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Shootings at Texas School and at Florida Trump Resort
First bad news is from Santa Fe, TX:
Multiple fatalities were reported at a Texas high school on Friday after a person with a gun barged inside a classroom and fired several shots, police and law enforcement sources said.
Several law enforcement sources told NBC News that nine people were killed in the shooting at Santa Fe High School — but they cautioned that this number could change.
The alleged shooter was in custody, the school district reported.
“What we do know is that we did have an active shooter in the building and that person has been arrested and secured,” Assistant Principal Chris Richardson told reporters. “We hope the worst is over.”
The second shooting was indirectly aimed at the President:
Published in GeneralPolice responding overnight to a call of an active shooter at President Donald Trump’s golf resort in Doral, Florida, engaged in a shootout with a man and ended up taking him into custody with gunshot wounds. Miami-Dade Police Director Juan Perez said at a news conference early Friday morning that the man was found “actively shooting” in the lobby of Trump National Doral Miami resort, making anti-Trump statements.
One officer sustained a broken wrist during the altercation, but nobody else, apart from the shooter, was wounded. The man in custody was not identified, and his motive remained unclear later Friday morning. …
CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez reports that police believe the suspect tried to lure law enforcement officers to the scene, and a fire alarm was set off prior to their arrival.
I wonder if they’ll ever find out.
Sadly, it is very unlikely.
Time and time again these mass murderers blog for weeks before-hand about their motives, or go on trips to be indoctrinated in their motives and how to fulfill them.
Or as in this case, holler out their motives as they are committing their acts.
But these motives are clearly not their actual motives. Responsible journalists at CNN, NBC, and CBS should not report these so-called facts. If they are forced to, they must bury them in paragraph 10 and push the story to the back pages.
They are not consistent with what we know must be the motives of people who are evil. Indeed, the motives presented by the killers themselves often sound like the highest and purest of good motives–destroying Trump, destroying Western Civilization, punishing Christians, punishing Caucasians, and the like.
In such cases, it is likely that we will never discover what their motives were. The best we can do is spike the story and wait for an act of evil that supports the narrative without too much tweaking.
[Pre-edit: Your wry sarcasm was much more to the point than my rambling effort, I see upon reviewing this. I don’t care. I am mashing that Comment button anyway.]
The high school is about ten miles from my home. Right now all we have is swirling rumors.
Updates on the situation from the Galveston County Daily News. Click the link. It is outside their paywall. (Yes, this is the newspaper for which I write the book reviews I post every Sunday.)
Just to add a third shooting to this grim week:
Dixon, IL. Mark Dallas = hero
The son of my boss’ nephew is a student at Dixon High, though not a graduating senior and not one of the shooter’s targets.
Mark Dallas is a leader at the church where my boss’ nephew is a pastor.
Thanks for the link.
I’d like to see some solutions from my 2nd Amendment friends. (I am not being sarcastic, I honor my friends who own and use guns, I just want to see solutions.)
What could you support? What can we agree on? Or are the school shootings the price we have to pay for the 2nd Amendment. (I am not being sarcastic; traffic accidents are the price we have to pay to have cars.)
It seems pretty much. Early reports are that the shooter used a shotgun. No gun control laws short of complete confiscation could have prevented possession of that. Also, the shooter apparently set up bombs as well. No gun control laws can stop that, either.
I could support our schools not being the kind of place that churn out a statistically significant number of psychopaths.
The price we pay for Freedom, Gary, is that sometimes people use that Freedom in bad ways. Freedom means the ability to get it wrong.
I do have a solution to school shooting though:
Never, under any circumstances, say the name of the killer. Do not publish it. Do not have the police release it to the press. Change the laws to make it so. That would make them less of a infamous person. What is that? Is that breaching a 1st Amendment right? Well, you are OK with that, since you want to breach a 2nd Amendment right.
The only solution that I can really see is to better arm security at schools. Have multiple armed guards at schools. Stop them from being soft targets.
I’d lean this way, also. The public school system is rotten to its core and its roots. And there’s no way to change it or redeem it.
Vouchers immediately for every school-age child in the US would be a good start.
And in London, they are now banning knives because people use those in the absence of guns. And car attacks are getting bigger too.
The problem is not that there are tools for mass murder, the problem is that there are people willing to do it. What are we doing wrong as a society to produced them? I think there are lots of items, but I would wager lack of fathers is a big one.
GVROs. Worth a read.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-do-mass-shootings-happen-best-explanation/
I think David French is on to something here. Worth the read.
I think these would be abused. And, it would not have helped with a 17 year old.
People would certainly try to abuse them, but the due process safeguards are there. And, if the 17-year-old were a gun owner, I don’t follow why they wouldn’t help. But if obtained surreptitiously, sure. We need a start.
I would like to see a bit more sophistication from those who ask questions like this. My Dad was in rifle club in high school. Kids had guns in their lockers.
it is not “the price we pay for the 2nd amendment.” It is the price we pay for something else…
I doubt that looking at guns will solve anything. No more than a war on drugs solves an addiction problem. Profiling is my solution suggestion. I suggest looking at these shooters more closely. A few grants, perhaps, for such studies? And effective intervention. As to how without creating a police state, I am no expert. But more armed and trained police on site makes sense, though costly.
In this case, the shooter got his father’s guns, it was reported. So there is a problem. Did the father take due precautions. If not, maybe up the penalties, though how to know in advance when it counts is a problem.
In theology, it’s argued that evil exists because God wanted free people. If we were incapable of evil, we’d be children, or sleepers, or animals. Only humans can do evil because only humans are free. So yes, crime is one cost of freedom.
Restraining orders are abused now. There is no try.
Well said.
So it becomes cost/benefit. And I’m not aware that actual restraining orders are a blight on society. Here, we’re not even talking about people, we’re talking about an object. If we waited for solutions in almost any policy endeavor that wouldn’t be subject to abuse, the likelihood of doing anything would vanish.
I am saying don’t take a mechanism we know does not work, and apply it.
Indeed.
Nice try, but it ain’t the responsibility of Yer 2nd Amendment Friends to solve. Why don’t You ask solutions of the Parents Who raised these devils? Or the Teachers? Administrators?
There’s already laws against killing people.
There’s already laws against carrying firearms onto school grounds.
By the way, I know a lot of 2nd Amendment Friends and We all agree on carrying wherever, including schools.
I disagree that public school is the problem. They can contribute by not properly dealing with situation, but aren’t the root cause.
Parents are the problem. Parents excuse bad behavior in their kids from an early age. Parents are responsible for establishing values in their children, not schools. Parents are responsible for teaching right and wrong. Parents are responsible to know what their children are doing, who their friends are, what sort of things they are doing online or offline, whether they have access to guns, etc, etc.
Just last night my wife was telling me about a co-worker who has a first grader. This little guy was being bullied, so he punched the bully in the eye and kicked him in the nuts. The bully’s mother insisted on a meeting with the principal, then laid out medical bills and demanded they be paid for. Then she went on excusing all his behavior, including slapping a girl. A first grader was learning behavior because his mother wouldn’t deal with it. By the time he’s 16 he’ll be a complete mess. And it while the school isn’t being strong enough in addressing it, it will be his mother’s fault because she never held him accountable.
Hmmmm….. no mention of Father…
Amen, amen.
These days, with the internet and darknet, I agree that the old saying “the public has a right to know” no longer holds true in this case. There have been too many copycats. Perhaps we can get another category of ‘classified’ information?
In my experience it is not the bullies who become psychos but their victims. If we allowed more nut punching and had the stones to tell the bullies’ mothers that they’re getting what they deserve I think we’d see less deadly pushback after years of continued abuse that is enabled by parents and largely ignored by the schools.
He could have been at work or maybe out of the picture. I have no idea.
But, plenty of good kids have been turned out by single moms. If you want to meet one I’ll introduce you to my wife.
How do you take out a restraining order on an object?
You don’t. The restraining order in this case is against a person, prohibiting them from possession of an object.
Maybe the cost/benefit is worth it, maybe not. But let’s not obscure the fact that one of the the costs is a person being deprived of their right to effective tools for defending themselves and their family, not to mention the substantial legal bills involved (the process is the punishment, and all that).