Active shooter at Walmart in El Paso, TX

a reply to: geezlouise

Part of it is just that no one is there guiding them through it. Again, that goes back to parenting though.

Our son has a learning disability that just wrecks his handwriting and spelling, but he reads like an ace. Last year, he earned the top reader award first quarter for his class, and was really stoked about it. So he went in a was set to earn it again the next quarter, but out of nowhere, a little boy comes along and reads 1,200 minutes. Our son was disappointed because reading is his thing, but we sat with him and showed him what it would take to read more than 1,200 minutes before the end of the third quarter.

Our son being the goal oriented kid he is (he's only two color ranks away from working on his black belt and he turns 9 this fall), he set to with a will and had over 1,500 minutes turned in, maybe even 2,000.

At the assembly, his class was announced last, and for every other 2nd grade he would have won the award easy - 300 minutes, 500 minutes, 800 minutes ... - so when they got to his class he was all excited, but when they read off his class, the kid who read 1,200 minutes the previous quarter had turned in over 3,000 minutes.

Our kiddo was crushed and would have had his award in any other class. We told him we knew how hard he had worked, and we went out and celebrated his hard work and encouraged him to keep reading.

How many kids would have gotten blasted by their parents or dismissed for not getting that award? I know of some in my class whose parents would have run them down over that incident.

originally posted by: LordAhriman

originally posted by: starviego
If you've got a death toll of 20 or so that automatically means more than one shooter.

Somebody has never been to walmart or shot a gun.

Yes, it is actually surprising there aren't more.

But, 20 dead and "two dozen" injured means 44 bullets hit people. Not hard to imagine given the fact that likely atleast 100 round were fired in a densely populated area filled with "non combatants".

originally posted by: opethPA

originally posted by: starviego
If you've got a death toll of 20 or so that automatically means more than one shooter.

You can't be serious can you?
I mean I know the answer to that question based on your general posting approach but what's the logic you used to speak in such absolutes.

There was a gang shooting a couple of days ago in Chicago or somewhere. Anyway, they reported 1 dead and 11 wounded. Which is a much more natural casualty toll with an untrained shooter spraying bullets. If there's 20 dead, that should mean at least the same number of wounded, and how can one person achieve such an astounding casualty rate? Special Forces guys can do that, but not many others.

On the other hand, if you have 20 dead and 3-5 wounded, for example, than it's even more suspicious, because the shooter's kill-to-wounded ratio is incredibly high. Once again, you're talking about a highly trained specialist.

a reply to: MisterSpock

Agreed, honestly I just think that's a good idea on the whole for society. I know I would have benefited greatly by having a mentor, I still would in many ways.

Looking through history that was not such a wild idea, it was pretty normal.

Soft targets. These mentally disturbed killers are sane enough NOT to attack police stations, national guard armory, military installations, NRA events, gun shows, or other hard targets.

If the soft targets become hardened targets, even somewhat, the shooter “active” time gets reduced a lot.

Garlic festival. 1 min response. 3 dead.
ElPaso. 6 min response. 20 dead.
Vegas. 1 hour response. 58 dead.

originally posted by: LordAhriman

originally posted by:
Other gangsters, sometimes. Probably murderers? There's zero data to support that.

Gangsters murder gangsters. There is a lot of data to support that.

That murder is different than the ones today tho....

Mkay

So you guys really buy this bs? When was a shooting 2 weeks ago, i told to my friend, just wait, they will pull a bigger "event" because this wasn't big enough to "hear" It will be in a republican state this time, 2-3 shooters ( in first report) 15-20 dead, and will turn out "again" lonely shooter. It is a False Flag, it is bs, everybody posted on twitter several shooter, the media come up with 1 blurry photo when he entered lol. Lot's of cameras recorded when police told them to leave, but not a single record, or photo of, blood, dead people, or the shooting. Great job democrats, how the hell are they capable to organize an event like this? How many people involved in these events. Are you guys honestly believe these mass shootings are real lol?

a reply to: MisterSpock

No, send 'em out to the ranch. We'll see if they can work.

I remember one day when I brought my (black best friend) out to the job site. Old man got really pissed off at me, I was supposed to be digging post holes in an asphalt parking lot with my 680 Case backhoe. I thought Dad was pissed at me for going and getting breakfast with my buddy Wayne.

Turns out Dad was pissed about the fact Wayne had no idea about how to be safe around a swinging hoe. And, when he got hit by the bucket, in the hole....I was in trouble (for not knowing better). Just knocked "Wayne" down, but it cold have been FAR worse!!

I was wrong. Wayne was wrong. ....and so it goes.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

"Turns out Dad was pissed about the fact Wayne had no idea about how to be safe around a swinging hoe"

Is anyone really safe around a swinging hoe?

Seriously though, I don't see how you(anyone) could disagree with the concept of mentorship(maybe we have different meanings for that word) to boys in the age ranges I mentioned that have no guidance into adulthood.

Whether or not hoe's are present.

Here is the profile I have developed for the suspicious random-rage shooter:


--the 'uniform' of all black/camoflage/trenchcoat look on the part of the shooter

--previous history of mental health 'treatment' of the perp

--reported multiple suspects besides the named patsy

--lack of any believable motive for the shooters' acts

--investigation taken over by the Feds, as represented by the FBI or ATF

--previous ties to the military by the shooter

--attempt by the politicians to impose new laws in the wake of the shooting

--extra guns and ammo found in the auto and at the home of the shooter

--strange expressionless look on the shooter's face during the rampage, or an inability to remember the act afterwards, which I see as an indication of mind control

--early start time to the massacre, so the story will dominate the day's headlines

--a drill mimicking the shooting happening nearby or in recent memory


See how many of these commonalities are reported in the next couple of days, and let us know.

originally posted by: amagyar
So you guys really buy this bs? When was a shooting 2 weeks ago, i told to my friend, just wait, they will pull a bigger "event" because this wasn't big enough to "hear" It will be in a republican state this time, 2-3 shooters ( in first report) 15-20 dead, and will turn out "again" lonely shooter. It is a False Flag, it is bs, everybody posted on twitter several shooter, the media come up with 1 blurry photo when he entered lol. Lot's of cameras recorded when police told them to leave, but not a single record, or photo of, blood, dead people, or the shooting. Great job democrats, how the hell are they capable to organize an event like this? How many people involved in these events. Are you guys honestly believe these mass shootings are real lol?

This is everything wrong with extreme Conspiracy Theorists in a single post.
Let me guess , no one died?

originally posted by: KansasGirl
I get it, that the issue is going to come up when there is a mass shooting, but damn, is this thread even really about the El Paso incident anymore? Not really.

It never really is about the incident. Political opportunities are far more valuable than human life, and when guns are involved, it's more about the guns than the violence.

Most important of all, however, is faithfully ensuring such tragic events are properly memorialized with grand, stentorian, sanctimonious displays of finger-wagging, blame-gaming, camera-posing and feather-ruffling.

Senseless, misdirected anger got us into this mess, and it's the only thing that can get us out of it.

originally posted by: KansasGirlAnyone have a good summary of what we know about what happened today?

Even people who get paid to write them don't have much to offer right now, and I don't recommend taking at face value anything being bandied about in the media without extensive corroboration in any case.

In news, the first casualty is the truth.

originally posted by: amagyar
So you guys really buy this bs? When was a shooting 2 weeks ago, i told to my friend, just wait, they will pull a bigger "event" because this wasn't big enough to "hear" It will be in a republican state this time, 2-3 shooters ( in first report) 15-20 dead, and will turn out "again" lonely shooter. It is a False Flag, it is bs, everybody posted on twitter several shooter, the media come up with 1 blurry photo when he entered lol. Lot's of cameras recorded when police told them to leave, but not a single record, or photo of, blood, dead people, or the shooting. Great job democrats, how the hell are they capable to organize an event like this? How many people involved in these events. Are you guys honestly believe these mass shootings are real lol?

The Gilroy shooter shot himself (came out yesterday), thus stopping the planned "arrangement" 😎

originally posted by: starviego

originally posted by: opethPA

originally posted by: starviego
If you've got a death toll of 20 or so that automatically means more than one shooter.

You can't be serious can you?
I mean I know the answer to that question based on your general posting approach but what's the logic you used to speak in such absolutes.

There was a gang shooting a couple of days ago in Chicago or somewhere. Anyway, they reported 1 dead and 11 wounded. Which is a much more natural casualty toll with an untrained shooter spraying bullets. If there's 20 dead, that should mean at least the same number of wounded, and how can one person achieve such an astounding casualty rate? Special Forces guys can do that, but not many others.

On the other hand, if you have 20 dead and 3-5 wounded, for example, than it's even more suspicious, because the shooter's kill-to-wounded ratio is incredibly high. Once again, you're talking about a highly trained specialist.

Did that Gang shooting take place in a WalMart that had basically people lined up in rows?
Was that gang shooting with the same weapon?

Not sure where you get 20 dead and 3-5 wounded considering its 20 dead 24 injured.

originally posted by: opethPA
This is everything wrong with extreme Conspiracy Theorists in a single post.
Let me guess , no one died?

After Sandy Hoax and the Boston Marathon bombings, I'd say that is a viable theory.

a reply to: conspiracy nut

www.voanews.com...

There are many theories about what motivates mass shooters.One common one holds that every active shooter is mentally ill. But a new study by the FBI calls that notion into question, showing that the vast majority of mass shooters do not have a diagnosed mental illness. The study, released Wednesday, looked at 63 active shooters between 2000 and 2013, focusing on the shooters' behaviors prior to their attacks. While most shooters experienced mental health "stressors" such as anxiety and depression, the researchers found that only 25 percent had been diagnosed by a health professional with a mental illness "of any kind" prior to an attack. Of those diagnosed with a mental illness, three had a psychotic disorder, a condition that is sometimes associated with violence. This is not the first study to de-link mass shootings from mental illness, but the notion that all mass shooters are mentally ill persists, and the FBI says it is "misleading and unhelpful."

but if you prefer peer reviewed studies vs news articles www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

small snippit mind you

Yet surprisingly little population-level evidence supports the notion that individuals diagnosed with mental illness are more likely than anyone else to commit gun crimes. According to Appelbaum,25 less than 3% to 5% of US crimes involve people with mental illness, and the percentages of crimes that involve guns are lower than the national average for persons not diagnosed with mental illness. Databases that track gun homicides, such as the National Center for Health Statistics, similarly show that fewer than 5% of the 120 000 gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness.26 Meanwhile, a growing body of research suggests that mass shootings represent anecdotal distortions of, rather than representations of, the actions of “mentally ill” people as an aggregate group. By most estimates, there were fewer than 200 mass shootings reported in the United States—often defined as crimes in which four or more people are shot in an event, or related series of events—between 1982 and 2012.27,28 Recent reports suggest that 160 of these events occurred after the year 200029 and that mass shootings rose particularly in 2013 and 2014.28 As anthropologists and sociologists of medicine have noted, the time since the early 1980s also marked a consistent broadening of diagnostic categories and an expanding number of persons classifiable as “mentally ill.”30 Scholars who study violence prevention thus contend that mass shootings occur far too infrequently to allow for the statistical modeling and predictability—factors that lie at the heart of effective public health interventions. Swanson argues that mass shootings denote “rare acts of violence”31 that have little predictive or preventive validity in relation to the bigger picture of the 32 000 fatalities and 74 000 injuries caused on average by gun violence and gun suicide each year in the United States.32 Links between mental illness and other types of violence are similarly contentious among researchers who study such trends. Several studies33–35 suggest that subgroups of persons with severe or untreated mental illness might be at increased risk for violence in periods surrounding psychotic episodes or psychiatric hospitalizations. Writing in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Keers et al. found that the emergence of “persecutory delusions” partially explained associations between untreated schizophrenia and violence.36 At the same time, a number of seminal studies asserting links between violence and mental illness—including a 1990 study by Swanson et al.37 cited as fact by the New York Times in 201338—have been critiqued for overstating connections between serious mental illness and violent acts.39 Media reports often assume a binary distinction between mild and severe mental illness, and connect the latter form to unpredictability and lack of self-control. However, this distinction, too, is called into question by mental health research. To be sure, a number of the most common psychiatric diagnoses, including depressive, anxiety, and attention-deficit disorders, have no correlation with violence whatsoever.18 Community studies find that serious mental illness without substance abuse is also “statistically unrelated” to community violence.40 At the aggregate level, the vast majority of people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent acts—only about 4% of violence in the United States can be attributed to people diagnosed with mental illness.41,42

so yeah but damned if they dont make a perfect boogeyman to make non mentally ill people feel better by placing blame on an easy scapegoat

www.psychologytoday.com...

www.psychiatry.org...

www.nbcnews.com...

"There’s not really a correlation," said Fox, who maintains a database on mass shootings. "We like to think that these people are different from the rest of us. We want a simple explanation and if we just say they’re mentally ill, case closed. Because of how fearful dangerous and deadly their actions are, we really want to distance ourselves from it and relegate it to illness."

a reply to: firesnake

Dude, ATS is not for the squeamish, and CERTAINLY not for children.

This needed to be posted here.

Try not to look if you can't deal with our world (reality).

Just saying.

Why is it that when it is a white killer, Republicans bring up the "Mental Health" issue? Guess what, mental health exists in every country and in every race, so show me the constant mass shooters that are anyone other than white that target INNOCENT people?

originally posted by: opethPA

Did that Gang shooting take place in a WalMart that had basically people lined up in rows?
Was that gang shooting with the same weapon?

Some people just freeze when they are confronted by an active shooter, but many others quickly move around. It's not easy to achieve such a high hit-on-target rate. If he's firing high powered bullets, the impact on his hand and arm will begin to tell pretty quickly. Control becomes harder, with shots going into the ceiling, the floor, and other unintended places.

Like I sez, if this was just one guy, you're looking at someone with professional training and plenty of practice.

a reply to: RalagaNarHallas

Both anxiety and depression are things which can be medicated. How are they not mental illnesses?