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Congressman Steve Scalise Among 5 Shot at Baseball Field (nytimes.com)
From a New York Times report: A lone gunman opened fire on Republican members of the congressional baseball team at a practice field in a Washington suburb Wednesday, using a rifle to shower the field with bullets that struck five people, including Steve Scalise, the majority whip of the House of Representatives. Two members of Mr. Scalise's protective police detail were wounded as they exchanged gunfire with the shooter in what other lawmakers described as a chaotic, terror-filled ten minutes that turned the baseball practice into an early-morning nightmare. Police said a total of five people were shot, two critically. Standing at second base, Mr. Scalise was struck, in the hip, according to witnesses, and collapsed as the shots rang out, one after another, from behind a chain-link fence near the third-base dugout. Witnesses said Mr. Scalise, of Louisiana, "army crawled" his way toward taller grass as the shooting continued. Alternative source: NBC News, CNN, BBC, NPR, WashingtonPost, and WSJ.
Update: 06/14 15:40 GMT: In remarks at the White House, President Trump said the Alexandria shooting suspect has died from injuries.
Update: 06/14 15:40 GMT: In remarks at the White House, President Trump said the Alexandria shooting suspect has died from injuries.
That's a good point. Anybody who's planning to commit mass murder will surely stop when he finds out gun ownership is illegal.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
>50-100 shots
>only hit 5 people
more than likely.
This is getting out of hand... WAY out of hand. The specific targeting of the right needs to end. I'm not talking about the nut jobs with guns, but those who engage in irresponsible verbal targeting that encourage the nut jobs with guns and provide them targeting.
Come on folks, all this hateful rhetoric needs to come to a full and final stop. Those on the other side of the isle are NOT (in general) trying to do harm to others or the country and it's way past time we stop trying to claim they are. Attach the principles, argue about what the country should do, discuss the issues, but leave the personal attacks and outlandish claims alone.
This shooting illustrates just one of the reasons why this is important..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
We could just cut out the middleman and declare murder illegal. I'm shocked it hasn't been suggested before now actually.
This is what you get when you engage in hate campaigns. Is it what you wanted? If not, then find something to believe in besides hating people. Find something to talk about besides how much you hate [whomever] and how much your hate is justified because [reasons].
"Libtard"? Hey kid, do your parents know you're on the Internet?
I don't respond to AC's.
Thoughts and prayers? So nothing, really. You're doing nothing. Bravo.
"Anybody who's planning to commit mass murder will surely stop when he finds out gun ownership is illegal."
Murder is illegal. Though it does not stop all murders. By your argument, we should make it perfectly legal. After all, murders are still happening at an alarming rate. If making murder illegal is not stopping murders, then what is the point?
Early reports are wrong. It was not the shooter who asked if the players were Republican or Democrats.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
The thing is...this isn't just an isolated nut job here and there acting alone. Just look at the large, violent mobs in past year or so at college universities trying to extinguish any speakers or thoughts that are not in lockstep with their hive mind....mobs of people beating people, destroying property, shouting down any opinions differing from theirs and suppression anyone they see as different.
You saw this for days in the streets after Trump won...
Peaceful protest is one thing, I'm all for it..but this is mob rule violence and destruction trying to intimidate and suppress thought.
It sounds vaguely familiar to groups doing the same things just before WW2.
It just now is left instead of right, and the uniforms have changed.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
What we do know though... is that a couple of good guys with a gun, stopped a bad guy with a gun.
No, police stopped a bad guy with a gun. There's a difference. If there stronger gun control, the bad guy might not have had a gun but those police still would have. Of course, it will be spun exactly as you did in order to fight gun control. And I say this as a person who owns multiple firearms, including one that would be classified as an "assault weapon". We do need more gun control, even if it is nothing more than a mandatory, government funded and provided class before you can get a permit that covers gun safety, gun laws, and basic handling/marksmanship.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
What violent acts by the GOP in any form of recent history?
Even the Tea Party high levels of activity, were quite peaceful at rallies....
I seem to remember a recently elected Congressman from the Midwest pleading guilty to bodyslamming a reporter. Or by "recent" do you mean only within the last few days?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Thoughts and prayers? So nothing, really. You're doing nothing. Bravo.
No, I'm also changing my facebook picture....
It looks like the CDC has them virtually neck and neck. I would dare say, if you removed the suicide gun deaths, and justified shootings where it was a "bad guy" that died.... I would guess the numbers would be a good bit lower than traffic deaths.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
gun violence is down and has been going down for decades now.....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
False — already rebutted by cayenne8. And irrelevant anyway.
?? Of course, weapons have very productive uses — indeed, one such use was demonstrated by the police this very morning!
Two false statements out of two... But nice try, anyway.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Jared Laughner shot a democratic congresswoman in the face. There have been numerous shootings and bombings at abortion clinics, at least 5 major incidents. Some of these are attributed to the Army of God, which also bombed some gay night clubs. The bombing of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics was carried out by Eric Rudolph who wanted to fight against abortion and the "homosexual agenda." There's the Phineas Priesthood responsible for plotting and sometimes succeeding in blowing up gay night clubs, FBI buildings, abortion clinics, etc. Let's not forget the unabomber's reign of terror. Let's not forget the Oklahoma City bombing. Or the Charleston Church shooting. Or the Sihk temple shooting.
Of course I understand that a few nutcases with right leaning ideology doesn't mean all of those with right leaning ideology are unable to differentiate right from wrong. Surely you know that not everybody on the left is about to start taking pot shots at those on the right, don't you?
2. Was a skinhead, tied to KKK group. KKK founded by Democrats to destroy Republican reconstruction efforts in the south. KKK = Democrats. 3. Dylan Roof prop of choice was Confederate flag. History lesson: Confederate flag = Democrats. Northern states (the Union) led by Republicans.
Mid 1800s Democrats=modern day Republicans in terms of political leanings. Your argument is disingenuous at best.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Almost every place in the world has seen gun violence go down in the last 20-30 years. Almost... the USA is the exception as usual
Allow me to inject a little reality using a source you doubtless regard as truth incarnate: Washington Post, 2015: We’ve had a Massive Decline in gun violence in the United States. Here’s why
This decline in gun violence is part of an overall decline in violent crime. According to the FBI's data, the national rate of violent crime has decreased 49 percent since its apex in 1991. Even as a certain type of mass shooting is apparently becoming more frequent, America has become a much less violent place.
You're worldview is fictional. You've been inculcated with fictional nonsense about the US and you're regurgitating it all over the interwebs.
You'll note that wapo at no point credited gun control for the "massive decline." You'll then dismiss that as it fails to align with the fictions you prefer to indulge. The massive decline corresponds to a period in which firearm ownership and concealed carry in the US have both grown at phenomenal rates. There is no correlation between the growth of firearms and gun violence; exactly the opposite. Another reality you'll need to subsume under your preferred bullshit narrative.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Only if every auto accident is an argument to ban automobiles...
You're comparing an accident with a transportation device with an attempted homicide with a purpose built weapon. Automobiles have plenty of uses besides killing something. Firearms are purpose built weapons. Comparing the two is a false equivalency.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. The US has seen a massive decline in violent crime in general, along with a decline in teen pregnancies. There is no correlation between increased gun-ownership, increased conceal-and-carry, and increased violent crime.
While it's only a theory and correlation does not strictly imply causation, I cautiously subscribe to the lead-crime hypothesis:
"Second, this correlation holds true with no exceptions. Every country studied has shown this same strong correlation between leaded gasoline and violent crime rates. Within the United States, you can see the data at the state level. Where lead concentrations declined quickly, crime declined quickly. Where it declined slowly, crime declined slowly. The data even holds true at the neighborhood level - high lead concentrations correlate so well that you can overlay maps of crime rates over maps of lead concentrations and get an almost perfect fit.
Third, and probably most important, the data goes beyond just these models. As Drum himself points out, "if econometric studies were all there were to the story of lead, you'd be justified in remaining skeptical no matter how good the statistics look." But the chemistry and neuroscience of lead gives us good reason to believe the connection. Decades of research has shown that lead poisoning causes significant and probably irreversible damage to the brain. Not only does lead degrade cognitive abilities and lower intelligence, it also degrades a person's ability to make decisions by damaging areas of the brain responsible for "emotional regulation, impulse control, attention, verbal reasoning, and mental flexibility."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/a...
http://www.motherjones.com/env...
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...
The thing is, most of them don't want to. It's a cry for help./p>
Most of them who don't wan't to die choose a method that has a greater chance of being stopped, I think. I'm not a mental health professional, but I unfortunately have some direct experience.
I have a daughter who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder, and like many BPD sufferers has tried many times to kill herself. For a few years there, we were at the ER at least three or four times per year, except when she was institutionalized. When she was institutionalized we also got the chance to be sometime-parents to a bunch of other girls with similar problems, and we became friends and have kept in touch since, so my experience is broader than just her.
I own many guns, and because of her disorder I've been careful to always keep them locked up... except one time. I'd been teaching a shooting class so I had a couple of .22 pistols in my truck, and I was in a hurry when I got home and didn't get them locked up right away. She took one, with the intention of killing herself with it (all previous attempts had been with pills). When I went out to get the guns I realized immediately what had happened and called the police (who knew her well). They, and we, began searching intensively for her.
When we found her, she had the gun, but had carefully unloaded it and thrown the ammunition into a swampy area. She told me that she had realized that she didn't actually want to die, and that if she used the gun no one would be able to intervene to keep her from dying.
I'm not going to claim that there aren't some people who kill themselves with a gun who wouldn't kill themselves if they didn't have a gun. But I think that most people who choose a gun choose it specifically because they aren't crying for help and really just want to end it. If they were crying for help, they'd do something more like what my daughter usually did: Take a bunch of pills then make sure she was with people who would notice and act to save her. Those who really want to die and don't have access to a gun can jump in front of a bus or a train, or off a tall building, or run a hose from their tailpipe when they're certain no one will be around all day, or any of a hundred other methods with just as high a probability of "success".
(Aside: My daughter is doing much better. It's been over three years since she attempted suicide. She still struggles with her disorder but is doing much better at building a life in spite of it. She sees a therapist weekly -- her own choice, which is important. We made her go to therapy for years, but it's dramatically less effective than when the person actually wants the help.)
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