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Adam Lanza Destroyed His Computer Before Rampage
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Here's some breaking news I saw MSNBC this morning that I haven't seen reported anywhere in the print media yet. NBC reporter Pete Williams reported on Chuck Todd's The Daily Rundown that (police) 'had been hopeful that they could extract some information from the computer at (Lanza's) home. He was very into computers. Before he left his mother's house on the morning that he shot his mother while she was sleeping, he damaged extensively his computer. He took the hard drive out, pulled the disk out, and did a lot of damage to it,' said Williams. 'It's not clear that (police) are going to be able to extract any information or not.' It has previously been reported that Lanza left no online footprint. Police had been eager to examine Lanza's computer in hopes of determining a motive in his killings or finding records of purchases of firearms and ammunition. 'If he visited certain websites, they are going to glean whatever information they can from that and see what it means,' said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly. 'Does he have friends he communicates with online? Was there a fight with somebody?'"
I wonder if it ran Linux
Just do a few passes with DBAN.
Premeditated. This wasn't an impulsive act.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Should have used DBAN.
Really, I find this hard to believe. With all this talk of NSA wiretapping ...
this is where they subpoena his home ISP for the last N ip addresses and then hit up murderbook for logs, right?
For all computer users and programmers.
His behaviors match that of typical anonymous posters.
Wat happen
"Here's some breaking news I saw MSNBC this morning..."
People watch MSNBC? This is breaking! Well done, editors.
Connecting an IP to a person is difficult to prove, however, connecting a person to an IP is much simpler.
They have probable cause, ISPs are required to hold logs, just get his logs from his ISP.
The fact that he tried to physically destroy things means he isn't nearly as smart as they want us to believe. They'll get quite a bit of it back. And more than likely will be able to get a pretty good profile of him by sequestering logs from various services, be it ISP, Xbox Live, etc.
Over a hundred people die from firearms every day in America. Roughly about 1/3 accidents, 1/3 suicides, and 1/3 deliberate homicides. Dwelling on massacres like Sandy Hook is not really a good idea for many reasons. Most gun homicides are committed with handguns, by people with long records of violent crime, and are done more often than not in heated emotion. But these school massacres fit none of those patterns. They are usually done with rifles, by people that are "odd" and loners but without any record of violent crime, and they are usually meticulously planned. In many ways these make them the hardest violent acts to prevent. We should focus on preventing more on the everyday killings, many of which should be preventable, instead of focusing too much on the black swans where any plausible effort is unlikely to make much difference.
We should try to learn from history: On January 17th, 1989 Patrick Purdy walked into a school yard in Stockton, California, and opened fire on the children playing there, killing five and wounding 29. In the months that followed, legislation was rushed through to outlaw rifles similar in appearance to the one he used. Back in those days, it was common for gun owners to support "common sense" gun control. But they watched gun control advocates, who often claimed that they wanted to restrict handguns and not hunting guns such as rifles and shotguns, use this tragedy to push through bans on rifles and only rifles, and do so on the basis of appearance (shape of the grip, bayonet stud, etc.) rather than functionality. The result had a negligible effect on crime, but resulted in a significant decline in support for gun control in America. There was also a strong political backlash. Many pro-gun-control politicians lost elections, and the urban-rural split between the two major political parties became more pronounced. I really hope that we do something more sensible this time.
This should be a reminder to all of us to be that friend he probably didn't have. I'd have killed myself in college if it weren't for a few online friends. Skearrit and Zenobia, that's you. It's WoW now instead of MUDs, but people are the same.
The story said they were trying to piece together a smashed hard drive.
I'm saddened that slashdot is joining in on the hoopla.
They can still put the hard drive back together and pull out information. Facebook has everything on him. Google tracked what he searched and what websites he visited. The fingerprints on his keyboard and they way the letters are worn will show which keys he used most and they can determine his passwords to his accounts. The NSA and DHS has been tracking him, and everyone else in the country, and knows his exact whereabouts for the last several years. Yes, I've seen CSI.
Yeah, FoxNews has talked about it a bit today as well, but I could find nothing on their website about it. But my experience has been what is on the Fox News website rarely reflects what they cover on the news network. If it wasn't for the fact that I had to have Fox News on all day at work, I would never watch it. Actually, I wouldn't watch any of the American press - there doesn't seem to be an American News Network that reports unbiassed news. CNN Headline news probably comes the closest
You could just ask 4chan. I recall seeing a (possibly fake) screencap that implied that someone was going to do something at 9am at a local school on some day.
This was after the fact, of course.
Posting AC for cowardice in the face of fibbers.
Where else would a disturbed young man go to find a peer group willing to encourage depraved behavior?
Lookin at you /b/.
It was reported on NBC and CNN, that I saw, on the day of the event. It was also further reported that the FBI was going to try to recover data form the hard drive.
Since he was already described as having Autism(Aspergers) and a recluse(by his own mother) it is probable that he doesn't have a social networking history.
Will we demand investigations of those without easily accessible "online footprints", deemed suspicious, as they are now calling for more gun control laws and bans?
So, if I thermite my HDD, everything I've ever done or said online (i.e., stored anywhere but my local drive) magically falls into the bit bucket?
Bullshit.
Cops need to get off their lazy asses and start serving the three-letter-agencies (NSA, CIA, DHS, all the other panoptic asshats) with warrants.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Why give credit? That's why those people do those things - to be remembered as not nobody.
Be aware of your responsibility as a news outlet. Let them be a nobody forever.
Meanwhile @AdamLanza is getting VERY annoyed.
You're the only one saying that as far as I can see. Perhaps you're just afraid of saying it straight up without the false quotes....
Yup... Encrypting your drives with a hammer generally keeps away all bit the most dedicated spooks.
Sad thing is that the kid probably didn't have many friends. And they were probably Bronies... Can't let THAT get out! Maybe he was after elementry kids because their parents were getting the show in trouble.
He probably made random rants, but I don't think they'll find much. Other than a bunch of AC guy posts 90% of people would write off as childish. As this goes deeper, I think he's just an extremely lonely kid, extremely disconnected from society. The top end of the ASD spectrum kids KNOW they don't fit in... And they get REALLY mad about it... But they still cannot do it without extensive help, if ever. Something triggered the kid and he took the most extreme route he could... That screams ASD with no training to deal with it. He just picked something extremely violent and went for it. Maybe he fixated on it, but typically not really.
The only person with warning signs would have been his mom.. He didn't interact with anybody else?? . And she obviously overlooked the violence escalating till it was too late. I'll bet if they look we over she has old bruises from outbursts... But she never told.
You can't get rid of guns or crazy people, there are too many out there. And, if they want to do something like this, all you can do is prevention. I personally recommend building gated doors that automatically drop down when a gunshot is detected by omni-mics placed throughout schools. The doors can be opened with a card/code by law enforcement afterwards on an individual basis. This means SWAT could go in and clear each room. It also means that a shooter gets confined to a single area where he will do less harm. This also needs to be combined smaller classrooms with fewer students in each class, spread out over many classes. Then the hope would be, that he might only take out a teacher and a handful of students instead of 30 people before being apprehended. This is probably a better solution for now than anything congress will be able to come up with. Just my two cents.
"If you do not leave an online footprint, you are a terrorist."
"To be on the internet, you must digitally sign yourself with your ISP."
Now... I'm not saying false flag or any of that BS, but would you put it past the US government to take this as a sort of 9-11 attack, and use it as ammo to go after the lock down of the intertubes? I'm not into conspiracy theories - just into leaving my mind open to possibilities... granted - ones that we would have never thought would exist, but who would have thought the patriot act would have come into being either?
he isn't nearly as smart as they want us to believe
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Who is "they," and what makes you think "they" want "us" to believe this maniac is/was smart?
I thought the general consensus is that he was batshit crazy, and the only question is whether or not there was something in particular that pushed him over the edge, or just random "voices in his head"-type stuff.
What if he had used Tor to browse websites and created many pseudo-profiles for e-mail, FB etc? He had all the time in this world to do that.. being home-schooled and all.
I was running late for work today and realized I forgot to do laundry over the weekend.
The only thing left to do was put my full body kevlar on over my "Venom" costume.
Fortunately, I work for a bunch of blind people.
Yeah, right.
And Kitchen Knives.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
We focus plenty of resources on those everyday homicides. Those homicides are the reason we have security gaurds with guns at the entrances to Banks and not elementry schools. Spending more resources on that problem won't neccesarily change anything. At some point your just harrasing innocent people who fit profiles. It should also be noted that violent crime of that sort has been on a decline. Plus the 1/3 deliberate homicides include plenty of people involved in crimes. If your not sucidal, don't own a gun, and not involved in crime your not at much risk. At some level society doesn't care abuot those deaths.
An Hero!
Great. I was wondering what it would take for the Slashdot crowd to pervert this dipshit into a hero.
"Dude, check it out! He destroyed all his data before he did this! That way, them dirty screws in law enforcement won't ever know a thing about him, won't understand what happened, and won't have any way to prevent it from happening again! Yeah! That's so awesome! Power to the privacy! Privacy rights for all! Woo!"
Attempting to smash up his PC and HDD and leaving the wreckage in his place is about the most n00bish form of data destruction you can imagine, and has probably only been partially successful at best. I'll leave it to the numerous other comments already posted to detail this sick kid's failure to cover his tracks adequately. If you're going to irresponsibly portray privacy and security advocates as paranoid deviants who cheer mass murder, you're going to need to try harder.
Warrant-less wiretaps are a lot different than a murder investigation that has established evidence and a warrant.
When I want to physically destroy my hard drives, I use bullets. Here's why it works:
The surface of the platters is covered in magnetic data, but in order to read it you have to be able to pass a head over it. If you bend the platters, put a few jagged holes in them, and destroy the bearing center, there is no technology that can run a read head reliably over a data track. If the platters are bent, you can't install them in a new drive or mount new heads. You also can't flatten them to the original tolerances without destroying the magnetic surface coating.
The biggest hand-waving magic people fear is the electon microscope techinques which have been shown to dig up even erased data by looking at the edges of the latest written data to see what was there before. While this is technically possible in ideal conditions, it requires that you can move the platter under the tip of the microscope with incredible precision. Without the platters in perfect physical shape, you'd risk destroying the electron microscope's fragile tip.
Pistol rounds generally dent the platters pretty seriously. Rifle rounds generally punch through leaving jagged holes. A combination of both is a fun day at the range, makes great desk art, and securely pretects your drives from ever being decoded again.
--Jaborandy
so dropping a stack of textbooks on the floor or slamming a door (or any loud crashes or bangs for that matter) trigger an instant lock down and SWAT response.....
i cant see that getting in the way of things......
There are about 10000 death per firearm per year , about 3000 are murder, very little are accident, and about 2/3 are suicide. Google it you will very very quickly find teh stats. No there is *NOT* 9000 murder per firearm in the USA that's the toal murder+suicide per firearm.
The act of an irrational person, or you so-called "rational" people trying to ascertain the "motives" or someone who has completely lost their mind?
You should win money. It's sickening.
So if I had to "get rid" of data stored on a computer, for whatever reason, I would just dd from /dev/zero directly to the disk devices. Any disadvantage of this technique? Maybe to confuse who is after me I could maybe copy from urandom, but this would probably make an already slow process even slower.
On unrelated news, I read (but the article was absolutely not technical and in another language) that they caught somebody hacking his previous office even if he was operating through Tor. What to do then to have effective anonymity online when looking for info or even interacting?
I am often confused, and more than just a little alarmed at the polarization that stories like this cause.
On one side, there are the people that would rather live in an Aldus Huxley novel than suffer the slight against their perceptions of safety that allowing the general public access to firearms presents. (Seriously. If there are 100 shootings per day, out of 250 million persons in the USA, your chances of being so shot on any given day are 4 places to the right of the decimal point in terms of percentages-- (borrowed possibly false statistic from previous poster.) At that rate, you are more likely to die in an airline catastrophe. Contemplate that when you advocate stampeeding over peoples rights because kids were involved.)
Then, on the other, you have the people that feel we are already deep inside an aldus huxley novel, and have a "freedom fighter" complex. (The types who wear the tinfoil, you know whom it is of which I speak.)
Where are the people like me, who live in the middle? The people who deplore the senseless death, but who blame a faulted cultue that stigmatizes people with mental health issues, makes care for such insanely unaffordable, and tries to pretend the problem isn't serious? The ones who understand that guns are simply a tool, and the purpose they serve in the hands of the public is a preventative measure against corruption in high places, and nothing more?
The solution to deaths like these is NOT "gun control".
The solution to deaths like this is to get people the help they so desperately need, without any overtones of disparagment, or of belittling the people who need that help.
Outlawing guns does NOT help the mentally ill get the help the need, before they snap and take others with them. It simply sweeps the issue under the rug, because outlawing the tool used for the killing is simply easier. Nevermind that any sense of security the measure brings is false, and endagers more innocent people. (If not a gun, then perhaps a bomb, or poison, or any number of other methods.)
I am tired of these stories. I am tired of the shield rattling. I am tired of the "Ra Ra Rah!" And gung-ho idiocy of both sides.
In cases like these, there are *ONLY* victims. There are no bad guys, unless you care to look in the mirror. Our blind complacency to the sufferings of others is what CAUSES this shit. Everything about this story is tradgedy. Stop looking for a fucking scapegoat.
Seriously. It confuses the fuck out of my why it always must be so, that we all lose our minds over this, and dive headfirst from the frypan into the fire.
We like to pretend that we have sharp minds.
For FSM's sake, fucking use them.
What is missing her, what was her major malfunction?
You see, you can claim to want a gun for self defense but how many do you need? What did she need that arsenal for? Why so much ammo?
Ten to one the mother is the answer to this drama.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I was thinking... When I was a kid, a friend and I defeated a 4 digit (10000 possible combinations) lock in about 2 days by simply trying each possible combo. Any gun should be locked TWICE. The outer lock or container, should have some sort of way to know that it has been defeated that could be reset. If a perp were to gain access to the outer lock, they would be stopped from accessing the weapons by the inner lock. The owner would then be alerted to the idea that someone has been trying to get at the weapons because of the "flag" that the first lock had been defeated.
Australia banned automatic rifles after several mass shootings and since then, they have had none.
But hey, why let actual facts stand in the way of you rant.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Seriously kid, stop watching fox, your bain is rotting away. Australia and Europe both got lower crime rates.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
And people who want to shoot other people.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Publish his IP address and let message board admins check their records. Google has him sure as shit.
10 year olds aren't exactly strong on thinking ahead in the best of cases.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm totally sure that students with fireworks would never dream of regularly pranking whatever school had this setup...
I can see where this is going, and sure enough, Jack Thompson is already on the case. He or someone claiming to be him has been active in the comment sections of major newspapers, suggesting that this incident was motivated by violent video games.
Remember, it's not an ad hominem attack to point out that he was disbarred in Floria, because that fact is relevant to his credibility.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
there was some way to see where people search, like a record stored in a device stored between a computer and the internet. Oh wait there is: its called a cable or DSL modem.
Since when has LEA been obligated to discover the motivation for a crime? What's done is done. The perpetrator has been unequivocally identified. There can be no trial. Justice has already been served. So what reason is there for this motivation probe?
If the perpetrator has been captured alive, I could understand that the discovery of a motive could aid in the prosection of the case against him. But the perpetrator is dead. There will be trial. What purpose does knowledge of a motive now serve, other than to satisfy a morbid curiosity?
It's a spectrum. Individuals vary.
You're assuming top down, I see no reason it couldn't be bottom up this time around, like the school's in 24x7 lockdown for adults, not allowed in until they log into a valid, active, and normal looking facebook account using a PC right outside the door. Which would be a big problem for a non-facebook parent like myself, and the response will be who cares its for the children blah blah whatever BS. Of course the solution is to use someone elses stolen account.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
'It's not clear that (police) are going to be able to extract any information or not.'
Actually, it's 100% certain that they will, or will not, extract any information. There is no third option.
You must be retarded. Most shootings have a very low casualty count because people run. Your suggestion is to have bulk head type doors drop locking all the victims in the firing line of the assailant.
Smart guys like you are what happens. Rash decision leads to legislation that makes things worse, not better.
why don't he join the military? You get to pwn people for honor.
requiring all citizens to pass a firearms safety class (to include safe storage) carry a firearm.
I cannot get to 100 day no matter what source I look at. I am not denying there is a problem in regards to homicides by any means, but even the CDC only shows 32,000 deaths by firearms which is lower than those by auto or even poisoning.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Why destroy evidence if he was going to kill himself anyway? Something isn't right here.
Would have been easier. Even if its not 100% perfect, the cost wouldn't be worth it to extract, as there really isn't any question of quilt here.
But then again, im thinking rationally, he wasn't.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
he had to be a /b/tard
Our war policy is, you never fight the stronger guys because you can lose. You fight the weaker ones to increase your chance of victory. Another reason why people start learning how to pwn people from point-blank range in supermarkets, movie theatres, shopping mall and elementary schools. You can rack up a lot of kill counts there.
Every time some tool/artifact is used for a crime, outlaw it!
Every year at least one hundred unarmed people get shot to death by the police, some are children, it seldom gets reported and almost never gets prosecuted!
Oh yeah, they're mostly poor people.
Let's ban the police!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Gun control? Like they control illegal drugs? Like they control felons getting illegal guns? Please. All they will do is harass people who never do anything wrong. The criminals and wackos will get guns and still do their thing.
Its pretty simple. They either follow the rules and change the US Constitution to remove the 2nd Amendment or go home, because the US Supreme Court keeps over turning gun bans.
9) The hospital went into lockdown and cleared four trauma rooms, but received only three patients, two of them dead children (according to the official story) and one mildly wounded adult.
I've noticed this too, and I believe the cops are trying to cover for being cowards. I've had minor wounds that just won't stop bleeding without medical attention and there's nothing cops love more than playing domination games with who's in control and who's allowed to do what on scene and act out their twisted little swat fantasies, so I suspect at least half the kids had a minor wound but were left untreated to slowly, painfully bleed out while cops played SWAT games, and if the truth came out they'd look bad and/or get sued, hence no pics, no autopsies, intimidation from officers, etc etc. From military experience its very hard to have a firefight, even a one sided ambush, with absolutely no wounded whatsoever. Simply mathematically astounding, is what I'd call it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
He's dead. We know he shot the kids.
We don't have nearly enough prisons for that sort of thoughtcrime.
plus, Obama can't officially don the antichrist mantle until he takes away erh GUUUUNNNNSSS!!1
He knew he wasn't coming back, so he had to destroy his own browser history. Now we'll never know what porn sites he visited! News agencies everywhere weep!
No more bath salts for you!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
All injured, but none killed.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
...and just put a bullet through the monitor.
On a more serious note though, some comments on this thread are along the lines of "Fuck you!! Don't you dare touch my guns - I'll own as many as I want" - unfortunately, until your attitude changes (for whatever reason), or until you are able to sit down and have a rational discussion about the topic, your country will always have the problem it has now.
Secondly, as a compromise, why not involve gun clubs more in the purchase and use of guns. What is missing is the human control aspect, and if a member of a gun club is slightly loopy then it is much more likely to be picked up through contact with other club members than if the person is isolated. That way there is little or no change for responsible gun owners, but a little more self-policing by clubs. Hell, it's your community, but it seems to want to distance itself from any members that go postal.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Asbergers, at this point, is just a catch-all. Others may correct me, but I believe the technical definition relies more on [lack of] empathy than it does savantism, intelligence, foresight, or capacity to become a mass murderer.
Obviously, the politicians in charge know that the current public outrage will be the catalyst to move us forward into a safe future, where all risk is eliminated, violence is practically unknown, and environmentally-unfriendly customs have been replaced with three shells.
It's a good thing that I like the food at Taco Bell - gosh darn it all!
I'm always amazed that someone whose job includes keeping their mouth shut is always willing to spill the beans. Or do the people who know how to keep a secret work for the higher paying TLAs?
you don't think we'll get to a a point where we need to sign in to a computer using a digital sig that ties us to the MAC address? Seems all to obvious to this very novice user.
I haven't heard yet that there were any very visible signs of his instability (not arguing that he was). From what I've heard, he was quiet, smart, didn't get into much trouble, etc.
I'd imagine that if the guy was a raging nutball with a history of violence/threats/instability it would be fairly front-page. Maybe I'm just not reading the right articles, but I haven't seen such.
I remember just after Columbine, people at school were suddenly "unusually nice" to me. I hadn't read the news so didn't know why. Apparently they were scared I was going to do something similar (because they were dicks to me). However, I really didn't have the mentality for such things, and don't really believe in violence except in self-defence.
So here we have a guy who was quiet, apparently smart, and possible a bit of a loner. No indication of provocation or history. I'm hoping that in the next while we'll see some (real, not just "hey he played video games a lot") signs that led to his impending mental instability.
I think a lot of people are missing the point. There really wasn't any reasonable way to see this one coming, nor to stop the attack before it started. That's unfortunate, but it's a lesson: You can't protect the undefended. Now if you stop and ponder that one simple little lesson for a minute, the answer becomes so plainly obvious it hurts. All the other questions (why didn't he get mental help, why did he have access to guns, why are 30 round magazines still legal, etc. etc.) are irrelevant. The number one question we should all be asking is this: Why are our children undefended? We all know there's a lot of sick, twisted, evil people out there. Yet day after day, we send our children off to school, where they are concentrated, confined, and 100% UNDEFENDED, often BY LAW?!?!
I personally recommend building gated doors that automatically drop down when a gunshot is detected by omni-mics placed throughout schools.
Whats to say you aren't locking the kids INSIDE with the shooter. This is an utterly terrible idea. You effectively prevent the best means of survival (escape).
MACs aren't as hard to change/spoof as you'd think. Also it was either HP or SUN who was famous in the early 90s for shipping multiple cards with the same MAC. After all no one would ever plug two into the same LAN, right? This is no sea story I was there and saw the protocol analyzer traces with my own eyes. Hmm so we've got three cards on this test lan, and the analyzer only sees 2 mac addrs, wtf?
Now I could see tying into something you'd not want to give away/share... like a valid, chargeable CC number. This also takes care of the whole micropayment thing. So you can log into facebook (or slashdot?) but that login cookie will cost you 10 cents on a valid credit card and anyone with access to the account can see who paid for previous access...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
They are are either caught or did not plan that far ahead. The Arizona congressman shooter and theater shooter were captured alive.
Can we stop discussing this event in every piece of media under the sun. It's a tragic incident, incredibly sad. The coverage it is getting though, surely only goes to encourage others who would consider similar actions.
All Asspies have constant meltdowns and this was the worst of all meltdowns. Eventually asspies will either implode by harming self or explode through harming others. When the worst occurs they kill others. It is best to just let natural selection take its course with Asspies. That way there will be a whole lot less Rethuglicans in office.
And if it's not a burglar, but a rapist, will you just sit there and let him have his way with your family?
If I have to defend my family (or join in an insurrection) the AR-15 is definitely my weapon of choice because it is functionally identical to an M-16 except for the full auto mode, and I had extensive experience with M-16s during a former employment.
I'm assuming you served in the US military and you're an American.
I can understand that in the heat of defense, you'd want a gun that you've trained with.
My suggestion would be to get the .22 conversion kit. .223 will go through at least 2 walls in a typical American suburban home. All there is are 2x4s 16" on center (24" on center on second floors:IRC allows this) with plaster board over that.
In my non-military trained opinion, I don't think anything larger than a .25 should be used for home defense because of the possibility of the round going through a wall and hitting a loved one when fighting off an intruder.
I prefer non-lethal weapons because I want the fucker to suffer and hopefully end up crippled.
Unless his ISP has incredible capture, it's going to be near impossible to find what website or forums he's visited in a timely manner... much less chat programs or other likely mediums like WoW/Ventrilo
Want ISPs to log *all traffic*... literally make a copy of every packet transmitted and received, for each individual customer and keep those copies for two years worth of storage.
Example of my comment earlier" Shooting Through Walls"
Not trying to be wise-ass - just don't want to see in the news, "Former solder accidentally kills child fighting off intruder."
Take care.
So nobody can buy, use nor die using them. Oh, wait...
Right wingers believe that new laws will prevent people from getting abortions. Why don't they believe that new laws will prevent people from shooting guns at people?
'Does he have friends he communicates with online? Was there a fight with somebody?'
Who cares? Lots of people have lots of shit in their life they don't go off on a shooting spree at a school they don't go to. How about blaming it on being bat-shit crazy and having access to guns?
Mathew 26:52 But Jesus said to him, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.
You found a way to work a "tech" angle into this story.
Congratulations.
sic transit gloria mundi
I just read this entire thread and find it fascinating. There are some well thought out arguments on both sides. One thing I have not seen mentioned is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Guard_(Israel) . This is a volunteer force, administered by the police. One of the areas they protect is schools and kindergartens. The volunteers are screened, get training, and provide a first line of defense until the troops show up. They have over 50,000 in the force out of a population of 7.7 million. If we had the same percentage in the USA we would have over 20 million people helping with security and crime.
I'm interested in what this community thinks. Would/Could this work in the USA? Would you volunteer for 12 hours/month?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
What the founders intended is that those that exercise their right to bear arms be members of a regulated militia.
The 2nd Amendment does not say the militia has the right to keep and bear arms. It says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The Supreme Court said that's what it says too. It's an individual right.
The quest for finding a way to "not let this happen again" seems impractical. Everyone is looking for that Reagan-esque Safety dome, that will keep all the bad things out,... The best we might do is a bunch of small things that would reduce the likelihood of this happening again Inspire a sense of community instead of alienation, reduce martyr status heaped on by the press, reduced road rage by better traffic patterns... It wont be one thing that "fixes this" situation.
People making jokes here need to grow up. This isn't time to make light of the situation.
Read the whole story.
It wasn't one incident.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The American "kids are the most important thing ever" culture vs the American "muh guns" culture. Who's got the best lobby?
With such a low threshold for acquiring an easily operated killing device, how can there be any feeling of safety?
16 yr old teenagers get behind the wheel of an automobile, resulting in 18000 of them causing deaths or dying themselves each year in the US (source : http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2012/10/01/214505.htm)
How can there be any feeling of safety with this either. Surely that means we must ban cars. Or at least ban teen drivers.
Every day I see an armed cop hanging out at a coffee shop or just sitting in the cruiser on road 66, pulling someone over periodically. Why can't they hang out at schools and become an obstacle to crimes like this? I don't really give a sh*t that Jo Shmo was going 15 miles over the speed limit and got stopped.
All "right to armed bears" arguments aside, clearly the weapons and ammunition were not sufficiently secured.
Had THAT been done in a safe and sane manner, THIS event would never have occurred.
American society has changed HUGELY (attitudes, values, etc) compared to back in the "recently separated from Britain" days and the assumption (at the time) that "people with guns are both reasonable and sane" no longer applies.
Add to that the fact that guns these days are smaller and lighter and fire faster and more accurately than they did in the days of way-back-when (semi-automatic handguns were invented only just prior to the 1900s) and you have what's officially known as "a volatile mix".
DESPITE these facts (ie MASSIVE CHANGES over time), the second amendment to the constitution remains unmodified, a historical artefact.
SOMETHING needs to change.
Would all gun owners be willing to submit to random inspections of their weapon/ammunition storage and safety? Would the government fund the additional manpower/resources to perform such validations?
Answering YES to both might possibly lead to more freedom for enthusiasts of recreational firearms.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
What we know about the Connecticut school shooting By By The Associated Press – 40 minutes ago Key facts related to the Connecticut elementary school shooting: THE INVESTIGATION: Twenty-year-old Adam Lanza was carrying an arsenal of hundreds of rounds of deadly ammunition — enough to kill nearly every student in the school if given enough time, authorities said, raising the specter the bloodbath could have been far worse. Lanza shot himself in the head when he heard police approaching the classroom where he was gunning down helpless children. He had multiple high-capacity clips each capable of holding 30 bullets, and the chief medical examiner said the ammunition was the type designed to break up inside a victim's body and inflict the maximum amount of damage, tearing apart bone and tissue. The gunman shot his mother four times in the head before going to the school and gunning down 26 victims there. THE VICTIMS: All the victims at the school were shot multiple times with a high-power rifle, some of them up close. All six adults were women. Of the 20 children, eight were boys and 12 were girls. All the children were 6 or 7 years old. Among the dead were popular principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach, who rushed toward Lanza in an attempt to stop him and paid with their lives; Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old teacher who died while trying to hide her pupils; 30-year-old Lauren Rousseau, a teacher thrilled to have been hired this year, and Ana Marquez-Greene, a 6-year-old girl who had just moved to Newtown from Canada. THE GUNMAN: Lanza was described as a bright but painfully awkward student who seemed to have no close friends. In high school, he was active in the technology club. The club adviser remembered that he had "some disabilities" and seemed not to feel pain like the other students. That meant Lanza required special supervision when using soldering tools, for instance. He also had an occasional "episode" in which he seemed to withdraw completely from his surroundings, the adviser said. Authorities said Lanza had no criminal history, and it was unclear whether he had a job. THE SCENE: Families sought to comfort each other during Sunday church services and vigils devoted to impossible questions like that of a 6-year-old girl who asked her mother: "The little children, are they with the angels?" Many of Newtown's 27,000 people wondered whether life could ever return to normal, and, as the workweek was set to begin, parents pondered whether to send their children back to school. Signs around town read, "Hug a teacher today," ''Please pray for Newtown" and "Love will get us through." THE PARENTS: One of the parents who lost a child in the attack spoke publicly about his loss. Robbie Parker fought back tears and struggled to catch his breath as he described his 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, as a little girl who loved to draw. He also reserved surprisingly kind words for the gunman, saying he was not mad and offering sympathy for the gunman's family. To the man's family, he said, "I can't imagine how hard this experience must be for you." THE GUNS: Federal authorities visited local gun ranges but found no evidence that the gunman trained for the attack or was an active member of the recreational gun community. Investigators also have interviewed gun dealers trying to determine whether there was any training or other behavior that precipitated the attack. THE HISTORY: The Newtown massacre is the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history and one of the deadliest mass shootings around the world. A gunman at Virginia Tech University killed 33, including himself, in 2007. It appears that only Virginia Tech; the mass killings of 77 in Norway last year; and a resort massacre with 35 victims in Australia had greater death tolls across the world over the past 20 years.
I think your anti-Jewish sentiment is misguided; I know a lot of excellent, humane Jews. It would suck to be hated for no other reason than my parents happened to be of one religion or another. I get to choose my actions in life.
Israel is the problem.
But otherwise, many of the questions you raise are excellent and people should spend time trying to find answers to those before jumping half-cocked into stupid-land.
Google is usually used sooner or later.
That would imply adsense or some type of metric that would be connected to a "key" that could be used to back track his searches.
Whether anonymous or not, most people don't go to any effort to anonymize themselves that much.
But even if so they should be able to by process of usage by existing "keys" to find one that recently went dormant and triangulate on the subnet from which it came.
There should be billing records from in his mothers name.
Do even anonymity isn't really anonymity.
It might be vaugely difficult to seperate searches by his Mom versus searches he conducted.. but even if the searches were not wholely available, the adsense key should have profiled the types of things he might be interested in and in that way give a frame of mind reference for inferring his motives.
Literally, but going offline.. that signal should go up in the data like flare and illuminate the key unique to him.
Most gun deaths in the US are tied to drugs, alcohol, or crimes like robbery ... NOT to recreational shooters or to people who have guns for self-defense, nor to hunters, nor to people who hold guns for the constitutional reason (a check on government). Sure, there are many suicides, but many of those are tied to drugs or alcohol.
About 30,000 people are killed every year in the US by drunk drivers, and thousands die every year from drug use. Many thousands die from gay sex (AIDS in the US is not primarily a hetero disease) and yet the left-wingers who push for gun laws after every nut abuses a gun never call for limits on alcohol, cars, drugs, etc and in fact are pushing constantly to loosen the laws on drugs and legitimize gay sex. This clearly has nothing to do with saving lives. This is not a troll-post about sex or drugs ... I bring them up as part of an overall pattern of pretense by the left who always try to wrap their constant dream of gun bans in some sort of do-gooder ban on things-that-kill, while they actually embrace many things with higher rates of related death.
You are constantly being manipulated into surrendering your most-important freedoms (self defense, freedom from search and seizures, etc) , allowing yourself to be groped/irradiated in public places without a warrant and with absolutely no probable-cause, your income will be increasingly stolen from you by rising taxes (both rates and on WHAT is taxed) in order to pay for the MASSIVE increase in public pending, and you are tolerating it because you are being offered the illusion of increased freedom via the bread-and-circuses of legalized pot and the promise of gay marriage. Sure the pot will give you the munchies, and gay marriage will get you some legal benefits you could currently get with contract law (like a power-of-attorney paper) but those will not offset the rights you lose while you are distracted.
In case my fellow slashdotters have not noticed... the politicians and activists are also desperately trying to tie this to computers, video games, and being-a-smart-geek. There is renewed talk of video games as military-style "murder simulators". People who hate or fear freedom will trick you into supporting them by saying they want to let you have drugs or let you marry your gay partner while they go for your guns... but later, when you have no guns, they'll go for your gear and then they just might decide to take back your drugs. In fact, nothing would lock them from taking-back the gay marriage option. The absolute first right you must be deprived of is your right to a gun; that makes taking any of your other rights away much easier.
I'll address everyone's comments above in this one. It is true they are locked inside with the shooter. However, the rooms are tightly partitioned and there are many doors that drop, not just one or two. I also specified that classes would be made smaller. This means he's locked in with fewer victims, if any. He might be able to wipe out a handful, some of them may be kids. However, he wouldn't be able to pull off a mass 30 person shooting or more. This is a preventative measure to save the most lives possible. Dropping books or setting off fireworks can set off the detection system? No, there are algorithms for detecting the unique pattern of a gunshot that is being used in various cities around the U.S. right now. It does not detect car doors, dropped books or fireworks.
My solution isn't perfect, but it would have saved lives that were otherwise lost. Banning guns wouldn't have saved lives in this scenario, because the mother had bought them legally before Connecticut had banned purchasing those types of guns. The son stole them from his mother before ending her life. Also, he could have purchased illegal guns on the street. Gun laws don't stop criminals. Likewise, being paranoid and locking up anyone who shows signs of autism isn't going to stop crimes like these either. Whereas my suggestion actually saves the most lives that can be saved in this kind of situation. Someone being saved, or no one being saved. It's a choice as a nation that we have to make. And, it looks like we're going to repeat history against instead of learn from it. Each time one of these disasters happens they play the blame game and they pass laws, and it happens again anyways. In my humble opinion it is time for something new. Feel free to improve on my idea if you'd like. There might be protocols that can be put in place to improve it and save even more lives.
It is also worth noting that he was able to get past their front security door which required someone buzz you in by shooting his way in. With my recommended security system, he would have been stopped in the entry-way before ever making his way into the rest of the building. He might have been able to kill the woman at the front desk, and anyone who happened to be in the ante room. Again, it would have at most been a handful of people instead of dozens.
Actually, I often come to Slashdot for a quick look, then get sucked into the comments, then decide to post a quick reply to something and find it's simply more convenient to post AC than to go log-in and then have to go back to the right comment section and then borrow back down to re-find the comment I wanted to comment on. This might well be why others here also post AC (though I'm sure some DO because they indeed are cowards who wish to remain nameless)
For some reason, either Slashdot or my Firefox setup does not make this quick simple and easy (and I have better things to do with my time than to investigate). If I go log in, I lose my spot ... and if I open another tab and log in with that one, then the tab still open where I want to comment is not "logged-in"... the alternative of logging in and out of slashdot every time I visit is similarly annoying.
(Seriously. If there are 100 shootings per day, out of 250 million persons in the USA, your chances of being so shot on any given day are 4 places to the right of the decimal point in terms of percentages-- (borrowed possibly false statistic from previous poster.) At that rate, you are more likely to die in an airline catastrophe.
What the fork? 11k people die from gun related homicide per year. Can't say the same for airline catastrophes, can we?
The solution to deaths like these is NOT "gun control".
That's an unjustified conclusion. It might be, or it might be part of it.
The solution to deaths like this is to get people the help they so desperately need, without any overtones of disparagment, or of belittling the people who need that help.
OK, fine. Except when the patient stops taking the medication - which happens often - are you sufficiently willing to solve the problem that you're willing to involuntarily commit the patient? Isn't that a whole lot more infringing on liberty than getting rid of the guns?
(If not a gun, then perhaps a bomb, or poison, or any number of other methods.)
I keep seeing this but it seems rather unjustified. Assembling a bomb isn't easy. Particularly one that takes out more than a few people. Poison is pretty hard too. Additionally, the violent nature of guns makes them so damned appealing - thanks to the Columbine generation there. Take away the guns, you take away the appeal, I think.
He doesn't deserve this attention.
Hour zero reporting is ALWAYS junk. Final reporting may also be junk, if the establishment creates an ultimate fake narrative (as with the hilariously stupid tale of the 911 plane that was originally supposed to hit the White-house, but was shot down when that option was aborted).
All your points and questions are moronic. They relate to the 'fog of war', standard backside protecting behaviour by the authorities, and the need to appear to be doing something long after it is too late.
There are a few important questions that fly over the heads of idiots like you.
-why and how (psychologically) did the shooter kill little kids? This is seriously out-of-character with such shooting events.
-was the shooter influenced by the vile 'kids kill kids' garbage of 'The Hunger Games'- a series of books written by a resident of the same town?
-how co-incidental is it that war criminal Obama gets exactly the needed event to progress his number one stated agenda of his new term?
Those who suspect that a deranged individual was carefully chosen and 'persuaded' to carry out his own 'Hunger Games' scenario for the benefit of certain political agendas cannot easily be dismissed. Now his job is done, any convenient false narrative can easily be slapped on top of the events.
The UK saw its very limited gun rights exterminated after a very similar school shooting, by a 'Jimmy Savile' style paedophile with a similar long history of powerful establishment connections. The UK shooting made no 'ordinary' psychological sense either, but was hugely useful to the agenda of the political establishment.
Saw an article that claims the mother destroyed the computer, which triggered the whole thing. That sounds more plausible.
The perpetrator and his mother are already dead. Now the computers are damaged too.
Their motivations and their stories will take much longer to investigate.
1. Steal gun.
2. Go to store.
3. Get money.
You forgot that part.
Socialized healthcare, for example, could go a long way in giving people the sense that someone cares about them.
The American society is a "jungle, survival of the fittest" society and it has it's price. We, at some point, need to decide if this is how we want to keep going, and if so, accept the loss that comes with it.
You can't get rid of guns or crazy people, there are too many out there. And, if they want to do something like this, all you can do is prevention. I personally recommend building gated doors that automatically drop down when a gunshot is detected by omni-mics placed throughout schools. The doors can be opened with a card/code by law enforcement afterwards on an individual basis. This means SWAT could go in and clear each room. It also means that a shooter gets confined to a single area where he will do less harm. This also needs to be combined smaller classrooms with fewer students in each class, spread out over many classes. Then the hope would be, that he might only take out a teacher and a handful of students instead of 30 people before being apprehended. This is probably a better solution for now than anything congress will be able to come up with. Just my two cents.
Take back your money... How about we just arm the teachers and administrative staff? Failing that, how about we not let folks into schools unless we know who they are and why they are there?... Naw, let's just lock all the doors and wait for the cops...
WMDs? Outlawed.
Nuclear Bombs? Outlawed.
Crack Cocaine? Outlawed.
Human Trafficking? Outlawed.
What do you want to happen when something is found out to be used for a crime? Go "Oh, well, never mind, eh?"?
"Police had been eager to examine Lanza's computer in hopes of determining a motive in his killings or finding records of purchases of firearms and ammunition."
The shooter is dead. How is locating any receipts for firearms and ammunition going to further the investigation into the murder of twenty-plus persons mostly children? Is law enforcement so devoid of investigative skills that they cling to "the computer has all the answers to every question, even the unasked questions."
[Kiling your self] the most common use of guns against humans
...
why wouldn't we identify the most common use as the purpose of the tool?
After that absurd level of equivocation,
It's because of the wave nature of electrons!
Whoa, hang on, it's because of the particle nature of electrons!
Pssssh, fools! Relativity! E=MC^2. You're welcome.
Wait, wait - I got this - we have this cat in a box and it dies, or something... I'm pretty sure this has something to do with it.
Hold on, I think it's because of innumerable, invisible vibrating strings that permeate the universe.
Noooooooo, it's from this thing called the Higg's Boson and once we understand it, it'll explain it. Ah, shit. Now there's two.
Well, no one really understands gravity, so it is probably caused by whatever causes that. Um, dark energy/matter, perhaps?
Well, at least there's a parallel universe wherein we do figure it out.
Just because something's complicated doesn't mean we don't try to figure it out. If we see a trend or occurrence in a scientific discipline that is unprecedented or poorly understood, then we try to find the a reason or cause for such anomalies. In this case, finding a cause (or several causes - which is more likely to be the case) could help us prevent similar incidents in the future and potentially save lives. Isn't that worth the speculation? Besides, societal trends, regardless of the complexity of a society, are still less complicated than theoretical physics.
"With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone."
Gah!! I submitted before I finished, but you get the idea.
You don't have need his computer to see where he was on the Internet. His router has all the information of his history. His isp also has all his logs.
Not to mention the nsa
What happened to the maroon mini van driving off with the blown out window?
And the guy skulking off into the woods?
Seems like the story got changed by media when government showed up.
Lone gunman, just like Oswald.
and point out that right up until about 1950 there was regular terrorism and atrocities perpetrated against minorities (not just blacks, we did the Irish until there was too many of them to be a minority). Basically, there used to be a socially acceptable whipping boy for this sort of thing, and we kinda don't like to talk about that...
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I wonder; what if guns in the US themselves were to remain relatively unrestricted (but still required registration) but instead, bullets became closely tracked, and that the purchase of additional bullets by a gun-owner required them to account for the bullets they had previously acquired?
After all, someone who has a handgun for 'protection' from a sole assailant only requires a small number of bullets for such a purpose. This would make casual stockpiling more difficult. People who gave vague reasons, but went through a lot of ammo would also face more intense scrutiny, weeding out poachers or people on-selling bullets to criminals. Additional metals could also be added to bullets to 'fingerprint' them, making it easier to tie bullets back through the supply chain.
Regulating and restricting bullets doesn't take away the US citizen's right to 'bear arms' while increasing accountability and hindering the ability to go on a shooting spree. To me, it looks like a win-win.
The idea that one can limit harms from a gun soaked populace by somehow psychologically screening "risky" individuals is absurd and a diversion from the key questions posed by the ongoing gun related deaths in the USA (approx 80/day).
Let me explain why, but first a disclaimer: I work in psychiatry and I hunt with firearms for food/sport/vermin control.
In an ideal setting (hospital with access to records, collateral history and a willing patient), a cross-sectional screen for risk or for diagnosis of psychiatric illness is near useless. I have been doing this professionally for more than a decade and it would be a foolish practitioner who would claim to be able to risk stratify on the basis of such an assessment. That's not to say that previous mental illness or violent behavior should not be considered. However, screening would not catch many of the individuals who have committed mass murders. Furthermore, it would increase discrimination and prejudice against an already disadvantaged group.
The true lunacy here is in the cultural mindset that accepts that these weapons should be in the possession of the public. I hunt, a bolt action rifle is the best tool for the job, not a pistol, semi-automatic or automatic. A gun buyback and storage policy are good examples of rational policy. Guns and angry/scared people do kill and they kill a lot easier when the gun is close to hand and time for sober reflection is taken away. There is no place for pistols on the streets just as there is no place for hand grenades. Automatics and semi-automatics are designed to kill people, they do it well. That's why they should also be removed from public sale.
However, I can hear the cries of "but how do we defend ourselves"?. This, indeed, is a difficult issue when the violence, social disadvantage and entrenched poverty has so disenfranchised people that the gun seems like a good alternative. But having a gun won't make you safer, in fact it's just another weapon to use against you. Tough choices borne out of chronic neglect. Vigorously enforcing gun laws, licensing sale of ammunition, offering a buyback on automatics and considering more humane social policies are the way out of the lunacy but we must treat the sickness where it is, in the fabric of a people scared by each other, not in the minds of the most disadvantaged.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Even if we accept the claim that guns have zero guilt in the shootings. Why so many guns purchased? For self defense at home, one pistol is enough.
I could understand one gun, but have you seen how these loonies have so many guns and military equipment?
Why the parents purchase so many guns, why not spending such money in books for their kids, and isntead of goint to shooting practice, why not read them books at their kids, at home, to teach them to love knowledge?
For everyone clamoring for better availability to mental health professionals be careful what you ask for. There is a pretty significant chance that this was partially caused by mental health professionals overdosing this kid on SSRIs which are known to cause anger, suicidal tendencies and violence. http://www.ssristories.com/ http://www.ssristories.com/index.php?sort=date&p=school
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She had 2 handguns, completely reasonable for self defense. A standard .223 carbine... standard rifle you can get at walmart, fun to shoot and then a shotgun, pretty typical for hunting small game.
You do realise that to most people in most parts of the civilized/first world, this sounds completely insane, right?
Two handguns for self defence? Insane. Guess what I have for self-defence in the first world country where I live? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even a bat or knife. Times I have been violently murdered or robbed so far: 0.
A "standard" .223 carbine... that you can buy at a neighbourhood variety store. Insane.
A shotgun, "pretty typical for hunting small game". Insane.
Even more insane, though, is this idea that your hobby/paranoia (which are the two reasons you implicitly think people should have guns) outweighs other people's safety.
Where I live, you actually don't see guns, other than small handguns, in holsters, carried by the police. That's it.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Guns just make people way more effective at killing each other. That's what they are for. Take up archery, buy a can of mace, and stop being so completely ridiculous about your weapon-infested society.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html
Read Pynchon.
I'm glad to see someone has said this.
If he hadn't shot those people...
If his mother had secured her guns and raised him better...
If the various shrinks had spotted the signs...
If the US govt had banned automatic weapons...
If James Madison hadn't written such a shit amendment...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text
Although I believe this to be a perversion of the US constitution...
Please mod parent up!!
>>>
The DSM was not concocted as part of a plot to lock people up. Its goal is to help. It may not, and that's why there's a DSM-6 already in the works.
>>>
All the guy needed was vitamins! Ask batshit crazy Tom Cruise---O! where is Jack Reacher, umm Ethan Hunt, amm Maverick, emm, Sly Stallone formulaics, imm, superstar actress movement #237:
Taking the audience on a Jungian journey into the collective unconscious by using the shadow as a metaphor for the primal self that gets repressed by the modern persona and also by using an underground setting and labyrinth office design to represent both the depths of the psyche and the dungeon-like isolation of our increasingly mechanistic society which prevents people from finding satisfying work or meaningful connections with others.
... it is the effects caused by the impact of the bullets that kill people.
Perhaps you could use a snowboard to murder someone, but I don't know of any mass murder done with a snowboard.
If guns weren't widely available, people with mental disorders would be less likely to have access to them. If guns with high capacity weren't available to the general public, there would be much less probability of mass murders being committed.
Want to have fun with guns? What is exactly that you want to do that you cannot do with a .22 rimfire? Other than macho bragging, there's no need at all for a civilian to have access to guns that shoot military ammo.
According to what I read, he was shooting them point-blank with a high power rifle and likely using hollow point rounds.
Almost nobody survives this. Those who did were likely not shot directly themselves...
Just food for thought.
Banning the police from using guns would be a good idea in the long term, and would be much easier if the public doesn't have them.
And left wingers believe that prohibition will stop guns yet they preach to us that it doesn't stop marijuana...
So, what's the moral? Politicians on both sides speak out of both sides of their mouths and are masters of hypocrisy and stirring up their base against the "evil" other side...
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Simple as that.
Whether you just use it to cut your toenails or the hair in jour nostrils. Whether you baught it just off of dear old Washington or even god's own garage sale. Whether you hate em, don't havem, even love'em.
You or your kids will still be dead.
Can't you just open your eyes? Once?
When I search for news of the above, I get an October (rather than November) 21st incident at the Azana Salon in Milwaukee. Of the several articles I read, not a single one mentions a customer having a gun or the heroics you mention. Would you please indicate the source of your information so that I don't have to wonder whether my search is of or your retelling is, um, overly enthusiastic?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Not a single wounded person? Normally you have more wounded than dead. How is this possible, was he a Rambo?
A ban on even semi-automatic weapons doesn't really help. Mass murders (4+ murders as a single event) have been around for awhile and 1900 to 1999 saw 909 instances including the 1966 Whitman tower sniper incident. That incident would have still been a mass murder without access to the semi-automatic Garand he used in the tower. He had bludgeoned and knife killed two people and used a shotgun to kill at least two other prior to getting up in the tower. However, without the Garand he would have still had the bolt action rifles accessible to him to commit the act with and the casualty count probably would not have deviated very much. In fact it might have been even higher since armed civilian Texans firing back at him forced him to seek cover and significantly reduce his angle of fire and with a ban they likely would not have had guns to perform such response early on.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
If the British hadn't taxed tea...
If the Spanish and Vikings hadn't crossed the Atlantic...
If the Chinese hadn't discovered gunpowder...
If Neandertal man hadn't clubbed one another...
If proteins hadn't combined...
Darn big bang!
Nah. Guy with the gun in hand is to blame. The rest is circumstance that could have been raveled any number of ways.
Since it happened it has been theorized that he had been brainwashed, programmed to commit these acts by some federal authority, so they would have an excuse to start their gun grab. For the record, it is all leading up to martial law and a facist police state.
Of course, a destroyed computer would make it difficult for anybody to prove otherwise, but lets look at the inconsistencies.
1. If they guy was planning on killing himself, why would he need body armor?
2. If he was planning on killing himself or getting killed, why would he need to cover his online tracks?
3. Even if he survived, he was bound to end up in prison for life, anything on his computer would be trivial.
4. If he has enough knowledge to know how to destroy the computer like that, he should have enough to wipe it truely clean electronically.
Now of course, they can construct whatever kind of evidence they want the public to hear.
For the record, when something like this happens again, do NOT let federal authorities get involved... THEY are suspects in the case, and so it needs investigated locally, without federal authority.
1. Aspergers is merely the very mildest form of autism on the spectrum. MANY people are diagnosed with it, and clinically, all it really means is that they have some difficulties interpreting non-verbal forms of communications (not likely to get the fact that someone just told a joke if the only clue given is a wink or a nod, for example), and they're likely to become fixated on specific topics or items of interest more than most people would. There's a whole list of other possible symptoms Aspergers people may or may not have, such as a heightened sensory response (tags on the back of clothing items annoying them and the like), too. But it's crazy to think this would flag a person as "potentially dangerous".
2. If you're a family who shoots guns, why wouldn't you want to teach all the family members what it's about? We've got so many people today who live in urban or suburban settings, who never learn the first thing about gun safety.... They often wind up being the ones who finally get ahold of somebody's gun at a party while everyone's been drinking, mis-handle it, and accidentally shoot themselves or others. Better to be familiar with a gun and how it's PROPERLY handled and used, IMO.
3. As others said, the guy was 20 years old ... No longer a minor and only a year or less away from being considered an "adult" in society. We really don't know that the guns weren't properly secured anyway? He very well might have bypassed the security.
Aspergers was the least of his issues. Supposedly he had problems even feeling empathy for others. He simply didn't belong around firearms.
His family didn't shoot guns. His mother bought the guns to take him out and teach him responsibility. The kid had great pride in his knowledge of proper firearms handling.
Sorry but 20 year olds are still kids in my book. They don't know shit.
Finally, the fact that he shot up a school pretty much proves I'm right. Feel free to keep arguing though.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Your argument - that people will find other means - seems logical, but isn't actually true. The same debate occurred around putting up barriers on bridges to keep people from jumping off. Some people argued against them, saying that they were ugly, and people would just find another way. However, when the barriers go up, the total suicide rate in the area drops by the number of people who would have killed themselves. People prevented from suicide on the bridge DON'T find another method.
Similar data can be found when the UK removed carbon monoxide from oven gas. People could no longer kill themselves from sticking their head in the oven, and the total suicide rate dropped as a result.
Could this guy have killed people with a pistol instead of an assault rifle? Sure. But not nearly as many. We probably would feel just as bad if 4 kids had died instead of 20, but it would've made a huge difference to the families of the other 16 kids.
It's not clear what could have been done on the mental health front. This guy and his mother had plenty of money, and access to whatever health care they wanted. Outside of compelling people into mental health care, what else could be done on that front?
I have a mild case of Asperger's myself... Was never formally diagnosed as a kid because back then, nobody really knew it existed. I don't think they even had any medication to deal with ADD/ADHD yet at that time (though they were just starting to diagnose a couple of my classmates with it in early grade-school).
Anyway, I'd say Jason Levine's post is pretty accurate, but even at that, there are varying degrees.
In my own situation, I was over-sensitive to the emotions of others before I was told about them. I always had trouble making friends in class, but would overly worry if something I said or did affected someone else. Unlike some Aspergers' people, I think I was pretty good at reading the non-verbal cues, but I'd tend to dwell on them or make too much out of them in my head. (EG. Oh man.... After I told that joke, I saw Lisa frown for a second. I bet she thinks I'm an idiot now. Or maybe my joke offended her for some reason? I wonder if she's going to tell her friends, behind my back, how dumb it was for me to say that? That might concern me for DAYS .... when in reality, Lisa probably didn't even remember making the frown, a few minutes after it happened, and it was just her subconscious way of saying she didn't really get the joke.)
And I'd definitely go off on tangents, talking about a topic that probably bored some listeners to death by the time I was done. But again, in my case at least, it wasn't so much about being unable to "read the nonverbal cues" to know they were bored. It was more the unwillingness to even try, because I was concentrating fully on whatever it was I was talking about. (If I didn't find it fascinating to begin with, I wouldn't be motivated to talk about it. And I started realizing the type of people who would just be bored by such a thing were people I wasn't going to enjoy being good friends with anyway. It was difficult, but I always eventually found at least 1 or 2 people who DID want to hear all that stuff I had to say, and they became my best friends.)
If we're going to make a law, I suggest that we mandate the ownership and use of gun safes for gun owners. Here's why:
This does _not_ imply that we give cops the right to inspect to make sure that you own and use the safes; that's unlawful search. But having the law on the books and being able to prosecute after the fact will convince a lot of law-abiding citizens to practice some extra safety that will keep some guns out of the hands of criminals, insane people, and kids. And this is not a complete solution, maybe a 10% solution. There will be other ways for these people to get guns, but it gets just a little bit harder, and saves a good many lives.
You sound more like an average, normal teenager. Why do you think this is a medical condition, not normal growing up and going through puberty with all the associated akwardness?
The only concern I would have around this would be if he wasn't alone. Sometimes nutballs band together. While it's hard enough to imagine one sick person who would take a gun to a school full of kids, it's not impossible (though highly unlikely) to be part of something larger.
Certainly it wouldn't hurt to know more about the events that led up to the shooting.
Unless the disk was shredded (like Google does when they decommission a disk drive), the FBI probably have the forensic means to extract information from that disk.
PICTURES: 20 children among 28 Victims of Connecticut Shooting http://celestonews.com/news/pictures-20-children-among-28-victims-of-connecticut-shooting/4951.html
hey now, there are plenty of GOOD reasons to attack Blizzard these days
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Got news for you - a .22LR *will* kill you. Don't believe me? Volunteer to take a couple in the chest and as you gasp for your last breath, tell us if I was right.
Remember when Reagan got shot? He was minutes from death thanks to a single .22LR round fired from a junk revolver.
I'm no expert but it's clear that auto and semi-auto weapons are far easier to mass kill with, especially for someone untrained.
They'd also be marginally better for defending the US from its own govt, although that really isn't much of a threat with your constitution.
Also highly amused I was modded down -1 Troll.
Your list just shows that there are thousands of causes for every action, albeit of decreasing significance.
Blame is just vengeance/deterrence. With vengeance it almost doesn't matter who you aim blame at. With deterrence, everyone should think about the consequences of their actions, therefore blaming a single person is stupid.
state a fact and ask a question and get rated troll.... Well this certainly shows the political bias of Slashdot. So the paid online data manipulating israeli's are here too... as has been noted about wikipedia editing.
He smashed the computer... Ok... what does that mean exactly? To some it could just mean that the monitor or case is cracked. Unless he smashed the disk drive(s), taking care to thoroughly fragment the platters or going so far as to bake it in the oven(500F for 1 hour), throw it in the fireplace or subject it to a good strong magnetic field data could still be recovered
How about requiring home ownership before handing out firearm purchase permits. You know, append the mortgage or deed paperwork to the permit application. Statistically, home ownership is a reliable talisman of social responsibility and it also serves a compelling government interest. Of course the Fourteenth Amendment Humanoids will have something to say about it since, well, you know...
Whenever these shootings happen there are calls for guns to be banned but never SSRIs.
Who knows, he may even have had a slashdot account.
Of course he left a trail somewhere.
I'd say there's a pretty good chance he did have an account on slashdot. Or 4chan. Or reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Google+
SOMETHING that he used pretty regularly.
1337 h4xorz these days don't spend much time just messing around with their computer, they're all over the interw3bz.
Even the anonymous and lulzsec guys screw up sometimes and connect to their IRC channels without TOR.
The thing I'm wondering is, are the high and mighty gods of the tubes off scouring their own records for anything that looks like L4nzAd92?
And if they find it, would they offer it up to the cops, or seriously scrub the crap out of their data
so it was gone forever and they didn't get the big scary government breaking down their doors demanding copies of their backups?
If the po-pos released technical information like IP address, any usernames or emails he discovered,
I have to believe the internet geek squad would be hella fast at digging up all the online traces.
Ominous! Who needs a computer to plan simply walking into a place full of innocent people? Who needs body armor when no one is shooting at them? Perhaps there was more to this plan that didn't get carried out. At least, if this guy was sane, I hope there was more to his plan, some kind of motive that we could understand in terms of greed, anger, jealousy, religion; something that would, even slightly, humanize his actions.
He smashed a young, innocent hard drive that was no harm to anyone ! Is there no end to his evil ?!? To think of the future that hard drive could have had...... the first novel, the first porn download, the first person shooter...... uh.... nevermind