That’s the thing though... None of that describes anything new in this world. The only thing that truly separates the bullying from when I was little and today is that social media and connectivity is greater than ever and kids have no escape from school bullying anymore. The shit follows them home and into their bedrooms. And athletics tends to give the student athletes a sense of greater value in school and in groups, those guys and girls can be just awful. It was even shitty in marching band between different groups of students.
I lurk on some firearm and concealed carry forums, and no doubt in my mind they’re gonna go after this guy in the same way that New York racist attorney was doxed. The internet is a rabid beast, and all it takes to set it off now is one picture.
Related to the above, for all of the times a shooter apparently tries to bring bombs into play, I can't remember a single incident where they did it successfully. Are bombs that hard? The only successful bombings I can think of are ones where that was the perpetrator's sole focus (Boston Marathon, Atlanta Olympics, Oklahoma City, etc).
Fucker used a .38 special revolver and a pump shotgun. Let's see how the anti-gun crowd tries to spin this one. Yeah he made a bunch of molotov cocktails (when I told my wife she said "wait so he was drunk when he did this!!!"). Those are pretty hard to fuck up. I wonder why he didn't use them? There were also apparently some pressure cooker bombs, but if he was too stupid to make a molotov cocktail right then of course he couldn't get a pressure cooker to go boom.
It has happened: The 1927 Bombing That Remains America’s Deadliest School Massacre I'm curious about that too. No scary "Assault" rifle, no high capacity clips. A shotgun and a revolver. Do we need to outlaw those now too?
When I first started thinking about carrying on me, I originally wanted a revolver. .357 to be exact. They're fool proof. They go bang every time. Of course the more research into it, and the more I realized that, if it ever came to it and I actually had to use it in a defensive scenario, the 5-6 shots I'd get most likely wouldn't be enough, and reloading a wheel gun is a MASSIVE pain in the ass, especially in a firefight where find motor skills are outta your system before the shit even hits your pants. Which is a long-winded way of saying: I'm curious how many shots he actually took with the pistol. I think the shotgun is a non-issue. The talking heads on the news and in politics don't even understand the difference between semi-autos and actual automatic rifles. I can only imagine that their heads will explode trying to wrap their mind around the concept of a pump shotgun. Though I'd love to see a video of Diane Feinstein trying to operate one.
Not really. I bought a .357 S&W Highway Patrol model years ago. I bought it from a dealer and the serial numbers were filed off. They still sold it to me. They should've never had the gun in the first place, but they did and filled out the paperwork on the gun, which is bullshit. (This was in the late 80's) I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with that fucking thing. I traded it to a friend, who then traded it to another friend and he couldn't hit anything with it either. He finally took it to a gunsmith who discovered the barrel was slightly warped. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how this kid caused so much carnage with a shotgun and a revolver. He shouldn't have been able to reload, both a revolver and a pump take quite a bit of time. All I can figure is he had the victims cornered and he was taking out multiple people with each shot from the shotgun and causing peripheral damage with each shot.
Ok maybe I should have qualified that by saying that revolvers are fool proof provided that they haven't been fucked with. You can re-load shotguns pretty quick, but it takes practice. For the last year, until I recently got my 308 AR 10, I was using my 870 with slugs and 00 Buck for hog hunting, and I used the ammo belt method in the video below and could top it off in a hurry when I needed to. But again, it took practice. Reloading revolvers is a different animal. It can be done VERY quickly -- watch the video, you'd be surprised -- but you need specialty equipment (speed loaders or moon clips) and, just like with quickly re-loading a shotgun, a metric shit ton of practice.
Just to throw this out there: I read an interesting comment from someone today who said their child was a bullying victim. They said their child had to go to counseling. The kid was called out of class and had to go see a psychologist because they were being bullied. The kid did nothing wrong, but was apparently seen as weird by their peers. The kids bullying the kid got to continue life as if nothing was wrong and they were in the right. Doesn't that seem a bit ass backwards? Perhaps the adults should look at the motivation behind the bully's actions instead of counseling the kid that's getting shit on?
I guess it depends on which anti-gun nuts you listen to. The hysterics will surely push for banning "assault shotguns" and "semi-automatic revolvers". The rest of them will carry on as normal and insist on fixing whatever flaws in the system let this psycho arm himself to begin with.
It's illegal for him to own a shotgun. It's illegal for him to own a pistol. It's illegal for him to have a gun at school I'm sure he broke a bunch of laws before he even pulled the trigger.. Somehow I doubt that passing another law would've prevented this. Both guns belonged to his father. I would suggest going after his father if he left the guns around unsecured that his asshole son could get his hands on and charging dad with 10 counts of murder. Wouldn't that be a good start?
I think it's a couple of factors: 1. If you fuck up practicing your marksmanship it means you're not hitting your target. If you fuck up practicing your bomb-building it means you likely go boom. Probably dissuades a lot of potential bomb-makers. 2. For the majority of these shooters a bomb doesn't give you the visceral reaction and power rush of shooting people. You plant a bomb and set it off, unless you're blowing yourself up too nobody knows you're the one doing it. I think it's really important for these sickos that the people they're killing know it's them doing the killing, and they get a feeling of power from that.
I guess my point is that there have been shooters that tried, but their bombs failed. This Santa Fe kid planted bombs but none of them were set off; the original plan at Columbine was to detonate bombs and shoot people as they fled, but the bombs failed to detonate; etc