Category Archives: Gun violence

#DoSomething, #NEVERAGAIN, #NOTONEMORE, Gun control, Gun violence, Mass killings, Mass shootings

Ohio shooting: nine dead in second US mass killing in 24 hours

[Editor: this report details 22nd mass killings in the US this year, accounting for 96 deaths, according to an AP database.  I prefer to monitor gun violence using data from MassShootingTracker.org, which includes many more of these horrific incidents, counting those where 4 or more are shot, regardless of how many were killed in the mass shooting.  Massshootingtracker’s reasoning behind this: “…in 2012 Travis Steed and others shot 18 people total. Miraculously, he only killed one. Under the incorrect definition used by the media and the FBI, that event would not be considered a mass shooting! Arguing that 18 people shot during one event is not a mass shooting is absurd.”  The Ohio mass shooting was the 293rd this year, accounting for 345 killed.  – RS]

Dayton incident comes hours after at least 20 people died in a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas

The Guardian, by Frances Perraudin, 4 Aug 2019 12.07 BST

Nine people have been killed in Ohio and at least 26 injured in the second mass shooting in the US in less than 24 hours.

Police said the suspect opened fire in the Oregon district of the city of Dayton at 1m local time (6am BST) on Sunday, before being shot and killed by responding officers.

The mayor of Dayton, Nan Whaley, said the gunman was wearing body armour. He used a 223-caliber rifle magazine and had additional high-capacity magazines with him.

Whaley said the injured had been taken to a number of hospitals and that some had life-threatening wounds.

She added uniformed officers were in the area when the suspect started shooting. “In less than one minute, Dayton first responders neutralised the shooter. While this is a terribly sad day for our city, I am amazed by the quick response of Dayton police. They saved literally hundreds of lives.”

She said: “As a mayor this is a day that we all dread happening and certainly what’s very sad is … that so many of us have gone through it.”

Earlier on Sunday morning, Matt Carper of the Dayton police department said the shooting had taken place “over a very short timeline” on the city’s East 5th Street. Nine people were known to have been killed, not including the shooter.

“Currently we are working on identifying the suspect to see what the possible motivation might have been. We do not have that yet,” he said. “The suspect was firing a long gun with multiple rounds at the victims.”

Carper said the police’s initial investigation suggested the shooter had been acting alone, but that inquiries were in their early stages. He said they were interviewing dozens of witnesses to establish what happened.

Video from the scene near downtown Dayton showed a number of emergency vehicles on a street that had been cordoned off. The FBI was assisting with the investigation and a family assistance centre had been set up at the Dayton Convention Center. Carper called on those with information about the incident to contact police.

The Oregon district is a historic neighbourhood near downtown Dayton, home to bars, restaurants and theatres. Carper said officers routinely patrolled the area, which was popular with visitors.

“We are very fortunate that the officers were in close proximity and that they reacted in the way that they did,” he said. “As bad as this is, it could have been much, much worse as I think everyone will become aware of here as more information unfolds. So we’re very appreciative of the officers who were on scene and the action that they took.

“This is obviously a very difficult situation. They put themselves in harm’s way. That’s what they are here for – to protect the public – and that’s what they did tonight.”

The Ohio shooting came hours after a young man allegedly opened fire in a crowded shopping area in El Paso, Texas, leaving 20 dead and more than two dozen injured.

Days before, on 28 July, a 19-year-old shot and killed three people, including two children, at the Gilroy garlic festival in northern California.

The El Paso shooting was the 21st mass killing in the US in 2019, according to a database compiled by the Associated Press, Northeastern University and USA Today. The database tracks all US homicides since 2006 involving four or more people killed, not including the offender, over a short period of time regardless of weapon, location, victim-offender relationship or motive.

That makes Sunday’s shooting in Dayton the 22nd mass killing in the US this year. The first 20 mass killings in the US in 2019 claimed 96 lives.

Mike DeWine, the Ohio governor, tweeted that he was heartbroken by the attack. He commended Dayton police and other first responders for “their bravery and quick response to save lives and bring an end to this tragedy”.

“I have ordered that flags in Ohio remain at half-mast in honour and memory of the victims who lost their lives this morning,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

#DoSomething, #NEVERAGAIN, #NOTONEMORE, Benicia, Gun control, Gun violence, Mass shootings

A Benicia perspective on outbreak of mass shootings – 20 dead in El Paso today

Hate is a factor, Trump fanning the flames

By Roger Straw, August 3, 2019

So today 20 innocent people were gunned down by a white supremacist in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.  Another 26 were seriously injured, some critically.  Earlier this week, two store workers were killed in a Walmart in Mississippi.  And on Sunday this week, another white supremacist gunman opened fire at the Gilroy Garlic Festival near San Jose, California, killing three of us and injuring 15 .

In just this last week, according to MassShootingTracker.com, 43 were killed and 75 injured in mass shootings.  In 2019, 291 mass shootings have taken place so far – that’s 291 mass shootings in 215 days!  In those 291 horrific events, 335 individuals have been murdered and 1,111 others were injured.

In May, a gunman killed 13 people at a municipal building in Virginia Beach. The month before, on the last day of Passover in April, a vocal anti-Semite attacked a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one person and injuring three.

This is a crisis.  President Trump’s racist tweets and actions have added momentum to the white supremacist element in the U.S.  (See NY Times, Why Does Trump Fan the Flames of Race-Based Terrorism?)

I have documented this trend on a number of occasions – see previous Benicia Independent gun control stories.  (Also, note archives on local Benicia gun reporting halfway through this article.)

The most recent shooting in El Paso (below) caught my attention today, and deserves your careful consideration.  What will our leaders DO to stop this!?

Mass Shooting at El Paso Walmart Leaves 20 Dead

The gunman “started shooting everyone, aisle by aisle,” an eyewitness says.
The Daily Beast, by Jordyn Rozensky, Justin Hamel, Anna Kaplan,
Justin Hamel/The Daily Beast

EL PASO—A lone gunman killed at least 20 people inside a crowded Walmart on Saturday morning, according to eyewitnesses and officials.

“A day that would’ve been a normal day for someone to leisurely go shopping, turned into one of the most deadly days in the history of Texas. Lives were taken who should still be with us today. Twenty innocent people from El Paso have lost their lives, and more than two dozen more are injured,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at an evening press conference.

At least 22 people were transported to area hospitals, including a 4-month-old girl. At least nine people were in critical condition at Del Sol Medical Center, where three of them were said to be in “life-threatening” condition. The victims there ranged in age from 35 to 82, but no further details were immediately available.

Police have not yet identified those killed, though Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced on Twitter late Saturday that three Mexican nationals were among the 20 people killed.

Police said one person is in custody and they have ruled out multiple shooters. The suspect has been identified as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius of Texas, according to a senior law-enforcement source. Authorities are investigating a purported manifesto posted online shortly before the attack.

Justin Hamel/The Daily Beast

“Right now we have a manifesto from this individual, that indicates to some degree, it has a nexus to potential hate crime,” El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said at a press conference. Allen, who stopped short of naming the suspect, said authorities were still working to “validate” that the manifesto was penned by the alleged gunman.

More than a thousand people were inside the Walmart near the Cielo Vista Mall when the shooting started around 11 a.m. A woman named Karina, who declined to give her last name, said she was driving in the parking lot with her 7-year-old daughter when she saw a white man in his twenties in front of the store’s main entrance, dressed in all black and carrying a long rifle. Karina said she heard what sounded like “balloons popping” and saw the gunman shoot another man at “point-blank” range.

Then the gunman entered the store, as captured by surveillance footage.

Miguel Rodriguez said he was shopping for a toy for his 7-year-old son when he heard gunshots and ducked to the ground. He said a person “started shooting everyone, aisle by aisle, with rage.”

Justin Hamel/The Daily Beast

Britney, a 19-year-old who declined to give her last name, said she was with her 16-year-old brother and her mother in the store’s underwear aisle when she heard shooting. The family dropped to the ground. Then Britney said she grabbed her mother and brother’s hands and they ran out of the store.

Dozens of people from inside the mall who were evacuated lined a nearby street. A man carrying a Bible went from group to group, asking people to pray with him.
Justin Hamel/The Daily Beast

The El Paso shooting is the latest in a series of deadly attacks on public places. On Monday, a disgruntled employee killed two people in a Walmart store in Mississippi. Last Sunday, a gunman killed three people and injured 15 at the Gilroy Garlic Festival near San Jose, California. In May, a gunman killed 12 people at a municipal building in Virginia Beach. The month before, on the last day of Passover in April, a vocal anti-Semite allegedly attacked a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one person.

Gun control, Gun violence, Mass shootings

The Virginia Beach shooting confirms that gun violence is a national emergency

By Editorial Board, The Washington Post, June 1 at 2:45 PM

The Virginia Beach shooting confirms that gun violence is a national emergency

Mourners pray on Saturday for the victims of the mass shooting in Virginia Beach. (Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images)

THE TWELVE victims killed in the Virginia Beach massacre were the people who knit the sinews of a society together, who plot the course of overhead wires and underground pipes, who set the course of roadways and sidewalks. They were municipal engineers and administrators, account clerks and agents, all of them making sure in some way or another that the essential connections and pathways everyone relies on would keep functioning. One of the victims had come simply to follow the rules, and file for a permit.

MassShootingTracker.org

That they were murdered in cold blood at their workplace on Friday afternoon is another sign that our society is not functioning properly in the face of an awful scourge. Mass shootings at schools, newspapers, concerts, nightclubs and factories have become a threat to public health and safety in the United States, an epidemic of violence resulting in hundreds of deaths every year. Would the nation’s politicians be mute and paralyzed if, say, 199 people were killed by food poisoning, a defective toy, or an automobile part malfunction? That is the number who have died in mass shootings so far this year (along with 643 nonfatal gunshot wounds), according to one group that keeps track. Sadly, sensible gun control generates headlines for a few days after each massacre, but then nothing happens.

The reason for this inaction is no mystery: Politicians are intimidated by a gun rights movement, led by the National Rifle Association, that has for too long stood in the way of action. There are promising signs that this year’s crowded field for the Democratic presidential nomination might generate some long-overdue commitment to gun control, and some Democrats in Congress are devoting fresh attention to the crisis, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has suggested is a national emergency. But the hour is late. The answers are not rocket science: universal background checks for gun purchases; banning semiautomatic assault rifles, which are weapons of war; putting limits on high-capacity magazines, which allow mass shooters to take more and more lives (these magazines were used by the Virginia Beach shooter) and other measures.

The authorities in Virginia Beach announced they would say the shooter’s name only once. No doubt, many mass shooters may have been motivated by the perverse attraction of media notoriety, and so it will be interesting to see if this well-intentioned move has any impact, given today’s relentless and intense news and social media environment.

But something greater must be done. The Virginia Beach shooter put a sound suppressor on his .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol so that the death shots were muffled, perhaps denying others the warning that would have allowed them to escape. It is long past time to remove the silencer that seems to suppress action on gun-control legislation, to treat mass shooting as the epidemic it is, and do everything possible to save lives.

Gun control, Gun violence

Parkland mourns 2 student suicides a year after Stoneman Douglas shooting. Now parents are urged to be alert

Repost from CNN

By Kaylee Hartung, Susannah Cullinane and Holly Yan, March 25, 2019 10:37 AM ET

The grief that still envelops Parkland after last year’s school massacre is now compounded by the recent suicides of current or former students.

Community leaders are urging parents everywhere to be vigilant and proactive in talking to their kids about trauma.

Parkland school shooting survivior dies by suicideSydney Aiello, a 2018 graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, died by suicide last week. She survived the attack on Valentine’s Day 2018 that killed 17 people at the Florida school — including 14 students and three staff members.

Aiello, a Florida Atlantic University student, suffered from survivor’s guilt and had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, her mom told CNN affiliate WFOR.
Then on Saturday, more tragedy struck Parkland when a second student died in what police describe as “an apparent suicide.”
The student, who has not been publicly identified, was a student at Stoneman Douglas High. It’s not clear under what circumstances the student died, or whether the apparent suicide was related to last year’s massacre.

Parents: ‘We have to take this seriously’

“Unfortunately, what we’ve learned is that the survivors of a traumatic event like a school shooting carry with them a lot of guilt, anxiety, pressures, depression even,” said Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina Petty was killed in last year’s shooting.

Study: More US school-age children die from guns than on-duty US police or global military deaths

Petty, who has another child who survived the attack, established the WalkUp Foundation after the shooting with a focus on preventing suicide.
“We just have to assume as a parent that your child is not immune for that. Your child is at risk, and you need to take that seriously,” he said.
Petty said the school district, community leaders, law enforcement and concerned parents met Sunday to discuss how to address the trauma survivors are facing.
“Even if everything appears to be OK, you need to take that seriously,” he said. “You need to ask them the questions. Have you thought about killing yourself? Have you thought about ways you might do that?”
How to get help for someone who might be suicidal
Petty said students had been offered resources after the shooting, including counseling options. But he said sometimes there are stigmas associated with getting help, or that students just pretended that they were OK.
“So unfortunately some students are not availing themselves of those opportunities, and some parents are not understanding that the risks of anxiety and depression in a post-traumatic environment like a school shooting,” Petty said.
“So our message is parents we have to take this seriously. We have to take this into our own hands. … Regardless of your proximity to the building and whether or not you saw the horrific events of that day that took 17 lives and injured 17 others, you’re part of a school community and that community is suffering.”

The power of peer-to-peer communication

Cindy Arenberg Seltzer, the president of Children’s Services Council of Broward County, also attended Sunday’s meeting.
1 year after Parkland, parents and teachers are still grieving. These are their stories
“One of the things that I have heard parents and children say is that nobody cares, and they just want us to get on with our lives. And I really want them to know that that’s not true,” she said.
“I just left a room full of 60 people who came on a moment’s notice on a Sunday afternoon to show how much they care.”
She said that peer-to-peer communication could be a powerful tool, as teenagers might not turn to their parents as a first resource.
“We want to harness the power of the young people to speak to each other,” she said. That may include using Instagram, Snapchat or any other method that could “yield huge benefits.”

MSD students use their experience to help others

In an example of such networking, MSD students have themselves been reaching out beyond their own community to help other people experiencing trauma.
Parkland students comfort families in Nwe Zealand
Survivors began a letter-writing campaign last week to help heal families and communities affected by the March 15 shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The Parkland students grew connected to the Christchurch community when they visited New Zealand last July on a learning and healing trip.
“We got letters after our tragedy. That was something that really surprised us,” said Kai Koerber, a Stoneman Douglas senior who went on last year’s trip.
“It’s something that really warmed the hearts of people in my community. I think it will warm the hearts of people in Christchurch as well.”
If you or someone you know might be at risk of suicide, here’s how to get help: In the US, call theNational Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. The International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide also can provide contact information for crisis centers around the world.

CNN’s Dakin Andone and Kevin Conlon contibuted to this report.