Too bad the thirteen year old didn't have a gun, right? 'Murica.
A 12-year-old boy was arrested after he allegedly shot and wounded his 13-year-old classmate at a school in Oakland, California.
The shooting erupted at about 1.30pm on Monday at Madison Park academy in East Oakland. Local police said they were able to quickly detain the alleged shooter while his victim was hospitalized in what is now described as stable condition.
As news of the shooting spread, the school became surrounded by anxious parents desperately seeking news of their children.
Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, expressed relief that the victim was recovering but dismay at the ongoing gun violence battering the city and the US as a whole. “School should be the safest place for our kids,” she wrote on Twitter. “The increased level of gun violence in our country and our city is heartbreaking and unacceptable.”
Authorities have not said whether the shooting was accidental or intentional. Either way, the case highlighted the exceptionally high rate of death and injury suffered by children in the US as a result of the country’s permissive stance on guns.
According to the gun control group Everytown, death by firearm is the leading cause of death for children and teens in America. “This is a uniquely American problem,” the group says. “Compared to other high-income countries, American children aged five to 14 are 21 times more likely to be killed with guns.”
Dutch government ‘concerned’ about U.S. gun violence after soldier’s killing
Gun violence in the United States has surged in recent years. Firearms purchases hit record levels in 2020 and 2021, with more than 43 million guns estimated to have been bought during that period, according to a Post analysis. More than 45,000 gun fatalities were recorded during each of the past two years, and the rate of gun deaths hit the highest level since 1995.
The United States’ “intentional homicide” rate was seven times that of the Netherlands in 2020, the last year for which the United Nations has statistics on both countries. The death rate from gun violence was nearly 18 times higher in the United States than in the Netherlands in 2019, according to the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
We just need fewer doors and for everyone to be armed. Easy peasy.
The ultimate irony is as a responsible gun owner I am under no illusion I could intervene in any of these circumstances more guns are “necessary.”
Responsible means 1. You will hesitate not wildly shoot 2. You will need to aim carefully and double or triple check
all of that also assumes you won’t panic and/or not do anything
these people are wildly overestimating both their ability and human nature
I also fully understand statistically my gun is more likely to injure me or someone else by accident than it ever will be used to prevent a crime. So it’s locked up
to me responsible means not equating yourself with Rambo
Red flag laws get little use as shootings, gun deaths soar
By BERNARD CONDON
Today
Chicago is one of the nation's gun violence hotspots and a seemingly ideal place to employ Illinois' "red flag” law that allows police to step in and take firearms away from people who threaten to kill. But amid more than 8,500 shootings resulting in 1,800 deaths since 2020, the law was used there just four times.
It's a pattern that's played out in New Mexico, with nearly 600 gun homicides during that period and a mere eight uses of its red flag law. And in Massachusetts, with nearly 300 shooting homicides and just 12 uses of its law.
An Associated Press analysis found many U.S. states barely use the red flag laws touted as the most powerful tool to stop gun violence before it happens, a trend blamed on a lack of awareness of the laws and resistance by some authorities to enforce them even as shootings and gun deaths soar.
AP found such laws in 19 states and the District of Columbia were used to remove firearms from people 15,049 times since 2020, fewer than 10 per 100,000 adult residents. Experts called that woefully low and not nearly enough to make a dent in gun violence, considering the millions of firearms in circulation and countless potential warning signs law enforcement officers encounter from gun owners every day.
“It’s too small a pebble to make a ripple,” Duke University sociologist Jeffrey Swanson, who has studied red flag gun surrender orders across the nation, said of the AP tally. “It’s as if the law doesn’t exist.”
“The number of people we are catching with red flags is likely infinitesimal,” added Indiana University law professor Jody Madeira, who like other experts who reviewed AP’s findings wouldn’t speculate how many red flag removal orders would be necessary to make a difference.
The search for solutions comes amid a string of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, Uvalde, Texas, and Highland Park, Illinois, and a spike in gun violence not seen in decades: 27,000 deaths so far this year, following 45,000 deaths each of the past two years.
AP’s count, compiled from inquiries and Freedom of Information Law requests, showed wide disparities in how the laws were applied from state to state, county to county, most without regard to population or crime rates.
Florida led with 5,800 such orders, or 34 per 100,000 adult residents, but that is due mostly to aggressive enforcement in a few counties that don’t include Miami-Dade and others with more gun killings. More than a quarter of Illinois’ slim 154 orders came from one suburban county that makes up just 7% of the state's population. California had 3,197 orders but was working through a backlog of three times that number of people barred from owning guns under a variety of measures who had not yet surrendered them.
And a national movement among politicians and sheriffs that has declared nearly 2,000 counties as “Second Amendment Sanctuaries,” opposing laws that infringe on gun rights, may have affected red flag enforcement in several states. In Colorado, 37 counties that consider themselves “sanctuaries” issued just 45 surrender orders in the two years through last year, a fifth fewer than non-sanctuary counties did per resident. New Mexico and Nevada reported only about 20 orders combined.
“The law shouldn’t even be there in the first place,” argued Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who heads the pro-gun Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. “You’re taking away someone’s property and means of self-defense.”
Red flag laws, most of which came into effect over the last four years, allow police officers who believe gun owners are an imminent danger to themselves or others to petition a judge to order firearms surrendered or, barring that, seized for an “emergency” period, typically two weeks. The judge can then convene a court hearing in which petitioners present evidence to withhold weapons longer, typically a year, and the owner can argue against that.
AP’s tally counts an emergency order that is followed by a longer one as a single order if they involve the same gun owner. In rare cases where no one asked for an emergency order and only a longer one was requested and granted, that also counts as a single order. Several states reported incomplete data.
Some states also allow family members of gun owners, school officials, work colleagues or doctors to ask for gun removal orders, also known as extreme risk protection orders. But data reviewed by the AP show nearly all petitions in several states were initiated by police, possibly because, as several surveys have shown, few people outside law enforcement are even aware the laws exist.
The recent spike in shootings has brought renewed attention to red flag laws, with states including Alaska, Pennsylvania and Kentucky introducing legislation to add them. The Biden administration is seeking to foster wider use of red flag laws by allocating money in a newly passed federal gun law to help spread the word about such measures.
An AP-NORC poll in late July found 78% of U.S. adults strongly or somewhat favor red flag laws, but the backlash against them has been intense in some states, particularly in rural areas. Opponents argue that allowing judges to rule on gun seizures in initial emergency petitions before full hearings violates due process rights, though court cases claiming this have generally found the laws constitutional.
Many police believe seizing guns can also be dangerous and unnecessary, even as a last resort, especially in sparsely populated areas where they know many of the residents with mental health issues, said Tony Mace, head of the New Mexico Sheriffs’ Association, which lobbied against the state’s law.
“You’re showing up with 10 to 15 law enforcement officers and coming in the middle of the night and kicking in the door, and it’s already a dangerous environment,” said Mace, sheriff of Cibola County, a sanctuary county with just one order since 2020. “You’re dealing with someone in crisis and elevating it even more.”
One fierce gun rights defender who still aggressively uses the law is Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd, who says he doesn’t let his beliefs stand in the way of moving fast when gun owners threaten violence.
“We’re not going to wait for an Uvalde, Texas, or a Parkland or a Columbine if we have the information and people say that they’re going to shoot or kill,” said Judd, who enforced 752 orders since 2020 in a county of 725,000 residents, a tally that's more than the total orders for 15 entire states. “We’re going to use the tools that the state gave us.”
Florida’s traditionally pro-gun Republican-led legislature passed its red flag law in 2018 following revelations police failed to act on repeated threats by an expelled student who would go on to carry out the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland earlier that year that left 17 people dead.
A recent high-profile example of a red flag law not being used was for the 21-year-old gunman accused of fatally shooting seven people and injuring dozens more at a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park. Robert E. Crimo III drew police attention three years earlier when he threatened to “kill everyone” in his house and officers acknowledged going to the home several times previously because of a “history of attempts” to take his own life.
But Highland Park police never requested a gun surrender order, saying there was no gun belonging to Crimo to take away at the time, even though the law has a provision to block threatening people from making future purchases, too.
Illinois state Rep. Denyse Stoneback said there has clearly been a problem with awareness of the law among those tasked with carrying it out. “We’d go to police departments and they didn’t know anything about it,” said the Democrat who helped push through a bill last year providing $1 million in police red flag law training.
Asked why Chicago had so few red flag firearm restraining orders, police spokesman Thomas Ahern said many of the city’s gun killings are committed with illegally owned firearms.
But Ahern emphasized it remained a priority of the department to increase its awareness and use of the red flag law. “If we are able to prevent one citizen from getting hurt or killed that’s a law worth having and definitely not a low priority," he said.
In New York, a red flag-type situation that wasn’t covered under the state’s law nonetheless led to a spike in red flag gun surrender orders.
Payton Gendron was a 17-year-old high school senior last year when he was investigated by New York’s State Police and ordered hospitalized for a mental health evaluation for typing into an economics class online program that his future plans included “murder-suicide.” But since he was a minor, he wasn’t covered under the state’s red flag law and it didn’t prevent him from later buying the high-powered rifle authorities say he used to kill 10 Black people in a racially-motivated shooting at Buffalo supermarket in May.
Since then, New York has seen 779 gun surrender orders under its red flag law, equal to nearly half of all its orders since the measure took effect three years ago.
Several experts said it’s impossible to come up with an ideal number of red flag orders and misleading to compare states by orders because of the widely varying rates of gun ownership and gun homicides and suicides, among other stats.
Another complicating factor is that some states have stricter gun ownerships rules and multiple ways to seize firearms. In California, for instance, guns can be taken away through domestic violence restraining orders, civil harassment protection orders and school violence prevention orders in addition to the red flag law.
Still, experts consulted by AP agreed more could be done to enforce red flag laws given the prevalence of guns and the millions of gun owners that national studies suggest could be dangerous to themselves and others. In red flag states alone, figures compiled by the Gun Violence Archive show at least 21,100 homicides and 47,000 injuries during the 2½ years covered by AP’s count.
Several studies suggest red flag laws can be particularly effective in preventing gun suicides, which kill about 20,000 people a year. A Duke University study of Connecticut’s-first-in-the-nation red flag law in 1999 estimated that for every 10 to 20 surrender orders a life from a potential suicide was saved. A study of Indiana’s law came up with a similar ratio.
While the impact of red flag laws on homicides is less well researched, studies suggest many mass shootings could be avoided if the laws were implemented aggressively. A study by the gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety showed perpetrators exhibited dangerous warning signs before more than half of the mass shootings in the dozen years through 2020 that accounted for 596 deaths.
Such warning signs have led to many opportunities to stop gun violence, as well as missed chances.
In Colorado in 2020, police seized 59 guns from a man who complained of hit men coming to get him, bragged about shooting someone and repeatedly threatened his ex-wife.
In New Jersey in 2019, police took seven guns from a man threatening on Facebook to attack a Walmart.
And in Washington state in 2018, police removed 12 guns from the home of a man who posted on social media about killing Jews in a synagogue and kids in a school.
None of those threatened shootings happened.
But in Indianapolis in 2020, failure to employ all aspects of a red flag law resulted in disaster. After 18-year-old Brandon Hole’s mother alerted police that he was threatening to commit “suicide by cop,” police seized his pump-action shotgun. A county prosecutor could have gone further under the law to argue before a judge that Hole should be barred from possessing or buying a gun, but that never happened.
A few months later, Hole bought two AR-style rifles at a gun store, turning to his mother and saying, “They don’t have a flag on me.” Several months after that, he fatally shot eight employees in a FedEx warehouse where he had worked and injured seven more before killing himself.
“I feel the state of Indiana is an accessory to murder,” a wounded Angela Hughley told the Indianapolis Star shortly after the shooting.
Amber Clark, a librarian in Sacramento, California, might still be alive today if police had acted on a tip that Ronald Seay was armed and dangerous.
The gunman’s twin brother called police in 2018 warning that Seay, who had a history of mental illness and trouble with police, was making violent threats and had two semiautomatic pistols. But the police never went to a judge to ask for a gun surrender order or tell the sibling that he could do that himself.
A few weeks later, Seay unloaded 11 bullets into Clark’s face, head and body at pointblank range outside the Sacramento library.
“It is obvious to me and my family that the application of California’s red flag law in this case would have saved two lives – Amber’s and the shooter’s – and prevented immeasurable grief,” said her husband, Kelly Clark. “My wife would still be alive and the killer would have received the help he needed instead of being condemned to life in prison.”
___
Condon reported from New York; AP writer Terry Spencer in West Palm Beach, Florida, AP Data Editor Justin Myers in Chicago and AP statehouse reporters across the country contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
'Devastating': Mass shootings obscure daily U.S. gun toll
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Today
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Cameron Taylor was watching an illegal street race that had attracted hundreds to an intersection in Portland, Oregon, but decided to leave as the crowd got increasingly unruly. Moments later, gunfire erupted and Taylor was hit by a stray bullet as he and a friend headed to their car.
Police, who were overwhelmed with 911 calls about other shootings, couldn't control multiple street takeovers in the city that night and had trouble finding the victims of three shootings that occurred during the chaos.
“His friend who was with him put him in the car and drove him out to get him to the hospital, but he was not able to make it and that friend called his parents” to say Taylor was dead, family friend Erin Russell told The Associated Press.
Taylor, 20, died Sunday the same day that four high-profile, public shooting rampages in Bend, Oregon, Phoenix, Detroit and Houston drew national headlines. His slaying went largely unnoticed amid the daily toll of gun violence that has come to define Portland and a number of other American cities since the pandemic.
Homicide rates appear to be dropping in some major U.S. cities, such as New York and Chicago, but in others killings are on the rise, particularly from guns. In Portland, the homicide rate surged 207% since 2019 and there have been more than 800 shootings so far this year. In Phoenix, police Chief Jeri Williams said this week the gun violence was the worst she'd seen in 33 years on the job.
“How many more officers have to be shot? How many more community members have to be killed before those in our community take a stand? This is not only a Phoenix police issue, this is a community issue,” she said after a weekend that tallied 17 shootings and 11 homicides citywide.
Now, police are on edge heading into Labor Day weekend, with its traditional end-of-summer festivities, and some are adding extra patrols as they brace for more potential violence.
In Portland, police busy with three killings and nine non-fatal shootings in 48 hours couldn’t control three illegal street races last weekend that attracted hundreds and shut down major intersections for hours. In Houston, the day after a gunman shot five neighbors, killing three, another man shot two sisters before killing himself.
In the past two weeks, authorities in Phoenix have confiscated 711 guns and made 525 gun-related arrests as part of a targeted crackdown. Nearly 90% of homicides there this year were by gun, police said. In Detroit, where a man is accused of shooting three people at random on city streets last weekend, authorities are also cracking down on gun violence in high-crime neighborhoods through Labor Day.
“Let’s stop talking about our inability to respond to crime in the community. Let’s stop advertising to criminals that they’re going to get away with it,” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said, using an expletive at a City Council meeting this week after police Chief Chuck Lovell once more asked for more officers.
“I think we should stop using the messaging at every turn, that the reason we can’t help our citizens with basic criminal justice issues is because we don’t have the personnel," Wheeler said. “We’ve got to figure out better ways to address this crisis."
Last weekend's rampages — which included a heavily armed assailant who stormed a central Oregon supermarket, random shootings on Detroit streets and a Phoenix man who opened fire while wearing body armor — were shocking and scary, but they aren't representative of the broader toll gun violence is taking on American society, experts said.
Victims killed in mass shootings make up about 1% of all those killed in gun homicides nationwide, despite headlines that instill fear in many Americans, said James Fox, a professor at Northeastern University who has created a database of mass killings stretching back to 2006 with The Associated Press and USA Today.
All four shootings last weekend didn’t even meet the database's definition of a mass killing — four or more people, excluding the assailant, killed in a 24-hour period — but they nonetheless sowed fear because of the random nature of the violence, he added.
“Those don’t tend to make news. They don’t tend to scare people because people say, 'Well, that’s not my family," Fox said. “We have as many as 20,000 gun homicides a year, and most of those are one victim. Sometimes two, sometimes three, (but) rarely four or more.”
The pandemic and the social unrest it caused has also played a role. Eight million Americans became first-time gun owners between 2019 and 2021, said Jeffrey Butts, director of the research and evaluation center for the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York.
“We already had 400 million guns in circulation. So when you bump that up and include a lot of first-timers in the population, you get accidents, you get precipitous behavior, you get people reacting to small insults and conflicts with their guns because they’re in their pocket now," he said.
Meanwhile Taylor's friends and family mourn his death in Portland.
The car aficionado and beloved big brother who loved barbecues and spending time with his family was “at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Russell said.
“He has a lot of friends and a lot of family who love him dearly, and this is a devastating loss.”
____
Associated Press reporter Walt Berry in Phoenix contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
A teenage girl was accidentally shot while trying to take a loaded gun away from a toddler who had gotten ahold of it in a Winnipeg apartment, police say.
Officers were called to an apartment complex in the Seven Oaks area at about 11 a.m. Saturday, where they found a teenage girl with a gunshot wound to her upper body, police said in a Wednesday news release.
She was taken to hospital in stable condition.
Police believe the teenager was babysitting the toddler while an adult was asleep in the apartment. The toddler grabbed a loaded gun that wasn't locked up and began running around the suite, according to police.
The babysitter quickly took the gun from the child but it accidentally fired, wounding her.
A 20-year-old woman was arrested at the apartment and charged with possession of a loaded prohibited or restricted firearm, storing a gun contrary to regulations and carrying a concealed weapon.
She was released from custody on an undertaking.
"Oh Canada...you're beautiful when you're drunk" -EV 8/14/93
We just have one of these and one of those a day, ho hum, another day in ‘Murica.
A 19-year-old man was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after four people died in multiple shootings Wednesday in Memphis, one of which was live-streamed on Facebook.
The suspect, whom police identified as Ezekiel D. Kelly, is in custody hours after shootings in at least eight locations prompted a citywide alert. Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis confirmed the four fatalities at a news conference early Thursday, calling the day’s events a “mobile mass shooting.” She said three others were wounded, including an employee of an AutoZone who was critically injured and is in the hospital, and one person was uninjured. The shooting at the AutoZone was shown on Facebook Live, she said.
Court records show Kelly was released from prison this year after serving 11 months of a three-year sentence for aggravated assault, according to the records. Police didn’t release the identities of Wednesday’s victims and didn’t immediately respond to calls and emails Wednesday night.
So, I’m trying to find the video but basically all the white residents stood outside hugging the superintendent, supporting him, etc. shortly thereafter a white gentleman told the Latino reporter to leave because they didn’t need her kind around. Inside, the parents of those killed wondered out loud what would have happened had those children slaughtered been white?
Of course, he would have been removed immediately.
When the color of a slaughtered child while at school determines your sympathy or empathy then we know it’s time to get out of this fucked up country, or better, for it to end altogether.
Guilty plea due in Michigan school shooting that killed 4
By ED WHITE
1 hour ago
DETROIT (AP) — A teenager accused of killing four fellow students and injuring more at a Michigan high school is expected to plead guilty to murder next week, authorities said Friday.
Ethan Crumbley had created images of violence during a classroom assignment last November but was not sent home from Oxford High School in southeastern Michigan. He pulled out a gun a few hours later and committed a mass shooting.
Authorities have pinned some responsibility on Crumbley's parents, portraying them as a dysfunctional pair who ignored their son's mental health needs and happily provided a gun as a gift just days before the attack. They also face charges.
Crumbley, 16, is due in court Monday.
“We can confirm that the shooter is expected to plead guilty to all 24 charges, including terrorism, and the prosecutor has notified the victims,” said David Williams, chief assistant prosecutor in Oakland County.
A message seeking comment was left for the boy's lawyers.
Crumbley was 15 when the shooting occurred at Oxford High, roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Detroit.
His parents had been summoned to school that day to discuss the teen's ominous writings. A teacher had found a drawing with a gun pointing at the words, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.” There was an image of a bullet with the message: “Blood everywhere.”
James and Jennifer Crumbley declined to take Ethan home but were told to get him into counseling within 48 hours, according to investigators.
A day earlier, a teacher saw Ethan searching for ammunition on his phone. The school contacted his mother, Jennifer Crumbley, who then told her son in a text message: “Lol. I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught," the prosecutor's office said.
Ethan Crumbley was charged as an adult with one count of terrorism causing death, four counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of attempted murder and 12 counts related to use of a gun.
A first-degree murder conviction typically brings an automatic life prison sentence in Michigan. But teenagers are entitled to a hearing where their lawyer can argue for a shorter term and an opportunity for parole.
Separately, James and Jennifer Crumbley are facing involuntary manslaughter charges — a rare case of prosecutors trying to make parents accountable for a school shooting. They are accused of making a gun accessible to Ethan and neglecting his need for mental health care.
“Put simply, they created an environment in which their son’s violent tendencies flourished. They were aware their son was troubled, and then they bought him a gun,” prosecutors said in a court filing.
The Crumbleys said they were unaware of Ethan’s plan. They also dispute that the gun was easy to get at home.
Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre, Hana St. Juliana and Justin Shilling were killed, while six students and a teacher were injured.
Sheriff Mike Bouchard said a guilty plea from Ethan Crumbley would be a relief for families and witnesses.
“At least not to have to go through the pain of painstakingly seeing every bit of evidence, every bit of video and all of the things that would be horrific” at a trial, Bouchard told WDIV-TV.
In court documents, prosecutors have revealed portions of Ethan Crumbley’s personal journal. He said his grades were poor and that his parents hated each other and had no money.
“This just furthers my desire to shoot up the school or do something else,” the teen wrote.
All three Crumbleys are being held at the Oakland County jail, though Ethan is kept away from adults.
Ven Johnson, an attorney who is suing the Oxford school district, declined to comment Friday on Ethan Crumbley's expected plea.
___
AP reporter Corey Williams contributed to this story.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Yay! You go tejas with your gubner Abbot&Costello. What a fucking country. Yea, “ordinary.”
Members of the U.S. armed forces are fingerprinted, their DNA is collected, and the information is kept on file and in storage. It is a precaution for those terrible situations in which a body needs to be identified and an acknowledgement of the danger inherent in serving in the military. That Texas officials think schoolchildren should take the same precautions as troops who go into battle speaks volumes about the twisted priorities that have protected gun rights at the expense of children.
“A gift of safety, from our family to yours” reads the message printed on fingerprint and DNA kits that are being handed out to parents of Texas public school students to help them identify their children “in case of an emergency.” Parents who opt in — the program is free and voluntary — will be able to keep their child’s DNA and fingerprint information at home, and can later provide it to law enforcement agencies in emergency situations if needed. The 2021 law establishing a “child identification program” doesn’t explicitly say it’s for identifying victims of school shootings, and text on the kits only references missing children. But five months after a gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., it is hard not to make the connection.
“I worry every single day when I send my kid to school. Now we’re giving parents DNA kits so that when their child is killed with the same weapon of war I had when I was in Afghanistan, parents can use them to identify them?” said the mother of a Texas second-grader. “Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered,” Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son, Uziyah Garcia, was killed in the Uvalde shooting, posted on Twitter. Among the gut-wrenching things we learned about Uvalde was that authorities had to ask for DNA samples from parents because it was hard to identify the bodies due to the devastating damage caused by the high-powered rifle the gunman used. A pediatrician who treated Uvalde victims told Congress what he witnessed: “Two children whose bodies had been so pulverized by the bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been so ripped apart that the only clue as to their identities was the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them.”
Yay! You go tejas with your gubner Abbot&Costello. What a fucking country. Yea, “ordinary.”
Members of the U.S. armed forces are fingerprinted, their DNA is collected, and the information is kept on file and in storage. It is a precaution for those terrible situations in which a body needs to be identified and an acknowledgement of the danger inherent in serving in the military. That Texas officials think schoolchildren should take the same precautions as troops who go into battle speaks volumes about the twisted priorities that have protected gun rights at the expense of children.
“A gift of safety, from our family to yours” reads the message printed on fingerprint and DNA kits that are being handed out to parents of Texas public school students to help them identify their children “in case of an emergency.” Parents who opt in — the program is free and voluntary — will be able to keep their child’s DNA and fingerprint information at home, and can later provide it to law enforcement agencies in emergency situations if needed. The 2021 law establishing a “child identification program” doesn’t explicitly say it’s for identifying victims of school shootings, and text on the kits only references missing children. But five months after a gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., it is hard not to make the connection.
“I worry every single day when I send my kid to school. Now we’re giving parents DNA kits so that when their child is killed with the same weapon of war I had when I was in Afghanistan, parents can use them to identify them?” said the mother of a Texas second-grader. “Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered,” Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son, Uziyah Garcia, was killed in the Uvalde shooting, posted on Twitter. Among the gut-wrenching things we learned about Uvalde was that authorities had to ask for DNA samples from parents because it was hard to identify the bodies due to the devastating damage caused by the high-powered rifle the gunman used. A pediatrician who treated Uvalde victims told Congress what he witnessed: “Two children whose bodies had been so pulverized by the bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been so ripped apart that the only clue as to their identities was the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them.”
Yay! You go tejas with your gubner Abbot&Costello. What a fucking country. Yea, “ordinary.”
Members of the U.S. armed forces are fingerprinted, their DNA is collected, and the information is kept on file and in storage. It is a precaution for those terrible situations in which a body needs to be identified and an acknowledgement of the danger inherent in serving in the military. That Texas officials think schoolchildren should take the same precautions as troops who go into battle speaks volumes about the twisted priorities that have protected gun rights at the expense of children.
“A gift of safety, from our family to yours” reads the message printed on fingerprint and DNA kits that are being handed out to parents of Texas public school students to help them identify their children “in case of an emergency.” Parents who opt in — the program is free and voluntary — will be able to keep their child’s DNA and fingerprint information at home, and can later provide it to law enforcement agencies in emergency situations if needed. The 2021 law establishing a “child identification program” doesn’t explicitly say it’s for identifying victims of school shootings, and text on the kits only references missing children. But five months after a gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., it is hard not to make the connection.
“I worry every single day when I send my kid to school. Now we’re giving parents DNA kits so that when their child is killed with the same weapon of war I had when I was in Afghanistan, parents can use them to identify them?” said the mother of a Texas second-grader. “Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered,” Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son, Uziyah Garcia, was killed in the Uvalde shooting, posted on Twitter. Among the gut-wrenching things we learned about Uvalde was that authorities had to ask for DNA samples from parents because it was hard to identify the bodies due to the devastating damage caused by the high-powered rifle the gunman used. A pediatrician who treated Uvalde victims told Congress what he witnessed: “Two children whose bodies had been so pulverized by the bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been so ripped apart that the only clue as to their identities was the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them.”
Heading out for early voting here in Texas. For the first time in my life I am voting straight ticket D. It is just pathetic that the alternative is so terrible.
Yay! You go tejas with your gubner Abbot&Costello. What a fucking country. Yea, “ordinary.”
Members of the U.S. armed forces are fingerprinted, their DNA is collected, and the information is kept on file and in storage. It is a precaution for those terrible situations in which a body needs to be identified and an acknowledgement of the danger inherent in serving in the military. That Texas officials think schoolchildren should take the same precautions as troops who go into battle speaks volumes about the twisted priorities that have protected gun rights at the expense of children.
“A gift of safety, from our family to yours” reads the message printed on fingerprint and DNA kits that are being handed out to parents of Texas public school students to help them identify their children “in case of an emergency.” Parents who opt in — the program is free and voluntary — will be able to keep their child’s DNA and fingerprint information at home, and can later provide it to law enforcement agencies in emergency situations if needed. The 2021 law establishing a “child identification program” doesn’t explicitly say it’s for identifying victims of school shootings, and text on the kits only references missing children. But five months after a gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., it is hard not to make the connection.
“I worry every single day when I send my kid to school. Now we’re giving parents DNA kits so that when their child is killed with the same weapon of war I had when I was in Afghanistan, parents can use them to identify them?” said the mother of a Texas second-grader. “Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered,” Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son, Uziyah Garcia, was killed in the Uvalde shooting, posted on Twitter. Among the gut-wrenching things we learned about Uvalde was that authorities had to ask for DNA samples from parents because it was hard to identify the bodies due to the devastating damage caused by the high-powered rifle the gunman used. A pediatrician who treated Uvalde victims told Congress what he witnessed: “Two children whose bodies had been so pulverized by the bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been so ripped apart that the only clue as to their identities was the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them.”
Heading out for early voting here in Texas. For the first time in my life I am voting straight ticket D. It is just pathetic that the alternative is so terrible.
Yay! You go tejas with your gubner Abbot&Costello. What a fucking country. Yea, “ordinary.”
Members of the U.S. armed forces are fingerprinted, their DNA is collected, and the information is kept on file and in storage. It is a precaution for those terrible situations in which a body needs to be identified and an acknowledgement of the danger inherent in serving in the military. That Texas officials think schoolchildren should take the same precautions as troops who go into battle speaks volumes about the twisted priorities that have protected gun rights at the expense of children.
“A gift of safety, from our family to yours” reads the message printed on fingerprint and DNA kits that are being handed out to parents of Texas public school students to help them identify their children “in case of an emergency.” Parents who opt in — the program is free and voluntary — will be able to keep their child’s DNA and fingerprint information at home, and can later provide it to law enforcement agencies in emergency situations if needed. The 2021 law establishing a “child identification program” doesn’t explicitly say it’s for identifying victims of school shootings, and text on the kits only references missing children. But five months after a gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., it is hard not to make the connection.
“I worry every single day when I send my kid to school. Now we’re giving parents DNA kits so that when their child is killed with the same weapon of war I had when I was in Afghanistan, parents can use them to identify them?” said the mother of a Texas second-grader. “Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered,” Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son, Uziyah Garcia, was killed in the Uvalde shooting, posted on Twitter. Among the gut-wrenching things we learned about Uvalde was that authorities had to ask for DNA samples from parents because it was hard to identify the bodies due to the devastating damage caused by the high-powered rifle the gunman used. A pediatrician who treated Uvalde victims told Congress what he witnessed: “Two children whose bodies had been so pulverized by the bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been so ripped apart that the only clue as to their identities was the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them.”
Heading out for early voting here in Texas. For the first time in my life I am voting straight ticket D. It is just pathetic that the alternative is so terrible.
School gunman had AR-15-style weapon, 600 rounds of ammo
By MICHAEL PHILLIS and JIM SALTER
Today
ST. LOUIS (AP) — The 19-year-old gunman who killed a teacher and a 15-year-old girl at a St. Louis high school was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and what appeared to be more than 600 rounds of ammunition, Police Commissioner Michael Sack said Tuesday.
Orlando Harris also left behind a hand-written note offering his explanation for the shooting Monday at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School. Tenth-grader Alexzandria Bell and 61-year-old physical education teacher Jean Kuczka died and seven students were wounded before police killed Harris in an exchange of gunfire.
Sack read Harris' note in which the young man lamented that he had no friends, no family, no girlfriend and a life of isolation. In the note, Harris called it the “perfect storm for a mass shooter.”
Sack said Harris had some ammo strapped to his chest, some in a bag, and other magazines were found dumped in stairwells.
“This could have been much worse,” Sack said.
The attack forced students to barricade doors and huddle in classroom corners, jump from windows and run out of the building to seek safety. One terrorized girl said she was eye-to-eye with the shooter before his gun apparently jammed and she was able to run out. Several people inside the school said they heard Harris warn, “You are all going to die!”
Harris, 19, graduated from the school last year. The FBI was assisting police in the investigation. Sack, speaking at a news conference, urged people to come forward when someone who appears to suffer from mental illness or distress begins “speaking about purchasing firearms or causing harm to others.”
Relatives of those killed mourned their losses.
“Alexzandria was my everything," her father, Andre Bell, told KSDK-TV. “She was joyful, wonderful and just a great person.”
Alexzandria was outgoing, loved to dance and was a member of the school's junior varsity dance team, her father said.
“She was the girl I loved to see and loved to hear from. No matter how I felt, I could always talk to her and it was alright. That was my baby,” Andre Bell said.
Abby Kuczka said her mother was killed when the gunman burst into her classroom and she moved between him and her students.
“My mom loved kids,” Abbey Kuczka told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “She loved her students. I know her students looked at her like she was their mom.”
The seven injured students are all 15 or 16 years old. All were listed in stable condition. Sack said four suffered gunshot or graze wounds, two had bruises and one had a broken ankle — apparently from jumping out of the three-story building.
The school in south St. Louis was locked, with seven security guards at the doors, St. Louis Schools Superintendent Kelvin Adams said. A security guard initially became alarmed when he saw Harris trying to get in one of the doors. He was armed with a gun and “there was no mystery about what was going to happen. He had it out and entered in an aggressive, violent manner," Sack said.
That guard alerted school officials and made sure police were contacted.
Harris managed to get inside anyway — Sack declined to say how, saying he didn't want to “make it easy” for anyone else who wants to break into a school.
Police offered this timeline of events: A 911 call came in at 9:11 a.m. alerting police of an active shooter. Officers — some off-duty wearing street clothes — arrived at 9:15 a.m.
Police located Harris at 9:23 a.m. on the third floor of the school, where he had barricaded himself inside a classroom. Police said in a news release that when Harris shot at officers, they shot back and broke through the door.
At 9:25 a.m., when Harris pointed his rifle at police, they fired several shots. He was secured by police at 9:32 a.m.
Police said Alexzandria was found in a hallway and died at the scene. Kuczka was found in a classroom and died at a hospital.
Central Visual and Performing Arts shares a building with another magnet school, Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience. Central has 383 students, Collegiate 336.
It was the 40th school shooting this year resulting in injuries or death, according to a tally by Education Week — the most in any year since it began tracking shootings in 2018. The deadly attacks include the killings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May, when 19 children and two teachers died. Monday’s St. Louis shooting came on the same day a Michigan teenager pleaded guilty to terrorism and first-degree murder in a school shooting that killed four students in December 2021.
For now, the survivors are dealing with the trauma.
The gunman pointed his weapon at Raymond Parks, a dance teacher at the school, but did not shoot him, Parks said. The kids in his class escaped outside and Parks stopped traffic and get someone to call the police. They came quickly.
“You couldn’t have asked for better,” Parks said of the police response.
Ashley Rench said she was teaching advanced algebra to sophomores when she heard a loud bang. Then the school intercom announced, “Miles Davis is in the building.”
“That’s our code for intruder,” Rench said.
The gunman tried the door of the classroom but did not force his way in, she said. When police officers started banging, she wasn’t sure at first if it really was law enforcement until she was able to glance out and see officers.
“Let's go!" she told the kids.
___
Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri. Associated Press writers Margaret Stafford and Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri, contributed to this report.
___
This story has been corrected to show that Alexzandria Bell was 15, not 16 as police had previously stated. Police also corrected the spelling of her first name.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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A 12-year-old boy was arrested after he allegedly shot and wounded his 13-year-old classmate at a school in Oakland, California.
The shooting erupted at about 1.30pm on Monday at Madison Park academy in East Oakland. Local police said they were able to quickly detain the alleged shooter while his victim was hospitalized in what is now described as stable condition.
As news of the shooting spread, the school became surrounded by anxious parents desperately seeking news of their children.
Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, expressed relief that the victim was recovering but dismay at the ongoing gun violence battering the city and the US as a whole. “School should be the safest place for our kids,” she wrote on Twitter. “The increased level of gun violence in our country and our city is heartbreaking and unacceptable.”
Authorities have not said whether the shooting was accidental or intentional. Either way, the case highlighted the exceptionally high rate of death and injury suffered by children in the US as a result of the country’s permissive stance on guns.
According to the gun control group Everytown, death by firearm is the leading cause of death for children and teens in America. “This is a uniquely American problem,” the group says. “Compared to other high-income countries, American children aged five to 14 are 21 times more likely to be killed with guns.”
Shock as 12-year-old allegedly shoots classmate in Oakland school (msn.com)
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Dutch government ‘concerned’ about U.S. gun violence after soldier’s killing
Gun violence in the United States has surged in recent years. Firearms purchases hit record levels in 2020 and 2021, with more than 43 million guns estimated to have been bought during that period, according to a Post analysis. More than 45,000 gun fatalities were recorded during each of the past two years, and the rate of gun deaths hit the highest level since 1995.
The staggering scope of U.S. gun deaths goes far beyond mass shootings
The United States’ “intentional homicide” rate was seven times that of the Netherlands in 2020, the last year for which the United Nations has statistics on both countries. The death rate from gun violence was nearly 18 times higher in the United States than in the Netherlands in 2019, according to the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/30/dutch-soldier-indianapolis-gun-violence/
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all of that also assumes you won’t panic and/or not do anything
these people are wildly overestimating both their ability and human nature
I also fully understand statistically my gun is more likely to injure me or someone else by accident than it ever will be used to prevent a crime. So it’s locked up
to me responsible means not equating yourself with Rambo
Chicago is one of the nation's gun violence hotspots and a seemingly ideal place to employ Illinois' "red flag” law that allows police to step in and take firearms away from people who threaten to kill. But amid more than 8,500 shootings resulting in 1,800 deaths since 2020, the law was used there just four times.
It's a pattern that's played out in New Mexico, with nearly 600 gun homicides during that period and a mere eight uses of its red flag law. And in Massachusetts, with nearly 300 shooting homicides and just 12 uses of its law.
An Associated Press analysis found many U.S. states barely use the red flag laws touted as the most powerful tool to stop gun violence before it happens, a trend blamed on a lack of awareness of the laws and resistance by some authorities to enforce them even as shootings and gun deaths soar.
AP found such laws in 19 states and the District of Columbia were used to remove firearms from people 15,049 times since 2020, fewer than 10 per 100,000 adult residents. Experts called that woefully low and not nearly enough to make a dent in gun violence, considering the millions of firearms in circulation and countless potential warning signs law enforcement officers encounter from gun owners every day.
“It’s too small a pebble to make a ripple,” Duke University sociologist Jeffrey Swanson, who has studied red flag gun surrender orders across the nation, said of the AP tally. “It’s as if the law doesn’t exist.”
“The number of people we are catching with red flags is likely infinitesimal,” added Indiana University law professor Jody Madeira, who like other experts who reviewed AP’s findings wouldn’t speculate how many red flag removal orders would be necessary to make a difference.
The search for solutions comes amid a string of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, Uvalde, Texas, and Highland Park, Illinois, and a spike in gun violence not seen in decades: 27,000 deaths so far this year, following 45,000 deaths each of the past two years.
AP’s count, compiled from inquiries and Freedom of Information Law requests, showed wide disparities in how the laws were applied from state to state, county to county, most without regard to population or crime rates.
Florida led with 5,800 such orders, or 34 per 100,000 adult residents, but that is due mostly to aggressive enforcement in a few counties that don’t include Miami-Dade and others with more gun killings. More than a quarter of Illinois’ slim 154 orders came from one suburban county that makes up just 7% of the state's population. California had 3,197 orders but was working through a backlog of three times that number of people barred from owning guns under a variety of measures who had not yet surrendered them.
And a national movement among politicians and sheriffs that has declared nearly 2,000 counties as “Second Amendment Sanctuaries,” opposing laws that infringe on gun rights, may have affected red flag enforcement in several states. In Colorado, 37 counties that consider themselves “sanctuaries” issued just 45 surrender orders in the two years through last year, a fifth fewer than non-sanctuary counties did per resident. New Mexico and Nevada reported only about 20 orders combined.
“The law shouldn’t even be there in the first place,” argued Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who heads the pro-gun Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. “You’re taking away someone’s property and means of self-defense.”
Red flag laws, most of which came into effect over the last four years, allow police officers who believe gun owners are an imminent danger to themselves or others to petition a judge to order firearms surrendered or, barring that, seized for an “emergency” period, typically two weeks. The judge can then convene a court hearing in which petitioners present evidence to withhold weapons longer, typically a year, and the owner can argue against that.
AP’s tally counts an emergency order that is followed by a longer one as a single order if they involve the same gun owner. In rare cases where no one asked for an emergency order and only a longer one was requested and granted, that also counts as a single order. Several states reported incomplete data.
Some states also allow family members of gun owners, school officials, work colleagues or doctors to ask for gun removal orders, also known as extreme risk protection orders. But data reviewed by the AP show nearly all petitions in several states were initiated by police, possibly because, as several surveys have shown, few people outside law enforcement are even aware the laws exist.
The recent spike in shootings has brought renewed attention to red flag laws, with states including Alaska, Pennsylvania and Kentucky introducing legislation to add them. The Biden administration is seeking to foster wider use of red flag laws by allocating money in a newly passed federal gun law to help spread the word about such measures.
An AP-NORC poll in late July found 78% of U.S. adults strongly or somewhat favor red flag laws, but the backlash against them has been intense in some states, particularly in rural areas. Opponents argue that allowing judges to rule on gun seizures in initial emergency petitions before full hearings violates due process rights, though court cases claiming this have generally found the laws constitutional.
Many police believe seizing guns can also be dangerous and unnecessary, even as a last resort, especially in sparsely populated areas where they know many of the residents with mental health issues, said Tony Mace, head of the New Mexico Sheriffs’ Association, which lobbied against the state’s law.
“You’re showing up with 10 to 15 law enforcement officers and coming in the middle of the night and kicking in the door, and it’s already a dangerous environment,” said Mace, sheriff of Cibola County, a sanctuary county with just one order since 2020. “You’re dealing with someone in crisis and elevating it even more.”
One fierce gun rights defender who still aggressively uses the law is Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd, who says he doesn’t let his beliefs stand in the way of moving fast when gun owners threaten violence.
“We’re not going to wait for an Uvalde, Texas, or a Parkland or a Columbine if we have the information and people say that they’re going to shoot or kill,” said Judd, who enforced 752 orders since 2020 in a county of 725,000 residents, a tally that's more than the total orders for 15 entire states. “We’re going to use the tools that the state gave us.”
Florida’s traditionally pro-gun Republican-led legislature passed its red flag law in 2018 following revelations police failed to act on repeated threats by an expelled student who would go on to carry out the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland earlier that year that left 17 people dead.
A recent high-profile example of a red flag law not being used was for the 21-year-old gunman accused of fatally shooting seven people and injuring dozens more at a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park. Robert E. Crimo III drew police attention three years earlier when he threatened to “kill everyone” in his house and officers acknowledged going to the home several times previously because of a “history of attempts” to take his own life.
But Highland Park police never requested a gun surrender order, saying there was no gun belonging to Crimo to take away at the time, even though the law has a provision to block threatening people from making future purchases, too.
Illinois state Rep. Denyse Stoneback said there has clearly been a problem with awareness of the law among those tasked with carrying it out. “We’d go to police departments and they didn’t know anything about it,” said the Democrat who helped push through a bill last year providing $1 million in police red flag law training.
Asked why Chicago had so few red flag firearm restraining orders, police spokesman Thomas Ahern said many of the city’s gun killings are committed with illegally owned firearms.
But Ahern emphasized it remained a priority of the department to increase its awareness and use of the red flag law. “If we are able to prevent one citizen from getting hurt or killed that’s a law worth having and definitely not a low priority," he said.
In New York, a red flag-type situation that wasn’t covered under the state’s law nonetheless led to a spike in red flag gun surrender orders.
Payton Gendron was a 17-year-old high school senior last year when he was investigated by New York’s State Police and ordered hospitalized for a mental health evaluation for typing into an economics class online program that his future plans included “murder-suicide.” But since he was a minor, he wasn’t covered under the state’s red flag law and it didn’t prevent him from later buying the high-powered rifle authorities say he used to kill 10 Black people in a racially-motivated shooting at Buffalo supermarket in May.
Since then, New York has seen 779 gun surrender orders under its red flag law, equal to nearly half of all its orders since the measure took effect three years ago.
Several experts said it’s impossible to come up with an ideal number of red flag orders and misleading to compare states by orders because of the widely varying rates of gun ownership and gun homicides and suicides, among other stats.
Another complicating factor is that some states have stricter gun ownerships rules and multiple ways to seize firearms. In California, for instance, guns can be taken away through domestic violence restraining orders, civil harassment protection orders and school violence prevention orders in addition to the red flag law.
Still, experts consulted by AP agreed more could be done to enforce red flag laws given the prevalence of guns and the millions of gun owners that national studies suggest could be dangerous to themselves and others. In red flag states alone, figures compiled by the Gun Violence Archive show at least 21,100 homicides and 47,000 injuries during the 2½ years covered by AP’s count.
Several studies suggest red flag laws can be particularly effective in preventing gun suicides, which kill about 20,000 people a year. A Duke University study of Connecticut’s-first-in-the-nation red flag law in 1999 estimated that for every 10 to 20 surrender orders a life from a potential suicide was saved. A study of Indiana’s law came up with a similar ratio.
While the impact of red flag laws on homicides is less well researched, studies suggest many mass shootings could be avoided if the laws were implemented aggressively. A study by the gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety showed perpetrators exhibited dangerous warning signs before more than half of the mass shootings in the dozen years through 2020 that accounted for 596 deaths.
Such warning signs have led to many opportunities to stop gun violence, as well as missed chances.
In Colorado in 2020, police seized 59 guns from a man who complained of hit men coming to get him, bragged about shooting someone and repeatedly threatened his ex-wife.
In New Jersey in 2019, police took seven guns from a man threatening on Facebook to attack a Walmart.
And in Washington state in 2018, police removed 12 guns from the home of a man who posted on social media about killing Jews in a synagogue and kids in a school.
None of those threatened shootings happened.
But in Indianapolis in 2020, failure to employ all aspects of a red flag law resulted in disaster. After 18-year-old Brandon Hole’s mother alerted police that he was threatening to commit “suicide by cop,” police seized his pump-action shotgun. A county prosecutor could have gone further under the law to argue before a judge that Hole should be barred from possessing or buying a gun, but that never happened.
A few months later, Hole bought two AR-style rifles at a gun store, turning to his mother and saying, “They don’t have a flag on me.” Several months after that, he fatally shot eight employees in a FedEx warehouse where he had worked and injured seven more before killing himself.
“I feel the state of Indiana is an accessory to murder,” a wounded Angela Hughley told the Indianapolis Star shortly after the shooting.
Amber Clark, a librarian in Sacramento, California, might still be alive today if police had acted on a tip that Ronald Seay was armed and dangerous.
The gunman’s twin brother called police in 2018 warning that Seay, who had a history of mental illness and trouble with police, was making violent threats and had two semiautomatic pistols. But the police never went to a judge to ask for a gun surrender order or tell the sibling that he could do that himself.
A few weeks later, Seay unloaded 11 bullets into Clark’s face, head and body at pointblank range outside the Sacramento library.
“It is obvious to me and my family that the application of California’s red flag law in this case would have saved two lives – Amber’s and the shooter’s – and prevented immeasurable grief,” said her husband, Kelly Clark. “My wife would still be alive and the killer would have received the help he needed instead of being condemned to life in prison.”
___
Condon reported from New York; AP writer Terry Spencer in West Palm Beach, Florida, AP Data Editor Justin Myers in Chicago and AP statehouse reporters across the country contributed to this report.
___
Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Cameron Taylor was watching an illegal street race that had attracted hundreds to an intersection in Portland, Oregon, but decided to leave as the crowd got increasingly unruly. Moments later, gunfire erupted and Taylor was hit by a stray bullet as he and a friend headed to their car.
Police, who were overwhelmed with 911 calls about other shootings, couldn't control multiple street takeovers in the city that night and had trouble finding the victims of three shootings that occurred during the chaos.
“His friend who was with him put him in the car and drove him out to get him to the hospital, but he was not able to make it and that friend called his parents” to say Taylor was dead, family friend Erin Russell told The Associated Press.
Taylor, 20, died Sunday the same day that four high-profile, public shooting rampages in Bend, Oregon, Phoenix, Detroit and Houston drew national headlines. His slaying went largely unnoticed amid the daily toll of gun violence that has come to define Portland and a number of other American cities since the pandemic.
Homicide rates appear to be dropping in some major U.S. cities, such as New York and Chicago, but in others killings are on the rise, particularly from guns. In Portland, the homicide rate surged 207% since 2019 and there have been more than 800 shootings so far this year. In Phoenix, police Chief Jeri Williams said this week the gun violence was the worst she'd seen in 33 years on the job.
GUN VIOLENCE
In new gun law, a quiet breakthrough for victims of abuse
Red flag laws get little use as shootings, gun deaths soar
Maricopa County making policy changes for gun violence cases
AP-NORC poll: 2 in 10 report experience with gun violence
“How many more officers have to be shot? How many more community members have to be killed before those in our community take a stand? This is not only a Phoenix police issue, this is a community issue,” she said after a weekend that tallied 17 shootings and 11 homicides citywide.
Now, police are on edge heading into Labor Day weekend, with its traditional end-of-summer festivities, and some are adding extra patrols as they brace for more potential violence.
In Portland, police busy with three killings and nine non-fatal shootings in 48 hours couldn’t control three illegal street races last weekend that attracted hundreds and shut down major intersections for hours. In Houston, the day after a gunman shot five neighbors, killing three, another man shot two sisters before killing himself.
In the past two weeks, authorities in Phoenix have confiscated 711 guns and made 525 gun-related arrests as part of a targeted crackdown. Nearly 90% of homicides there this year were by gun, police said. In Detroit, where a man is accused of shooting three people at random on city streets last weekend, authorities are also cracking down on gun violence in high-crime neighborhoods through Labor Day.
“Let’s stop talking about our inability to respond to crime in the community. Let’s stop advertising to criminals that they’re going to get away with it,” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said, using an expletive at a City Council meeting this week after police Chief Chuck Lovell once more asked for more officers.
“I think we should stop using the messaging at every turn, that the reason we can’t help our citizens with basic criminal justice issues is because we don’t have the personnel," Wheeler said. “We’ve got to figure out better ways to address this crisis."
Last weekend's rampages — which included a heavily armed assailant who stormed a central Oregon supermarket, random shootings on Detroit streets and a Phoenix man who opened fire while wearing body armor — were shocking and scary, but they aren't representative of the broader toll gun violence is taking on American society, experts said.
Victims killed in mass shootings make up about 1% of all those killed in gun homicides nationwide, despite headlines that instill fear in many Americans, said James Fox, a professor at Northeastern University who has created a database of mass killings stretching back to 2006 with The Associated Press and USA Today.
All four shootings last weekend didn’t even meet the database's definition of a mass killing — four or more people, excluding the assailant, killed in a 24-hour period — but they nonetheless sowed fear because of the random nature of the violence, he added.
“Those don’t tend to make news. They don’t tend to scare people because people say, 'Well, that’s not my family," Fox said. “We have as many as 20,000 gun homicides a year, and most of those are one victim. Sometimes two, sometimes three, (but) rarely four or more.”
The pandemic and the social unrest it caused has also played a role. Eight million Americans became first-time gun owners between 2019 and 2021, said Jeffrey Butts, director of the research and evaluation center for the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York.
“We already had 400 million guns in circulation. So when you bump that up and include a lot of first-timers in the population, you get accidents, you get precipitous behavior, you get people reacting to small insults and conflicts with their guns because they’re in their pocket now," he said.
Meanwhile Taylor's friends and family mourn his death in Portland.
The car aficionado and beloved big brother who loved barbecues and spending time with his family was “at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Russell said.
“He has a lot of friends and a lot of family who love him dearly, and this is a devastating loss.”
____
Associated Press reporter Walt Berry in Phoenix contributed to this report.
____
Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-police-babysitter-shot-toddler-1.6574905
A teenage girl was accidentally shot while trying to take a loaded gun away from a toddler who had gotten ahold of it in a Winnipeg apartment, police say.
Officers were called to an apartment complex in the Seven Oaks area at about 11 a.m. Saturday, where they found a teenage girl with a gunshot wound to her upper body, police said in a Wednesday news release.
She was taken to hospital in stable condition.
Police believe the teenager was babysitting the toddler while an adult was asleep in the apartment. The toddler grabbed a loaded gun that wasn't locked up and began running around the suite, according to police.
The babysitter quickly took the gun from the child but it accidentally fired, wounding her.
A 20-year-old woman was arrested at the apartment and charged with possession of a loaded prohibited or restricted firearm, storing a gun contrary to regulations and carrying a concealed weapon.
She was released from custody on an undertaking.
-EV 8/14/93
A 19-year-old man was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after four people died in multiple shootings Wednesday in Memphis, one of which was live-streamed on Facebook.
The suspect, whom police identified as Ezekiel D. Kelly, is in custody hours after shootings in at least eight locations prompted a citywide alert. Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis confirmed the four fatalities at a news conference early Thursday, calling the day’s events a “mobile mass shooting.” She said three others were wounded, including an employee of an AutoZone who was critically injured and is in the hospital, and one person was uninjured. The shooting at the AutoZone was shown on Facebook Live, she said.
Court records show Kelly was released from prison this year after serving 11 months of a three-year sentence for aggravated assault, according to the records. Police didn’t release the identities of Wednesday’s victims and didn’t immediately respond to calls and emails Wednesday night.
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12-year-old Texas girl allegedly shoots self, father in alleged murder pact.
DETROIT (AP) — A teenager accused of killing four fellow students and injuring more at a Michigan high school is expected to plead guilty to murder next week, authorities said Friday.
Ethan Crumbley had created images of violence during a classroom assignment last November but was not sent home from Oxford High School in southeastern Michigan. He pulled out a gun a few hours later and committed a mass shooting.
Authorities have pinned some responsibility on Crumbley's parents, portraying them as a dysfunctional pair who ignored their son's mental health needs and happily provided a gun as a gift just days before the attack. They also face charges.
Crumbley, 16, is due in court Monday.
“We can confirm that the shooter is expected to plead guilty to all 24 charges, including terrorism, and the prosecutor has notified the victims,” said David Williams, chief assistant prosecutor in Oakland County.
A message seeking comment was left for the boy's lawyers.
Crumbley was 15 when the shooting occurred at Oxford High, roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Detroit.
His parents had been summoned to school that day to discuss the teen's ominous writings. A teacher had found a drawing with a gun pointing at the words, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.” There was an image of a bullet with the message: “Blood everywhere.”
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James and Jennifer Crumbley declined to take Ethan home but were told to get him into counseling within 48 hours, according to investigators.
A day earlier, a teacher saw Ethan searching for ammunition on his phone. The school contacted his mother, Jennifer Crumbley, who then told her son in a text message: “Lol. I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught," the prosecutor's office said.
Ethan Crumbley was charged as an adult with one count of terrorism causing death, four counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of attempted murder and 12 counts related to use of a gun.
A first-degree murder conviction typically brings an automatic life prison sentence in Michigan. But teenagers are entitled to a hearing where their lawyer can argue for a shorter term and an opportunity for parole.
Separately, James and Jennifer Crumbley are facing involuntary manslaughter charges — a rare case of prosecutors trying to make parents accountable for a school shooting. They are accused of making a gun accessible to Ethan and neglecting his need for mental health care.
“Put simply, they created an environment in which their son’s violent tendencies flourished. They were aware their son was troubled, and then they bought him a gun,” prosecutors said in a court filing.
The Crumbleys said they were unaware of Ethan’s plan. They also dispute that the gun was easy to get at home.
Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre, Hana St. Juliana and Justin Shilling were killed, while six students and a teacher were injured.
Sheriff Mike Bouchard said a guilty plea from Ethan Crumbley would be a relief for families and witnesses.
“At least not to have to go through the pain of painstakingly seeing every bit of evidence, every bit of video and all of the things that would be horrific” at a trial, Bouchard told WDIV-TV.
In court documents, prosecutors have revealed portions of Ethan Crumbley’s personal journal. He said his grades were poor and that his parents hated each other and had no money.
“This just furthers my desire to shoot up the school or do something else,” the teen wrote.
All three Crumbleys are being held at the Oakland County jail, though Ethan is kept away from adults.
Ven Johnson, an attorney who is suing the Oxford school district, declined to comment Friday on Ethan Crumbley's expected plea.
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AP reporter Corey Williams contributed to this story.
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Members of the U.S. armed forces are fingerprinted, their DNA is collected, and the information is kept on file and in storage. It is a precaution for those terrible situations in which a body needs to be identified and an acknowledgement of the danger inherent in serving in the military. That Texas officials think schoolchildren should take the same precautions as troops who go into battle speaks volumes about the twisted priorities that have protected gun rights at the expense of children.
“A gift of safety, from our family to yours” reads the message printed on fingerprint and DNA kits that are being handed out to parents of Texas public school students to help them identify their children “in case of an emergency.” Parents who opt in — the program is free and voluntary — will be able to keep their child’s DNA and fingerprint information at home, and can later provide it to law enforcement agencies in emergency situations if needed. The 2021 law establishing a “child identification program” doesn’t explicitly say it’s for identifying victims of school shootings, and text on the kits only references missing children. But five months after a gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., it is hard not to make the connection.
“I worry every single day when I send my kid to school. Now we’re giving parents DNA kits so that when their child is killed with the same weapon of war I had when I was in Afghanistan, parents can use them to identify them?” said the mother of a Texas second-grader. “Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered,” Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son, Uziyah Garcia, was killed in the Uvalde shooting, posted on Twitter. Among the gut-wrenching things we learned about Uvalde was that authorities had to ask for DNA samples from parents because it was hard to identify the bodies due to the devastating damage caused by the high-powered rifle the gunman used. A pediatrician who treated Uvalde victims told Congress what he witnessed: “Two children whose bodies had been so pulverized by the bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been so ripped apart that the only clue as to their identities was the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/23/dna-tests-texas-public-schools/
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ST. LOUIS (AP) — The 19-year-old gunman who killed a teacher and a 15-year-old girl at a St. Louis high school was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and what appeared to be more than 600 rounds of ammunition, Police Commissioner Michael Sack said Tuesday.
Orlando Harris also left behind a hand-written note offering his explanation for the shooting Monday at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School. Tenth-grader Alexzandria Bell and 61-year-old physical education teacher Jean Kuczka died and seven students were wounded before police killed Harris in an exchange of gunfire.
Sack read Harris' note in which the young man lamented that he had no friends, no family, no girlfriend and a life of isolation. In the note, Harris called it the “perfect storm for a mass shooter.”
Sack said Harris had some ammo strapped to his chest, some in a bag, and other magazines were found dumped in stairwells.
“This could have been much worse,” Sack said.
The attack forced students to barricade doors and huddle in classroom corners, jump from windows and run out of the building to seek safety. One terrorized girl said she was eye-to-eye with the shooter before his gun apparently jammed and she was able to run out. Several people inside the school said they heard Harris warn, “You are all going to die!”
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Harris, 19, graduated from the school last year. The FBI was assisting police in the investigation. Sack, speaking at a news conference, urged people to come forward when someone who appears to suffer from mental illness or distress begins “speaking about purchasing firearms or causing harm to others.”
Relatives of those killed mourned their losses.
“Alexzandria was my everything," her father, Andre Bell, told KSDK-TV. “She was joyful, wonderful and just a great person.”
Alexzandria was outgoing, loved to dance and was a member of the school's junior varsity dance team, her father said.
“She was the girl I loved to see and loved to hear from. No matter how I felt, I could always talk to her and it was alright. That was my baby,” Andre Bell said.
Abby Kuczka said her mother was killed when the gunman burst into her classroom and she moved between him and her students.
“My mom loved kids,” Abbey Kuczka told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “She loved her students. I know her students looked at her like she was their mom.”
The seven injured students are all 15 or 16 years old. All were listed in stable condition. Sack said four suffered gunshot or graze wounds, two had bruises and one had a broken ankle — apparently from jumping out of the three-story building.
The school in south St. Louis was locked, with seven security guards at the doors, St. Louis Schools Superintendent Kelvin Adams said. A security guard initially became alarmed when he saw Harris trying to get in one of the doors. He was armed with a gun and “there was no mystery about what was going to happen. He had it out and entered in an aggressive, violent manner," Sack said.
That guard alerted school officials and made sure police were contacted.
Harris managed to get inside anyway — Sack declined to say how, saying he didn't want to “make it easy” for anyone else who wants to break into a school.
Police offered this timeline of events: A 911 call came in at 9:11 a.m. alerting police of an active shooter. Officers — some off-duty wearing street clothes — arrived at 9:15 a.m.
Police located Harris at 9:23 a.m. on the third floor of the school, where he had barricaded himself inside a classroom. Police said in a news release that when Harris shot at officers, they shot back and broke through the door.
At 9:25 a.m., when Harris pointed his rifle at police, they fired several shots. He was secured by police at 9:32 a.m.
Police said Alexzandria was found in a hallway and died at the scene. Kuczka was found in a classroom and died at a hospital.
Central Visual and Performing Arts shares a building with another magnet school, Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience. Central has 383 students, Collegiate 336.
It was the 40th school shooting this year resulting in injuries or death, according to a tally by Education Week — the most in any year since it began tracking shootings in 2018. The deadly attacks include the killings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May, when 19 children and two teachers died. Monday’s St. Louis shooting came on the same day a Michigan teenager pleaded guilty to terrorism and first-degree murder in a school shooting that killed four students in December 2021.
For now, the survivors are dealing with the trauma.
The gunman pointed his weapon at Raymond Parks, a dance teacher at the school, but did not shoot him, Parks said. The kids in his class escaped outside and Parks stopped traffic and get someone to call the police. They came quickly.
“You couldn’t have asked for better,” Parks said of the police response.
Ashley Rench said she was teaching advanced algebra to sophomores when she heard a loud bang. Then the school intercom announced, “Miles Davis is in the building.”
“That’s our code for intruder,” Rench said.
The gunman tried the door of the classroom but did not force his way in, she said. When police officers started banging, she wasn’t sure at first if it really was law enforcement until she was able to glance out and see officers.
“Let's go!" she told the kids.
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Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri. Associated Press writers Margaret Stafford and Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri, contributed to this report.
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This story has been corrected to show that Alexzandria Bell was 15, not 16 as police had previously stated. Police also corrected the spelling of her first name.
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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