As you might imagine, it wasn’t all that fun of one. I don’t know personally anybody who was shot this morning, but that was more happenstance than anything else; the political folks were all people who I could have reasonably worked with, at one time or another. And while it could have been so much worse, it still wasn’t what anybody would call ‘good.’ I have had the urge to snarl.
Prayers and good wishes for the victims, of course.
Personally, I’m not overfond of being casually rude about a man’s religion – unless it’s a Greenie’s, of course** – but America is chock-full of things that I’m not overfond of, and my opinion is ultimately irrelevant about just about every single one of them. That’s one of the glorious things about America. We don’t have to care if your nose is bent out of shape over something.
Obviously evil acts are and must be the responsibility of their perpetrators. I recommend prayer for the families of the three murdered victims in Chapel Hill… and prayers for the shooter, because I’m sorry but that sad, sorry bastard rather desperately needs some God in his life. I try not to hassle people about their different faiths – in the end, it’s not me who makes the call over who goes where – but I don’t think that the murderer’s life choices exactly ended up working out for him.
Before we go any further: @lee_ritz isn’t the one making the false equivalence: she’s merely the one pointing it out.
A bulls-eye on Sarah Palin's website caused the Gifford shooting. Mobs chanting "death to cops" has nothing to do with dead cops. #2deadcops
— Lee Ritz, M.D. (@lee_ritz) December 21, 2014
I’m already seeing people – who, hopefully, are internally a little sick to their stomachs for having to make this argument – try the time-honored tradition of appealing to the very better nature of the Right that the Left routinely denies, every single day. Those people can do us all a favor, actually: they can frankly shut up and instead try to think about why they’ve placed themselves in this awful head-space right now. That’d be marvelous, thanks.
Moe Lane
So, here’s the situation: guy with mental issues gets a gun and starts a rampage at a Philadelphia hospital. He shoots his caseworker (who later died of her wounds), then goes after a psychatrist named Dr. Lee Silverman… who promptly pulls out a gun from his desk and puts several bullets in the man, being wounded himself in the process. Mind you, the entire site is, of course, a gun-free zone.
The Christian Science Monitor is trying, here. It’s really, legitimately trying to concede the point that Dr. Silverman stopped a shooter before he could kill more people, and that everybody officially involved admits that. But I still have to point out this admittedly-small blind spot.
…the Pennsylvania hospital gunfight is already being recounted at least by some gun owners as a telling anecdote about life in a heavily armed nation where 60 million people suffer from some kind of mental-health problem.
For one thing, police are still trying to figure out why [Dr. Lee] Silverman was armed in the first place since bringing a gun to work is against the rules at the hospital.
Continue reading Philly doctor Lee Silverman shoots murderer at ‘gun-free’ hospital.
This sounds like the standard scenario: assailant goes to a firearms-restricted area with an unauthorized gun, shoots people until confronted by somebody who is also armed with a gun, and then the assailant shoots himself to avoid capture. The major differences this time are that the firearms-restricted area was Fort Hood (which had been hit by a thankfully-rare domestic jihadist five years ago), and that the man was a war veteran with untreated mental problems* stemming from his service. I’m not going to get into the politics of it. Continue reading Disarming soldiers on base does not prevent shootings.
So, yeah, this is going down in my area:
A Howard County police officer was shot and seriously wounded Wednesday afternoon in Laurel after exchanging gunfire with a suspect who remains at large, authorities said.
…shortly followed by the concentration of pretty much every cop within the area to this location. They still haven’t found the shooter, so it’s going to be an interesting night for suburban Maryland law enforcement.
I don’t particularly expect any personal trouble out of this, but I am curious to see how the schools handle the situation if the guy isn’t caught by tomorrow. They were closing down roads and stuff this afternoon; it’s pretty intense.
Moe Lane
PS: My prayers for the victim and his family/loved ones, of course.
[UPDATE] Death toll down to 12, thank God; police have identified the murderer as James Holmes. No reports on motives, which will stop nobody from riding their favorite hobbyhorse on this.
This is just awful, especially since those numbers will undoubtedly go up.
A gunman wearing a gas mask set off an unknown gas and fired into a crowded movie theater in suburban Denver theater at a midnight opening of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises,” killing 14 people and injuring at least 50 others, authorities said.
Moviegoers didn’t know what was happening and some thought the attack was part of the show.
Prayers for the victims and their families, of course. The murderer is in custody; first reports suggest ‘lone nut’ (no sign of assistance); and ‘brain tumor’ (ability to plan and use camouflage/body armor apparently unaffected) rather than ‘jihadi scumbag’ (caught alive) or ‘paranoid schizophrenic’ (no manifesto). Or, of course, he just could be an evil, malignant bastard. Sometimes they just are.
Moe Lane
The line between the two can get blurry in the Middle East, but it’s being reported that the Assad regime have escalating what has been a steadily-deteriorating situations in Syria. The death toll from yesterday is… well, Syria is keeping foreign reporters out, which makes getting an accurate count correct; but what is getting out is consistent with the Syrians using lethal means to enforce a crackdown.
Meanwhile, we’re issuing stern statements. One half of Hot Air – reasonably enough – asks what else the Obama administration could be doing right now; the other half of Hot Air – also reasonably enough – comments that one thing that we could be doing would be to at least suggest that the Assad regime should relinquish power. I mean, when a dictator’s firing on his own people already, just how much more upset and repressive is he likely to get if the USA formally calls for his ouster? Continue reading Syria firing on funerals/protests.
…when people like Pejman Yousefzadeh and I can no longer feel outrage and anger at the contemptible and despicable rhetoric of the Online Left in response to outrages. A day where the rampant hypocrisy that their pet bloggers and pundits routinely show stops surprising us with its power to offend. A day where we throw up our hands in despair and allow their (and their allies’) appalling willingness to use dead children to claim a nonexistent manhood to occur without comment. A day where we are just too weary of the sickness festering in the heads of the Netroots to care about their latest successful effort to reach a lower ground.
But it is not this day.
Moe Lane (crosspost)