Tag: rampage shootings

More Reasoned Discourse™

KevinLeave a comment

In reference to the recent debate between Mr. James Kelley and various and sundry members of the RKBA contingent, Joe Huffman left this in a comment here:

Did you notice that James says he will not read my post and that he accuses us of both of “angry/emotional reactions”?

And that, apparently because of me he now says, “I had no intention of doing this, but as someone has just penned a blog post with a title that takes my name in vain, I feel I now have no option but to take the precaution of reintroducing full comment moderation for the time being. I apologise for doing so, because to be fair no-one has actually over-stepped the mark yet.”

Interesting. Without even reading my post, but because of it, he moderates the comments on his blog.

Joe is referring to this comment:

To be honest, Joe, I’m not planning to follow your link – but on the plus side that at least means you don’t need to worry about me penning a counter-post entitled ‘Why Joe Huffman is So Offensive to Me’. It’s interesting that Kevin suggested on his blog that I was guilty of resorting to the typical emotional arguments of my side of the argument (implying that he by way of contrast relied solely on hard-headed logic). And yet we’ve now seen clear-cut examples of angry/emotional reactions from both Kevin and Joe. And when someone reacts to a calm debating point with such startling emotion, I think it’s always worth looking beneath the words to see what it is that’s really making the person so uncomfortable. In the case of Kevin’s reaction to my point about Thomas Hamilton, I don’t think we need to look very far – it clearly hit a nerve because the logic of my argument is inescapable. Everything we know about Hamilton’s character suggests that if he hadn’t been able to obtain guns legally, he wouldn’t have obtained them at all. Allowing Hamilton the right to own handguns therefore directly deprived more than a dozen young children of their right to life. Repeating over and over again that the object in Hamilton’s hand made no difference to the outcome (only the killer’s murderous intent counted) is a desperate last line of defence and a poor one – and I’d guess Kevin’s discomfort in having to rely on it is as good an explanation as any for his resort to emotion. He knows in his heart of hearts that Hamilton simply would never have succeeded in killing as many as he did with virtually any other realistic choice of weapon at his disposal.

The other point at which Kevin substituted logic with emotion was on his own blog post, with his shameless juxtaposition of a photo showing hideous injuries with the words “after all, it’s just ‘bumps and bruises,’ right?”. The equivalent of that debating tactic for me would have been to show a photo of one of the Dunblane victims with a caption reading “was my right to life really so much less important than your right to own a luxury item – one that you described yourself as an ‘inanimate object’?” I haven’t felt the need to debase my argument with that kind of tactic – others can draw their own conclusions from the fact that you have felt such a need.

Other matters – Kevin, your response to my ‘correlation is not causation’ point was interesting, but it raised more questions than it answered. You assert that since the UK murder rate has not gone down since the handgun ban, this constitutes proof that the ban has not protected the public – quite simply this is woolly thinking. In order to say you have ‘proved’ that, you would have had to demonstrate that the murder rate would not now be even higher than it currently is had the ban not been implemented. At what stage have you even come close to demonstrating that? This idea that the only test that counts is whether the murder rate goes up or down in absolute terms following a change in the law is one you’ve conveniently conjured out of the air, and it has no rational basis whatosever. I could just as easily – and I did the other day – conjure up my own test that says any lowering of murder rates following the introduction of ‘conceal/carry’ laws is meaningless unless it reduces the murder rate to below that seen in a comparable society that had fewer guns in circulation in the first place. (And incidentally, any of your attempts to draw conclusions from apparent localised drops in crime rates following a liberalisation of gun laws in the US also very clearly falls foul of the ‘correlation is not causation’ principle – I don’t see how you can now credibly dispute that.)

On the Alun Michael quote – any reasonable person would understand that he was talking about protecting the public specifically from violence caused by handguns. Again, how have you proved that the ban has failed to do achieve this? Small hint – you haven’t. The overall murder rate is irrelevant (as it includes non-gun-related deaths), and highlighting that there are more guns around than there were before 1996 doesn’t even begin to do the trick, because as I’ve already pointed out there might now be even more illegal weapons in circulation had the ban not been implemented. You’ve already pointed out that I have no evidence this is the case – so I’m now waiting with baited breath for your hard evidence this is NOT the case, which is the minimum that would be required to substantiate your claim that Alun Michael’s statement has been ‘proved’ wrong.

“Things have changed a great deal in Britain since the Tottenham Outrage 100 years ago, and not, to American eyes, for the better. A lot of us have started referring to that space on the other side of the pond as where ‘Great Britain used to be.'”

It’s ironic that you charged me with being a stereotype in the arguments I deployed, because when you used the words I’ve just quoted it was at that point you revealed yourself to be a walking, breathing stereotype of your ‘type’ of right-wing American. Did you actually imagine I or others would never have encountered that particular cliché before? As a Scottish nationalist I’ve got no special illusions about the ‘greatness’ of Britain past or present – but in hankering after (for instance) Britain’s Churchillian past you’re missing an aspect of the British people’s true ‘greatness’ in times gone by that I suspect wouldn’t be quite so much to your taste. For during Churchill’s wartime tenure as PM, the electorate were just biding their time to replace him with a red-blooded socialist government that would build the welfare state and a National Health Service free at the point of need. And if you want me to go further back, I can – it’s now more than 100 years since the Liberal landslide that laid the initial foundations of the welfare state, and that was accompanied by the first massive influx of socialist members of parliament. So it’s not only your assessment of Britain’s present that’s distinctly faulty, it’s your assessment of our past.

Finally, I had no intention of doing this, but as someone has just penned a blog post with a title that takes my name in vain, I feel I now have no option but to take the precaution of reintroducing full comment moderation for the time being. I apologise for doing so, because to be fair no-one has actually over-stepped the mark yet.

I left this in reply:

“Full comment moderation” due to something someone posted somewhere else.

As to stereotypes, you just fulfilled the last one: You are now practicing what we call “Reasoned Discourse™”.

I’m undecided on whether to dissect this comment in all its circular-logical glory – I am tempted – but I will most definitely put a link to it on my blog, along with a copy of this comment, since I believe it probably won’t escape your “full comment moderation.”

We’ll see if he “allows” it.

I’m Shocked, SHOCKED I Say!

KevinLeave a comment

I’m Shocked, SHOCKED I Say!

Well, now that the dust has settled over yesterday’s shooting of Arkansas Democratic State chairman Bill Gwatney, I thought I’d comment. The AP reports (no link, on purpose):

The man who fatally shot the chairman of the state Democratic Party had a Post-It note at home with the victim’s last name and phone number along with 14 guns, antidepressants and a last will and testament, according to court documents.

I’m shocked to discover that the killer was taking antidepressants. The 14 guns? Not so much. We’re talking about Arkansas here.

The one thing that lefty blogger Markadelphia and I agreed on (aside from the individual right to arms issue) was that it appeared that mind-altering chemicals seemed to be the one thing that the overwhelming majority of “rampage shootings” had in common. The shooters were on Selective Serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, etc. As I’ve said before, if these medications affect 1/100 of 1% (.001%, literally one in 100,000) in such a way as to reduce or remove the inhibition to suicidal violence, it would be too small a population to statistically determine. But there are literally millions of people on these drugs.

So every time I hear about a “rampage shooter,” the first question I want an answer to is “Were they on antidepressants?”

And this one was.

The “Threshold of Outrage”

KevinLeave a comment

Well, we’ve had another rampage killing, another church shot up. Pretty much everyone in the firearms community is aware of this, but for future readers I’ll spell out the specifics. On Sunday morning a man armed with a semi-automatic shotgun and 76 rounds of ammo walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church during a children’s performance of “Annie Jr.” and opened fire. According to the reports so far, he fired three shots, and was then subdued by congregants when he attempted to reload. There were two fatalities and seven wounded. From the reports, the first person killed placed himself directly in the shooter’s path in order to shield others. As of this writing, four people are still in the hospital, two in critical condition.

The shooter, 58 year old Jim Adkisson, left a four-page letter in his vehicle that gave clues as to the reason for his rampage and leading authorities to believe that he intended to use all of the ammunition he brought, and die in a hail of police gunfire. In the letter, Adkisson indicated antipathy towards Christians, and extreme antipathy towards “liberals” and their causes, gays in particular.

He did not expect resistance.

When I wrote Why I Am an Atheist, I included a couple of jokes, one of which was a “how many X does it take to change a light bulb?” joke. For the Unitarians the punchline was:

We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that light bulbs work for you, you are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your light bulb for the next Sunday service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.

If there’s a “liberal position” on something, the Unitarian Church can be counted on to support it. The particular church Adkisson chose was openly friendly to homosexuals, and that may have had an influence on his choice of targets as well.

Mr. Adkisson was unemployed and apparently unable to find work, at least work that he found acceptable. He was receiving food stamps, and there was a letter found that stated that his food stamps were to be reduced or cut off. Mr. Adkisson’s only criminal record was two DUI convictions in two different states. CNN reports that Adkisson had threatened to kill his fourth wife and himself in 2000 which resulted in an order of protection barring him from contacting his wife. He apparently drank heavily, and had done so for quite a while.

Adkisson purchased his shotgun a month before the shooting. He was not a prohibited person. A waiting period would not have helped. The shotgun was not a high-capacity “street sweeper,” but apparently a standard hunting shotgun with a three-round capacity. He was an angry, bitter old man of 58, probably alcoholic, who wouldn’t or couldn’t face the fact that his problems were of his own making. Like too many people today, he decided to end it all, but to take as many with him as he could in a burst of rage.

Some time back, Billy Beck wrote an essay in response to a post at the newsgroup misc.activism.militia. I linked to it in my 2005 essay, March of the Lemmings, and I came across it again recently. In that piece Billy stated something that I unconsciously absorbed, I think, and have restated myself in my various “Reset Button” postings:

Every human being has a “threshold of outrage” beyond which a transgressor proceeds at peril of response. At this point in our history, individuals are responding ever more frequently. The only question to me concerns the nature of the response.

It would appear that this is the case in Mr. Adkisson’s rampage. In 1997, Carl Drega killed two policemen, a judge, and a newspaper editor in New Hampshire over property rights. In 2000 Garry DeWayne Watson killed a town alderman and a city worker and wounded two others also over property rights. Also in 2000, 77 year-old Melvin Hale shot a Texas State Trooper to death because he’d been pulled over for not wearing his seat belt. In 2003, Arthur and Steven Bixby of South Carolina shot two Sheriff’s deputies to death over the taking by eminent domain of a 20-foot wide section of their property. Also in 2003, Stuart Alexander, owner of a sausage manufacturing business in California, deliberately murdered three of four state inspectors in his office. The fourth escaped only because Alexander couldn’t run him down. In 2004 Marvin Heemeyer destroyed a good chunk of Granby, Colorado with an armor plated bulldozer before taking his own life, again over property rights.

And yesterday, Jim Adkisson decided that he was going to kill himself some liberals because they were keeping him from getting work.

Last week and over the weekend there were a lot of pixels spilled over a letter to the editor written by an outspoken member of the militia movement, a letter threatening bloodshed against “anyone who tried to further restrict our God-given liberty.” A lot of the discussion was heated, too much of it was insulting. Far too much of it lacked perspective and thought.

Billy Beck is spot-on. Everyone has a “threshold of outrage.” For everyone it’s different, and what happens when that threshold is crossed is different for everyone as well. But the general public doesn’t share the outrages perpetrated by society on its individuals. No one is able to accurately gauge the egregiousness of the insults and injustices – or lack thereof – visited upon those whose personal “thresholds of outrage” were crossed. Our media hasn’t done it. In many cases of government overreach that do end up in the media, I (and I’m sure others) wonder what prevents the victims from exacting a similar revenge. Perhaps their own personal “thresholds of outrage” weren’t crossed, or simply a violent response just isn’t in them.

But when someone states in a public forum that “There are some of us “cold dead hands” types, perhaps 3 percent of gun owners, who would kill anyone who tried to further restrict our God-given liberty,” the picture the general public gets isn’t one of a patriot standing up for the rights of all, it’s this:

That’s not the picture I want attached to the battle for my individual rights.

In Keeping with Harshing Your Mellow

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In Keeping with Harshing Your Mellow…

I would not be at all surprised if SCOTUS hands down the Heller decision today, since there has been another rampage shooting in a workplace this morning.

An employee shot and killed four of his fellow workers at a plastics plant in Henderson, Ky., on Wednesday, before shooting himself, the police said.

Two other workers at the plant, Atlantis Plastics, were also shot and they were transferred to hospitals in Evansville, Ind., the Henderson Police Department said in a statement. “The cause behind this incident is unknown, however, the suspect is known to have gotten into an argument with a supervisor earlier in the evening,” the police statement said.

After the argument, the suspect left the plant for his regular break and when he returned he was carrying a handgun, police said. The identities of the victims and of the suspected killer were not immediately released, and it was not clear whether the supervisor was among those killed.

According to the radio report I listened to on the way in to the office this morning, the shooter went home, got a gun, came back and started shooting.

Boy, it’s a good thing that people aren’t allowed to keep firearms in their cars at work, isn’t it? That kind of “common-sense thinking” prevents this sort of incident!

Right?

So, anyway, with this story starting off the day, I will not be surprised for SCOTUS to say, today, in Tam’s words,

“It’s an individual right, but only not.”

Sorry, but the more I consider it, the less likely I find the idea that the courts will save us, and I’ve felt that way a LONG time.

How Long Until Another Rampage Shooting

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How Long Until Another Rampage Shooting?

One of the few things I agreed with Lefty blogger Markadelphia on was our belief that mood-altering chemicals have an association with “spree killings.” I believe, and have so stated, that a tiny percentage of the population is adversely affected by this class of pharmaceuticals, specifically the antidepressants known as “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors” (SSRIs) like Prozac and Zoloft. I think for a tiny percentage of people these drugs can unlock normal inhibitions and lead to severe violence. I think that the percentage is so small that it would appear in any study as “statistical noise,” but I also believe that there have been too many rampage shooters who have been on such medications for it to be mere coincidence.

So imagine my discomfort to discover that:

Data contained in the Army’s fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, about 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope.

—

Given the traditional stigma associated with soldiers seeking mental help, the survey, released in March, probably underestimates antidepressant use. But if the Army numbers reflect those of other services — the Army has by far the most troops deployed to the war zones — about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq were on such medications last fall. The Army estimates that authorized drug use splits roughly fifty-fifty between troops taking antidepressants — largely the class of drugs that includes Prozac and Zoloft — and those taking prescription sleeping pills like Ambien.

The one thing that helps alleviate my discomfort is this:

(S)oldiers — who are younger and healthier on average than the general population — have been prescreened for mental illnesses before enlisting.

But I have read LtCol Dave Grossman’s excellent book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, and I realize that combat can have a mentally debilitating influence on the majority of combat soldiers.

So the question I have is, are our soldiers stable enough to withstand the effects of these drugs? I know our mental health screening efforts aren’t what they could be, given the example of Steven Dale Green, but I certainly don’t want another Green coming back here and deciding to end it all and take as many with him as he can.

I hope like hell the military is supporting and observing those who are on SSRI’s for changes in behavior patterns.

KevinLeave a comment

OK, WTF?!?.

Look, I know it’s an election year and all the available choices suck. Yes, I know that the economy has finally descended from its twenty-eighth consecutive quarter of growth or whatever, and is now threatening to enter recession. I know that a lot of people bought houses they really couldn’t afford, betting that the economy would continue up, up, and away! I know that oil is at all time high prices, and the dollar is reaching new lows against every currency up to and including the Som of Kyrgyzstan. I know that millions, nay tens of millions of Americans have no health insurance, or insufficient health insurance (something almost no one had prior to say, 1940). I know that Global Warming has resulted in the coldest winter in thirty years, and the Arctic ice has melted so much that it’s almost back to normal. I know that things are so bad in Iraq that even the Democrats have stopped talking about it.

So for various and sundry reasons, lots of people apparently want to take their own lives.

WHY THE HELL ARE SO MANY OF THEM TRYING TO ARRANGE PACKAGE CRUISES ON THE RIVER STYX?

What is with these nutjobs deciding to take perfect strangers along with them?

It just Does. Not. Compute.

I sent in my CCW application this morning. If they want to go, fine. I’m not going with them.

“…as if it were something ominous.”

KevinLeave a comment

Megan McArdle links to this CNN story that reports:

Steven Kazmierczak had been taking three drugs prescribed for him by his psychiatrist, the Northern Illinois University gunman’s girlfriend told CNN.

Jessica Baty said Tuesday that her boyfriend of two years had been taking Xanax, used to treat anxiety, and Ambien, a sleep agent, as well as the antidepressant Prozac.

The first question I had upon hearing about the shooting was “I, for one, wonder if the shooter was on anti-depressants.”

Megan doesn’t see it that way:

This is being reported as if it were something ominous, perhaps the cause of the tragedy. This seems a little much. It’s not exactly shocking to find out that people who go on shooting sprees are often depressed, anxious types with difficulty sleeping.

Megan seems to be missing the point. This kind of rampage murder/suicide was extremely rare. It has since become something that occurs two, three, or four times a year. Everybody asks “what changed?” Most seem to blame “the number of guns” or “gun availability,” but the fact of the matter is that “gun availability” has never been the issue – guns have always been available. Some people blame violent video games, but there doesn’t seem to be a correlation there.

The one thing that seems to be consistent is that the shooters are often on (or recently off of) medications like Prozac. According to this NY Times piece:

Over the years, the antidepressant Prozac and its cousins, including Paxil and Zoloft, have been linked to suicide and violence in hundreds of patients. Tens of millions of people have taken them, and doctors say it is almost impossible to tell whether the spasms of violence stem in part from drug reactions or the underlying illnesses.

Tens of millions. Well, gee, how many “rampage shootings” did the U.S. (or the world, for that matter) see prior to the widespread use of these drugs, and how many do we see now? And if these drugs affect only 1/100 of 1% of people this way, that’s 1,000 out of every 10,000,000.

So yes, Megan, many of us are wondering if Prozac wasn’t a contributor to Kazmierczak’s decision to murder a bunch of college students and then kill himself. The correlation seems to point in that direction.

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day.

You see, I can already predict how things would go if it were demonstrated that anti-depressants have a determinant role in sudden outbursts of homicidal-suicidal violence.

Promotion of responsible use of these drugs? No way.

Pharma companies would be sued nearly out of existence and the use of anti-depressants strictly regulated (some of them may be banned altogether), all to the detriment of those people who’d actually benefit from them. – Fabio C. in a comment to Another Gun Free Zone.

What do you expect in a country where there’s one lawyer for every 300 of us? Hey, they gotta eat!

KevinLeave a comment

Another Gun Free Zone Does its Job.

Gunman Opens Fire at Northern Illinois University

A heavily armed man burst into a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University this afternoon and opened fire, wounding as many as 18 people, four of them critically, before taking his own life, authorities said.

According to radio reports, “heavily armed” was a shotgun and a pistol.

The shooter, a thin white male dressed in black and wearing a stocking cap, went into Cole Hall on the university’s campus in DeKalb, entered a science class through an emergency door and began shooting at students and a teacher, witnesses told a local radio station and a student newspaper.

Well, at least we’re back to the “angry white male” demographic.

There was conflicting information on fatalities. A hospital reported that there were none besides the gunman, but the Chicago Tribune quoted the campus police chief as saying four of the shooter’s victims had died.

Last I’d heard there were 17 victims, three critical, and the only dead was the shooter (not included in the 17.) However, those three were head wounds. I expect more fatalities.

NIU campus police chief Donald Grady told reporters that the gunman apparently had a shotgun and two handguns, including a Glock, but that only one of the handguns was immediately recovered. He said the shooter, who appeared to have been acting alone, had not expended all of his ammunition.

Which matches the radio report with the exception of the extra handgun.

School officials said they knew of no motive for the shooting. The gunman does not appear to have been a student at the university but may have been a student somewhere else, they said. He emerged from behind a curtain near the stage and began firing, they said. The man has been identified, but his identity has not yet been released.

“This is a tragedy, but from all indications we did everything we could when we found out,” Peters said. “Our security people were there right away.”

Yes, when seconds count, the authorities are only minutes away.

Grady said police officers were at the scene within two minutes of the shooting and that a campus-wide alert was issued within 15 minutes.

As I said…

And once again a rampage shooting ends when the shooter decides he’s done.

According to this story, there have been four fatalities in addition to the shooter, but this is the part that sticks with me:

Katie Wagner, a student who was inside the classroom, tells CBS 2 that there were 70 students inside room 101 at Cole Hall when the shooting happened. She said the gunman entered from a side door near the front of the lecture hall and started to fire shots.

She described the gunman as white, tall, skinny and wearing a black tee shirt – and maybe something red.

She said she went to the ground immediately and just started staring at the floor.

Waiting to die.

I am reminded once again of Tam’s declaration:

I ain’t goin’ out like that. Whether it’s some Columbine wannabe who’s heard the backward-masked messages on his Marilyn Manson discs, distressed daytrader off his Prozac, homegrown Hadji sympathetic with his oppressed brothers in Baghdad, or a bugnuts whackjob picking up Robert Frost quotes transmitted from Langley on the fillings in his molars, I am going to do my level best to smoke that goblin before my carcass goes on the pile. I am not going to go out curled into a fetal ball and praying for help that won’t arrive in time.

—

Even if the police are right there, it might not do me any good. Heck, I might not do me any good. But, dammit, I am going to try.

There doesn’t seem to be much of that attitude in today’s youth.

Expect there to be immediate blaming of the guns for this.

I, for one, wonder if the shooter was on anti-depressants.

UPDATE: From ABC News:

Stephen Kazmierczak, the 27-year-old who opened fire on a crowded Northern Illinois University lecture hall, killing five and then himself Thursday, was described as “fairly normal” and an “unstressed person” by NIU campus Police Chief Donald Grady.

But in the last few weeks his behavior had become erratic, according to Grady, and it is believed the Kazmierczak had stopped taking his medication. The type of medication he was on is unknown.

UPDATE II: According to the same report, the shooter purchased two of his four firearms last Saturday, from a licensed dealer in Champaign. According to this report, it was nine days ago.

Illinois has a 24 hour waiting period for long gun purchases, and a 72 hour waiting period for handguns. I’d assume he started the purchase nine days ago and picked them up on Saturday after the 72 hour waiting period for the handgun.

Boy, that waiting period really helped.