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mass shooting Politics

Another Mass Shooting – 1000 Since Sandy Hook

I can almost guarantee that you did not hear about the 1,000th mass shooting in America since the massacre in Sandy Hook Connecticut. And I can almost guarantee that because at the time of this mass shooting, the country’s attention was fixated on another mass shooting at a college in Oregon.

Just before sundown on Thursday 1 October, an old man charged across the main street of the little town of Inglis, Florida. He was expecting trouble. Someone had recklessly fired a pistol in public, and Buzz Terhune intended to have words about it.

he horror that unfolded in the next few minutes has become so mundane, so everyday, that it no longer makes national news. Terhune was marching headlong into the 1,000th mass shooting in the United States since the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre almost three years ago.

Just a few hours earlier, a gunman in Oregon had killed nine people and injured nine others at a community college. It shocked the American conscience. But what happened to Terhune and three other people, and has happened to thousands of others across the country, went unnoticed. Shootings that injure or kill four or more people – mass shootings – have become commonplace in American culture.

An examination of the details, though, reveals mass shooting number 1,000 to be, like all the others, a human cataclysm. Broken hearts and bullets, an affair in which the roles of victim and perpetrator flip in an instant.

It started a few days earlier, when sheriff’s deputies responded to a missing person report. Walter Tyson, 57, couldn’t find his wife, Patricia. But when deputies arrived at the house, they found notes Patricia had left saying she wanted a new life. And so she had left.

Days passed.

Inglis sits on Florida’s west coast, in a swamp draped with Spanish moss. The town has been dying since the day, decades ago, when commercial net fishing was outlawed. Its population has dwindled to 1,300, and most residents are getting old.

Most of 1 October, 68-year-old Buzz Terhune ran errands in the tiny downtown. He stopped by city hall to leave a get-well card and balloons for the mayor, Drinda Merritt, who had been ill. The two had a friendly, sparring relationship: Terhune showed up at every city meeting, always sat in the same chair, and always spoke his mind.

“I’m not done with you yet!” he wrote in the card, and drew a little smiley face.

City hall’s main hallway was stacked with old wooden doors. The mayor had replaced them with doors of reinforced glass, and added a thick glass barrier at the front desk, after a man who lived across from city hall started stalking one of the women who worked there. Otis Ray Bean was his name.

“We knew we could have trouble when he moved to town,” the mayor said.

People in town didn’t like Bean. He wore a black leather vest and drank too much. His home looked like a southern gothic haunted house, with rotting clapboard sides and a rusted roof and strange stick-and-feather talismans hanging outside. It sat directly across from city hall and the town bank, looming over the comings and goings of Inglis.

Just before 6pm on 1 October, Terhune and his friend Scotty Smith pulled up to the bank’s cash machine, in Smith’s truck. Terhune sat in the passenger’s seat. The truck sat too high for Smith to reach the machine, so he stepped out. As he keyed in a $100 withdrawal he heard Terhune, behind him in the cab, say something about a fire.
Smith looked at the sky.

“Nah, Buzz,” he said. “That’s just some mist coming in. Not smoke.”

He heard Terhune say, “ … firing a gun”, and saw him jump out of the truck and take off running.

“Where are you going?” Smith shouted.

Terhune called back, “The kids!” and pointed to a playground next to city hall. He apparently suspected Bean was drunkenly firing off his pistol in sight of the children, whose mother was scrambling to gather them.

Smith hadn’t heard the gunshots, and still didn’t quite grasp what was happening. “What has Buzz got us into now?” he thought.

He danced around the cash machine until it spit out his money, then hopped into his truck and pulled away, toward the Bean place.

Terhune, who served three tours in Vietnam, crossed the street to confront Bean.

Bean, though, lay dying in his yard. He wasn’t the shooter.

A man Terhune didn’t recognize stood on the steps of the side porch, with one pistol in his hand and another on his waist. Walter Tyson had bought them years earlier in New York state, where he had a concealed-carry permit.

In the bank parking lot, Smith looked through the windshield of his truck. He saw Bean lying in the yard and, a few feet away, Terhune now lying still in the grass. He heard four more gunshots, from the first floor of the house. Tyson had found his wife.

Smith pulled his truck past the house and on to the side of the road. He dialed 911, and an operator told him to stay clear of the scene. But he backed his truck up to the house and watched his friend Terhune, hoping for movement. Praying for a twitch.

“If he had moved, I was going to pull the truck up and throw him in it and take off,” Smith said later. “Like on TV, you know? But it didn’t happen like that.”

Tyson had shot Terhune twice in the head, and he never moved again.

Inglis has no police department. But according to Lieutenant Scott Tummond of the Levy County sheriff’s office, the town had a single stroke of luck that day.

A couple of blocks away, a tactical joint task force of US marshals, state police and sheriff’s deputies had just arrested a fugitive on unrelated interstate charges. When Smith called 911, the enormous task force responded within moments, arriving at Bean’s yard like a cavalry division.

“I have no doubt things would have carried on, and been worse, if they hadn’t been there,” Tummond said. “I believe Tyson would have fled the scene and it would have spilled into another town.”

Seeing the house surrounded, Tyson climbed to the second floor. He called his daughter, Jennifer Conklin, and told her what he had done. She begged him to surrender.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “Goodbye.”

And he shot himself.

The town had never known violence like it. And yet it seemed familiar, and even inevitable. At a memorial service for Terhune, pastor Bobby Thompson addressed much of the town.

“So profuse has become the violence that we have become accustomed to it,” he said. “We expect it.”

The reaction of many citizens is, now, to reach more quickly for their own guns.

Mayor Merritt is a petite, middle-aged woman. “If I had been there that day, the difference is I would have stopped at my car for my gun,” she said. “Then I would have crossed the street. And I would have dropped the shooter.”

After Scotty Smith called for police, he went home and picked up his own pistol.

“Maybe I’m just paranoid,” he said.

His hands shook as he talked about what he had seen.

“I felt like I needed it. It’s crazy. People will shoot you for anything, these days.”

h/t The Guardian

Categories
Politics

Bernie Sanders on Guns – “We are tired of seeing children in elementary schools slaughtered”

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, spoke to a group of 10,000 people in Tucson Arizona. Saunders, who has been criticized by some as being weak on gun control, spoke in favor of background checks and other measures that can possibly cut down on the frequency of mass shootings in this country.

“We are tired of condolences and we are tired of just prayers. We are tired and we are embarrassed  in picking up the paper or turning on the TV and seeing children in elementary schools slaughtered and young people on college campuses shot. 

I think the vast majority of the American people want us to move forward in sensible ways that keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them and cut down on these senseless murders that we see every week.”

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Ben Carson Featured

Ben Carson Admits – He Punked Out When Man Pulled a Gun On Him

Ben Carson must be trying to overtake Donald Trump with all these dumb statements. Carson, who bragged all week that he would have fought back and encouraged others to do the same if he was in the room when the Oregon massacre began, Ben Carson is now admitting that he punked out when a man tried to rob him at a Popeyes in Baltimore.

On an interview with Karen Hunter’s Sirius XM Radio program, Carson recalled that one time when he had the opportunity to do a Rambo on a gunman, but instead whimpered.

“I have had a gun held on me when I was in a Popeye’s organization,” Carson said.

“Guy comes in, put the gun in my ribs. I just said, ‘I believe that you want the guy behind the counter,’”

What happened to “the guy behind the counter?” We don’t know, Carson did not say. What is apparent however, Carson did not come to the guy’s rescue as he claimed he would have if he was a victim in the Oregon shooting.

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Christians Featured

Republican’s Advice to Christians – “think about getting a handgun permit”

The Republican Lt. Governor from Tennessee, Ron Ramsey, went on his Facebook page with a message for all his “fellow Christians who are serious about their faith.” According to Mr. Ramsey, his fellow Christians should “think about getting a handgun permit.”

Ron Ramsey was referencing the recent mass shooting in Oregon, where a crazed gunman asked students at the Umpqua Community College if they were Christians, then shot the ones who answered yes. On the post, Ramsey wrote;

While this is not the time for widespread panic, it is a time to prepare. I would encourage my fellow Christians who are serious about their faith to think about getting a handgun carry permit. I have always believed that it is better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.

Our enemies are armed. We must do likewise.

But Ramsey didn’t stop there. He also included a link to a state government Web site that showed residents the steps in getting a gun permit.

Good work Mr. Ramsey. Jesus would be so proud!

Categories
Gun Control shooting

11 Year Old Charged With Murder – Kills his 8 Year Old Neighbor

Don’t be silly, he didn’t buy the guy. He got it from his father – another Responsible gun owner!

An 11-year-old boy has been charged with murder after he killed his 8-year-old neighbor, police said, and witnesses say it was because the girl wouldn’t let him see her puppy.

Deputies were called to the neighborhood in White Pine, about 40 miles east of Knoxville, on Saturday night. The boy shot the girl from inside his home with his father’s 12-gauge shotgun, said Jefferson County Sheriff Bud McCoig.
Latasha Dyer told WATE-TV (http://bit.ly/1KWbDPA) her daughter was playing outside when the next-door neighbor asked to see the puppy. McKayla told the boy “no,” and he shot her, Dyer said. A neighbor, Misty Edwards, said her niece was playing with the girl and saw what happened.

“She was a precious little girl. She was a mommy’s girl. No matter how bad of a mood you were in she could always make you smile,” Dyer told the station. “I want her back in my arms.”

Categories
Gun Control mass shooting

Gun Control Australia Calls for Boycott on Travels to America – Video

It’s like anything else you don’t believe in or support – if it goes against your values system, then you hit them in the wallet where it hurts most – you boycott! And that is exactly what Gun Control Australia Director, Samantha Lee, is calling for – ending all unnecessary trips to America until Americans, particularly those in the Republican party and their NRA buddies, realize that their inaction on gun violence is literally killing the nation!

“We have 2.1 million Australians visiting the U.S. every year and over 200,000 expats in America. So I believe we have a duty to respond to this tragedy in the U.S. And the way to do this is have a boycott of non-essential travel to the U.S.”

“Millions of dollars are donated by the [National Rifle Association], particularly to the Republican party [in America] In Australia, we need to be cautious that we also don’t take any donations from the firearms industry, and we need to raise this issue with the U.S.”

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Categories
Donald Trump Politics

Trump on Ending Mass Shootings -“That’s the way the world works” -Video

Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate running for president in 2016 is running on the message that only he can “make America great again.” But when it comes to stopping mass shootings in this country,  Donald Trump is admitting that there is nothing a Trump presidency would do to cut down on this form of domestic terrorism.

“You’re going to have these things happen and it’s a horrible thing to behold, horrible,” Trump said in an interview Friday morning on Morning Joe. “It’s not politically correct to say, but you’re going to have difficulty and that will be for the next million years, there’s going to be difficulty, and people are going to slip through the cracks.”

Trump was responding to a question about what he would do to stop the mass shootings.

“What are you going to do?” Trump asked. “That’s the way the world works, and that’s the way the world always has worked.”

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Categories
Featured shooting

Man Shoots Self in Head While Demonstrating How Safe His Gun Was

Can you say dumb ass gun nut?

The dumb ass in this case is 23-year-old Phoenix resident Christen Reece. After bar-hopping with his six friends  around 2 or 3AM last Tuesday morning, someone announced the marvelous idea of going to shoot guns!

“You know, there’s not really a lot to the story other than don’t drink and shoot guns,” explains Jim Molesa, chief deputy of the Navajo County Sheriff’s Office. “They were partying in the Valley, and then when the bars closed around 2 or 3, someone said, ‘Let’s go to the high country and shoot guns.’”

So the story goes Reece was so happy with his gun’s double safety feature that after bragging to his friends about how secure it was, he took the gun to his temple ato demonstrate and pulled the trigger. This is the point where I’ll say the gun did the shooting!

Reece dropped to the ground bleeding. His frantic friends took his body to a local fire station and ran away. The injuries were too much to handle at the fire station so Reece’s body was airlifted and taken to Scottsdale Osborn hospital and immediately taken into surgery. He remains in critical condition a day later.

Categories
Gun Control shooting

Megyn Kelly Interviews Father of Murdered Reporter – Video

Moments after his daughter was murdered on live television for the world to see, Andy Parker, father of WDBJ’s Alison Parker – one of the victims in Wednesday Virginia killings – appeared on Fox News of all places to talk about his daughter and the need for sensible gun laws in this country.

“Next week it isn’t going to be a story anymore,” Mr. Parker said on Fox, “and everybody’s gonna forget it. But mark my words, my mission in life… I’m going to do something, whatever it takes to get gun legislation, to shame people, to shame legislatures into doing something about closing loopholes in background checks and making sure crazy people don’t get guns!”

While Mr. Parker spoke, Kelly just nodded, fully aware that Fox News – being the media mouthpiece of the NRA and the right hand Republican party – will do all they can to continue pushing their usual narrative, that guns don’t kill people and that more guns is the answer!

Reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were shot and killed on Wednesday while broadcasting and interview in Moneta Virginia.

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Categories
Politics shooting

Someone Attached a Rifle to a Drone – Video

Of course this is highly illegal, but criminals don’t care about the law, so, here is a rifle attached to a drone.

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Categories
Politics

Senator Bernie Sanders Answers The Question about His Possible NRA Support – Video

With his surge in the recent 2016 polls – just a few points behind Hillary Clinton – the great liberal voice, Bernie Sanders is getting attacked by other candidates for President. On Sunday, Sanders went on ABC’s This Week and spoke with George Stephanopoulos.

Asked about a recent ad affiliated with a SuperPac supporting Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley suggesting that Sanders has the support of the NRA, Sanders answered with a smile and stated that he has “a strong record” voting against NRA promoted bills, also saying that in every single race he has run “with the exception of one,” the NRA has supported his opponent. Sanders also quoted his rating with the NRA – “somewhere between D and F!”

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Chris Wallace dylann roof Politics South Carolina violence

Karl Rove on Guns – “Repeal The 2nd Amendment” to Stop Gun Violence

Karl Rove, like many other Republicans, have been a staunch advocate for more guns. The idea these people always put forward in times of shootings and massacres, is the only solution to end gun violence is to have more guns on the streets. Well after the most recent shootings in South Carolina where 9 people died at the hands of a racist 21-year-old, Karl Rove appears to have had a change of heart.

Appearing on Fox News’, Rove was interviewed by Chris Wallace and was asked about the recent gun violence in South Carolina, and his response appeared to be a step away from his usual more guns is the answer stance, and a step towards more common sense gun policies.

WALLACE: How do we stop the violence?

What do you think?

ROVE: I wish I had an easy answer for that, but I don’t think there’s an easy answer

What do you think?

We saw an act of evil. Racist, bigoted evil, and to me the amazing thing is that it was met with grief and love. Think about how far we’ve come since 1963. The whole weight of the government throughout the South was to impede finding and holding and bringing to justice the men who perpetrated the [Birmingham] bombing.

What do you think?

And here, we saw an entire state, an entire community, an entire nation come together, grieving as one and united in the belief that this was an evil act, so we’ve come a long way.

What do you think?

Now maybe there’s some magic law that will keep us from having more of these. I mean basically the only way to guarantee that we will dramatically reduce acts of violence involving guns is to basically remove guns from society, and until somebody gets enough “oomph” to repeal the Second Amendment, that’s not going to happen.

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