Perhaps you missed it. It hasn’t been picked up for syndication yet but I’m sure some sharp TV programmer will have it ready in time for the first Fall season cancellations. And it beats the heck out of “Lock-Up” on MsNBC:
A total of 67 people were shot between Friday and Monday and 13 of them died.
That included this gunfight in NYC:
Three people were killed and two police officers were injured in a gun fight in Brooklyn Monday evening — the latest bloodshed in a violent holiday weekend in New York City that saw at least 48 people shot. […]
Of course since then, we’ve had a few more. First there was the IHOP shooting in Nevada by a man with what has been described as an AK-47 for which no one can provide a motive:
And today, West Virginia joins the show:
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Authorities say a man who killed five people near Morgantown and ran down an elderly woman in neighboring Pennsylvania also shot and wounded a gas station attendant as he crossed back through West Virginia. He then took his own life in Kentucky.
The path of violence that Shayne Riggleman cut through three states before committing suicide during a police chase was “one of the most heinous crimes I’ve ever witnessed,” State Police Capt. James Merrill said Tuesday.
Why did he do it? I don’t know. Here’s what was on his Facebook page; see if you can make sense of it.
On a public Facebook page for a Shayne Franklin Samuel Riggleman, a string of Wall Posts from the past week seem to hint at a troubled relationship.
“There is a direct corelation between the amount of love you have for someone and how crazy you go when you lose them,” reads one.
“I mate for life, not like a penguin though,” reads another. “I mate for life like a praying mantis.”
And one, ominously, says only, “We’re not promised tomorrow.”
Riggleman’s profile page, meanwhile, contained several quotes.
At the top of the list, unattributed, was this one: “I ain’t goin’ out without a fight. I’m with whatever. it WILL be YOUR LIFE before MY LIFE.”
Some of you may think I’m being insensitive regarding the victims of these shootings so let me say that I deeply grieve the deaths of these shooting victims and the losses suffered by their friends and families. I once met a man and woman, husband an wife, who belonged to an organization for which no one would willingly become eligible: people who have lost loved ones to murder. The man told me that it didn’t much matter why someone was murdered–the loss was just as bad whether you knew the motive or not. He also told me no one but those who have endured such a loss can understand the pain that he and others like him suffer each day. I believed him. All I can do is offer my condolences. I cannot comprehend the pain the families of these shooting victims are going through.
Some others of of you may think I’m waving the bloody flag of gun control in this post, but that’s not true either. We are beyond any ability to control the hundreds of millions of guns in the hands of American citizens. We live, whether we like it or not, in a society that at any moment can erupt into a shooting gallery, in the public square or in the privacy of individual homes. Children, police, physicians, ordinary people in the wrong place at the wrong time and even members of Congress have all been targets of gun violence. Some of these shootings have been motivated by specific political or religious beliefs, and others appear meaningless, the last desperate act of delusional or mentally unstable individuals. It matters little though, in the final analysis.
You know what happened when everyone knew Obama was going to be elected back in 2008? Rumors and lies were spread that he and the Feds were going to confiscate everyone’s guns, or make it illegal to buy guns, or illegal to buy ammunition (none of which happened) and so Americans, during the worst collapse of the global economy in my lifetime rushed to gun stores and gun shows to buy more guns and more ammunition. They bought so much that there was a shortage of bullets for all those guns, for which predictably many gun people also blamed Obama:
“It started the day that Obama got elected,” Johnny Dury, who owns Dury’s Gun Shop in San Antonio, tells NPR’s Michele Norris. “It is when everything just went crazy in the gun business.”
Dury says people are buying guns as well as ammunition, creating a shortage of both. He says people are buying the guns to protect themselves because they perceive Obama’s policies as socialist and rewarding those “people who are not working hard.” They are also afraid, he says, of more restrictive gun laws.
No, this isn’t a post calling for more gun control. I’ll let Mayor Bloomberg try to slay that dragon. But I do believe that much of what he says is true. We have created a society which rewards the very few at the expense of the very many:
Mayor Bloomberg on Wednesday blamed last weekend’s spate of violence on what he said was a national scourge of “young, disaffected people with guns.” He said there were remedies, however, including … social programs like his new initiative to help black and Hispanic young men. […]
Mr. Bloomberg said that violence was also caused by “an educational system that hasn’t included everybody,” a condition he suggested that his young men’s initiative would attempt to redress. The initiative will include, among other things, assessing city schools based on the academic progress achieved by black and Hispanic male students.
Mr. Bloomberg is helping to finance the $130 million program with $30 million of his own money. The billionaire investor George Soros has also donated $30 million, and the city is providing the balance.
The trouble is that this isn’t a problem limited to a single city or race or ethnic group much as that quote by Bloomberg seems to suggest it is. You see, we’ve spent the better part of three decades limiting the educational and job opportunities for most Americans. You all know the story of America’s large income inequality by now. You also know how we have cut funding for education, health care, including healthcare for those with mental disorders. You know the massive debts with which most college graduates are saddled as well as the loss of opportunity for many to obtain a college education at all. You know of our the failure to invest in critical infrastructure and cutting edge technologies. You know of the rampant consumerism and “easy credit” that is a plague upon our population. You know the consequences that the deregulation of our financial industry caused.
You also know of the policies of “free trade,” globalization and “neo-liberalism” that have shipped jobs overseas and eliminated well paying jobs at home. You know our manufacturing base has shrunk. You’ve witnessed the war on unions and indeed the eradication of entire sectors of our workforce from the ability to essentially organize and collectively bargain. You’ve seen a generation of people’s lives ruined from lack of good jobs, affordable healthcare and even a place to live when “times are tough.” Tough for some people that is.
You see this is a post at its heart about anger and despair. My despair is over the fact that we have the resources to provide better healthcare to all our citizens, to give a college education to everyone who wants one and to create good jobs. However, since Ronald Reagan became President we have chosen a separate path. A path that prioritized fighting overseas wars, killing and maiming thousands of foreign civilians and our troops and massive spending on the military over the general welfare of our people. A path that made made mega-corporations persons with greater rights than real people. A path that demonized racial, liberal, ethnic and LGBT communities. A path that eviscerated the union movement and lowered taxes on the wealthiest corporations and individuals making it easier to transfer wealth from the Poor and the Middle Class to people like — Charles Koch.
You all know Charlie, don’t you? The man who held a “seminar” at the resort town of Beaver Creek, Colorado for some of his closest billionaire and multi-millionaire buddies in which he compared Barack Obama to Saddam Hussein and applauded guest speaker Anthony Napolitano of Fox News for making this statement:
So what does the government fear the most? I think the government fears fear. I’m afraid the government is going to take the property and the freedom of everybody in this room. The government should fear that we will take its power away from it and put it into the hands of worthy custodians of our freedom.
Napolitano and Koch and all their “friends” in that “room” weren’t talking about freedom for you and me, oh no. They were speaking solely about ensuring that government does their bidding and helps them maintain their wealth, power and influence. As for your freedom, well, that’s not really a priority for them. Their “worthy custodians” will work for their interests not ours.
Oh, they’ll let you keep your guns (and anyone else who has one as well), but protect the social security and medicare benefits for which you paid into during your adult working lives? Perish the thought. Allow you the same measure of “free speech” that they can buy but you can’t? Not likely. Provide educational benefits to all Americans? Not unless they can profit by it. Allow women to determine what happens with their own bodies? Don’t make me laugh. Provide people the ability to actually exercise their “right” to organize and collectively bargain? Who are you kidding? Create well paying jobs in America? Only for themselves.
See, that is why I am angry and sad, both. Because these shooting sprees and other acts of violence have been going on for a while now. They have just been slipping under the media radar, except on your local nightly news, of course, where they help sell advertising for products you likely don’t need. We as a nation are at a tipping point and I for the life of me can’t convince myself that a peaceful outcome is the most probable one.
You know what happens when you put a bunch of rats into a confined space and then begin to cut their food supply? They begin to fight one another. Some even become cannibals. Now go back and revisit that wealth and income inequality gap, and healthcare gap and education gap and employment gap and all the other gaps these high and mighty plutocrats, or to use a phrase that seems fitting, robber barons, of our times have created. Now go look at the vast number of guns estimated to be in the hands of Americans, many of them who have been pushed into poverty and desperate straits, or who live under the threat of losing what little they have, by the very policies Charlie Koch and his pals seek to preserve and even expand.
Now go back and look at the title to this post and tell me how you would answer the question it raises. My answer: All of the above.
I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again, the next Civil War won’t be as neat and tidy as the previous one, and I believe Ft. Sumpter has just been shelled…
A friend of mine reminded me a few weeks ago that folks living in the hills outside my city have been stocking up on firearms and ammo for some time, waiting for their version of Armageddon. Right-wing conspiracy nuts who are armed in the midst of a crappy economy can – and this is admittedly an understatement – do some serious damage. Actually anyone who is extremely desperate and armed – which is something that is happening nationwide – can, as you duly note, do a great deal of damage. We definitely have good reason to be concerned.
StevenD you have painted an excellent picture of the level of despair in America and the manifestation of its deadly blossoms, death and destruction. America as a nation unfortunately has gone beyond the tipping point and is even now slowly collapsing towards an insane internal insurrection which is unconditionally driven to bloody every corner of domestic society for no apparent reason at all.
Decades of demi-god like worship of Guns and Gun Owner’s Rights have left this land drowning in a sea of lethal automatic high fire power weaponry. In many American neighborhoods guns are more popular than bath soap. When I was a child American hucksterism sold the nation on the wholesome idea that the thing Americans enjoyed the most were hot dogs and ice cream cones on a balmy summer’s day. Now in the early days of the 21st century the things Americans yearn for the most are bricks of C4 and Glocks with extended magazine clips. Yet no one appears to see the inversion of societal values here, or perhaps fear has shaded the eyes of the American people from the clear light of reason and sanity.
Fortunately man cannot disavow his God given sense of self, so at some point when the bloodletting across the country reaches epidemic proportions and four out of every five families are grief stricken over the loss of one or more of its members; the common man will lift his weary battered head and cry, “enough, enough I pray, enough”. Then will all of the guns be collected and thrown into the gaping jaws of insatiable junk yard metal compactors, and peace will bring the balm of healing to the sorrow filled American homeland.
is its complete disconnect from actual data. In fact, the violent crime has been falling:
When I was a prosecutor people would tell me how frustrating it must be to work hard and see the crime rate just going up and up. When I told them that in fact it was going down, and actually pretty quickly, it was funny to see their reaction. Now I left because I had moral problems with the absurd drug laws, but I had little doubt that violent crime was going down.
They didn’t believe it. Now I think most New Yorkers know this to some extent – but I don’t think most people realize how significant the change is.
Anyone who has tried a reasonably high profile case and dealth with local news, knows why. Local news rooms have been cutting staff for years. Most of the reporters know how to do crimes, fires, and car accidents. They wouldn’t have a clue how to do a story of substance, and producers know the shocking stories are what people want anyway.
So we get stuff like this diary.
I have another idea: let’s ask WHY the crime rate is declining. It’s pretty clear to me why, and I will be shocked if you do – wait for it –
the reason is the elimination of lead from gasoline and the environment
Even the notorious James Q Wilson, noted in the Wall Street Journal
There are other studies around about this. One researcher predicted almost exactly when both the US and the UK murder rates would peak by tracking when the first generation of lead free children came of age. And there are other studies that the suggest that the US has saved $150 Billion a year from the removal of gasoline.
What a success story. The government listened to scientists (the US were leaders here, by the way), and cut the murder rate in half and saved money. Sounds like the title of a story I might want to read.
Never heard of it? Not surprising. I have never, and I mean never, seen a liberal blogger write about it.
People don’t want to hear it. It reminds me of the play “Enemy of the People”. In fact, I want to do a revival, with an actor doing Rick Perry’s voice as the lead antagonist.
I’ve always known violent crime has been going down over the years — and yeah, I get those same wild-eyed looks when I assert such a thing. But I’ve never been able to pinpoint why, or have any rational conclusions (though tbh I never really looked that hard). Thanks for the link! I’m not sure I totally agree with it, but this is the first I’ve heard of it…so I’ll research it further.
when I tell people about this, the conservatives don’t believe it. This is because they think the 60’s were the start of a great moral decline, and the idea that crime is dropping doesn’t fit with their “it’s all single mother’s fault” thinking. And how could this happen with Miranda still the Law?
Liberals didn’t like this either. If crime is going down while inequality is rising, it doesn’t fit their thinking. And how could crime be dropping when we have all of these guns?
Now I would think environmentalists would be tumpeting this success, and maybe they are so marginalized they just don’t get heard.
Again, a summary of enemy of the people:
Not bad for a play written in 1882.
Well liberals still have a point on that front, as inequality in a society is one of the best ways to predict crime (note, not poverty, but inequality). In that sense, if we were less unequal, the rate of decline may have happened even faster.
Still, it’s an interesting link, and thanks again!
I agree people should be careful to actually look at the numbers.
And it’s gonna be that way, more and more. Don’t even bother whining about it. It’s as inevitable as the rain in April.
We are gonna have 5-6 school shootings in the next month. Why? Teenagers are back in school, and the guns are there, and math tests are scheduled.
There is no way of avoiding the atrocities.
Unfortunately it seems a sustainable veto group is locked in the mindset that gun violence only points out the need for more responsible citizens to provide for their personal defense with the latest in concealable pistols, and for security and penal forces to be made ever more unaccountable in their scope and methods. Everything else is obviously socialism.