Is it just me, or does there seem to be a mass shooting epidemic in the United States?
One person has been killed and three others critically injured after gunfire erupted at a Korean Christian church retreat in Temecula, southern California, reports CBS News affiliate KCAL.
Police say the shooter was a Korean male in his 70s. The church retreat is actually a Catholic facility, the Kkottongnae Retreat Camp.
Terrible, terrible news.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
This would be a 4th mass shooting in the past 30 days by my count. Most of these assholes kill themselves after killing their victims. Wrong fucking order…
It’s not just you, Robert. I’ve been noticing this since three rampages ago.
Jeffery Hodges
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#1 Pretty difficult the other way round
I didn’t notice anything unusual until you mentioned it.
WaPo says the economy may be responsible for the recent upswing in killings:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040703979.html?hpid=sec-nation
I think this has to do with Media focus more than anything else. These things always happen, but with Bush being president, and most of his tenure with a Republican congress, no change could be expected so they just kind of sat on the reports for the last 8 years. Now that the tables have turned were the press to concentrate on these shooting, they may be able to stir the American populace into supporting stricter gun laws, or at least give the Democratic lawmakers the cover they need to implement such laws. That and notice how they keep trying to convince people that M-16s and M203 Grenade launchers are being bough at gun shops and smuggled into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
Obama and a Democratic majority in congress,
…oh I remember once while in the army, one soldier had gone out, gotten drunk, and beat up a Korean. He broke his own fist in the altercation. He was arrested and handed over to the MPs who then gave him to our unit (which didn’t want him and preferred he stay in holding with the MPs, but had no choice).
It was a classic case of a drunken GI behavior that is usually over hyped by the Korean media. I feared the worst when , knowing what happened, I came home seeing a mass of Korean press outside our gate talking to the MPs.
Over the course of the next week it never was reported, and I kept an eye out for it. It turned out the current foreign boogey-man for that week was… “Japan”.
Overall my point here is, the media, (Korea or American) likes synergy. They tend to focus less on accurately reporting what really happens day-to-day and instead like to focus their readers attention on topics in waves, it gets a better reaction. Besides were they to report on something evenly and consistently, the topic will just loose everyones interest.
“Overall my point here is, the media, (Korea or American) likes synergy.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
All I can say is it is a good thing Korea has such strict gun control laws. Could you imagine what Korea would be like if every Jeong, Lee, and Kim had a gun?
Perhaps the Yanks CAN learn something from Korea?
Yeah gun control would be nice, but, won’t happen. The guns are out there and you aren’t going to make them go away, ever.
More detail from the LAT:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-korean-retreat-shooting9-2009apr09,0,5696106.story
Although most of the people who ran the center were Koreans, most of the people who lived in the center were white.
It could have been a real blood bath but one brave couple fought the gunman and knocked him unconscious.
… And in this week’s “I’m glad he wasn’t Kore…” Oh wait.
Shit!
Yep. Sad but true. This is what we made it. I find it interesting how America has progressed from a time when pretty much only male whities snapped to this day and age, when it really can be anybody. Melting Pot, indeed! It’s a downright Melt Down!
Well, look at the bright side… assimilation is working, I guess.
It does happen elsewhere, but there has been a bad case of this in the US for many years.
Which is why it was out of ignorance of American culture that many worried about a backlash against Koreans and Asians in the US because of Cho Seung-hui at Virginia Tech. The perpetrators behind 9/11 were seen by all nations as having engaged in an attack on civilization, and therefore a threat to all peoples. What Cho did, on the other hand, was perhaps perceived, whether people realized it or not, as being rather American… 너무나 미국적인… or at least something Americans have all too frequently been known to do. Cho was quite the gun enthusiast, and how could you hate a guy like that?
Well, in a way, they were right about the backlash, it just came from other Asians
Some really fuck*d up news:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vPnMbLr5nc&feature=haxa_popt00us0f
^ Woman at a shooting range in Florida shoots son in the back of head, then shoots herself through the mouth, wrote she was going to do it in order to send son to Heaven and herself to Hell. All of it captured on tape.
And there was one other church shooting that happened in March a few weeks ago, the one in Illinoise with the pastor shot dead. Reports indicate that the pastor used the Bible to effectively block the first shot against him. Church patrons thought it was a skit at first.
Sickos. Fuck*ng sickos.
http://www.spreekillers.org/index.html
Korea #1!
“Yeah gun control would be nice, but, won’t happen. The guns are out there and you aren’t going to make them go away, ever.”
Maybe not completely, but you seem not to have lived somewhere with gun controls…if you had you might see the difference in the number of deaths per capita…by guns
I frequent the occasional weapons related forums, and almost all of them are going “What the fuck! Oh dammit not again!”.
What’s interesting is that some of the recent shootings have been done by people with entirely legitimate guns and permits. That is actually pretty rare. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a shooting at a gun range of all places.
But I wouldn’t be surprised to see more. The economy is in the shitter, and people do crazy things more often when that happens.
For anyone arguing on whether gun control stops violent crime, there have been numerous studies, and all the impartial ones show ZERO correlation. At least in the US. That means that neither more or less guns means more or less crime.
Banning murder doesn’t stop people from murdering. And getting rid of guns is about as useful as trying to get rid of drugs. If you can walk down the street and buy a bag of the good stuff, you can do the same with guns.
In addition, culture, and a stable society matter as well. If you suddenly gave everyone guns in Korea, yeah, shit would happen. They have no real experience with guns concerning everyday life. In America, guns have always been a life sustaining tool, less so now than 200 years ago, but the concept still remains with *most* of us.
Guns are not automatically bad evil baby killing death machines. Britain has all sorts of bans, and crime is a huge problem.
Yes, some regulations are needed, but there comes a point when all you do is disarm responsible citizens who have spent money and the time needed for these things.
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