Comments

1
Does anyone give a shit why this is happening?? Why there are so many violent crimes like this??

Why is the focus ENTIRELY on the method used, rather than the intent?

I question your priorities.
2
What about the cafe racer shooting back in June? Doesn't that count?
3
Did you really skip the six killed (five victims and the shooter) in Seattle on May 30th, 2012? :/
4
dont forget the azana spa shootings in brookfield wisconsin that happened less than 2 months ago. 4 dead including the gunman, many injured.
5
I hate to pile on, but that was May and a few blocks from my house. My kids' school was on lockdown.
7
@3 I guess she did. She must not have been in Seattle, or considered Seattle part of the US, or she is trying to dumb down her SLOG postings for a shot at a mass media job.
8
Shock, Outrage, Do Nothing, Move On...Rinse repeat...
9
@3 I guess she did. She must not have been in Seattle, or not considered Seattle part of the US, or she is trying to dumb down her SLOG postings for a shot at a mass media job.
10
@1: Yeah, why is is that so many people who want to kill someone, or somesdozen use a gun?

It's not like they're abundantly available and super efficient at quickly killing from a distance.
11
Was the incident located at Cafe Racer considered a mass shooting?
12
@1: alienation. anomie. impulsive suicidal rage.
13
@10 shhh. If people catch on that someone with a house full of guns could be killed by someone else with a gun from a distance, using like a scope or laser targeters or these things called assault rifles or something, they might not think they're invulnerable from other people's guns.

Having a gun doesn't make you invulnerable to a bullet. Even body armor only protects against low skilled shooters some of the time. Unless you walk around in full armor.
14
@11: maybe not technically, because the shootings occurred in 3 separate locations and i think there's a threshold.

but it should have been included. it was a rampage, as was this.
15
@10,
Are you trying to be funny?

Don't you give a damn why these people want to kill?

Unpaid Intern's flippant comment at the end:
Meanwhile in China today, where guns are tightly regulated and not available to the public at large, a man wielding a knife allegedly stabbed 22 children, none of whom died.
OH.... nobody died? Whew, what a relief... guess we can just completely forget about it then, right? No harm no foul.

Does no one care that a guy STABBED 22 PEOPLE?!?

Why is this headline:
March 2, 2012: Fourteen injured in mass shooting at concert in Tempe, AZ.
Not treated as casually unimportant as the China stabbing one? I mean, no one died, so who the fuck cares, right?

Oh that's right, I almost forgot...

GUNSGUNSGUNSOHMYFUCKINGGODWEMUSTGOAPESHITCRAZYBECAUSEGUNSGUNSGUNS!!!!!

You think gun nuts are impossible to reason with? Look in a fucking mirror.
16
uh.. you're counting December twice, this isn't the past year.. this is '13 months of tragedy'.
17
Guns don't kill people.

Guns just make it really easy to kill people.
18
@1 Well, that's pretty obvious. The answer is cowardice. And like it or not, the cowardice of our people is most acutely expressed in our gun culture and gun violence.

If you're so afraid of your friends, neighbors, and the world around you that you feel being armed to the teeth is a supremely valuable right that must be protected at all costs, you are a coward.

If you're so afraid that someone might put some limit, any limit, on your ability to own firearms in order to prevent mentally ill people from having unfettered access to firearms, you are a coward.

If you believe that deadly force is a reasonable and legitimate response to all variety of adversity and setbacks in life, you are a coward. Hell, if you believe deadly force is a legitimate response to a verbal altercation or non-lethal physical altercation, you are also a coward.

It takes courage to admit that there is a problem, and it takes courage to embark on the difficult work of addressing the problem. No one, ESPECIALLY not the pro-gun lobby, is showing any courage at all right now.
19
unpaid intern forgot cafe racer shootings. i guess you get what you pay for.
20
Surprised to see that the Cafe Racer shooting right here in Seattle is not on this list...
21
@1:

What do you suppose is a more likely outcome: A, that we have much stricter rules on guns and who can obtain them, or, B, that we somehow find a way to get to fix the infinite number of causes that amalgamate to produce these acts?
22
@1 - Because absent the method, the intent wouldn't do anywhere near as much damage. That's the point of the note at the end.
23
@18,
Cowardice? You mean 'fear,' not 'cowardice,' right?

A person who goes into a school on a shooting rampage, knowing they're eventually going to be confronted by the police shooting back, is many things... but 'coward' isn't a word that comes to mind. Actually, 'fearful' doesn't seem an appropriate label either.

You believe we could decrease some of these shootings from happening by helping people feel more brave? I'm not sure I get what you mean.
24
I would like to take issue with the account of the August 24 killing. One man was murdered by a former business associate. Our vaunted police killed the murderer and wounded 9 bystanders in the process.

I'm not sure we can class this as a typical criminal mass shooting. It was an NYPD shitshow.
25
Urgurtha,

I don't think it's that people DON'T ask, "why did this (and similar tragedies) occur?", but that people simply need time to absorb and emotionally process the sheer enormity of the event itself before they can begin to objectively and rationally delve deeper into the root causes.

Chances are very good that we will learn the shooter has some history of mental illness, an illness that perhaps may have been manageable with medication, but maybe not. If that's the case, then clearly we should be having a very serious conversation about why we as a nation do not feel that treating the victims of such illnesses is or should be a priority; which of course will tie into a whole host of tangential issues such as the general state of our Health Care System, the Affordable Care Act, etc., etc.

And of course there's the question of the sheer ease with which the mentally ill, convicted criminals, et al can obtain these weapons of mass destruction. The NRA will do its best to derail that conversation, just as they always do. But at some point we're going to have to come to grips with the reality that there are far too many people in this country who - legally, medically, or otherwise - have no business owning a firearm, but who nevertheless can get one - or many - with such ridiculous ease that it renders whatever paltry restrictions we currently have in place literally meaningless.

Let's please just hope that it doesn't take another - or several more - similar tragedies as the one that occurred today, before we can collectively decide that "NOW is the time" to have that debate; because if NOT now, then WHEN?

Peace to you all.
26
If The Stranger staff is so upset about this (as opposed to just the grief porn displays) then why not (as I have suggested before) keep a running list of LOCAL shootings?
All local shootings.
With as many facts as possible on each incident.
If you want to change the law you have to show people that it is local.
27
@23 Note how many of these shooters turn the guns on themselves once they're done killing innocents. You know, rather than face the consequences of their actions? What word would you use to describe that? Fear is a part of what cowardice entails, so yeah, that's included. People can't face the inevitable pains of human existence without weapons in their hands.

But you almost answer your own question. We can't instantly make people feel more secure with themselves, or less afraid of the world around them, or compel them to show courage in the face of life's adversities and disappointments. We can't! We cannot fix the "why", we can only address the outcomes. So insisting that we're wrong for not prioritizing the intent, which we can do nothing about, is a goddamn red herring.
28
@21,
What, we can only do one or the other? All I ever see is people screaming about your point A. Nobody seems to give two shits about your point B.
Take away the guns and you still have psychopathic murderers. Does that really make you feel safer? Really?

@22,
It wouldn't do as much damage? That's short sighted.

"Unpredictable maniac's guns taken away - Everyone can relax now."

What's more damaging, the fact that the 'unsinkable' Titanic sunk, or the hubris that exists to allow people to boast they had built an 'unsinkable' ship?
29
The post has been updated to include the Cafe Racer shooting.
30
@15, I linked the China story earlier this morning in the main post about this shooting. I did so not to avoid the unsettling, base issue that you point out of why these things happen at all and with such frequency (particularly in the U.S.), but to offer a near-parallel counterpoint to the argument against gun restrictions that killers will kill just the same with other weapons, that the availability of guns somehow does not enable these monsters to be more efficient monsters. I think the intern is making a similar point.
31
@27,
But it's NOT a red herring! How do you KNOW we can't fix the "why?" Have we ever even tried? Do we ever talk about it?

No, we can't instantly make people feel better or feel less afraid, but we can at least talk about it.

We can and should talk about responsible, real gun control. We also can and should talk about the root causes of these violent acts and how we can prevent them.

@ COMTE,
I think both your second and third paragraphs @25 are equally important.
32
Hey, how come cafe racer isn't on the list? Who's the intern?
33
Read again. Looks like the intern got this list from an FBI agent. Sure, Chelsea could have verified other sources, but even without the Cafe Race tragedy, this list is really huge. There's stuff on this list I don't remember hearing. Think about the possibility of other shootings not being mentioned by this source either.

Fact is that we don't go very long without someone somewhere in our nation going completely nuts and committing one of these acts. And it does happen in other nations, and sometimes it happens without guns.
34
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
35
@31 That I can agree with you on. The one thing that frustrates me more than anything else is how few people in a position to make a real difference are even trying to in the first place. Thanks for responding, I wish you well.
36

Young people. Young people. Young people.

It's not some "creepy old guy" that you've made into your bogeyman.

It's you. Yourselves. You're the crazy ones.

You are shooting at yourselves and now at children.

What's wrong with you?
37
@1,

People who have no hope or feel hopeless can be dangerous.(They can also be easily manipulated and recruited.) I think desperation is at the root of these tragedies. Just a few ideas that I think could help...

1) We need comprehensive health care, including mental health.

2) A living minimum wage, affordable housing, et. cetera.

3) Meaningful gun regulation. Perhaps the Netherlands model could give us some ideas.

4) Serious reevaluation of some aspects of free speech. Presently we allow individuals and networks to wind audiences up with manufactured concerns and such. We need journalism standards to be strong and statements made to be verifiable. We may need to treat the contents of news broadcasts being subject to financial penalties for inflammatory statements.

5) We will need to seriously consider the effects of the Internet . The Internet can be a good thing, but it can also be a source of anxiety and it can feed hopelessness and despair.

These ideas may sound lame. Some years ago one of the young women connected with the domestic violence group I was involved with was murdered by her partner. The ensuing trial highlighted the hopelessness of his story. It illuminated his inability to cope with his anxieties, fears, depression, et cetera. Hopelessness seems, to me, to make humans sick. Sick enough to murder. So, I would not be surprised to hear that the shooter in every case on this list and the knife attacking individual in China felt hopeless and desperate to the point of being mentally ill.

Just my $0.02.

Take care.
38
@37,
Thanks Kim, I don't think your suggestions sound lame. I think your fourth point is one that really strikes hardest. Some people in favor of gun control essentially go as far as to suggest repealing the second amendment... but what about the first amendment? It's terrible to shoot up a school, but isn't it also terrible to use one's voice to work people (sometimes dangerous people) into a violent frenzy?

If we limit the second amendment in order to make people feel safer, then why can't we also limit freedom of speech to make people feel safer? (I'm kinda being devil's advocate here, but only kinda)

Things to think about.
39
It is happening because people are bastards. Fundamentally, to each other, to the mentally unstable (who the go bastard on other people) to the young to the old, to the weak. Human psycho nature is why this happened.

The focus on the weapon used is relevant because no guns = less (or even no) massacres, because a knife wielding bastard can kill far fewer people (or as yesterday in china, NONE AT ALL) than in the same time period as a gunman, you also have to be closer, you're also easier to stop. Crazy, non gun, massacres require physically intimacy, guns allow emotional distance.

Less guns = less mass murders.

"A school shooting is an incident in which gun violence occurs at an educational institution."

UK, 'school shootings' since 1992 = 1. It led to stricter gun control and essentially an end to private gun ownership.

Canada 'school shootings' since 1992 = 0 due to much stricter gun controls brought about by the 1989 massacre. Several of these were repealed in April 2012, we have yet to see how this will go (it is still waaay harder to get a gun in Canada than the US)

USA, 'school shootings' since 1992 = 50+ (there are so many i lost count.) 7 of them killed more than 5 people in the single incident, 3 of them killed more than 15 - a feat which is unlikely to have been achieved with a knife, sword or axe. None of these led to strict gun control.

And that's just in the schools and universities, the Aurora massacre and others like it do not figure in these statistics.
40
@27 Fear and love are not the only emotions on the life line. There are a whole litany of other emotions that are available.

In the case of today's shootings, @27 I think has it as desperation as well as frustration and anger and mental illness. The shooter's mother was a kindergarten teacher. I don't think it's much of a coincidence that he shot mainly in the kindergarten.

Urgurtha is right in asking the questions of "why?" But GUNS seems to be what everybody wants to talk about instead. Why? Because its easier.
41
@1. Because people are violent. Inherent part of the human condition. The method matters because it significantly ups the body count. Lots of people feel like this guy did (FBI guy said millions fit the profile). Lack of access to efficient weapons lowers the media presence of whatever violence they do commit, so we don't hear about it. And they tend to keep it in the family, so again, we tend not to care.
There is significant stigma, especially for males, to get help with mental health issues, long term or temporary. There are economic, social and personal consequences to getting sufficient help for a serious problem. It's likely he did have health coverage that would have paid for treatment (mom a state employee, he under 26 y.o.). A mental hospital would also probably only have kept him in for a few weeks. You can't involuntarily commit in CT (there are very good reasons why, as you can imagine), and the mentally ill don't tend to be any more violent than the general population, so even treating mental illness isn't necessarily a help.
I actually doubt there was any real strong reason he killed the kids. He wanted to hurt and kill his mom, the rest of it was a bonus. What does their death matter when he feels life is shit? Maybe felt he was doing them a favor.
42
Ummmm gun laws have actually gotten more strict over the decades. And the shootings you are listing have happened in the past year. Explain your logic please.
43
At least we sometimes have one, even two, whole months in a row without a gun massacre. That's great!

I suppose for 2013 we might see these run 12 months a year. And still do nothing?
44
@1 I agree and concur with your sentiments. I would like to suggest a comparison that helps me understand the sense of urgency: if you come across a person who is injured and bleeding profusely, the first priority is to stem the bleeding. Asking questions about how this person got there doesn't help stem the bleeding. The feeling of an epidemic of gun violence in this country can be viewed as a massive trauma that must be treated. Effective gun control would be an attempt to stem that bleeding, once the bleeding is curtailed and the victim is stable, then we can further benefit from seeking answers to the kind of questions you have posed.
45
Did you actually read the whole linked article?

Note these lines: "before being subdued by security guards who have been posted across China following a spate of school attacks in recent years" [Clearly the results would have been worse, except there are security guards posted everywhere because of knife wielding maniacs!]

Then: "echo a string of similar assaults against schoolchildren in 2010 that killed nearly 20 and wounded more than 50"

And the closing paragraph: "In one of the worst incidents, a man described as an unemployed, middle-aged doctor killed eight children with a knife in March 2010 to vent his anger over a thwarted romantic relationship."

Err. Hello? This killings obviously wouldn't have happened if these people didn't have access to knives!
46
How does this year compare to previous years?
47
Matter of fact is if semi automatic weapons were banned there would have been a lot less casualties. Sure we need to help and get the the bottom of why people go crazy but if we make it a lot harder to obtain these weapons (weapons too powerful for self defense or hunting) then it would make everyone a heck of a lot safer. Period.
48
Honestly, I think we have a huge mental illness problem- so often, it seems like everyone close to these shooters has KNOWN that they are mentally ill, won't take medication consistently, and are thus unpredictable and dangerous. I think we should, at the very least, make it possible for people to get their dangerously mentally ill relatives on a list of people who won't pass a background check to get a firearm. Really though, I'd rather we reconsidered our policies in terms of both institutionalization and how we deal with the mentally ill in general. Aside from these mass shootings, our cities are also full of mentally ill homeless people who should honestly be much better cared for in a society like ours than they are.
49
August 13th, 2012 in College Station, TX. You forgot that one.
50
You just posted what amounts to a high score list.
51
Way to go Unpaid Intern, you've taken two things I've been crying over today and just made me angry.

It infuriates me that [Chelsea Kellogg] values the lives of Chinese children LESS because they "get to live" with fractured skulls, scarred faces and other deformities caused by this mentally unstable man that was still able to attack 22 children before anyone could stop him.. with only a KNIFE. He didn't need a gun to destroy the lives of twenty two families.

He stole a knife to carve up twenty two children so they will look in the mirror or touch the gaping hole in the back of their heads and always remember him. And what we don't know is the extent of the damage the more seriously injured (there were 3 that had to be transferred to a bigger hospital) suffered.

But thanks for putting it in *bold* just to show how different it is that they lived and how that means it's not a big deal-good to know we Americans have that to look forward to, because surviving those attacks makes it so much better. Have you ever been stabbed? Slashed? Multiple times? Watched it happen? If not, then STFU.

The shootings are a tragedy, today is a tragedy- a horrible awful day that makes my eyes swell up with tears, and my heart goes out to all the families involved. But yesterday was a tragedy too. The loss of life is terrible, but so is the destruction of it. Yes we should be grateful those children in China will have a chance hopefully to work through this and build back confidence in themselves and live a decent life. But it doesn't make what they went through any less awful. And shame on you for thinking that they don't matter.
52
24 elementary school incidents since 1995, with 54 total dead. 275 wounded/maimed/burned horribly/still in comas. add another 19 secondary school deaths + 23 wounded = China isn't exactly the place to use as a role model when it comes to school killings. Kitchen Knives, garden shears, fire bombs, motorcycles-set-ablaze, axes, homemade guns, IEDs, and THROWING KIDS TO THEIR DEATHS FROM THIRD STORY WINDOWS have been the weapons of choice in their MULTITUDE of school killings. If anything, China makes a great case for showing how batshitcrazy ragers & haters will find a way to kill a bunch of innocent kids whether guns are banned or not.
See also: banning guns in UK -in kneejerk response to a horrrible Scottish school killing, no less- while the new law eventually sent gun-only homocide rates down, has actually made every other violent gun crime and gun-related injury violence go UP- WAY UP: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlic…
But, if you're going to go after weapons, make sure to ban fire. 67 dead in 2001 in kenya and 19 injured in a school killing there using only fire. And ban bombs: the deadliest school mass killing ever (44 dead, 58 injured in 1927) was a series of bombs, not guns.

Moreover, Australia and the United States — where no gun-ban exists — both experienced similar decreases in murder rates:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0…
Between 1995 and 2007, Australia saw a 31.9 percent decrease; without a gun ban, America’s rate dropped 31.7 percent.
f.y.i. I think guns should be nowhere near schools, let alone loaded ones. But I also think gun control and mental health are not the paths to prevent yesterday's mass murder.
53
Petition by Daily Kos to the White House: http://campaigns.dailykos.com/p/dia/acti…
54
#15, I know that gun nuts are impossible to reason with. Yourself included. And I look at myself in the mirror at least twice a day.

And Urgutha, people who use guns to murder children are cowards.
55
Three more in a New Jersey grocery store in August:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/3…
56
It is so hard to get a person who is mentally ill the help they need if their resistant. The laws of Grave disability or danger to self or others ties mental health workers hands on a constant basis. Its not against the law to be crazy. These are the laws that need to be changed. Mentally ill persons dont get hospitalized till they do something that endangers themselves or another person or persons!
57
What about the theater shooting at the Batman premier? I don't see that on the list, either.
58
Oh, never mind, I guess that's the Aurora, CO one.
59
Guns are not the problem. They need to be guided by a person to do damage.

Neglectful parents who (to their benefit) didn't learn how to model constructive and pro-social behavior for their children are a dangerous, growing phenomenon in our society.

Who's regulating/monitoring parenting skills? Because we become parents doesn't give us a "free ticket" from having mental health and interpersonal communication issues which need attention.

Metaphoric to a person who seeks to acquire a gun - a parent who is not "qualified" (has no "background check" or monitoring done for parenting/communication skills) is potentially very dangerous. Further, parents "wrap their hands around" a child, guide/"aim" their direction, and, ultimately, pull the trigger.

What we really need to give our attention to is not the gun, but who's behind the trigger?
60
I believe it is intentional...I believe these attacks have a underlying purpose....My question is who have these people become affiliated with. Who has been allowed to enter the dark recesses of these peoples mind and fertilize the seed of insanity already there. What a horrible way to end 2012. Maybe we misinterpreted the demise of civilization as the Mayans predicted?
61
I was disappointed that The Stranger omitted from this timeline the mass shooting that happened in July of this year. Seattle's very own Rainier Beach neighborhood: six people shot at a house party--one passed away shortly afterward. This event happened shortly after The Cafe Racer shootings and received little to no coverage from the press, (certainly none from The Stranger and very little from local Seattle news). Here is a link to the coverage via Rainier Valley Post: http://www.rainiervalleypost.com/six-peo…
62
:
You missed the mass shooting that occurred in Seattle's Rainier Beach neighborhood in July of this year. It happened shortly after Cafe Racer's shooting and received little to no coverage from the Seattle press. Six people were shot at a house party, one died later. The shooter(s) were never caught. I know that it wasn't as sensational as Racer but it still offends me that, when tallying mass gun violence, this tragic event was ignored. In my dream world, the Stranger would update their "Timeline of Mass Shootings n the Last Year." Here are details from this event via the Rainier Valley Post:
rainier bvhttp://www.rainiervalleypost.com/six-people-shot-at-rainier-beach-house-party-suspects-at-large/

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