The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
So a Canadian whack-job goes on a 12-hour shooting and arson spree, killing at least 23 people before suicide-by-cop. No mention of what weapon(s) the killer used, but Prime Minister Trudeau came out immediately stating that Canada was going to implement an “assault weapon” ban.
Twelve hours. Offhand, I’d say the Canadian government has done a bang-up job of disarming its citizens.
From the linked piece:
Mass school shootings are incredibly rare events. In research publishing later this year, (James Alan) Fox (Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern) and doctoral student Emma Fridel found that on average, mass murders occur between 20 and 30 times per year, and about one of those incidents on average takes place at a school.
—
Their research also finds that shooting incidents involving students have been declining since the 1990s.
—
Four times the number of children were killed in schools in the early 1990s than today, Fox said.
“There is not an epidemic of school shootings,” he said
Not according to the bleating gun control crowd. The actual numbers are pretty bad, but they always have to inflate them because apparently reality isn’t bad enough. It’s like hate crimes. There’s more demand than there is supply.
Broward Ex-Deputy Sheriff Scot Peterson has been arrested and charged with seven counts of neglect of a child, three counts of culpable negligence and one count of perjury in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Peterson, a School Resource Officer, declined to intervene in that shooting, instead hiding behind cover for 45 minutes while the shooter killed seventeen and wounded seventeen others.
This is pretty much unprecedented. Until now, officers of the law have been held not liable for the protection of any individual person or persons, as I explained in detail in my May, 2003 posts, Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? Part I and Part II. As I explained in Part I:
Carolyn Warren, Joan Taliaferro, and Miriam Douglas were the appellants in a lawsuit against the District of Columbia and its police department for failing to protect them. Fail them it did, but the court found against them. And here is its reasoning:
A publicly maintained police force constitutes a basic governmental service provided to benefit the community at large by promoting public peace, safety and good order. The extent and quality of police protection afforded to the community necessarily depends upon the availability of public resources and upon legislative or administrative determinations concerning allocation of those resources. The public, through its representative officials, recruits, trains, maintains and disciplines its police force and determines the manner in which personnel are deployed. At any given time, publicly furnished police protection may accrue to the personal benefit of individual citizens, but at all times the needs and interests of the community at large predominate. Private resources and needs have little direct effect upon the nature of police services provided to the public. Accordingly, courts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community. (Emphasis is mine)
Note the quote: “without exception.” This is not the first time someone has sued the government for not protecting them, not by a long shot. It’s one of the most egregious examples, but far from the only one.
So, it isn’t the government’s responsibility to protect “individual members of the community,” that is, you and me specifically.
This has been established for years, most recently in Castle Rock v. Gonzales from 2005. But in Part II of my essay I linked to a different case, Riss v. the City of New York, from 1968 in which a woman got a restraining order against her abusive boyfriend who had told her if he couldn’t have her, no one else would want her – and then carried out his threat by hiring someone to throw lye in her face, blinding her in one eye and disfiguring her face. She begged for police protection before the attack and got nothing. After the attack she received 24-hour protection. She sued. She lost, for the same reason Carolyn Warren, Joan Taliaferro, and Miriam Douglas lost – there is no duty to protect any particular individual or individuals unless they’re in custody or under direct care.
Here’s where it gets interesting. There was a dissent in the Riss case, and here’s the pertinent part of that dissent:
No one questions the proposition that the first duty of government is to assure its citizens the opportunity to live in personal security. And no one who reads the record of Linda’s ordeal can reach a conclusion other than that the City of New York, acting through its agents, completely and negligently failed to fulfill this obligation to Linda.
Linda has turned to the courts of this State for redress, asking that the city be held liable in damages for its negligent failure to protect her from harm. With compelling logic, she can point out that, if a stranger, who had absolutely no obligation to aid her, had offered her assistance, and thereafter Burton Pugach was able to injure her as a result of the negligence of the volunteer, the courts would certainly require him to pay damages. (Restatement, 2d, Torts, § 323.) Why then should the city, whose duties are imposed by law and include the prevention of crime (New York City Charter, § 435) and, consequently, extend far beyond that of the Good Samaritan, not be responsible? If a private detective acts carelessly, no one would deny that a jury could find such conduct unacceptable. Why then is the city not required to live up to at least the same minimal standards of professional competence which would be demanded of a private detective?
So if someone volunteered or was paid to protect her and failed as spectacularly at it as the NYPD did, THEY would be held liable, but the City is not.
Scot Peterson was paid to protect the kids in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It was his JOB. And he failed them. Criminally.
I hope he spends the rest of his life in prison contemplating his failure.
UPDATE: Gun Free Zone has a different take.
When I first heard of the details of the shooting spree in Las Vegas, my immediate thought was of Matt Bracken’s Enemies Foreign and Domestic. My second thought was of the University of Texas, Austin tower shooting. I was not alone on either thought.
Well, preliminary reports are that there were no obvious brain abnormalities.
Mark Steyn recently received a missive from one of his fans on the incident, and in keeping with letting other people say it better than I can, I recommend you read what he had to say, but I will offer some excerpts:
This man amassed (rough figures) 24 guns in the hotel and another 19 at his home – 42 guns in total. He spent some $100,000 on buying them. The guns at his home are one thing but he also spent days filling his hotel room with more weapons and ammunition than he could ever conceivably use along with an array of advanced modifications and accessories.
Everything brand new. And very expensive. And mostly entirely redundant. Representing in effect an enormous waste of money and time and risk.
Except that is in the realm of generating massive publicity. Guaranteed massive publicity.
Yet despite having gone to enormous lengths to achieve that goal we are asked to believe this same man never troubled – never took the most elementary steps – to speak to that publicity. Indeed left behind no trace of anything that might demonstrate indicate or even hint at his motive or motives.
That would appear to make very little sense.
We would argue the opposite – that it makes absolute sense.
Because this gentleman did not simply fail to leave behind a motive; He took substantial trouble to ensure that no motive could be found – or attributed to him. All of which can lead us to only one conclusion:
It has been said that ‘the medium is the message’.
In this case that is the literal truth. There is only one plausible motive for what this man did. And here it is:
This man wished to telegraph to America in graphic form the hard irrefutable evidence that guns and gun ownership and the ease of gun purchase in America are an evil and must be controlled. On that hypothesis everything now makes sense.
On the question of why the shooter scoped out other venues first, but ultimately attacked the Harvest Music Festival:
The people he chose to kill supports the hypothesis on ‘guns’. Country and Western fans are virtually guaranteed to own or at least to defend the ownership of guns. By a certain logic this provides the gunman with two sound moral positions (because it is not beyond possibility he has a conscience):
First – While killing a very large number of innocent people is an horrendous crime it is nonetheless entirely justifiable – in moral terms – if it causes a restriction on guns. Because such a restriction would – it is widely held – save innumerable lives in the long run. There is no evidence for this but it is still a widely and passionately held belief.
Second – Since the people he is shooting are actively or passively defenders of guns and an obstacle to gun control they are by definition responsible in part for all the people who have been and continue to be killed by guns.
You see it in almost every story – “We may never know the motive.” “The motive remains a mystery.”
I don’t think there was any kind of conspiracy involved, but I can’t disagree with this assessment. It’s almost as if he was shouting “How DARE we be allowed to be free!”
John Ringo, author of many books I’ve enjoyed greatly, posted something on Facebook I’m going to reproduce here. The title of this post comes from it.
Other than that, I have no commentary:
A Theory on Las Vegas
I may be the only person in the ‘pundit’ world who can put what we know about the Las Vegas shooter in perspective because I’ve dealt with something similar before. My personal take, at this point, is ‘homicidal psychotic break, rationale currently unknown, possible pharmacological.’
To debunk a few of the recent urban legends and prolapse some of the stupider arguments:
ISIS: Nothing in his electronic trail indicates any contact with ISIS despite their claims and some rumors. Nothing.
‘There were multiple shooters/he was a patsy!’: All the guns in the room were registered to Paddock. He was covered in GSR and even had burns on his hands from hot barrel/rounds.
‘He was antifa killing Republicans!’: Nothing in his electronic trail indicates the slightest political affiliation or interest. Nothing.
There weren’t even angry emails. He never posted comments. Rarely read political news. Nada.
Gambling debts! He was broke!
Paddock was a habitual hobby gambler who was the sort of person casinos hate. He would set a budget on his gambling and stick to it religiously. He also rarely lost big or won big and never let either one change his habits.
He was a perfectly normal, successful, retired accountant well-invested in real estate with very little or no recent change in demeanor or actions.
Perfectly normal guy and only a ‘loner’ to the extent he wasn’t terribly socially active. ‘Loner’ apparently means he didn’t frequent wild parties. If he had the narrative would be ‘wild party animal.’
‘Homicidal psychotic break means he couldn’t have done the planning!’
Au contraire. Deep sigh. Been here, had someone in my life nearly do if not that than similar. With their permission I will now recount a story and show why everything about this makes a terrible sort of sense to me. The story is about my lovely and extremely loving wife, Miriam, and her descent to homicidal psychotic break due to a nasty drug interaction.
My wife has had the same doctor since she was a child. Old ‘country’ doctor who is the only person who has ever been able to handle Miriam’s many oddities. A limited list:
My wife:
Has four kidneys and four ankles. (She ate the good twin.)
Was once listed as one of the top five Adult ADHD in the US and the only one who was clinically functional.
Has supremely bizarre drug interactions and thereby hangs this tale.
Miriam is a ‘limited case pharmacological phenotype.’ What does that mean? You know where on the warning label it says: ‘in rare cases may cause you to grow two heads and fly to the moon’? Miriam is ‘rare cases.’ Every single time she tries a new prescription drug (fill in reason here) she is ‘rare cases.’
This involves the ‘in rare cases’ effect of a drug called Cymbalta. Notably, as Cymbalta NOW states ‘in rare cases may cause homicidal or suicidal psychotic break. Should not be prescribed to teenagers.’ (Because it turns out in MOST cases WILL cause psychotic break in teenagers.)
Miriam was prescribed Cymbalta for ‘depression’ by her doctor in the early fall of 2007. I don’t really remember if it seemed to work or not but she remained on it. I do recall that there as a shooting (by a teenager) that December in Nebraska in a mall. And I do recall Miriam’s uncharacteristic comment.
‘He only managed to kill five people in a crowded mall at Christmas time with a pistol and three magazines? He really needed to learn how to shoot.’
My wife is extremely loving and extremely Christian. Her normal response would have been ‘That’s terrible. God bless their souls and I hope he finds peace!’ ‘I could have done better’ metaphorically was… not Miriam. I’ll admit I didn’t really notice it at the time.
Nor did I notice that over the course of the next several months (not sure when it started) we started to have a lot of ‘off-brand’ bleach around the house. Miriam is a lovely wife but cleaning is not her thing. But she also purchases in a very random manner. (Note the ADHD thing.) This did seem to be alot of bleach, though. I mentioned it a couple of times in jest. (We finally ran through all the bleach she bought in 2007-8 about a year ago. That much bleach.)I didn’t realize there were twenty-nine more gallon bottles in the trunk of her car.
I do recall during a rather bad time (possibly around below) that ‘when she was gone’ (and it had the feeling of ‘soon’) I wouldn’t have to worry about the cats because ‘they would be coming with her.’ Miriam occasionally says odd things but that stood out. I’m more than aware of various forms of murder suicide and it was… discomforting. But… Miriam sometimes says odd things. (Used to. Far less these days for a variety of reasons. She’s gotten SANER with menopause which is… just as bizarre as everything else.)
Things around Mother’s Day got bad but they usually are. (Reasons I won’t relate.) Then at a certain point I got a call from my loving wife (GF at the time) saying she was coming home from work, early, and we needed to go to Parkridge. I wasn’t even sure what ‘Parkridge’ was.
Parkridge is one of the hospitals in the area but the specific one she mentioned was the psychiatric hospital.
I asked her on the drive over what was wrong. She didn’t want to talk about it. For various ‘privacy’ reasons I wasn’t well informed at the time. But I’ll fill in the blanks for you in ways they weren’t filled in for me.
She finally realized something was VERY wrong and checked herself in. Miriam had had a ‘homicidal psychotic break’ due to a side effect of Cymbalta. In most cases this is light and happens during the first couple of months or first month. NOW doctors are told to evaluate regularly in the first few months. THEN there was no warning. And NOBODY goes nine months. Except someone with ENORMOUS coping skills who has had to deal with madness that drove others insane on a daily basis her whole life.
(By the way, the teenager in the mall above? Guess what anti-depressant he was on? One guess and it rhymes with ‘Sin Malta’. He’d been on it a few months, prescribed right around the same time as Miriam.)
So my loving wife coped. She controlled. As she slowly went ever-loving NUTS.
The specific issue was she had ‘an uncontrollable desire to do harm to those who do harm to others.’ Notably, she’d built up a list of persons on the Megan’s (sexual predators) List and had developed very carefully constructed kill plans for each. She was tracking them and targeting them carefully. She has an extensive background in forensics and was probably going to get away with it.
Now, people may look at the targets and go ‘Well… Uhm… having a hard time with that being ‘bad’.’ But to be very clear, my wife had shifted, subtly and without warning, from sweet, Christian, Miriam to serial killer. And I do mean without ANY REAL WARNING.
I didn’t know exactly what was going on at the time. I was approached by one of the staff after a few hours sitting in a hard chair out front.
‘I understand you’re an author?’
‘Yes. What’s going on? Is Miriam okay?’ (We weren’t married at the time. Yes, I married her AFTER this, people.)
‘She’s being evaluated. But I understand you work from home? Are there frequently?’
‘Pretty much all the time.’
‘We can release her if she is under 24 hour monitoring…’
I had to sign to get her out pledging I would maintain ’24 hour monitoring.’ (Yes, I had to sign an actual release taking responsibility for the actions of an adult. They wouldn’t tell me FOR WHAT ACTIONS.)
Miriam covered the big stuff on the ride home. I didn’t get lots of detail til… years later. Details such as: Manson-like she had started to get the other patients, and even staff, to agree that her plan totally made sense in her first group therapy session. That was the real reason they were sending her home. They were afraid she was infecting the patients and staff and would form a ‘kill sexual predators’ cult.
(I guess they thought I was immune or something.)
Issues with this went on and on for months as it slowly leached from her system.
But let me relate it to Las Vegas.
Most people think of ‘homicidal break’ as someone suddenly ‘grabbing a letter opener and carving their way out of Cost Accountancy and into forensic history.’ (H/t: the late Sir Terry Pratchett.)
That’s not, generally, how it works. How much planning and preparation a person does depends upon how rapid the onset is (months in Miriam’s case) and how good they are at planning and preparation. (Both Miriam and Paddock were planners. He was an accountant and multi-millionaire.)
So look at the story above and break it down:
Relatively normal person, perhaps a bit odd, has minor changes in behavior that no-one in their close circle really notices.
He/she is a methodical person with an agenda. Other people who’ve done mass kills simply did not do it right. He/she is going to do it right. He knows they hold concerts by the Mandalay. That’s the perfect venue for the most kills.
Suddenly they’re a mass killer for no apparent reason.
That was what WAS going to happen with my wife.
So, Paddock doesn’t really surprise me. I’ve seen it before.
My guess is it will be doctors who figure it out. And if they do they’ll find he either was having a bad drug reaction (in which case nobody will admit nothin’ just as they’ve never admitted it was Cymbalta that caused the Westroads Mall Shooting) or neurological degeneration of some sort. (A tumor caused the University of Texas ‘Bell Tower’ shooting.) If pharmacological, the drug doesn’t even have to be a definitively ‘psychotropic’ drug. Many drugs these days from heart medicine to anti-malarials have some psychotropic effect.
(If this had anything to do with a drug reaction, any drug of any type, I hope the survivors sue the shit out of the drug manufacturer. Because most of these recent ‘crazy’ mass kills, going all the way back to the ‘postal worker’ epidemic (overdosage of Prozac) and Columbine (both kids were hopped to their gills on prescription anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs), have had SOMETHING to do with psychotropic drugs pushed by drug companies. Many of the murder/suicides of returning military personnel were closely linked to an anti-malarial. And nobody seems to be willing to speak truth to power on the subject. Just writing this post will probably get me sued.)
The only lesson to take from this is ‘keep an eye on your loved ones especially if they have ANY changes in prescription.’ Doesn’t matter if it’s heart medication. Keep an eye on their personality as well as health.
Homicidal break does not always happen quickly. Sometimes it creeps in like the fog on cats feet. It is only at the last that the cackle of madness is heard. By then it is too late.
May God rest all their souls and let them find peace.
Hunter draws the e-comic Vexxarr! Here’s today’s:
Gunman kills at least 37 in Tunisia:
A gunman disguised as a tourist opened fire at a Tunisian hotel on Friday with a weapon he had hidden in an umbrella, killing 37 people, including Britons, Germans and Belgians as they lounged at the beach and pool in a popular resort town.
Terrified tourists ran for cover after the gunfire and an explosion erupted at the Imperial Marhaba in Sousse, 140 km (90 miles) south of the capital Tunis, before police shot the gunman dead, witnesses and security officials said.
“This was always a safe place but today was horror,” said an Irish tourist who gave only his first name, Anthony. “He started on the beach and went to the lobby, killing in cold blood.”
—
Rafik Chelli, a senior interior ministry official, said the gunman killed was unknown to authorities and not on any watchlist of potential jihadists. A security source named him as Saifeddine Rezgui, a 23-year-old electrical engineering student.
After pulling out a weapon hidden inside an umbrella, the assailant strolled through the hotel grounds, opening fire at the pool and beach, reloading his weapon several times and tossing an explosive, witnesses said.
A security source said another bomb was found on his body, which lay with a Kalashnikov assault rifle where he was shot.
Local radio said police captured a second gunman, but officials did not immediately confirm the arrest or his role in the attack.
“It was just one attacker,” said a hotel worker at the site. “He was a young guy dressed in shorts like he was a tourist himself.”
Yet according to GunPolicy.org, Tunisia has “common sense” gun regulations that gun ban er, control, ah safety advocates want implemented here to stop such incidents:
1. In Tunisia, the right to private gun ownership is not guaranteed by law
2. In Tunisia, civilian possession of automatic weapons is regulated by law
3. In Tunisia, private possession of handguns (pistols and revolvers) is permitted under license
4. In Tunisia, civilian possession of rifles and shotguns is regulated by law
5. In Tunisia, only licensed gun owners may lawfully acquire, possess or transfer a firearm or ammunition
6. Applicants for a gun owner’s licence in Tunisia are required to establish a genuine reason to possess a firearm, for example hunting, target shooting, collection, personal protection, security
7. The minimum age for gun ownership in Tunisia is 20 years
8. An applicant for a firearm license in Tunisia must pass a background check which considers criminal and mental records
9. In Tunisia, the law requires that a record of the acquisition, possession and transfer of each privately held firearm be retained in an official register
10. In Tunisia, State agencies are required to maintain records of the storage and movement of all firearms and ammunition under their control
And yet with all of these restrictions, one young man was able to murder at least 37 people.
But we’re told this only happens here in the U.S., and it’s because of our lax gun laws the Confederate Battle Flag.
Otherwise somebody might have gotten hurt!
According to the BBC:
Mass stabbings are not uncommon in China, but none have been recently reported on this scale.
I’m sure terrorism will be ruled out shortly….
Ice cream machine is still on the fritz. Please read what I wish I’d written on the most recent Colorado school shooting.
Rampage shootings end one of two ways – when the shooter decides he’s finished, or a good guy with a gun shows up to force that decision. The Arapahoe shooting lasted 80 seconds, because a good guy with a gun showed up. The shooter was armed not only with a shotgun, but with molotov cocktails. You’ll never hear it in the media, but more people have died at the hands of arsonists than rampage shooters. He tossed one firebomb. He never got to use the others.
Aaron Alexis.
See? The AR-15 is the preferred weapon for “legally hunting humans.” “For sport,” you understand.
The shooter just has to be sprinkled with the magic fairy dust of a .gov paycheck.