Tag: mass shootings

Cops visited Maine gunman’s home six weeks before massacre

Police across Maine were alerted just last month to ‘veiled threats’ by the U.S. Army reservist who would go on to carry out the worst mass shooting in the state’s history, after concerns he would ‘snap and commit a mass shooting’. It was just one of a string of missed red flags that preceded last week’s massacre at a bowling alley.

The revelations came as more than 1,000 people packed a cavernous church on Sunday night, with hundreds more spilling outside, to hug, sing, weep and seek comfort in the wake the state’s most deadly mass shooting. The crowd gathered for the vigil at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Lewiston, where days earlier a gunman fatally shot 18 people. Two local law enforcement chiefs revealed over the weekend how a statewide awareness alert was sent in mid-September to be on the lookout for Robert Card after the firearms instructor made threats against his base and fellow soldiers. Patrols were stepped-up on the base and a visit was paid to Card’s home only six weeks ago – neither of which turned up any sign of him – after which, they moved on.

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The 10 Mass Shootings Since Lewiston You Didn’t Hear About

Most news articles about the animal in Lewiston, Maine, who shot 31 people, killing 18, focus specifically on the shooter’s skin color and “AR-15 style” rifle.

The media seem to have missed the ten mass shootings that have taken place in the three and a half days since the Maine massacre.

FACT-O-RAMA! A mass shooting is defined as four or more people shot, not including the shooter, in a fluid situation.

Lewiston stands out because of the unusually high body count. Also, the shooter escaped and was at large for a while before police found his body. Every news source from Maine to New York kept readers glued to their sites with stories of “the shooter MAY come here next” fear porn.

Legendary jackpudding Joy Behar from “The View” doesn’t know the difference between an AR-15 and a bazooka. She is paid millions of dollars a year to lie to wine-box mommies who believe her codswallop.

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No, Mike Pence, We Should Not Make It Easier To Execute Mass Shooters

During last night’s Republican presidential debate, former Vice President Mike Pence had a startling answer to a question about what he would do to reduce gun violence.

“I am sick and tired of these mass shootings happening in the United States of America,” said Pence. “And if I’m president of the United States, I’m going to go to the Congress of the United States, and we’re going to pass a federal expedited death penalty for anyone involved in a mass shooting so that they will meet their fate in months, not years. It is unconscionable that the Parkland shooter…is actually going to spend the rest of his life behind bars in Florida. That’s not justice. We have to mete out justice and send a message to these would-be killers that you are not going to live out your days behind bars. You’re going to meet justice.”

This plan is not just unlikely to reduce mass shootings; it would leave lots of accused criminals without important procedural protections. While “mass shooting” doesn’t have a set legal definition, one common definition puts it as any shooting with at least four victims, including people who were injured rather than killed. By that metric, over 3,500 mass shootings occurred from 2015 to 2022. Roughly 95 percent of these shootings resulted in fewer than four deaths, according to Everytown for Gun Safety’s data. That includes a lot of crimes that do not look like Parkland—crimes in which there could be serious doubts about whether the accused is in fact guilty.

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Zoraida Bartolomei and Alberto Rolon – the Chicago couple shot dead with their two sons and three dogs in mysterious massacre – as cops hunt gunman and the victim’s sister pleads for ‘answers’ about ‘horrific crime’

The family of four who were massacred in their Illinois home along with their three dogs have been pictured for the first time as cops continue to hunt for the killer. 

Zoraida Bartolomei, 32, her husband Alberto Rolon – also known as Roberto – and their children Adriel, 10, and Diego, seven, were shot in their family bungalow in Romeoville, a suburb of Chicago, on Sunday.

Romeoville Police Department investigators have ruled out a murder-suicide and warned the murderer is still on the loose.

Their family said they have no idea why anyone would want to kill them, and Zoraida’s devastated sister has issued a plea for answers.

Sharing a photograph of the family on Facebook, Bryana Bartolomei said: ‘I want to know what happened to my nephews, my sister, her husband, and WHY?

‘They were shot and killed in their home.’ 

The picture shows Zoraida and Alberto beaming with their two sons, one playfully holding a strand of his mother’s hair.

A fundraiser created to cover funeral expenses was created on Monday, describing their children as ‘the sweetest most innocent angels’.

Friends described them as ‘hardworking people that had just bought their first home’.

‘Their kids were the sweetest most innocent angels who could hug your worries away,’ the fundraiser says.

‘In just a few hours their lives, their family’s lives completely changed. The world is going to be a much dimmer place without them.’

They pleaded for anyone with information about the gunman to contact police.

Zoraida’s mother Lydia from Puerto Rico earlier told DailyMail.com they were ‘so happy’ and had only bought their $250,000 Romeoville home five months ago. 

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FBI Data on Active Shootings Is Misleading

Americans are constantly debating policing and gun control. But to discuss these issues, we have to depend on government crime data. Unfortunately, politics has infected the data handling of agencies such as the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control.

Last year, the CDC became the center of controversy when it removed its estimates of defensive gun uses from its website at the request of gun control organizations. For nearly a decade the CDC cited a 2013 National Academies of Sciences report showing that the annual number of people using guns to stop crime ranged from about 64,000 to 3 million. The CDC website listed the upper figure at 2.5 million.

Mark Bryant, who runs the Gun Violence Archive, wrote to CDC officials after a meeting last year that the 2.5 million number “has been used so often to stop [gun control] legislation.” The CDC’s estimates were subsequently taken down and now lists no numbers.

The FBI is also susceptible to political pressure. Up until January of 2021, I worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as the senior advisor for research and statistics, and part of my job was to evaluate the FBI’s active shooting reports. I showed the bureau that many cases were missing and that others had been misidentified. Yet, the FBI continues to report that armed citizens stopped only 14 of the 302 active shooter incidents that it identified for the period 2014-2022. The correct rate is almost eight times higher. And if we limit the discussion to places where permit holders were allowed to carry, the rate is eleven times higher.

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University of North Carolina Murder Occurred in Gun-Free Zone

The murder that occurred on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus Monday took place in a gun-free zone.

The buildings at UNC Chapel Hill are gun-free via school policy.

The policy says: “It is a felony, punishable by fine and/or imprisonment, to possess or carry, openly or concealed, any gun, rifle, pistol, or other firearm of any kind, or any dynamite cartridge, bomb, grenade, mine, or powerful explosive on any University campus, in any University-owned or operated facility, or at a curricular or extracurricular activity sponsored by the University. Such conduct also may constitute a violation of the Honor Code.”

The exception to this policy is that concealed carry permit holders “may have a handgun in a closed compartment or container within the person’s locked vehicle or in a locked container securely affixed to the person’s vehicle.” But those handguns may not be transported into university buildings or carried or campus for self-defense.

Breitbart News reported that reports of shots fired on campus led to a shelter-in-place alert on the UNC Chapel Hill campus Monday. The shoots were reported around 1 p.m.

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It Isn’t ‘Divisive Rhetoric’ That Kills People

A gunman carrying a rifle emblazoned with a swastika killed three people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday before taking his own life.

The shooter, 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmete, was white. All of his victims—52-year-old Angela Michelle Carr, 19-year-old Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre Jr., and 29-year-old Jerrald Gallion—were black. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters has said that the murder spree was racially motivated and Palmete specifically targeted black people. The sheriff also noted that the guns Palmete was carrying were legally purchased.

As is so often the case with crimes like these, people are casting about for someone other than one racist psychopath—or “deranged scumbag,” as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis put it—to blame. Some have settled on “divisive rhetoric” as the culprit.

“When we have this kind of divisive rhetoric, this is exactly what happens,” journalism professor and Jacksonville councilmember Rahman Johnson told MSNBC’s Symone Sanders-Townsend. He mentioned Florida’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings, African-American studies programs in schools, and transgender people.

“The division has to stop, the hate has to stop, the rhetoric has to stop,” Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said.

An op-ed in the Florida Times-Union blamed the city’s reaction to antisemitic banners and light displays, saying the response wasn’t “forceful enough.” Those “public demonstrations look like terrible harbingers of what was to come,” wrote columnist Nate Monroe.

Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon blamed attacks on “wokeness,” which she called “a dog whistle. That wokeness that they want to die is Black people, and it was evident yesterday by what happened,” Nixon said.

Needless to say, plenty of people hear the same rhetoric Palmete may have heard about diversity trainings, wokeness, and so on but don’t go on to commit atrocities. And openly bigoted speech, as represented by those antisemitic banners, is much less common now than at most points in U.S. history past.

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Jacksonville Dollar General shooting leaves four people dead including gunman whose assault rife was covered in Nazi swastikas for ‘racially motivated’ attack

A shooting at a Florida Dollar General store in Northwest Jacksonville which left three black people dead was ‘racially motivated,’ officials say. 

The incident, which also saw the white gunman die from a self-inflicted gun wound, on Saturday is being investigated as a hate crime by the FBI and local authorities. 

The suspected shooter, in his 20s, used an assault rifle covered in Nazi swastikas in the attack, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

He is said to have sent a manifesto which detailed his racial hatred to police, media and his parents before the attack. 

Emergency services, including a SWAT team, rushed to the scene on Kings Road, at around 1pm on Saturday. 

Sheriff T.K. Waters said the gunman ‘hated black people’ and ‘wanted to kill “n******”.’ He described the shooting as a ‘dark day in Jacksonville’s history’. 

There were unconfirmed reports and photographs on Saturday night circulating around the suspected gunman’s identity. But police are yet to confirm his name. 

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Far-left activist accuses conservatives of ‘violence’ for referring to cross-dressing, BLM-supporting Philly mass shooting suspect as ‘trans’

In the wake of a mass shooting in Philadelphia which claimed the lives of 5 adults, injuring 2 children, far-left activists held a press conference to, in part, correct the media narrative on the alleged shooter’s identity. 

“I want to discuss, very briefly because there is a nasty, violent– in terms of verbal and written words– spewed by the conservative press regarding the shooter,” the activist said.

“There certain pictures that are circulating–some of you may are be aware of those pictures–have the shooter in one pitcher as male and other pictures dressed in female attire or female outfits. They have used those pictures to attack trans people in particularly trans women of color, which are extremely vulnerable to violence in our community,” he continued.

“I want to set the record straight,” he continued, “because language is extremely important when we’re talking about anything dealing with violence and [the] trans community. The suspect or the shooter has not identified themselves as trans. They have only identified themselves as male. And that’s the language that will be used until further developments if they change that type of language.

“But the language that is spewed out by the conservative press is violent and is dangerous and is targeting trans women of color. It’s rallying the community to be violent. And we’re better than that. We’re better than that. We have our trans women and our trans men living in these communities working thriving in the communities. They are not killers, they are the most vulnerable to violence. They want to live their lives, and they have every right to do so. And we will not allow conservative bigots to use that type of language to attack trans [people],” he said, in footage shared by Julio Rosas.

Kimbrady Watson Carriker, a 40-year-old male who is expressed support for the BLM movement on his Facebook page, was arrested on Monday evening after allegedly shooting and killing five people and injuring two children in the Kingsessing neighborhood. Police said they apprehended a male suspect who was wearing a ballistic vest.

Additional photos show Carriker wearing female clothes, though the Facebook page does not indicate that the suspect personally identified as transgender. 

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Allen, Texas mall shooter was removed from Army over mental health concerns: law enforcement sources

The suspect in Saturday’s mass shooting in Allen, Texas, has been identified as Mauricio Garcia, 33, a senior law enforcement source familiar with the investigation told CNN.

By the end of Saturday’s deadly rampage, eight people were killed and at least seven others were wounded from the massacre in the affluent suburb of Allen, about 25 miles north of Dallas.

In addition to the AR-15 style weapon found near him, Garcia had at least one other weapon on him when he was fatally shot in front of the mall, the source said. Police also found multiple weapons in his car.

CNN spoke with neighbors who witnessed FBI and police at a home of an address that matches Garcia’s parents Saturday night. They arrived there about an hour after the shooting and blocked off the street for several hours, neighbors said.

Garcia had been living in some form of transient lodging, according to the law enforcement source. Law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation told ABC News that preliminary information developed in the probe indicates that the shooter was in the U.S. Army in 2008 and was “removed due to mental health concerns.”

In addition to the insignia on the shooter’s equipment that suggested a right-wing extremist ideology, investigators have found social media accounts connected to the shooter that reveal hundreds of postings and images, including writings with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist rhetoric, neo-Nazi material and material espousing the supremacy of the white race.

None of the subject’s postings analyzed to date were liked or shared by other users nor were there any public comments. The shooter’s account did not contain any friends or associates that were publicly visible.

Also, investigators have determined he had no criminal history and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle. The shooter was equipped with a ballistic vest, numerous magazines and additional handguns.

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