Virginia Beach mass shooting 5/31/19

Not to be glib at all because I am heartsick and angry, but this fits with my narrative just fine, which the gun owner I've been married to for 25 years shares: we need sane, reasonable gun law reform. And that's where my energy is going. I've seen plenty of coverage of the latest (? Could have been more in the last hours since I checked), but since the NRA still owns the GOP, it didn't occur to me to start a thread. For me, it's all fighting for voting rights, turning out more blue voters, etc.

I live in a state with strict gun laws and a low rate of gun violence, two things that seem to go hand-in-hand. Moved here from a state with lax gun laws and a high rate of gun violence. My husband had to register his gun here, and after the third or fourth hoop he had to jump through, I asked him what he felt about the gun laws here. He was strongly in favor of them. And more. But instead of looking at what states (and countries) with low gun violence rates are going right, the GOP is going to gut the gun laws in my state and weaken them everywhere they can. There are so many bills that will make things worse. So my state won't have the low gun violence rate and there goes a talking point, and valid argument for gun law reform.

Yeah, I went there. I politicized a terrible tragedy instead of offering thoughts and prayers. I'm just trying to prevent more. And in an hour, I'm heading off to my city's Pride celebration. If there's a shooting and I am killed, please politicize my death to fight for gun law reform.

Edited to add that I didn't mean that a thread should not have been started or that my anger is in any way directed at the OP. This is about the problem, not anyone who is concerned about the lack of attention to a terrible tragedy.

Sadly, in America, mass shootings are just a fact of life. America is broken. It is not changing. There will be more and more shootings. RIP to the victims.

Here's where I am with this, and it's awful: Hears there's another shooting, sees its not children, feels relieved.
There. That's how beat down I am with this. I'm just happy it wasn't children this time.

The Repubs I know go to bed at night smug in their narrow-mindedness that because they can lovingly clutch their precious guns, it will never happen to them. These people don't care about victims, as long as it's someone else (preferably the hated Libs.)

America sold its soul on December 12, 2012.

I’m sorry for those who lost loved ones. Truly am.

But I can’t get upset by this any more. America, in the large, doesn’t care. If it cared, we’d do something. It’s not like other countries haven’t been able to address this. Australia did. But our so-called leaders are owned by the NRA, which is owned by gun manufacturers and probably at least rented by Putin, and they all amp-up the fears of gun-owners in the name of profits.

It’s not that I don’t think it’s a tragedy. I do. It’s horrific. But until swaths of my fellows start voting against NRA-owned politicians, against panderers to ammosexual fantasies, against 2nd amendment absolutists, I have no more fucks to give here. It happens again. And again. And again. And according to too many of my fellow citizens, each time it does, it’s too soon to have That Discussion. Or their 2nd amendment rights are absolute. Or guns don’t kill people, something else does, which they also don’t want to spend any money fixing. Or it’s all due to amoral liberal culture and not enough god-fearin’.

I’m done.

Kaiser-Kun said:

America sold its soul on December 12, 2012.

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Are we blase and bored?

Are we comfortably numb?

Are we depressed and discouraged and defeated?

Are killing sprees like the weather: everybody talks about it, but nothing can be done about it.

Are we suffering from PTSD, compassion fatigue and all out of fucks to give?

What's new about Virginia Beach? The race of the shooter and the fact he used a silencer? That's a detail for the investigators and whomever writes the report. Nobody else will care.

This is America.

58 killed - October 1, 2017 - In Las Vegas, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock of Mesquite, Nevada, sprays gunfire on a crowd of 22,000 concertgoers from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, killing 58 people and injuring almost 500. Witnesses say the gunshots last between 10 and 15 minutes. Officers breach Paddock's hotel room to find him dead. Authorities believe Paddock killed himself and that he acted alone.49 killed - June 12, 2016 - Omar Saddiqui Mateen, 29, opens fire inside Pulse, a gay nightclub, in Orlando. At least 49 people are killed and more than 50 are injured. Police shoot and kill Mateen during an operation to free hostages officials say he was holding at the club.
32 killed - April 16, 2007 - Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. A gunman, 23-year-old student Seung-Hui Cho, goes on a shooting spree killing 32 people in two locations and wounding an undetermined number of others on campus. The shooter dies by suicide.
27 killed - December 14, 2012 - Sandy Hook Elementary School - Newtown, Connecticut. Adam Lanza, 20, guns down 20 children, ages six and seven, and six adults, school staff and faculty, before turning the gun on himself. Investigating police later find Nancy Lanza, Adam's mother, dead from a gunshot wound.
25 and an unborn child killed - November 5, 2017 - A gunman opens fire on a small church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, killing 25 people and an unborn child and wounding 20 others. The shooter, identified by two law enforcement sources as Devin Patrick Kelley, is found dead after a brief chase, but it's unclear if it was self-inflicted.
23 killed - October 16, 1991 - In Killeen, Texas, 35-year-old George Hennard crashes his pickup truck through the wall of a Luby's Cafeteria. After exiting the truck, Hennard shoots and kills 23 people. He dies by suicide.
21 killed - July 18, 1984 - In San Ysidro, California, 41-year-old James Huberty, armed with a long-barreled Uzi, a pump-action shotgun and a handgun, shoots and kills 21 adults and children at a local McDonald's. A police sharpshooter kills Huberty one hour after the rampage begins.
18 killed - August 1, 1966 - In Austin, Texas, Charles Joseph Whitman, a former US Marine, kills 16 and wounds at least 30 at the University of Texas while shooting from a tower. Police officers Ramiro Martinez and Houston McCoy shoot and kill Whitman in the tower. Whitman had also killed his mother and wife earlier in the day.
17 killed - February 14, 2018 - A former student unleashes a hail of gunfire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing at least 17 adults and children. Nikolas Cruz, 19, has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.
14 killed - December 2, 2015 - Married couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik open fire on an employee gathering taking place at Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people. They are later killed in a shootout with police.
14 killed - August 20, 1986 - In Edmond, Oklahoma, Patrick Henry Sherrill, a part-time mail carrier armed with three handguns, kills 14 postal workers in 10 minutes and then takes his own life.
13 and an unborn child killed - November 5, 2009 - Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 people and one unborn child and injures 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, during a shooting rampage. He is convicted and sentenced to death.
13 killed - April 3, 2009 -In Binghamton, New York, Jiverly Wong kills 13 people and injures four during a shooting at an immigrant community center. He then kills himself.
13 killed - April 20, 1999 - Columbine High School - Littleton, Colorado. Eighteen-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold kill 12 fellow students and one teacher before dying by suicide in the school library.
13 killed - February 18, 1983 - Three men enter the Wah Mee gambling and social club in Seattle, rob the 14 occupants and then shoot each in the head, killing 13. Two of the men, Kwan Fai Mak and Benjamin Ng, are convicted of murder in August 1983. Both are serving life in prison. The third, Wai-Chiu "Tony" Ng, after years on the run in Canada, is eventually convicted of first-degree robbery and second-degree assault. He is deported to Hong Kong in 2014.
13 killed - September 25, 1982 - In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 40-year-old prison guard George Banks kills 13 people including five of his own children. In September 2011, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturns his death sentence, stating that Banks is mentally incompetent.
13 killed - September 5, 1949 - In Camden, New Jersey, 28-year-old Howard Unruh, a veteran of World War II, shoots and kills 13 people as he walks down Camden's 32nd Street using a German-crafted Luger pistol. He is found insane and is committed to a state mental institution. He dies at the age of 88.
12 killed - November 7, 2018 - Twelve people are killed in a shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California. Officials say the gunman, Ian David Long, shot an unarmed security guard outside the bar, then went in and continued shooting, injuring other security workers, employees and patrons. Long dies by suicide.
12 killed - September 16, 2013 - Shots are fired inside the Washington Navy Yard, killing 12. The shooter, identified as Aaron Alexis, 34, is also killed.
12 killed - July 20, 2012 - Twelve people are killed, and 58 are wounded in a shooting at a screening of the new Batman film in Aurora, Colorado. James E. Holmes, 24, dressed head-to-toe in protective tactical gear, sets off two devices of some kind before spraying the theater with bullets from an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and at least one of two .40-caliber handguns police recovered at the scene. On July 16, 2015, Holmes is found guilty on all 165 counts against him, 24 first-degree murder, 140 attempted murder and one count of possession or control of an explosive or incendiary device. He is sentenced to life in prison without parole.
12 killed - July 29, 1999 - In Atlanta, 44-year-old Mark Barton kills his wife and two children at his home. He then opens fire in two different brokerage houses, killing nine people and wounding 12. He later kills himself.
At least 11 killed - May 31, 2019 - A shooter opens fire indiscriminately in a Virginia Beach city building, killing at least 11 people and sending six others to the hospital. The shooter was a disgruntled employee and a public utilities worker, a Virginia government source briefed on the investigation told CNN. The shooter died at the scene after a gunfight with police.
11 killed - October 27, 2018 - Eleven people are killed in a shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. 46-year-old Robert Bowers surrenders to authorities on the third floor of the building and is now facing federal charges, including hate crimes. Bowers told a SWAT officer while receiving medical care that he wanted all Jews to die and that Jews "were committing genocide to his people," a criminal complaint filed in Allegheny County says.
10 Killed - May 18, 2018 - Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, allegedly walks into an art class and begins firing, killing eight students and two teachers at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas. Pagourtzis is arrested and charged with capital murder and aggravated assault of a public servant.
10 killed - March 10, 2009 - In Alabama, Michael McLendon of Kinston, kills 10 and himself. The dead include his mother, grandparents, aunt and uncle.
9 killed - October 1, 2015 - Gunman Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer shoots and kills nine people, injuring another nine, at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. The shooter dies after a gun battle with police at the college. Six weapons were recovered at the school; another seven were recovered at Harper-Mercer's home.
9 killed - June 17, 2015 - Dylann Roof, 21, shoots and kills nine people inside the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, South Carolina. Eight die at the scene; a ninth dies at a hospital. Roof is arrested the following day; according to police, he confesses and tells investigators he wanted to start a race war. Roof is convicted of hate crimes in federal court and is sentenced to death and later convicted of murder in state court.
9 killed - March 21, 2005 - Red Lake High School, Red Lake, Minnesota. Sixteen-year-old Jeff Weise kills his grandfather and another adult, five students, a teacher and a security officer. He then kills himself.
9 killed - August 10, 1991 - Six monks, a nun, a monk in training and a temple worker are found shot to death at Wat Promkunaram, a Buddhist temple in Waddell, Arizona. Johnathan Doody, 17, and Alessandro Garcia, 16, are later convicted of the crime and receive multiple life sentences.
9 killed - June 18, 1990 - In Jacksonville, Florida, 42-year-old James Pough, angry about his car being repossessed, opens fire at a General Motors Acceptance Corp. office, killing nine people. Pough takes his own life.
8 killed - October 12, 2011 - Eight people are killed during a shooting at the Salon Meritage in Seal Beach, California. The suspect, Scott Evans Dekraai, 41, of Huntington Beach, is arrested without incident as he is trying to leave the scene. The eight victims include Dekraai's ex-wife, Michelle Fournier, 48. He is armed with three guns -- a 9 mm Springfield, a Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum, and a Heckler & Koch .45 -- and is wearing body armor during the shooting rampage. After a delay of several years due to allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, Dekraai is sentenced on September 22, 2017, to eight consecutive terms of life in prison without parole, plus an additional term of 232 years to life for attempted murder.
8 killed - August 3, 2010 - Manchester, Connecticut - Omar Thornton kills eight co-workers at Hartford Distributors before turning the gun on himself. Thornton had been asked to resign for stealing and selling alcoholic beverages.
8 killed - January 19, 2010 - Christopher Speight, 39, kills eight people at a house in Appomattox, Virginia. He surrenders to police at the scene the next morning. In February 2013, he is sentenced to five life terms plus 18 years.
8 killed - March 29, 2009 - In Carthage, North Carolina, 45-year-old Robert Stewart kills a nurse and seven elderly patients at a nursing home. In May, the Moore County district attorney announces she will seek the death penalty. On September 3, 2011, a jury finds Stewart guilty of second-degree murder. Stewart is sentenced to 141 to 179 years in prison.
8 killed - December 5, 2007 - In Omaha, Nebraska, 19-year-old Robert Hawkins goes to an area mall and kills eight shoppers before killing himself.
8 killed - July 1, 1993 - In San Francisco, 55-year-old Gian Luigi Ferri kills eight people in a law office and then kills himself.
8 killed - September 14, 1989 - In Louisville, Kentucky, 47-year-old Joseph Wesbecker, armed with a AK-47 semiautomatic assault rifle, two MAC-11 semiautomatic pistols, a .38 caliber handgun, a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol and a bayonet, kills eight co-workers at Standard Gravure Corporation and then kills himself. He had been placed on disability leave from his job due to mental problems.
8 killed - August 20, 1982 - In Miami, Carl Robert Brown, 51, kills eight people with a shotgun at a machine shop. Brown, a teacher, was reportedly angry about a repair bill from the shop. After fleeing the scene on a bicycle, he is fatally shot by a witness who pursues him.

That was a long list, but it only keeps growing longer.

Planes fall out of the sky. Boats sink. Trains derail. Cars crash. Floods drown. Tornadoes blow away things. Tsunamis wreck. Volcanoes erupt. Radiation leaks. Fires burn. Man kills. Humans die.

This is not Trump's America. This is not Obama's America, Bush's America, Reagan's America or Millard Fillmore's America. It's ours. This is our America.

Any country that says its okay with killing its own children is not a great country. Any country that says it loves its guns more than it loves its children is not a great country.

We can blame the gun and we do blame the gun. There are too many guns and you can get one too easily. Americans don't do being inconvenienced. So it's easy to get a gun. It is SO fucking easy to get a gun. You can get your hands on pretty much anything you need to hunt and slaughter other Americans with the ease of ordering a pizza.

Nothing will change. Nobody is going to stop this. We will learn nothing from Virginia Beach. Why would we? We never have before.

On Friday evening, my wife and I were on our way to dinner with our three youngest kids when I happened to learn from Twitter that a man in Virginia Beach had just shot and killed 12 people. And so my struggle, which I am sure is also regularly your struggle, began. In almost every developed nation in the world, 12 people being killed in a mass shooting would make that incident the deadliest in years. In some nations, it would be the deadliest ever. But in the United States, they happen so often, with such ferocity and carnage, that when we learn about the next one, we hardly skip a beat. Indeed, 2018 was by far the most violent year ever measured for school shootings in the United States, and 2017 was the deadliest year in at least a half-century for gun deaths altogether in this country — with an astounding 40,000 people killed by guns. That’s 110 people per day. We couldn’t keep up if we tried.


After seeing the news of this latest mass shooting, I wanted to somehow relay the fact that 12 people were just murdered to my wife without actually saying the specific words in front of our kids. “Oh no. 12 people,” I said to her, not speaking in a complete sentence. “Virginia Beach,” I continued. I know my kids are aware of gun violence and mass shootings, but it just seemed like too much in that moment to say in front of them something like, “12 people were just shot to death.” Between the seriousness of my tone and the six words that I assembled for her about the shooting, she knew exactly what I was trying to relay to her without the kids quite catching on.


They were happy. And we were pulling up to a fun restaurant in Brooklyn. And so I used the strange skill that none of us should have but all of us use almost every day. Somewhere deep in my mind I tucked the thought of that horrific shooting in Virginia Beach away. I compartmentalized it — boxed it up and closed the door to the memory — so that I could be emotionally present during dinner, so that I could listen to the kid’s stories about their day at school, and excitedly order from the menu with the family. And I did it. I moved on in that moment so that I could enjoy the taste of Vietnamese food. And while I ate dinner, as I reflect back on it, I don’t think I once thought again of the victims in Virginia Beach.


That’s the game we play. To get through dinner, to get through a movie or a game, to get through quality time with our loved ones, we must temporarily suspend our knowledge that people are being slaughtered all around us. We speak of the wild, Wild West as some nostalgic era of the past, but we’re living it. The United States is the only nation in the world estimated to have more guns than people. And it shows. Americans are shooting and killing themselves and killing others with guns at a pace that should be treated as a dire national emergency. If we just enacted a fraction of the basic standards and norms held by the rest of the world, our nation would be so much safer.


In New Zealand, after 51 men, women, and children were shot to death earlier this year while gathering for prayers in their local mosques, the nation, in a matter of just a few days, made radical shifts in their gun laws: banning assault rifles and so much more. And that urgency is just what the United States needs, but I am afraid we’ve crossed some invisible threshold, having given up after burying so many thoughts of so many shootings and so much violence — so that we can just have dinner in peace.

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We may not have wanted this, but this is our America. How do you like it?

Introversion said:

It's not that I don’t think it’s a tragedy. I do. It’s horrific. But until swaths of my fellows start voting against NRA-owned politicians, against panderers to ammosexual fantasies, against 2nd amendment absolutists, I have no more fucks to give here. It happens again. And again. And again. And according to too many of my fellow citizens, each time it does, it’s too soon to have That Discussion. Or their 2nd amendment rights are absolute. Or guns don’t kill people, something else does, which they also don’t want to spend any money fixing. Or it’s all due to amoral liberal culture and not enough god-fearin’.

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That's where most of my time and energy goes now, because every issue I care about comes down to "Vote the GOP out of power/existence." That's it. Election integrity, voting rights, everything. I'm still going to try to get to a "Wear Orange" rally this week to show support, be another body but it's still about getting the GOP out of power. Then we can study the gun violence problem and address it, two things the GOP won't allow. That's what I won't stop working toward.

Seems like these shootings get less and less attention unless they break some kind of record.

Maybe it's a good thing if some of the shooters (at least) are doing it for notoriety and the sense they left a mark on the world with their murder-suicide. It's bad, though, if people are so resigned to it they don't remember to vote for candidates who endorse gun reform.

Most Americans say they favor stricter gun laws. Most Americans say they favor many issues and things our government seems to be working against these days. This won't change unless people actually start voting for candidates who support the issues the voters say they support.

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA—In the hours following a violent rampage in Virginia in which a lone attacker killed 12 individuals and injured four others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Wednesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Michigan resident Mark Butler, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

[h=1] There have been more mass shootings than days in 2019 [/h]