Active Shooter Situation in CA

[BoSoxGal]

San Bernardino gunman and his female accomplice dead in live TV shoot-out: Government holiday party guest 'left after argument, came back heavily armed and killed at least 14 in rampage'

Story



Immoral.

[Joe Guy]

BSG is correct in that the CDC would be looking at Mental Health in relation to gun violence. The problem I see is that even if we screened all gun purchasers and even eliminated the possibility of mentally unstable people from buying guns legally, unless the availability of firearms changes significantly, a mentally ill person could still get them illegally.

[Long Run]

Not a single reference to mental health, but references to mass shootings and other gun violence:

In 2010, more than 105,000 people were injured or killed in the United States as the result of a firearm-related incident. Recent, highly publicized, tragic mass shootings in Newtown, CT; Aurora, CO; Oak Creek, WI; and Tucson, AZ, have sharpened the American public’s interest in protecting our children and communities from the harmful effects of firearm violence. While many Americans legally use firearms for a variety of activities, fatal and nonfatal firearm violence poses a serious threat to public safety and welfare.

In January 2013, President Barack Obama issued 23 executive orders directing federal agencies to improve knowledge of the causes of firearm violence, what might help prevent it, and how to minimize its burden on public health. One of these orders directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to, along with other federal agencies, immediately begin identifying the most pressing problems in firearm violence research. The CDC and the CDC Foundation asked the IOM, in collaboration with the National Research Council, to convene a committee tasked with developing a potential research agenda that focuses on the causes of, possible interventions to, and strategies to minimize the burden of firearm-related violence. The committee’s proposed research agenda focuses on the characteristics of firearm violence, risk and protective factors, interventions and strategies, the impact of gun safety technology, and the influence of video games and other media. - See more at: http://iom.nationalacademies.org/Report ... daj7Q.dpuf

[BoSoxGal]

That might be so Joe Guy, but most all of the freaks over the past couple decades of mass shootings seem to have gotten their stuff legally, so let's tackle that issue, shall we? We can worry about all those mass shootings with stolen weapons later, or work on that problem contemporaneously.

Quit changing the subject; let's get sane gun laws!!!!!!

[BoSoxGal]

http://everytownresearch.org/reports/ma ... -analysis/

Mental Health

Of 133 examined incidents, in only one was there evidence the shooter was prohibited by federal law from possessing guns due to severe mental illness. In 15 other incidents (11 percent), there was evidence that concerns about the mental health of the shooter had been brought to the attention of a medical practitioner, school official, or legal authority prior to the shooting.

It's my bet that there was no follow-up because of lack of resources.

[Lord Jim]

Totally agree on increases/improvement in mental health care and research.

So do I...

There's violence related to mental health issues, there's gang-related violence, there's domestic-related violence, etc., etc. etc....

And each of these require different approaches to deal with, because they are very different sorts of problems...

Guns are just a tool used to carry out this violence; and like most tools they can be used for both good and bad purposes...

"Gun violence" is a very unhelpful phrase because it lumps together a very different array of problems that all require different kinds of approaches...It's neither a useful or even particularly meaningful expression.

When a person hits their spouse with a baseball bat, we don't call that "baseball bat violence" we call that (correctly) domestic violence...

If a mentally ill person stabs someone, we don't call that "knife violence" we call that a violent act by a disturbed person...

But suddenly when it's a gun that is the tool, it's all about the gun, and not the real cause for the violence...

We'll have no chance at all of solving any of these problems if we don't even define them in an accurate and meaningful way...

If you want a study done specifically addressing the mental health aspect then this government agency:

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

http://www.samhsa.gov/

Would be a far better fit than the CDC...

The CDC should stick to focusing on its core competencies; ie, protecting the country from actual physical disease, not branching out in to mental diseases or let alone a completely made up pseudo-disease like "gun violence"...

It seems to me that the CDC has quite enough difficulty just dealing with the things it is supposed to do (as Exhibit A I point to their bungling of the Ebola incident) without trying to expand its reach into areas it was not set up to address...

[Lord Jim]

San Bernardino gunman and his female accomplice dead in live TV shoot-out

A second accomplice is in custody...

party guest 'left after argument,

The police are saying it's not clear that the guy who got pissed off and left was one of the same people who then carried out the attack...

This was apparently a public hearing of some sort; people storm out of those pissed off all the time...

Given multiple people being involved and the amount of planning that went into this and all the equipment (the guns, the tactical gear, etc.) it seems extremely unlikely that this was something that arose at the last minute spontaneously...

[liberty]

San Bernardino gunman and his female accomplice dead in live TV shoot-out: Government holiday party guest 'left after argument, came back heavily armed and killed at least 14 in rampage'

Immoral.

I would like to know what the argument was about. What could be so bad that an individual and one or two of his friends or family members would consider revenge to be more important than their own lives? At any rate, I would bet that the A-hole that caused it survived, there is no justice.

[Lord Jim]

there is no justices.

Sure there are; nine of them in fact:

[BoSoxGal]

LJ, of course you're right given the description thus far of the amount of arsenal brought to the scene and the clothing, etc. - this was no impulse thing, unless those that carried it out had been preparing for 'any such event' and were just finally ready to blow?

I'm confused about the news reports because I've heard it was a Christmas party for county employees, not a public hearing. But maybe details still aren't clear?

[Joe Guy]

Ben Carson has now chimed in with his usual weirdness. He stated that the shooting in San Bernadino was a hate crime.

When asked why he thought it was a hate crime he responded, "Well it's hard to imagine that you would shoot a bunch of people if you didn't hate them, right? You don't do that to people you love."

Link

This guy wants to be the president of the United States of America....

[Lord Jim]

I had heard it was a party, then a public hearing, and now back to a party again:

A man and a woman connected to a mass shooting that left 14 people dead and 17 wounded in San Bernardino were killed in a firefight with police officers after a car chase Wednesday, authorities said.

Two law enforcement sources identified one of the deceased suspects as Syed Farook, an American citizen.

Public records show a person named Syed R. Farook was employed by the San Bernardino County Health department as an environmental health specialist, but it was not clear if that was the same person involved in the shooting.

The identity of the second person killed by police was not immediately known.

Police tracked the alleged assailants to a home in the Redlands around 3 p.m., touching off a dramatic televised car chase that ended in a shootout on the streets of San Bernardino, according to city police chief Jarrod Burguan.

A police officer was also wounded in the gun battle, but is expected to survive.

A federal law enforcement source told The Times that the suspects hurled what were believed to be pipe bombs at police during the vehicle pursuit. Burguan said police recovered one device, but it turned out not to be an explosive.

A third person was detained in the area where the pursuit ended. That person's connection to the shooting was unknown.

The chase came four hours after assailants opened fire at a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center, a social services office that aids people with developmental disabilities.

A senior federal official who is monitoring the case said investigators believe one of the shooters left the party after getting into an argument and returned with one or two armed companions. Local officials at an evening news conference said it was not clear whether the people involved in the dispute were the same people involved in the shooting.

In an exchange overheard on a law enforcement radio channel, an official can be heard telling a dispatcher Farook "was at the meeting," referring to where the shooting took place, and then left "out of the blue."

Farook "was acting nervous" and left the building approximately 20 minutes before the gunfire erupted, according to the recorded transmissions.

A black sport utility vehicle was seen fleeing from the office complex where the shooting occurred. Shortly before 3 p.m., police began pursuing a black SUV in San Bernardino.

TV footage showed dozens of heavily armed police officers approaching the SUV, and officers in tactical gear could be seen stalking through a San Bernardino neighborhood.

A body could be seen lying in the street near the vehicle. Blood was pooling nearby and a weapon was lying just feet away.

The motive for the attack remains unclear.

"Is this a terrorist incident? We do not know," said David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI's Los Angeles field office.

Burguan said that at least one device that police believed to be an explosive was recovered at the center, where authorities were expected to remain for several hours. Earlier in the day, a federal law enforcement official told The Times that a robot had been used to dispose of a potential explosive device.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html

I'm thinking that if the account in this article is accurate, what probably happened is that Farook staged the "argument" in order to have an excuse to join up with his compatriots to carry out the pre-planned attack...

Since the guy worked there I suppose it's possible that this was some sort of disgruntled employee thing, but how often is a disgruntled employee able to enlist two other people to join him in a mass murder spree because he's pissed off with his boss?

The answer to that is never...(at least not up to now)

That makes "disgruntled employee" a possible but unlikely explanation in my book...

The Fort Hood shooter worked at Fort Hood but he sure as hell wasn't motivated by being mad at his boss...

[BoSoxGal]

Washington (CNN)The former Republican congressman who pushed legislation nearly 20 years ago that effectively banned the federal government from funding research on gun violence is calling on Congress to reverse that law.

In a letter to the chair of House Democrats' task force on gun violence prevention, former Rep. Jay Dickey of Arkansas called for the government to fund research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to examine the causes of gun violence in the U.S. and expressed "regrets" for his part in stopping that research.

"It is my position that somehow or someway we should slowly but methodically fund such research until a solution is reached. Doing nothing is no longer an acceptable solution," Dickey wrote in a letter dated Tuesday.

Rep. Mike Thompson, chairman of the House Democrats' Gun Violence Prevention Task Force that was created in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, released the letter on Wednesday, hours after news broke of a shooting in San Bernardino, California, where at least 14 people were killed and another 17 injured.

Dickey has said in recent months that he regrets the legislative effort he led in 1996 effectively stopped the CDC from conducting research aimed at understanding and preventing gun violence in the U.S.

Dickey pushed to cut off funding out of concerns that the research would push policies that would infringe on Americans' Second Amendment rights.

"Research could have been continued on gun violence without infringing on the rights of gun owners, in the same fashion that the highway industry continued its research without eliminating the automobile," Dickey, who served in Congress from 1993 to 2001, wrote in his letter. "Scientific research should help answer how we can best reduce gun violence."

President Barack Obama urged the CDC and other agencies to research gun violence in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre that killed 20 children and six adults. But the CDC has stayed away from that kind of research to avoid losing funding.

Thompson praised Dickey in a statement Wednesday, saying that "there is not one good reason to keep this ban in place."

"I commend Jay Dickey for taking this stand," Thompson said in the statement. "As gun owners, we want to protect the Second Amendment. But at the same time, we recognize the fact that we can safeguard those rights while also allowing our expert scientists to conduct research on how to best prevent gun violence."

[BoSoxGal]

I'm reading a lot of stuff online saying the suspects were Middle Eastern; nothing from major media outlets yet.

Unless you count Daily Beast:

Suspect ID'd in San Bernardino Massacre as Syed Farook
Syed Farook is one of three suspected gunmen who attacked a center for the disabled, killing 14 and injuring more on Wednesday.
CORONA, CALIFORNIA — Law enforcement officials have identified Syed Farook as one of the suspected shooters who attacked a center for the disabled in San Bernardino, California, according to NBC News. The Daily Beast has learned that the police have just executed a search warrant at a Redlands, California address—an address that belongs to Farook’s family.

[Lord Jim]

Given what's publicly known so far, it's very puzzling...

On the one hand, as I pointed out it would be extremely unusual for somebody with a beef at his work place to be able to enlist two other people to help him massacre his co-workers...

On the other hand, if this is some sort of Islamist terrorist thing, it's also been reported that the assailants walked past a bunch people and specifically targeted the people in this room on the second floor...

Islamist terrorists are generally looking for the highest possible body count, and they could have killed more people than they did...

Of course they may have been concerned about the time factor and being able to get away before the cops arrived, (since they were not planning to perish at the scene) so perhaps they went straight to the room where they knew there would be the largest concentration of people, did their shooting as quickly as possible, and then ran out...

[BoSoxGal]

Syed Farook went to high school in CA, so not exactly Middle-Eastern?

[MajGenl.Meade]

...and the Paris shooters were Belgians and French. Of course.

[wesw]

leave it to econo to spout the presidents speaking points before the bodies cool.

this is not the only nation where this happens , it is not even the nation where it happens most.

I m not going to bother the list of countries where it happens more, we are all informed people and we know already.

bad enough that you turn it into a way to further your political agenda before the bodies cool, but you do it with blatant lies.

story of the last seven years and maybe the next 4 too.

yes, repubs (WHITE MEN) are racist bigoted haters who enjoy seeing planned parenthood attacked. that s the secret master plan.

[BoSoxGal]

I m not going to bother the list of countries where it happens more, we are all informed people and we know already.

Please, do. I'm not aware of the other developed nations where mass shootings are a weekly occurrence. I must not be informed. Please, inform me.

[wesw]

never mind. I don t feel like playing. you win