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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, @04:57PM (3 children)
Somehow, I'm not feeling any safer with all the guns in our communities. I guess YMMV.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @06:23PM (1 child)
Perhaps you should take responsibility for your own safety? Maybe go buy one and take a class on how to store, practise, and use it safely?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday November 06 2017, @08:18PM
You call buying more guns "taking responsibility"??
Do you know how many people are accidentally injured or killed by their own firearms? Like, that Idaho mother who was killed by her own gun when her toddler reached into her purse and accidentally fired it? How about the gun instructor who was accidentally killed by a 9 year old girl who couldn't handle the recoil from the automatic weapon he was trying to teach her to use? Yeah, a gun instructor, someone who ought to know better than that, if he wasn't such a gun nut that he thought children should be taught the use of such weapons. That's like putting a kid who's hasn't driven anything beyond a tricycle behind the wheel of a 18 wheeler.
If you want the world to be a safer place, you keep dangerous tools out of easy reach. And you tone it down. There is no need to murder someone when disabling them is enough to stop a problem. Nor are guns much use for many scenarios. No gun at that Las Vegas concert could have shot back at the mass murderer. Would've needed a sniper rifle just to get bullets anywhere near the murderer. What if a car goes out of control and heads for a crowd of people? For all you know, the car could be out of control because the driver just had a heart attack and died. Or it could be a mechanical problem. Obviously in those cases, shooting the driver will do nothing to stop the car. Shooting the car is very unlikely to stop it, even if you do manage to hit the tires. If you're especially unlucky, you could make things worse, say by hitting the gas tank and starting a fire. Or, suppose a terrorist plants a bomb hours beforehand? There's no one around to shoot when that bomb goes off. Or, suppose two people are having a heated argument that looks like it's about to get physical. Do you pull out your gun, and what? Threaten to shoot both of them? Tell them to back away slowly? By pulling the gun, you've make the situation much more dangerous. If the police show up about then, they might shoot you first because you're the one waving a gun around. What guns are great at is the cowardly, lethal surprise attack. None of these murderers offered a duel. No take ten paces, turn and shoot kind of stuff. No, they quietly got close, then, surprise! That's not a defensive weapon, that's the perfect tool to commit an impulsive murder. Without guns, it's a whole lot harder for an attacker to do serious damage to lots of people.
I rely on the society and law and order to deter murders. Yeah, anyone can be murdered in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses, but the murderer is going to have an impossible time getting away with it. If they were hell bent on murder-suicide, nothing, not guns nor the law, was going to stop it anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @06:33PM
I didn't either, so I left the community.
Now I live in a very rural area of Canada. There's a (usually loaded) gun in the backseat of nearly every (usually unlocked) pickup or other vehicle. ...and nobody is dropping dead of bullet-related injuries.
People are the problem, sure, but the population density, along with the socioeconomic factors of those people has got to be a huge contributing factor. There are simply too many of us, shoved in too small a space. Even small cities aren't fit to live in.
Doing what I did isn't an option for everyone. It won't be too many more years before it's not an option for anyone. A world like The Caves of Steel [wikipedia.org] is not a world I'm interested in living in.
I don't have an answer to the problem, but I can recognize that it's there.