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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @05:36AM (2 children)
Yeah, like we did with drugs! I mean we some brutal drug laws and have even sentenced nonviolent offenders to life imprisonment, have spent trillions of dollars tacking them down, and also have the largest per capita imprisonment rate in the entire world almost entirely due to nonviolent drug offense. All that's kind of bad.. but the drugs are gone, right.. right? ....
Yeah, drugs aren't guns. It's harder to ban a weed than a weapon (though many of the drugs consumed today require extensive expertise and chemical knowledge to prepare) but ultimately you're unlikely to ever be able to ban guns in the US. There are already more guns than people. If you somehow magically managed to confiscate all of them they still regularly funnel in from our borders. And even if you managed to stop that it's increasingly simple to literally build a gun. And then even if you decide to ban all 3D printing, all access to knowledge of metalsmithing, and so on (because these are totally reasonable things to do...) then people would just jump in a car and kill people that way. Or blow them up with explosives. Or poison them. Or any of a million different possibilities.
Ultimately the increase in apparent violence in the US is not being driven by anything other than a breakdown of mental health and increasing radicalism on all sides. The one thing that's true is that the main way a major act of violence is ended is a 'good guy' putting a bullet in the 'bad guy.' If we had even harsher gun control it's entirely possible this rampage could have been much much worse. He had ballistic armor and was carrying out this massacre in a town of 600. Had it not been for the armed civilian, it's entirely possible he could have entirely wiped out every individual in that church and then continued outward before special forces finally arrived.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday November 06 2017, @06:33AM
If total gun control on the federal level (possibly by Constitutional Amendment) passed Congress, you would see another 50 million guns sold before it became law.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @06:22PM
Yeah the USA is so serious about the drug war that nobody went to jail for this: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213 [rollingstone.com]
Or this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs [theguardian.com]
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/35914759/ns/business-world_business/t/wachovia-settle-drug-money-laundering-case/ [nbcnews.com]
They're not serious about it. They want the prices up, they want their cut AND they want their leverage.