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Federal authorities are responding to a shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a small community southeast of San Antonio.
In a press conference Sunday night, an official from the Texas Department of Public Safety described the scene: Around 11:20 am, the suspect, dressed in black, approached the church and began firing an assault rifle. He then entered the church and continued firing.
Gov. Greg Abbott confirmed that at least 26 people were killed. A Texas Department of Public Safety official said the ages of the victims ranged from 5 to 72 years old. The AP reports that the pastor's 14-year-old daughter is among the dead.
The Department of Public Safety confirmed to NPR that at least 20 others were wounded. A DPS official said in the press conference that the gunman was confronted by an armed civilian outside of the church.
The shooter, who was found dead in neighboring Guadalupe County, has been identified as Devin Kelley, 26, a former Air Force member.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday November 06 2017, @03:32AM (18 children)
Unfortunately, this is correct. Today was the New York marathon. A guy driving a garbage truck full speed into a crowd of spectators could easily have killed this many people or more, like a guy killed a bunch of people on the west side bike path mere days ago. So what are they going to do, ban all trucks also?
A person intent on killing a lot of people will find a way. Could even be by flying a plane into the side of a building. Could be by placing explosives inside a pressure cooker.
Getting rid of guns is an appealing idea because it's simple. But it won't work.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @04:25AM
If they ban pressure cookers I am going to give someone botulism.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @04:27AM (8 children)
> ban trucks
In a way yes. Vehicular terrorism has only made it clearer that our cities need to be redesigned to serve and protect people, and not sacrifice more lives for slightly faster transport. The vehicle deaths from deliberate malicious acts (and terrorism in general) is dwarfed by the number of deaths we accept simple as part of our way of life. What should be the acceptable death toll? How are we so casual about so many deaths?
For starters traffic calming measures will force drivers to go slower and do more to block them from certain areas and larger vehicle will very likely be banned except at special deliver times. Vehicle licensing and vehicle hire will likely come under greater scrutiny too.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday November 06 2017, @04:37AM (1 child)
I would dearly love to see all that happen, but brother you gotta concede we're dreamers on that one. After, what, 100 years of indoctrination people are not going to give up fast moving traffic or their cars or home delivery because of vehicular attack. The sheer size of the infrastructure shift argues against it. It's not gonna happen in 4 lifetimes.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @07:06AM
Why would they change their way of life in the name of safety? This is just stupid, and the same kind of thing supporters of nonsense like the Patriot Act say.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Monday November 06 2017, @04:54AM (5 children)
This wouldn't have helped in the situation where the perpetrator legally acquired a moving truck/van, took it to an area where the vehicle was banned, and proceeded to run people over.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @06:10AM (4 children)
took it to an area where the vehicle was banned
Don't just ban them; make it impossible to get the large powered vehicle where only bicycles|pedestrians are allowed to be.
Bollards1 [archive.li]
Bollards [archive.li]
Bollard3 [godawn.com]
A nearby city uses that last thing in multiples at intersection corners.
They're concrete; 4 feet tall and 2 feet across.
There's about 2 feet of space between them.
When CalTrans guys are doing roadwork, between the traffic and the workspace they will set up a series of temporary concrete barriers that are 4 feet tall and 20 feet long.
This stuff is not rocket surgery.
The fact that cities have designated places as restricted areas and haven't actually done anything to assure that that is what happens speaks to crappy governments and citizens not holding the politicians' feet to the fire.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 06 2017, @06:36AM (2 children)
Crappy governments which might not have the resources to put in all those bollards, let us note.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @06:50AM (1 child)
Oh, wow! Of course, they are more expensive than the wall! Can't afford them, but can afford a permanent militarized police. And prisons, lots of them.
Some priorities...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 06 2017, @07:20AM
Funny how you don't realize how true those words are. There's no end to the places that will need bollards (and beefier bollards). And of course, when they don't work perfectly, then you'll need the permanent militarized police and prisons to deal with the anti-bollard terrorists.
Back at you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @06:33PM
I believe the correct term you are looking for is "brain science."
(Score: 2) by Snow on Monday November 06 2017, @04:31PM (5 children)
Will banning guns completely eliminate gun violence? No, but it would greatly reduce it.
The USA has nearly 10x the gun homicide rate when compared to Canada (and Canada doesn't have a gun ban, just restrictions):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Monday November 06 2017, @07:49PM (2 children)
I just pulled some numbers on this before reading your comment, I was curious about this too.
US / Canada / multipler
People: 323.1M / 36.29M / 8.9x
Firearm murders: 11k / 158 / 70x
Guns per 100 people: 101 / 30.8 / 3.28x
Total guns: 326M / 11,200 / 29.2x
Guns per murder: 29,700 / 70,700 / .419x
So there you have it. Canadians have a little more than twice as many guns per firearm-related murder. Maybe banning guns more will help, but it seems like dealing with societal and cultural issues will help more.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snow on Monday November 06 2017, @08:21PM (1 child)
Definitely. I'm not a gun owner, so I could be wrong, but I think that most Canadians look at a gun as a tool, where a lot of Americans look at them as penis extenders.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Crash on Monday November 06 2017, @11:04PM
Most guns in Atlantic Canada are hunting rifles. People don't walk around with them; they are rarely even loaded. In 35 years the only handguns I've seen (in person) were in use by the RCMP or City Police.
I've never even heard anyone in Canada even talk about "Canadian gun rights", beyond a brief kerfuffle (decades ago) when registration of all owned firearms was required - which was deemed to be more of a govt tax overreach than anything else.
The firearm phenomenon in the US is beyond most any other first world countries' reckoning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @10:40PM
>"The USA has nearly 10x the gun homicide rate when compared to Canada"
But what is the comparative rate of homicidal psychopaths? You can't draw a conclusion without that information.
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Tuesday November 07 2017, @12:28AM
Unless you think knife attacks or vehicular homicide are totally acceptable, you should probably be looking at OVERALL homicide rate. Less guns = less gun violence is practically a tautology. If it was your only goal you could probably reduce gun deaths greatly by freely distributing high explosives, but most people wouldn't consider that to be an improvement...
I'll also note that Canada also has things like universal healthcare and better social services in general, which tend to make people less desperate. Better mental health and less desperation means less suicide (which are the VAST majority of gun deaths) and also less crime in general. Maybe try comparing to China next time, in this context they *might* be more similar politically... :)
More seriously though...compare these three maps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country [wikipedia.org]
https://assets.weforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1511B11-global-inequality-work-map-GINI.png [weforum.org]
None of them line up perfectly...but it looks to me like the GINI index is a better predictor of overall violent crime than rates of gun ownership.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by evilcam on Tuesday November 07 2017, @02:26AM
Except literally everywhere else it's been tried, where it did work.
You Yanks have had about 75% of a 9/11 so far this year in mass shootings - that's just the mass shootings (you have about 1 a day, btw). Include everyone else that was shot and killed this year and you've had over 13,000.
Like I don't care if you don't want to change your laws, but stop pretending that there isn't a relationship between number of guns and number of people killed by guns because you just sound like a fool.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 07 2017, @04:23AM
Nothing will solve it altogether, but handguns are basically good for killing and intimidation, and intimidation doesn't really work (in the big picture.) Sure, some nut flew his Cessna into the IRS building in Tampa, I don't think he actually killed anyone besides himself. The IRA has been demonstrating urban bombing for decades, but they're usually pretty limited - Oklahoma city was impressive, but that level of commitment doesn't seem to repeat nearly as often.
And, besides, 26 at a whack makes national news, but handguns kill 26 people every 5.5 hours 24-7-365 in the USA. Intentional killing with bombs, planes, cars, etc. happens, but at a much lower rate.
🌻🌻 [google.com]