that measurement Minnesota should have a higher rate of gun homicides than DC. And that simply isn't the case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state
Dog gone: “…since we know that lax gun states have more gun violence, and stricter gun laws appear to reduce gun violence, since those strict states tend to have less gun violence.”
DeleteYou put in that little qualifier that the violence has to be with a gun. Your statement is completely false without it.
The exact moment of his going bad is not the question, TS. The question is how many apparently lawful gun owners are unfit. I've already assigned a percentage to it, as you know.
DeleteAnd they did nothing about this one. What makes you think they would do something about the other 100-200 million people who you think are unfit? Remember, it’s not just the people who currently own guns- it’s also everyone who doesn’t already own a gun, but shouldn’t own a gun. You’re about prevention, aren’t you?
DeleteI think your numbers are off. 50% of the lawful gun owners cannot be "the other 100-200 million people." What are you thinking, man? One who brags about his math skills should never say such a nonsensical thing as that.
DeleteI even explained it to you in that same post. There are people who don't own a gun who you don't think should be allowed to buy one, right? Or is the act of not owning a gun proof of sound mind and therefore the responsibility to own a gun... well, until they buy a gun, that is. Is that how it works for you?
DeleteI should have known you'd have some convoluted tricky explanation.
DeleteAnother example why mental health evaluations are necessary before a gun purchase.
ReplyDeleteThe alarm was sounded, loudly, by the guy himself. His parents warned the police. The police interviewed him.
ReplyDeleteGun loons claim this is the price we gladly pay instead of putting unreasonable, unconstitutional infringements on the 2nd amendment. A laughable position, if it were not causing so much needless death.
Mike calls for interviews by police as part of “proper gun control”, yet we see a bone-a-fide homicidal maniac pass that little test weeks before his rampage. And the gun control people go on demanding more laws- more words on paper. At some point, there needs to be actual action taken in order to stop a killer, don’t you think?
DeleteYou're right, TS. Seize upon this case to deny the logic of my proposal. Do you think, Holmes, Cho, Laughner and Lanza would have passed such scrutiny too?
DeleteUm… they did pass that test. The Tucson shooter had contact with the police twice. The Aurora shooter’s therapist called the police on him, and they did nothing. And the VT shooter was another case of someone dropping the ball as he was already adjudicated as dangerous to himself or others but wasn’t reported to NICS. Yet in your idea of collective blame, you direct it at gun owners, the NRA, Republicans- but not the people who directly had the power to stop it. You actually place more blame on Wayne LaPierre than the Santa Barbara cops who said “he looks like a good kid”. On top of that, though we see this process failing for disarming these real world cases of psychotic murderers, you want to expand this disarmament plan literally a hundred thousand fold to cover 100 million plus Americans.
DeleteThere you go again. How do you get "100 million plus Americans" out of my 50% proposal. There aren't even that many gun owners in total.
DeleteShould we be worried about you? Are you all right?
Oh, and about the other shooters passing the test, you're wrong. There is no test. There is no psyche screening for gun ownership and the shabby reporting that is done in some places is not adequate. So, no, none of these dangerous lawful gun owners had to pass any kind of test that was worth a damn.
DeleteYou've expressly called for cops to go "check out" a situation to make sure everything is kosher before. Like automatic visits from police when someone buys too much ammo. Are you denying this? Now you're saying that wouldn't be worth a damn?
DeleteMikeB: "There you go again. How do you get "100 million plus Americans" out of my 50% proposal. There aren't even that many gun owners in total."
DeleteDo you get it now? If you're going to say half the population is unfit to own guns that would include people who don't own guns but abuse drugs, and all those other reasons you want to disqualify people. Your list of "unfits" is way over 100 million.
I guess you could look at it that way, if you wanted to exaggerate what I actually do say.
DeleteCops checking people out here and there is not the same as gun owners being required to pass a psyche eval.
A cop is not a psychiatrist, or a psychologist. The need is for true mental health evaluations by experts.
ReplyDeleteFacts don't always define the problem, as I have said. You can't claim your facts prove stiffer laws don't work. Comparing Calif. to Vermont is a false comparison, just as comparing Minnesota to any other State.
"A cop is not a psychiatrist, or a psychologist. The need is for true mental health evaluations by experts."
DeleteAnd you get him in front of mental health professionals after an arrest for making "terroristic threats".
No, you have mental health evaluations BEFORE the purchase of a gun.
DeleteWhat do you do when someone already owns a gun and their family called the cops because they felt he might be a homicidal maniac? Because that's what we're talking about. What do you do when someone passes a screen because mental health professionals don't have psychic powers and can't tell that someone is crazy just by talking to them for 20 min? What do you do when someone passes a screen, and later goes crazy? What do you do when someone is crazy but they don't own a gun, and don't plan on owning a gun, but they are planning on stabbing their three roommates to death? Do you do nothing in these situations?
DeleteThis is a point that I bring up often when people demand mental health screening, but I've not once seen anyone address it. Maybe you can be the first. Do you feel those suffering from mental illness are receiving too much care? Or at least adequate enough care that they can afford to have literally millions of man hours a year diverted from care of those who need it, to interviewing millions of perfectly sane people who want to buy a gun? Personally, I'd rather see more effort dedicated to care- not less.
DeleteGee, a job creating regulation. We do what we can instead of doing nothing. People slip through regulation procedures all the time, but that's a small minority most are caught and that helps. Right now we don't even screen for mental health.
DeleteExcept when you divert attention away from treatment, there will probably be a negative effect. And passing a law doesn't magically create more qualified mental health care professionals. It is already considered to be a dearth of mental health care, so even if the field grows, it is widely considered that the mentally ill could use more care.
DeleteNone of that even addresses that your policy would completely bog down gun sales, and that psychologists DO NOT have psychic powers. Diagnoses can not be made from brief interviews- COLD interviews, no less. Do you realize how long it takes to come up with a diagnosis? It took a team of doctors months to determine that the Tucson shooter was not mentally fit to stand trial- and that is knowing he shot up a parking lot (not a cold interview).
If they want their guns they will have to get treatment and show they can pass the qualifications. Most laws create new job opportunities. Completely bog down gun sales? To the mentally ill that should not have a gun. The type of interview to catch a mentally disturbed person will have to be determined, so your conclusions are false. You simply don't want mental health evaluations prior to a gun sale.
DeleteThe resources don't exist to handle millions of screens a year, so it would cause a huge bog in sales. The field is understaffed as is.
DeleteYou seem to think a psychologist can walk into a room of a thousand people and single out the one crazy dude. It doesn't work that way.
You must be brain dead. I already said many times more would have to be hired. That's what I mean by a job creating law/regulation.
Delete"A cop is not a psychiatrist, or a psychologist."
ReplyDeleteYour right, but California law does allow them to detain if the have probable cause to believe there is a credible threat. In fact I noticed that law had just been passed last year. If was listed on the law center to prevent gun violence web site.
This country's legal system runs on due process and the presumption of innocence.
As for your assertion that my facts can't prove that stiffer laws don't work, neither can you prove that they do work, which was exactly what Dog Gone was claiming.
You are the one who continues to use false comparisons to try and prove your point, a point you just admitted cannot be made.
Delete"You are the one who continues to use false comparisons to try and prove your point, a point you just admitted cannot be made."
DeleteThen why aren't you finding fault in Dog Gone's statement that makes the same type of comparisons? DG made a claim, and I used data to disprove her claim.
When you make an argument and fail to apply the same claim to the other side's claims, you sort of discredit yourself.
How did you discredit anyone when you admitted you cannot use those figures for a definite proof of anything? I'm not arguing your numbers, I'm just saying they don't prove anything; but you claim they do, as you just did again by claiming you discredited her.
Delete