Good thing he didn’t use a gun, isn’t it…


Random Throat Slashing on Colorado Campus
Alleged Attacker Mentally Ill, Worked on Campus; Freshman Victim Expected to Recover

By DAVID SCHOETZ
Aug. 28, 2007

The brazen throat slashing of an incoming freshman Monday shook the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus on the first day of school.

Micheal George Knorps, 17, was leaving the university’s student center around 9:30 a.m. Monday just days after arriving on campus.

At the same time, according to police and university officials, Kenton Drew Astin, a 39-year-old former campus employee with a history of mental illness, parked across the street from the building, exited his vehicle, began shouting incoherently and attacked Knorps.

The suspect grabbed Knorps from behind and sliced his throat, according to a release issued by the University of Colorado’s Boulder. The injured student freed himself as officers from the Boulder Police Department and Boulder County Sheriff’s Office responded, demanding that Astin drop his weapon.

Instead, he turned the weapon on himself. “The suspect began to stab himself with the knife and officers deployed a Taser to disable the suspect and then took him into custody,” the release reads.

Both men were transported to a local hospital. Knorps, of Winnetka, Ill., underwent surgery Monday to repair a neck wound and is expected to make a full recovery, according to University Chancellor G.P. “Bud” Peterson, who has been in communication with Knorps’ family. Astin remains in the hospital with serious injuries.

Astin allegedly was carrying a backpack at the time, but early reports suggesting he was carrying bomb-making materials turned out to be false.

The attack in Boulder happened less than five months after 32 students and faculty were killed at Virginia Tech by Seung-Hui Cho and just a week after the student body returned to Blacksburg, Va., for the first time since the massacre.

A Virginia Tech panel investigating the rampage last week recommended a series of security reforms in its internal report that included closer monitoring of mentally troubled students and improving campuswide communications during security incidents.

In the Boulder attack, the university sent out a text message at 10:20 a.m. to approximately 1,300 students, parents, faculty and staff enrolled in a service activated on the campus less than a week ago.

University administrators have urged members of the community to sign up for the text messages as a security precaution. After the killings at Virginia Tech, college campuses across the country established such messaging programs.

University of Colorado officials released as much information as possible to the public as details about the suspect emerged.

Late Monday, the university announced that Astin had worked without incident for the university as a temporary employee from October 2006 until April 2007. He was a cashier at the grill inside the building near where the stabbing occurred.

Astin had a criminal record and a history of mental illness. In 2001, according to the university, he was charged with larceny, assault and criminal intent to commit first-degree homicide. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was sent to the state mental hospital in Pueblo, Colo. For the last two years, he worked under a Boulder-based release program, which referred him to the university for his campus job.

Peterson, the university chancellor, immediately ordered criminal background checks for all new employees, permanent or temporary, as well as checks of existing employees.

The university also suspended its relationship with the program that had referred Astin, as well as other similar agencies, and placed seven current campus employees referred from the program on suspension while conducting further background checks.

“All campus resources have been called into action to respond to this random incident and to ensure the safety of our students and everyone on campus,” Peterson said. “We are relieved that the student was not more seriously injured.”

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Dial 911 and Die!

July 30, 2007 on 4:11 pm | In 911, victim defenselessness | No Comments

Woman shot dead in middle of 911 call
By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Sunday, July 29, 2007

BOYNTON BEACH — A woman was shot to death in front of her mother Saturday night, apparently while on the phone with 911 dispatchers.

Mittie Marie Allen, 49, was on the phone in the bedroom at her mother’s home on 11th Avenue, according to Boynton Beach police. Dispatchers said they heard a man in the background ask Allen whether she had called police at 6:46 p.m. The man, who police say was her boyfriend, Anthony H. Williams, then shot her at least once in the head.

Allen rolled forward, grabbing onto the shirt of her mother, Odessa Cox, pleading for help. Cox ran into the street, where a witness saw her and called 911 at 6:50 p.m. Six minutes later, the SWAT team arrived at the house.

SWAT members entered the house at 8 p.m., but Williams was not inside. Police believe the 52-year-old lives in West Palm Beach and were looking for him Saturday night.

Williams has been to prison five times since 1977, according to Department of Corrections records, for crimes including cocaine possession, robbery, aggravated battery and grand theft. He was released most recently in August 2005.

Police ask anyone who knows Williams or where he may be to call Boynton Beach police at 561 (742-6100) or Crime Stoppers at (800) 458-TIPS (8477).

Found at The War on Guns.

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Senior Couple Saved by Gun


Cape Coral, Florida

From the Bonita Daily News of May 29, 2007

Cape Coral couple tries to cope after attack at their home

Jacob Seckler keeps a gun in his pocket when he mows the lawn. He keeps a gun in his pillowcase when he tries to sleep, but the shadows dancing across the bedroom walls keep him awake.

“I’m strictly against guns. I never wanted them in the house,” said Seckler. “Now I wouldn’t be in the house without a gun.”

Seckler’s stance on guns changed the morning of May 16. He was mowing his lawn when he turned around and saw two 20-year-old men standing behind him. Seckler said one of the men was pointing a gun at his head.

After Seckler, 50, raised his hands to the sky, the two men pushed him past the garage toward the front door of his home in northeast Cape Coral. They held him at gunpoint and said they were getting into his house no matter what.

A struggle ensued at the front door. Seckler refused to let the men inside and they beat him over the head with the pistol and their elbows and fists. One of the men bit Seckler’s back. Seckler’s fiancée, Elizabeth Kachnic, 37, said she heard screaming and the door slam repeatedly.

“I don’t know what happened to me,” said Seckler. “I was so scared. I’m not crazy like that, but I knew I had to do something.”

The gun was pressed against Seckler’s temple. He said he pushed the assailant’s hand down and the gun fell to the ground. Seckler said he screamed for Kachnic to call 911 as he and the two men scrambled for the weapon.

“I got the gun. I just turned around and shot,” said Seckler. “If they did not come here with a gun, they would be alive. It’s their fault.”

He fired every bullet in the clip. One of the men, John Patrick Moore Jr., was hit as he sprinted across Seckler’s driveway. He stumbled to the edge of the street and died.

Police say Moore’s accomplice, Damion Jordan Shearod, fled when they lost control of the gun. Seckler said Shearod was hiding in the garage or the side of his home and appeared after the gunfire ceased and ran to a car parked in the street outside Seckler’s residence.

Police say Moore’s 19-year-old girlfriend, Jazzmyne Carrol-Love, was waiting behind the wheel and the two sped away.

Seckler had just killed a man. He hadn’t held or fired a gun since he was 18 years old and serving in the German Army. Even then, he was only aiming at practice targets.

“I was crying, screaming and hurting,” said Seckler, a large man who became tearful while recounting the shooting. “If they would have gotten in they would have killed us both. Everybody says I did the right thing, but it feels so bad. I killed another person.”

(Much More)

Found at Civilian Gun Self Defense Blog

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The Merced, CA Pitchfork Murders


Presented without comment…

Deaths in Merced
The Mary Carpenter Letter


Mary Carpenter in her own words.
Part 1

Part 2

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Why would anyone want to carry a gun inside a church?


Several Christian churches these days seek to restrict CCW inside their walls. After all, churches are places of sanctuary, and of peace and devotion. Why would anyone want or need to carry a concealed weapon inside a church?

I can come up with at least two reasons off the top of my head. Search the internet and I bet you’ll find several more.

Sex Attack Inside Church Captured On Videotape
May 17, 2007 11:38 am US/Mountain

“(CBS) NEW YORK CITY - It’s supposed to be a sanctuary, but instead a New York church became perhaps the most unexpected place for a sex attack.

Middletown, N.Y. police are looking for a man who sexually assaulted a woman inside a local church — in an act that was captured on surveillance video.

The attack happened just after midnight on Wednesday. The victim, a female volunteer at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Middletown, was volunteering during perpetual adoration when the church is kept open for paying respect over the Eucharist.”

…clicky…

Church Fire Was Set to Kill, Police Say
SALEM, Ore., Oct. 28, 2006

“(AP) A man accused of sloshing fuel on pews and parishioners during a church service and starting fires intended to kill everyone in the building, investigators say.

Kam Shing Chan is charged with attempted aggravated murder, attempted assault, arson and reckless burning. A judge denied bail Friday, saying Chan would be a danger to the community.

Witnesses said Chan burst into the Peoples Church on Wednesday ranting about “the blood,” sloshed fuel around and started fires. Two women were burned when their clothing caught fire. Members of the congregation caught him.”

…clicky…

Even Jesus advocated armed self-defense. When preparing his disciples to go into the world and spread the gospel, he specifically instructed them to buy a short sword for defense against wild animals and robbers.

“Luke 22:36 (New International Version)

He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.“

Any questions?

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Come again?


Does he seriously think we’re stupid?

“CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) — A police officer pleaded not guilty Wednesday to beating a female bartender, and to threatening to arrest bar employees in a failed attempt to suppress a video of the attack that has been viewed around the world.

In a brief hearing, Anthony Abbate’s attorney entered not guilty pleas to all 15 felony counts of aggravated battery, official misconduct, intimidation, conspiracy and communicating with a witness.

“He’s pleading not guilty because he is not guilty,” Peter Hickey said after the hearing. “And we expect at the end, the conclusion of the trial, that that’s what the outcome will be.”

…clicky…

For those of you with short attention spans, here’s the video of him not misbehaving.

…and these are the very same people the Brady Bunch would have us believe are the only ones who should have guns?

Yeah right…tell me another one Sarah!

-Yuri

Also found on The War on Guns.

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One of the reasons I carry a Gun


The world, is not a safe place. Period. Consider the following excerpt:

“When they came back outside, Watson says he was confronted by Fennessee, who he believes was watching the house. The suspect reportedly accused him of having relations with his child’s mother.

“Let me put my babies in the car,” Watson said he told the man, before denying the claims.

When Watson turned toward his vehicle, he says Fennessee shot him in the back and he went down. It was then that he says Fennessee stood over him with the gun pointed at his head.

“Don’t kill me in front of my babies,” Watson said he pleaded with Fennessee.

Instead, he said the suspect yelled an obscenity and shot him again and again, in the head, back and chest.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said. “I could hear my 3-year-old screaming, ‘He shooting my daddy! My daddy dead!’ “

Click here to read the whole article.

Thanks to Xavier Thoughts.

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OMG! Nobody panic now!


The War on Guns: Prosecute This Criminal Now!:

“Prosecute This Criminal Now!

The man was walking with a beagle along Flint Hill Road in Bedford County, carrying a bag of dog food and an unloaded .22-caliber rifle, when he stopped and sat in a ditch near school property, authorities said Monday.

If they determine he set one foot on school property, I know at least one guy who wants to see him prosecuted to the full extent of the law:

[W]e believe in absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America’s schools, period … with the rare exception of law enforcement officers or trained security personnel.

Isn’t that right, Wayne?”

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Convicted School (murderer) Shooter Loves Gun Control


(Yeah, I wonder why… -Yuri)

Fifteen years ago, Wayne Lo went on a killing spree at his Massachusetts campus. Here’s his take on Virginia Tech.

By Samantha Henig
Newsweek
Updated: 2:00 p.m. PT May 2, 2007
May 2, 2007 - Before Virginia Tech, before Columbine, there was Simon’s Rock.

Late on the evening of Dec. 14, 1992, Wayne Lo, an 18-year-old student at Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Mass., approached a security-guard shack on the campus and began shooting, as he says now, “at anything that moved.” Lo fired at least nine rounds during the following 20 minutes, killing another student and a Spanish professor and wounding four others.

A gifted violinist who had moved with his family from Taiwan to Billings, Mont., at age 12, Lo had bought his weapon, an SKS carbine rifle, that very afternoon at a sporting-goods store in nearby Pittsfield, Mass. His Montana driver’s license was the only documentation the purchase required. The cab driver who took him to the store would later describe Lo to the press as “a real gentleman.” That same morning he had received a package containing 200 rounds of ammunition, purchased the previous day from a mail-order company using his mother’s credit card.

Shortly after the shooting, Lo surrendered to police. When he appeared in court the next day, he was wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words SICK OF IT ALL, the name of a rock band he liked. His lawyer would later use an insanity defense, but Lo never testified and has subsequently said he doesn’t believe he was insane. On Feb. 4, 1994, Lo was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

This week, almost 15 years since that murderous night and two weeks after an even bloodier morning at Virginia Tech, Lo met with NEWSWEEK’s Samantha Henig in a conference room at MCI-Norfolk, the Massachusetts medium-security prison. Wearing a black T shirt tucked into the elastic waistband of his gray pants, Lo looked more like a young professional on casual Friday than a campus killer. He spoke candidly about his murderous tear at Simon’s Rock and shared his insights into the Virginia Tech shooting, which he said he had been following closely so that he could be ready with his opinion “if anybody wants to listen.” Yet his tone was oddly similar to that of most people when confronted by the tragedy—bewilderment at how such a thing could happen.

NEWSWEEK: What was your reaction when you heard about the Virginia Tech shooting?
Wayne Lo: When they said it was a perpetrator who was Asian, that really shocked me. The stereotype is that Asians don’t do these things. The Secret Service came and interviewed me for a report on school shooters that they put out in 2002, and even they said Asians don’t really do this.

Did you relate to Seung-Hui Cho because you’re both Asian?
At first I thought it was just a coincidence, but as more details came out, there were just too many eerie similarities to me. He was an immigrant, like myself. The events leading up to the shooting, the warning signs he gave out really reminded me of what happened at Simon’s Rock. They said he had mental-health issues. I don’t really think I had mental-health issues, but I did give out those warning signs. He harassed women, and I also had an incident where I was accused of stalking a female classmate. He went and purchased a gun at a store 40 minutes out of town; so did I. He wrote papers that got people’s attention; I did that, too.

What was the paper that you wrote?
It was for my sophomore English class. The assignment was to come up with a 10-step program for anything, so being the smart ass that I am, I wrote a paper on how to eliminate AIDS, and at the end it was calling for the extermination of all people with AIDS—you know, tongue-in-cheek satire. But that’s not how the class interpreted it.

Do you think that Cho’s writings should have been more of a red flag than they were?
It’s ludicrous that they didn’t stop this guy with all the warning signs. I mean, come on, I did this 15 years ago. I was one of the first school shooters. The question is, how don’t we learn from it? They’ve done studies; they know the typical warning signs now. How could they not see this coming?

What should be done when teachers or parents spot these warning signs?
Drastic measures should be taken. You should kick the kid out of school.

But did either of you really do anything that warranted kicking you out?
No. I certainly didn’t. But for him, in 2007, with all these precedents, there should be different standards.

Do you believe that stricter gun control would help prevent such tragedies?
The people who do these things are people who don’t want contact. They wouldn’t be capable of going out there and stabbing people to death. But there’s such a disconnect when you’re using a gun. You don’t even feel like you’re killing anybody. The fact that I was able to buy a rifle in 15 minutes, that’s absurd. I was 18. I couldn’t have rented a car to drive home from school, yet I could purchase a rifle.

You were from Montana, and a member of the NRA. Had guns and hunting been a part of your life?
That night was the first time I fired a gun. Why should a person who has never touched a gun be able to buy one and the first time he fires it, be able to kill people? You wouldn’t be able to drive a car without a license.

What sort of gun control do you propose, then?
Ideally, guns should be eliminated, but I know that won’t happen. There should be stricter checks. Obviously a waiting period would be great. Personally, I only had five days left of school before winter break: school got out on Friday, and I did that on a Monday. If I had a two-week waiting period for the gun, I wouldn’t have done it.

You’ve talked about “warning signs.” One of the common ones is social isolation. Is that something you experienced?
Most people at Simon’s Rock choose to leave high school because they felt isolated there. [Simon’s Rock College is designed for gifted students who want to pursue a college degree without having completed high school.] So the outcasts basically become the majority. For me, it wasn’t that I felt isolated at high school—I just wanted to get away from my parents. I was basically your typical normal kid. I wasn’t an outcast in high school. I was the kind of kid who made them feel isolated.

So did that make you an outsider there?
They didn’t like me. I felt defensive toward them, like, “If you don’t like me then I don’t like you.” But I did have a close group of friends at Simon’s Rock.

You also mentioned relating to Cho because you are both immigrants.
The issue of mental health and stuff like that is not talked about in the Asian community, even within families. It puts a lot of pressure on you as a young person. As it builds up and builds up and builds up, [Cho] acted out just like I did. Asians tend to be passive aggressive: we don’t get in fights, so it doesn’t come out in little bits; it all comes out in one big act.

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What the Gun Banners REALLY want!


The disarming of America
-by Dan Simpson

LAST week’s tragedy at Virginia Tech in which a mentally disturbed person gunned down 32 of America’s finest - intelligent young people with futures ahead of them - once again puts the phenomenon of an armed society into focus for Americans.

The likely underestimate of how many guns are wandering around America runs at 240 million in a population of about 300 million. What was clear last week is that at least two of those guns were in the wrong hands.

When people talk about doing something about guns in America, it often comes down to this: “How could America disarm even if it wanted to? There are so many guns out there.”

Because I have little or no power to influence the “if” part of the issue, I will stick with the “how.” And before anyone starts to hyperventilate and think I’m a crazed liberal zealot wanting to take his gun from his cold, dead hands, let me share my experience of guns.

As a child I played cowboys and Indians with cap guns. I had a Daisy Red Ryder B-B gun. My father had in his bedside table drawer an old pistol which I examined surreptitiously from time to time. When assigned to the American embassy in Beirut during the war in Lebanon, I sometimes carried a .357 Magnum, which I could fire accurately. I also learned to handle and fire a variety of weapons while I was there, including Uzis and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

I don’t have any problem with hunting, although blowing away animals with high-powered weapons seems a pointless, no-contest affair to me. I suppose I would enjoy the fellowship of the experience with other friends who are hunters.

Now, how would one disarm the American population? First of all, federal or state laws would need to make it a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and one year in prison per weapon to possess a firearm. The population would then be given three months to turn in their guns, without penalty.

Hunters would be able to deposit their hunting weapons in a centrally located arsenal, heavily guarded, from which they would be able to withdraw them each hunting season upon presentation of a valid hunting license. The weapons would be required to be redeposited at the end of the season on pain of arrest. When hunters submit a request for their weapons, federal, state, and local checks would be made to establish that they had not been convicted of a violent crime since the last time they withdrew their weapons. In the process, arsenal staff would take at least a quick look at each hunter to try to affirm that he was not obviously unhinged.

It would have to be the case that the term “hunting weapon” did not include anti-tank ordnance, assault weapons, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, or other weapons of war.

All antique or interesting non-hunting weapons would be required to be delivered to a local or regional museum, also to be under strict 24-hour-a-day guard. There they would be on display, if the owner desired, as part of an interesting exhibit of antique American weapons, as family heirlooms from proud wars past or as part of collections.

Gun dealers could continue their work, selling hunting and antique firearms. They would be required to maintain very tight inventories. Any gun sold would be delivered immediately by the dealer to the nearest arsenal or the museum, not to the buyer.

The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.

Clearly, since such sweeps could not take place all across the country at the same time. But fairly quickly there would begin to be gun-swept, gun-free areas where there should be no firearms. If there were, those carrying them would be subject to quick confiscation and prosecution. On the streets it would be a question of stop-and-search of anyone, even grandma with her walker, with the same penalties for “carrying.”

The “gun lobby” would no doubt try to head off in the courts the new laws and the actions to implement them. They might succeed in doing so, although the new approach would undoubtedly prompt new, vigorous debate on the subject. In any case, some jurisdictions would undoubtedly take the opportunity of the chronic slowness of the courts to begin implementing the new approach.

America’s long land and sea borders present another kind of problem. It is easy to imagine mega-gun dealerships installing themselves in Mexico, and perhaps in more remote parts of the Canadian border area, to funnel guns into the United States. That would constitute a problem for American immigration authorities and the U.S. Coast Guard, but not an insurmountable one over time.

There could conceivably also be a rash of score-settling during hunting season as people drew out their weapons, ostensibly to shoot squirrels and deer, and began eliminating various of their perceived two-footed enemies. Given the general nature of hunting weapons and the fact that such killings are frequently time-sensitive, that seems a lesser sort of issue.

That is my idea of how it could be done. The desire to do so on the part of the American people is another question altogether, but one clearly raised again by the Blacksburg tragedy.

Dan Simpson, a retired diplomat, is a member of the editorial boards of The Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Click here to read David Codrea’s (The War on Guns) take on this.

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