Thank you, Donald Trump… now… #DOSOMETHING Mitch McConnell!
The Hope Border Institute held a prayer vigil Sunday in El Paso, Texas. PHOTO: MARK LAMBIE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Everyone is talking about the mass murders in El Paso and Dayton. And well we should be talking – and doing something – about those horrors.
Thank goodness even our racist President made a powerful speech condemning hate, racism and white supremacist ideology.
MassShootingTracker.org
But few are aware that on August 3 and 4, it wasn’t just TWO mass shootings. On those two days, SEVEN mass shootings in the U.S. were reported on MassShootingTracker.org, and another was reported early today on August 5:
date
killed
wounded
city
state
8/5/2019
0
4
Brooklyn
NY
8/4/2019
0
4
Grenada Co.
MS
8/4/2019
10
16
Dayton
OH
8/4/2019
1
3
Memphis
TN
8/3/2019
1
7
Chicago
IL
8/3/2019
0
7
Chicago (Douglas Park)
IL
8/3/2019
20
26
El Paso
TX
As I reported yesterday, mass shootings have become an everyday occurrence. By the time I finish this, there might be yet another.
Our legislators in Washington have rallied after any number of mass assault-weapon murders, but with little to no effective results. It has become an all-too-familiar cry to hear something like “thoughts and prayers are not enough.” But the public has gotten mostly just that, thoughts and prayers.
US Reprentative Mike Thompson, California’s Fifth District
My congressional representative Mike Thompson has led the bipartisan House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force since 2012, but every time the House proposes gun control measures, either it fails in the House, or Senate leader Mitch McConnell and the Trump Republicans refuse to even allow a vote.
There are excellent legislative opportunities and worldwide guidance on how to stem the flow of these horrific attacks. If only… if only, our federal government would take action.
[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.
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.
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.
⚠️Video from inside JCPENNY in Cielo Vista Mall as it was being evacuated, due to an active shooter in the area.
Video: Victoria Balderrama pic.twitter.com/7v67DL4mPG
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.
U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bid to block Trump’s gun ‘bump stock’ ban
By Lawrence Hurley, MARCH 28, 2019 / 9:15 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday handed President Donald Trump a victory by rejecting for the second time in three days a bid by gun rights activists to block his new ban on “bump stock” attachments that enable semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly.
FILE PHOTO: A bump fire stock, (R), that attaches to a semi-automatic rifle to increase the firing rate is seen at Good Guys Gun Shop in Orem, Utah, U.S., October 4, 2017. REUTERS/George Frey/File Photo
The policy, embraced by Trump in the wake of an October 2017 massacre in Las Vegas in which bump stocks were used, went into effect on Tuesday. The ban is a rare recent instance of gun control at the federal level in a country that has experienced a succession of mass shootings.
The court in a brief order refused to grant a temporary stay sought by the group Gun Owners of America and others in a lawsuit filed in Michigan challenging the ban while litigation continues. Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday rejected a similar bid to block the policy in a separate legal challenge brought in Washington by individual gun owners and gun rights groups including the Firearms Policy Foundation and Florida Carry Inc.
Michael Hammond, Gun Owners of America’s legislative counsel, said many owners of the estimated 500,000 bump stocks in the United States would refuse to turn them in despite the ban and related criminal penalties. People caught in possession of bump stocks could face up to 10 years in prison under the policy.
“GOA will continue to fight the issue in the court system, as the case now returns to the lower courts. We remain convinced that the courts will consign this unlawful, unconstitutional ban to the trash bin of history, where it belongs,” Hammond said in a statement, using the group’s acronym.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said the administration was pleased with the high court’s action.
Bump stocks use a gun’s recoil to bump its trigger, enabling a semiautomatic weapon to fire hundreds of rounds per minute, which can transform it into a machine gun. The Justice Department’s regulation followed the lead of many states and retailers that imposed stricter limits on sales of guns and accessories after a deadly shooting at a Florida high school in February 2018.
LAS VEGAS SHOOTING
Trump pledged to ban bump stocks soon after a gunman used them in a spree that killed 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas. The Justice Department on Dec. 18 announced plans to implement the policy on March 26.
The FBI said in January it had found no clear motive for the 64-year-old Las Vegas gunman, Stephen Paddock, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
In the Michigan case, a federal judge already has ruled in favor of the administration. The Cincinnati, Ohio-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to put the ban on hold pending appeal. Other plaintiffs in that case include the Gun Owners Foundation, the Virginia Citizens Defense League and three individual gun owners.
In the Washington case, a federal judge also upheld the ban, prompting the gun rights advocates to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court has heard oral arguments but has not yet ruled.
Those challenging the policy have argued that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) lacks the authority to equate bump stocks with machine guns. One of the laws at the center of the legal dispute was written more than 80 years ago, when Congress restricted access to machine guns during the heyday of American gangsters’ use of “tommy guns.”
Trump’s fellow Republicans typically oppose gun control measures and favor of a broad interpretation of the right to bear arms promised in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. In 2017, there were 39,773 gun deaths in the United States, according to the most recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures released in December.
Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham
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