"Mass Shootings Have Long History"

A chart on how deaths from K-12 school shootings has changed over the past 23 years is available here.  From the Discovery Channel:

Although it sounds sadly modern, the account was published in the New York Times more than a century ago.
Dated April 10, 1891, the article described an elderly man firing a shotgun at children playing in front of St. Mary's Parochial School in Newburgh, N.Y.
"None of the children were killed, but several were well filled with lead," the report said.
More than a century earlier, on July 26, 1764, a teacher and 10 students were shot dead by four Lenape American Indians in Greencastle, Penn., in what is considered the earliest known U.S. mass school shooting.
Indeed, killing or trying to kill a mass of people is not a modern phenomenon. For as long as there has been history, there have been gruesome mass murders. . . .

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Newest Fox News piece: Memo to gun-control advocates: Even Elliot Rodger believed guns would have deterred him

The newest Fox News piece starts this way:

How can we prevent mass murderers? Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who killed six innocent people this past Friday in California, is causing everyone to ask that question, yet again.

Rodger spent over a year and a half meticulously planning his attack. 

His 141-page “manifesto” makes it clear that he feared someone with a gun could stop him before he was able to kill a lot of people. 

Consider his discussion about where he thought the best place to attack people was: 

“Another option was Deltopia, a day in which many young people pour in from all over the state to have a spring break party on Del Playa Street. I figured this would be the perfect day to attack Isla Vista, but after watching Youtube videos of previous Deltopia parties, I saw that there were way too many cops walking around on such an event. It would be impossible to kill enough of my enemies before being dispatched by those damnable cops.” 

Many gun-control advocates have long dismissed the notion that guns can deter these killers. . . . .

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Another mass killer who probably supported gun control

I have previously written about Dylan Klebold, Karl Pierson, and Chris Dorner's support for gun control.  Now as AWR Hawkins notes, Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in Santa Barbara, came from a family of strong gun control advocates.

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Six people killed, seven wounded in deadly multiple victim public Santa Barbara shooting/stabbing spree

UPDATE: As usual, the initial media news stories got fundamental facts wrong here.  Of particular interest, is that half the people killed here were stabbed to death.  

From Fox News:

A crazed gunman went on a shooting rampage in a popular Santa Barbara student enclave, killing six people and injuring seven others before being found dead in his car, in what authorities said was a “premeditated mass murder.”
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said early Saturday the person who carried out "this atrocity" was "severely mentally disturbed."
Fox News confirmed that several of the dead were killed at a sorority house.
Brown said that investigators were familiar with a YouTube video titled "Retribution" and were looking into whether the person in the video was linked to the killings, KEYT-TV reported on its website.
In a rambling rant, the young man in the video promises to take revenge on sorority girls who had rejected him over the years. "Tomorrow is a day of retribution," the man in the video says into the camera while sitting in the driver's seat of a luxury car. . . .

Santa Barbara County is essentially a gun-free zone, where only 0.009 percent of the adult population is allowed to carry a permitted concealed handgun for protection (about 30 out of an adult population of 333,000).  The extremely few people allowed to carry are undoubtedly politically well connected individuals who were unlikely to have been in the part of town where this attack occurred.  As we have seen over-and-over again, these multiple victim killers pick out places where they know that there victims aren't going to be able to defend themselves.  After a three judge panel decision earlier this year to strike down San Diego's virtual ban on concealed carry, the full 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is now considering whether to uphold this decision.  One can only hope that their decision comes soon.

UPDATE: As of February 2014, Santa Barbara County had 53 permits out of an adult population of 337,000 -- a rate of 0.016 percent.  The rate was virtually unchanged from 2011.

UPDATE: The killer here repeatedly stab to death by three of his roommates before he shot six people to death.  It also appears that the killer committed suicide.  Those were first ones killed.

3 -- stabbed to death
2 -- shot to death outside sorority
1 -- shot to death outside a delicatessen   

Note that out of Europe today: Jews apparently targeted in shooting at Brussels Jewish Museum: three dead, one seriously wounded

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Mass shooting yesterday at FedEx facility in Kennesaw Georgia to place in yet another "gun-free zone"

When are news reports going to mention the simple fact that yet another attack has occurred in a gun-free zone?  The above picture is from the Kennesaw facility for Fedex.  Six people are listed as wounded from the attack.  From Fox News:

KENNESAW, Ga. –  The father of a gunman who wounded six colleagues in an Atlanta-area rampage says his son didn't seem enthusiastic about his job but never mentioned problems with co-workers. 

Geddy Kramer showed up with a shotgun early Tuesday morning at the FedEx package-sorting center where he worked. He shot a security guard, then fired on those working in a large warehouse before killing himself. . . .

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Sunday's Shooter in Kansas City who killed three people references book by leftist The Nation and kills two people in gun-free zone

Remember when the media has tried to blame the Tea Party for the Aurora movie theater shooting and Sarah Palin for the Tuscon shooting of Congresswoman Giffords?  Now in this shooting in Kansas City we apparently have a liberal Democrat who reads anti-Semitic books put out by the leftist The Nation.  While the killer was motivated by his hatred of Jews, it turns out that none of his victims were actually Jewish.  From PJ Media:

What will our good friends at The Nation say now, when his very first sentence notes how inspired he is by the words of none other than Max Blumenthal, whose antisemitic and anti-Zionist book was released by the magazine’s own publishing house, Nation Books?  I can look back to find scores of examples of how various racist rants are attributed by the Left to conservatives, Tea Party members and especially to  Rush Limbaugh. Some years ago, one man tried to enter a left-wing group’s offices with a gun, and many leftists immediately attributed his actions to the hate spread by right-wing radio talk show hosts. 

Now, Mr. Miller himself, a proud Ku Klux Klan leader and avowed antisemite, has found inspiring words from the one Jew he likes–Max Blumenthal. Look again at his words: “Jew journalist Max Blumenthal exposes and explains this attempt by a foreign government Israel, to buy the presidential election for the neo-con, war-mongering republican establishment.” Except for the first two words,“Jew journalist,” Miller’s rant is similar to the arguments of Walt and Mearsheimer, John B. Judis and other realists and leftists, whose writings are filled with the same disdain for “neo-conservatives” who are always described as “warmongering.” When someone like Pat Buchanan makes that same argument, he never uses the word “Jews,” preferring to let his readers know by intuition just who is talking about. . . .

Note that in Kansas, temples are gun-free zones.  Given that The Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City holds religious services, it seems very likely that the area where two of the three people were murdered was a gun-free zone.

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