Hialeah Mass Shooting Most Recent by a Concealed Handgun Permit Holder

[Judi Lynn]

June 11, 2010
12:04 PM

Hialeah Mass Shooting Most Recent by a Concealed Handgun Permit Holder

At Least 65 Innocent People Have Been Killed in Recent Mass Shootings Involving Concealed Handgun Permit Holders


WASHINGTON - June 11 - Gerardo Regalado, the 38-year-old man who shot seven women, killing four, earlier this week at a Hialeah, Florida, restaurant is at least the 16th person licensed to carry a concealed handgun reported to have committed a mass shooting (three victims or more) since May 2007 according to Violence Policy Center (VPC) research. The 15 prior mass shootings, two of which occurred in Florida, are detailed on Concealed Carry Killers (http://www.vpc.org/ccwkillers.htm), an on-line resource that tallies from news reports killings by concealed handgun permit holders. Not including this most recent shooting, the website reports that since May 2007 concealed handgun permit holders have killed a total of at least 166 people, including nine law enforcement officers.

According to news reports, Regalado, who killed himself after the shooting, had a concealed handgun permit--even though relatives described him as "pure evil" with a history of abusing women and having served "hard time" in a Cuban prison.

Prior to the Hialeah shooting, concealed handgun permit holders had claimed 61 innocent lives in 15 mass shootings since May 2007 (six of the shooters killed themselves, four have been convicted, and five cases are pending). Regalado's attack brings the total number of innocent victims reportedly killed by concealed handgun permit holders in mass shootings during this period to 65, including a 2009 attack at a Pennsylvania health club where, like Regalado, the shooter targeted women--killing three and wounding nine. The Hialeah shooting is the third known mass shooting in Florida by a concealed carry permit holder since September 2007. In November 2009, concealed handgun permit holder Paul Michael Merhige allegedly opened fire at his family's Thanksgiving dinner, shooting six relatives and killing four, including his 76-year-old aunt, his pregnant sister, and a six-year-old cousin. In May 2009, concealed handgun permit holder Guillermo Zarabozo was found guilty of the September 2007 murders with an accomplice of the four crew members of the charter boat Joe Cool and was sentenced to five consecutive life terms in prison plus an additional 85 years to be served consecutive to the life terms.

In response to this latest tragedy committed by a concealed handgun permit holder, VPC Legislative Director Kristen Rand states, “Concealed handgun permit holders don't prevent mass shootings, they commit them. How much blood must run in the streets before state legislators act to disarm these rampage shooters?"

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/06/11-1

[burnsei sensei]

1. If a person uses a concealed weapon

permit to facilitate criminal behavior, the penalty he pays should be more costly than the person who commits his crime without a gun permit.
Where these licenses shield crime, the crime should really sting when it's caught.

[louis-t]

2. Agreed.

[Straw Man]

16. Licenses?

"If a person uses a concealed weapon permit to facilitate criminal behavior, the penalty he pays should be more costly than the person who commits his crime without a gun permit.
Where these licenses shield crime, the crime should really sting when it's caught."

I see. And when drunken drivers commit vehicular manslaughter, would you make the punishment correspondingly harsher if the offender has a driver's license than if he/she doesn't?

[burnsei sensei]

20. What does a license or permit mean?

It means the recognition of a privilege given by the state, but it also confers certain responsibilities that were not there before.
To mis-use a license, permit etc. is to betray the public trust.
It adds a further dimension of criminality to the act that should be recognized in law.
Particularly where there is no death penalty.

[Straw Man]

30. So you DO believe it?

"To mis-use a license, permit etc. is to betray the public trust.
It adds a further dimension of criminality to the act that should be recognized in law."

I must ask again. Do you believe that licensed drivers should be punished more harshly for traffic infractions than unlicensed ones? That's analogous to what you describe for pistol permit holders. Current law takes the opposite tack: it adds the lack of a license/permit to the list of charges.

The betrayal of public trust by a licensee is generally punished by revocation of the license. Criminal acts committed by the licensee are separate issues, and are dealt with on their own merits, as they should be.

Unless, of course, you think that possession of the permit is in itself worthy of punishment. "Driver's license good, pistol permit bad." Is that an accurate description of your attitude?

[cowman]

18. This has got to be one of the most asinine statements yet.

[burnsei sensei]

21. Asses never explain themselves in rational terms.

They just assume everyone is thinking the same damn thing.

[cowman]

27. What difference

does it make if the criminal is a CHL holder or not?
Thats like saying that someone who is licensed to drive and kills someone should be punished more than someone who doesn't have a license.
Your analogy is the definition of an asinine statement

[burnsei sensei]

29. Wow.

My writing is the very definition of an asinine statement.
And poor Kristen is an idiot!
What a bad day this must have been for you.

[cowman]

35. Nope

good day for law abiding gun owners, bad day for Kristen because she once again showed herself to be a fucking idiot and bad day for you because you showed yourself to be a f***ing i***t

[burnsei sensei]

37. So who the hell is coming

to get your gun or guns?
If you think, in a blanket sense, that liberals favor draconian gun control measures, you are sorely mistaken.
There are many who are aware that armed force is the chief means of tyranny when it is restricted to the government and its darlings by law.
What the hell makes you think anyone is coming to nullify your permit and get your guns on the basis of this story?

[X_Digger]

40. Seen the democratic platform lately?

Psst.. it still has 'renew the federal assault weapons ban and make it permanent'.

[cowman]

42. WTF are you talking

about? I never said anyone was coming for my guns. What a J***ass statement, I said that stricter punishment for someone with a CHL as opposed to someone without a CHL is the most asinine statement yet.
Try to keep up.

[DonP]

3. Gee, Brady said it, so it must be true! - and they have never lied in a release before!

Thanks for posting GOP drafted screeds here on DU. You do know that the VPC is pretty much an all GOP run organizations right? Brady, Helmke, Hennigan et. al.

But I'm sure that is there was no CCW law that this individual would have stayed home and watched Oprah and it never would have crossed their mind to commit a violent crime.

That's why we have such a great track record here in the gun control paradise of Chicago. No gun crime ever, because citizens are not allowed to carry.

"Ignore Florida, come to sunny Englewood for your next family vacation. It's gun free."

Any time one of you proud (and smug) gun control advocates would like to explain how CCW facilitated this, or how repealing it (fat chance) would have changed the results. we're ready to listen.

We'll just ignore the record low crime reports by the FBI and DoJ in the meantime, since you obviously do.

[Euromutt]

31. Point of order: the VPC isn't the same outfit as the Brady Campaign

The Brady Campaign's leadership is all de facto Republican. I don't know about the political leanings of Josh Sugarmann and Kristin Rand (who, for all practical purposes, are the VPC), though the organization does receive money (half or more of its budget, IIRC) from the Joyce Foundation.

[iverglas]

45. just curious

How come your post has nothing to do with your header?

Weren't you meaning to demonstrate that what "Brady" said was a lie?

If not, what could your header possibly have meant??

Maybe I can help you here. You really meant to say: It's the truth, so that's what was reported.

[gorfle]

4. The claim is demonstrateably false.

In response to this latest tragedy committed by a concealed handgun permit holder, VPC Legislative Director Kristen Rand states, “Concealed handgun permit holders don't prevent mass shootings, they commit them. How much blood must run in the streets before state legislators act to disarm these rampage shooters?"

This claim is demonstrateably false.

http://site297.mysite4now.com/clrwebsite/Joomla1.5/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=138:kates201086&catid=20:firearmsinc&Itemid=20

The overwhelming majority of firearm murders - over 90% - is committed by people with extensive criminal histories, including, on average, 4 felonies.

These kinds of people - the majority of firearm murderers - can't even legally possess firearms, let alone obtain a CCW permit.

Does the rare CCW permit holder commit a firearm crime? Sure. But most don't. CCW permit holders have been shown to be many times, sometimes hundreds of times less likely to commit crimes than non-CCW permit holders.

[spin]

8. The shooter did have a criminal record ... in Cuba. ....

But he had a clean record in the U.S.

HIALEAH, Fla. (WSVN) -- The troubled past of a gunman who set out to kill women inside a South Florida restaurant is coming to light.

Family members of Gerardo Regalado's late wife painted a disturbing picture of him. They said he abused and terrorized women for years. The 38-year-old gunned down his wife, Liazan Molina, on Sunday at Yoyito restaurant, where she worked. Her relatives in Cuba said they feared this would happen.

Before the rampage, Regalado had a clean record in the United States. However, back in Cuba, Regalado spent hard time in prison. Nelson Molina Martinez said Regalado stuck a woman in a pig pen and burned another one's chest with an iron. "We all knew it, but his wife constantly defended him," he said during a phone conversation, in translation.

Molina's uncle went on to say that Regalado beat her repeatedly and forced her to eat paper once. He called Regalado "an animal."

Relatives said he was smuggled into the U.S., but his Cuban criminal record kept his half brother, former Yankees pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez from legally claiming him.

Yet, Regalado was a resident and did have a concealed weapons permit. He bought a gun and, police said, he used it to commit mass murders Sunday night.
http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/22001395301054

So the shooter did indeed fit the profile of a person who would commit a mass murder. It is a shame that Florida was unable to consider his criminal record in Cuba.

[gorfle]

15. I'm not so sure.

It is a shame that Florida was unable to consider his criminal record in Cuba.

I'm not so sure I want US rights suspended on the judicial opinions of other countries, leastwise Cuba.

No, we go with their record here in the US.

[spin]

19. I see your point...

unfortunately in this case, it would have stopped him from getting a concealed carry permit. More than likely he still would have committed the crime.

I would be hesitant to trust the Cuban legal system.

I have to give the VPC credit for mentioning the fact that he did have a prior record in Cuba.

According to news reports, Regalado, who killed himself after the shooting, had a concealed handgun permit--even though relatives described him as "pure evil" with a history of abusing women and having served "hard time" in a Cuban prison.
http://www.vpc.org/press/1006fl.htm

[TheWraith]

23. I think it's entirely valid to consider it, as long as human judgement is applied.

If we blindly ignore all criminal records from other countries, or even just ones we're not wild about, then you can have guys like this pick up weapons who should have been stopped by the background check.

On the other hand, if we accept all foreign criminal records, then you could be denying the rights of somebody who was arrested in their home country--say Iran or China--for protesting against the government, and other things that in this country they would be given a parade for.

When it comes to international criminal records, it requires careful personal attention by an actual human brain, rather than a rote rule.

[AtheistCrusader]

46. One domestic violence conviction would have stripped him of that permit.

'History of abusing women'.

Bummer he got away with that shit, if he'd been brought to justice on the earlier crimes, perhaps the shooting spree would never have occurred.

[spin]

5. There's more to this story ...

Shooter had violent past

HIALEAH, Fla. (WSVN) -- The troubled past of a gunman who set out to kill women inside a South Florida restaurant is coming to light.

Family members of Gerardo Regalado's late wife painted a disturbing picture of him. They said he abused and terrorized women for years. The 38-year-old gunned down his wife, Liazan Molina, on Sunday at Yoyito restaurant, where she worked. Her relatives in Cuba said they feared this would happen.

Before the rampage, Regalado had a clean record in the United States. However, back in Cuba, Regalado spent hard time in prison. Nelson Molina Martinez said Regalado stuck a woman in a pig pen and burned another one's chest with an iron. "We all knew it, but his wife constantly defended him," he said during a phone conversation, in translation.emphasis added

Molina's uncle went on to say that Regalado beat her repeatedly and forced her to eat paper once. He called Regalado "an animal."

Relatives said he was smuggled into the U.S., but his Cuban criminal record kept his half brother, former Yankees pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez from legally claiming him.

Yet, Regalado was a resident and did have a concealed weapons permit. He bought a gun and, police said, he used it to commit mass murders Sunday night.
http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/22001395301054/

[TheWraith]

6. Seems to me that if we didn't treat Cuba as a non-entity...

Then his criminal record there would have been relevant to our legal system, and he would not have passed a background check to get a weapon. Once again, taking human decision-making out of the policy realm bites us on the ass.

[spin]

7. Exactly! (n/t)

[Euromutt]

25. Not so much a "non-entity" as an exceptional case, but the effect is the same

Speaking as an immigrant, I can tell you that if I'd been convicted of multiple violent crimes in my country of origin, I would not have been allowed to immigrate to the United States. But because this fuckwad was from Cuba, regular immigration regulations get waived. Your last sentence is spot on.

[DissedByBush]

39. There's alway more when the VPC is involved

Their main job is lying in order to take away rights.

[Travis Coates]

9. The sheer numbers of permit holders

makes it inevitable that some of them are going to commit crimes W/ hand guns, I have no problem admitting that. What I don't understand is why I should be disarmed because of the actions of a minority.

One permit holder here in colorado (arguably) saved more innocent people than have been killed by permit holders ever when Jeanne Assam stopped Matthew Murray in the foyer of New Life Church.

Cho Seung Hui, took out half that number in one day at VA tech.

Criminals are going to get guns, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try to stop it no matter how stiff the penalty, criminals will get guns. Taking away the permit system won't change that,it will just hand control of the house to the repubs in a way that will make AWB94 a pleasant memory.

Clearing up typos

[Remmah2]

11. I feel so stereo typed by the VPC some days.

It's like saying my ethnic origins predispose me to certain types of behavior. One day gun owners will get their civil rights and be seen as equals.

[Travis Coates]

14. Call me Tinfoil Travis but

I simply can not assign a good motive to an organization who's sole purpose for existence is to strip me of my 2nd amendment rights.



Somebody will call me a freeper by days end for posting that

[ZombieHorde]

28. Whatever, you are just a freeper by days end.

;)

Sorry, I could not resist the comma foul.

[Remmah2]

10. How come the VPC never publishes stories like this?

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20100611_11_0_Aforme166101

A former Tulsa police officer pleaded guilty Friday morning to feloniously pointing a firearm and carrying a firearm while under the influence of drugs or alcohol

Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20100611_11_0_Aforme166101

[PavePusher]

13. Doesn't fit the meme of "The only ones...", dontchyaknow.... n/t

[PavePusher]

12. 16 in three years? Really?

I think I might be in more danger of dying from falling off a ladder, or while skiing, or walking to the library, or riding my bicycles, or.....

[TheWraith]

22. Well, that's still more people than are killed every year by vending machines...

...barely. Averages say six people were killed in those three years by vending machines falling on them, but nobody is rushing to ban the Pepsi dispenser.

[PavePusher]

26. Those hoodlums...! n/t

[Katya Mullethov]

36. How insensitive

You gotta change your evil ways...... bay----bay ....... and refer to that group as " gun collectors" .

[Endangered Specie]

59. nope, but the do want to tax the stuff they dispense!

[cowman]

17. Kristen Rand is a complete fucking idiot

How many times are we going to hear the "blood will run in the streets" meme? Every time another state passess Shall Issue, the VPC and the Brady Bunch go into hysterics and say the same thing over and over and guess what? It doesn't happen. I've had my CHL for several years and I have never gone on a rampage.
As far as posting this article, we all know how you feel about guns and the 2nd Amend.Tell you what, don't tread on my RKBA and I won't tread on you free speech.

[Euromutt]

24. Only by a highly idiosyncratic definition of "mass shooting"

As I've pointed out before (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=304374&mesg_id=304443), if we read the fine print on the "mass shootings" perpetrated by CCW permit holders do we find that the VPC uses a criterium of "three or more persons (not including the shooter) <killed> in one incident." Now, definitions of what constitutes a "mass murder" vary, but every other definition I've come across puts the low-end cut-off at four or five victims, usually within something like a 24-hour period (homicide has got to be one of very few areas in which four or five people constitutes a "mass"). Why would the VPC use a rather idiosyncratic definition of three victims? One answer that presents itself is that if they set the bar higher, even at four victims, the list of "mass shootings" would comprise six incidents, rather than 15. But not every case listed meets even the VPC's own remarkably relaxed standard.

On February 14, 2009, Frank Garcia allegedly opened fire with a .40 Glock pistol in the Lakeside Memorial Hospital parking lot in Brockport, NY. He had recently been fired by the hospital. He shot three people there, killing two, before killing a married couple at their home in Canandaigua.

Three or more people killed, check... but Canandaigua is 49 miles from Brockport, more than an hour's drive according to Google Maps. Describing the separate shootings as "one incident" is stretching the definition to breaking point.

So not only does the VPC use a definition that allows it to make things sound scarier than they are, they can't even apply that definition consistently.

[iverglas]

43. yeah, if he only kills his wife and kids

it doesn't count.

We know that already.

[Euromutt]

47. Care to expound on what you mean by that?

If you're suggesting that I think a murder incident involving three victims "doesn't count" as a mass shooting or mass murder, then yes. Call it a familicide, call it a triple homicide, but I don't see how three individuals counts as a "mass" of anything.

To be blunt, I think the generally wielded definition of "mass murder" misses the point by attempting to--rather arbitrarily--quantify the result, rather than the circumstances. A page on the FBI website (http://www.fbi.gov/publications/serial_murder.htm#two) describes it as follows:

Generally, mass murder was described as a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders. These events typically involved a single location, where the killer murdered a number of victims in an ongoing incident (e.g. the 1984 San Ysidro McDonalds incident in San Diego, California; the 1991 Luby’s Restaurant massacre in Killeen, Texas; and the 2007 Virginia Tech murders in Blacksburg, Virginia).

To my mind, what constitutes a "mass murder" or "mass shooting" depends to more on the number of potential victims than on the number of people whom the perpetrator actually managed to harm. The examples cited in the above quote were all instances in which the gunman entered a readily demarcated location (usually a building), containing a large number of people, most or all of whom he didn't know personally and against whom he bore no personal grudge, and proceeded to (attempt to) kill as many as he was able. A "mass murder" by an individual, in my book, is defined as "I'm going to go to this place and kill as many people as I can there, because they are there."

As a concrete example, take the shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, CA in August 1999. Buford Furrow, a White Supremacist, entered the building and fired 70+ rounds with a semi-auto-only Uzi knockoff. By sheer good fortune (most likely due to lack of competence and bottle on Furrow's part), he "only" wounded five people, and failed to actually kill anyone. But given that there were over 250 people present in the complex, and the number of rounds expended, it seems indisputable to me that Furrow certainly intended to commit mass murder. Ditto with the Tacoma Mall shooting in November 2005; Dominick Maldonado walked into the mall around Sunday noon with a semi-auto-only Kalashnikov variant and a handgun and opened fire at staff and shoppers. Again, nobody was killed (though six people were wounded) but in the circumstances, there could have been quite a body count in the dozens, making the incident an attempted mass murder in my book. (For the record, both Furrow and Maldonado had both been legally prohibited from possessing firearms prior to the respective shooting incidents.)

And then there's the "Akihabara massacre" in Tokyo just over two years ago. Tomohiro Kato plowed a rented truck into a crowd on a busy shopping street, then dismounted and set about attacking people with a dagger. The fact that he killed seven and wounded another ten is, to my mind, less important in defining this incident as a "mass murder" as the fact that Kato, by driving a truck into a crowd of pedestrians, indicated that he was certainly prepared to kill many more people (dozens or more) than he actually did.

The reason the term "mass shooting" (or if you live in eastern Asia, "mass stabbing/hacking") triggers anxiety in most people is because the phenomenon we commonly understand that term to mean has such a random victim selection process; there's not a lot of precautions you can take against someone who has no discernible reason for killing you specifically, other than that you happen to be in a certain place at a certain time. We can predict the behavior of relatives, co-workers and the like, but how do you predict the behavior of someone you don't even know exists?

It's become fairly evident in the manufactroversy over vaccines supposedly causing autism that stating unequivocally that "vaccines do not autism" can actually be counter-productive, because people hear "vaccines" and "autism" and thus develop a mental association between the two terms. The VPC is using this same psychological phenomenon to develop mental associations between "concealed carry permit" and "mass shooting," because that's going to stick in people's minds more than the parenthetically included information that the VPC watered down the term.

[iverglas]

48. whatever

You define mass murder as you like, 'k?

And you go ahead and pretend that "we" can predict the behaviour of those in our entourage but not of strangers and that this is somehow relevant to something real -- even though we know very well that a majority of women homicide victims are killed by people close to them, almost all of those being present or former intimate partners. Doesn't count. Like I wuz saying.

And all those guys who shoot their wives and kids and then themselves -- commonly called suicide-homicides -- let's also make sure we keep their deaths in the suicide column, and then dismiss them as not relevant to the issue of firearms violence, so we can paint over that reality too ...

[friendly_iconoclast]

50. No pretense here. We *can* "predict the behaviour of those in our entourage"

And certainly anyone familiar with the murderer in this case whilst in posession of functioning brain cells could forsee
a bad result.

Even you know that domestic homicides are almost always preceded by contact with law enforcement agencies.

But eliding that little tidbit makes it easier to promulgate the "gun owners are unpredictably dangerous and might snap at any time" meme...

[iverglas]

53. Aaaahhhhh .... Haaaahhhhh

Even you know that domestic homicides are almost always preceded by contact with law enforcement agencies.

So ... it is reasonable to predict that any woman living in a situation in which police have been called to her home because of her partner's behaviour in the home is going to be murdered by him.

Uh huh.

That would be kind of like saying it is reasonable to predict that anyone with a firearm is going to kill someone with it, wouldn't it? I mean, given that we know that people who kill people with firearms had firearms.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Even you get that I got your little bit of intellectual deceit, I think.

Hurricanes are almost always preceded by a breeze. Obviously, whenever there is a breeze, there will be a hurricane. Or, at least, it is reasonable to predict there will be one!

Dawg, I've missed our little mass naps here.

Zzzzzzzzzzz.

[GreenStormCloud]

55. Of course we can reasonable predict the behavior of those we know.

Just like we know when the weasel is going to pop.

[iverglas]

56. there we go

You know who are REALLY predictable??

R.O.F.L.



Yup.

It's women's fault when men kill them and their kids.

THEY COULD PREDICT IT. They're just so stupid they stuck around to get killed.

Nobody to blame but themselves.

Or maybe they're so stupid they couldn't even predict it was going to happen ...

[GreenStormCloud]

58. Women should leave men who are abusive.

There are shelters to help them out. There are also friends and relatives. Once they have left, they should arm themselves for when he comes around.

Why stay if you know that he is likely to continue beating you and possibly kill you? Women can be strong and independent.

Why stay around for more verses of the same song? Round and round the mulberry bush...

[Euromutt]

61. I'll cite Gavin de Becker (in support of GreenStormCloud)

Provided (and that's a big "if") that the female partner has somewhere she can flee to, if she decides not to flee, that is a choice on her part to stay with an abusive partner. If you take the position that a woman is staying with the abusive partner involuntarily, that she has no choice in the matter, then how can you argue that the abusive partner has any choice in (and thus bears any responsibility for) being abusive?

[Euromutt]

52. Oh, I see; it's just your usual hypocritical whining

For somebody who's been known to get extremely huffy when somebody supposedly misrepresents your argument, with indignant demands to "show me where I said that," you have a remarkable tendency to utterly fail to practice what you preach. I'm fairly certain I have never stated that a familicide "doesn't count" in any way, except that I don't consider it a mass murder, but of course you know this very well.

My mistake for thinking you might be interested in having an intellectually honest discussion rather than insinuating what amoral and wicked I am, even though you have to fabricate an argument for me to "prove" your point.

[iverglas]

54. it's such a shame you missed the point

You yammered on and on about people being afraid of strangers doing awful terrible things and how nobody can predict it happening and blahdy blah blah blah. I responded to that.

The overwhelming majority of homicides (choose your weapon) is committed by people known to the victim and, in the case of women in particular, people with whom the victim is or has been intimate. And the fact is that those homicides are not predictable. Risk factors can be identified, but just as in the case of people who are depressed or suffering from a delusionary illness, the actual probability of any of them committing a homicide is minute.

The behaviour of people in an individual's entourage is not any more predictable than the behaviour of people who commit mass stranger homicides. In fact, the similarities between men who commit mass familial homicide and men who commit mass stranger homicide are, I will venture to assert, quite amazingly striking.

But hey. Making people afraid of the bogeymen who lurk in their places of employment and houses of worship and institutions of higher learning, and are just so damned strange and unpredictable, is one damned good way of selling the gun militant agenda. People have to be able to protect themselves against those bogeymen!

Meanwhile, just avert your eyes when it comes to the real bogeymen in far, far more people's lives: the ones living in their homes and eating at their dinner tables, who of course need to have their guns in case somebody tries to get into that inner sanctum over which they rule and get their stuff ... or at least so that they can enforce their control over that inner sanctum and the people who live in it with them ...

[X_Digger]

57. Psst..

The overwhelming majority of homicides (choose your weapon) is committed by people known to the victim and, in the case of women in particular, people with whom the victim is or has been intimate.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_10.html

6170 = "known to the victim"
5418 = "known to the victim but not a male identified category like Father, Brother, Son, Boyfriend" *
8010 = "not known to the victim or could not be determined"

* I'm being generous and leaving in categories like Daughter, Mother, Sister on the off chance that there's some possibility of incest. I'm also leaving in 'other family' which could be men or women. And I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that all offenders were male, when in reality, it's 90/10.

[Euromutt]

60. If your point had borne any relation to anything I'd said, I might have caught it

I'm perfectly aware that mass shootings are a sufficiently rare occurrence, comparatively speaking; even in the worst years, the victims of mass public/workplace shootings didn't even form 1% of the total number of homicide victims.

But hey. Making people afraid of the bogeymen who lurk in their places of employment and houses of worship and institutions of higher learning, and are just so damned strange and unpredictable, is one damned good way of selling the gun militant agenda.

I didn't say people should be more scared of becoming a random victim of a mass shooting than of being murdered by someone "known to the victim" (a term that includes such things as rival drug dealers, fellow gang members of suspected informants, and stalkers). I asserted that they are, and moreover, that it is, in the context of this thread, the Violence Policy Center--part of the gun prohibition lobby--that is attempting to foster and exploit this fear in pursuit of its own agenda. That's why the VPC employs this peculiar definition of "mass shooting," in order to create soundbites that are more attention-grabbing; I don't think it's controversial to assert that sixteen "mass shootings" by CCW permit holders sounds scarier than five or six.

Let me clarify, moreover, that I do not contend that the violent behavior of mass shooters is entirely unpredictable. It is most certainly predictable, but only to people who knew the shooter before the shooting occurred. Nobody at the North Valley Jewish Community Center could predict the behavior of Buford Furrow because they didn't know he existed before he walked in and started shooting; ditto with the shoppers at the Tacoma Mall with regards to Dominick Maldonado, or the diners at the Luby's in Killeen, TX with regard to George Hennard. By contrast, at least some of the students in Norris Hall at Virginia Tech who were at least somewhat acquainted with Cho stated afterward that, when they became aware there was a shooting in progress, they suspected the shooter was Cho, given his prior history.

Meanwhile, just avert your eyes when it comes to the real bogeymen in far, far more people's lives: the ones living in their homes and eating at their dinner tables <...>

On what evidence do you base your assertion that I'm "averting my eyes"? If I'm failing to mention that kind of incident in this thread, that's because it's not relevant to the topic of this thread. The implied point of the VPC's ongoing "Concealed Carry killers" report is that the deaths listed were made possible by the fact that the persons responsible (at least in part) had been issued CCW permits, the further logical implication being that, had they not been issued the permits, the deaths could have been averted. Now when it comes to intimate partner murders and familicides, I acknowledge that, yes, I assert that those deaths "don't count" in the context of the VPC's implied hypothesis, namely that these murders (NB: I do call them murders) would not have occurred if the perpetrator had not been issued a CCW permit. Since there is no jurisdiction in the United States that requires a CCW permit to keep a firearm in one's home, it follows that the murderer's possession of a CCW permit (or lack thereof) is irrelevant to any instance in which the murders took place in the perp's home.

From your earlier post:

And all those guys who shoot their wives and kids and then themselves -- commonly called suicide-homicides -- let's also make sure we keep their deaths in the suicide column <...>

I'm sorry, but you seem to under the misapprehension that I'm a member of the Japanese government. The Japanese language actually has multiple terms for familicidal murder-suicides: ikka-shinju is when all members of a family agree to die (e.g. to erase the family's shame), and the parents kill the children with the children's consent before killing themselves; muri-shinju is when one of the parents unilaterally decides to commit suicide, and take at least one family member with him/her. According to one source:

In the Japanese local and national press you can usually find at least one or two cases of "muri-shinju" reported every single day. Even in the English language press there are about two cases reported each week.

http://www.glocom.org/special_topics/social_trends/20040107_trends_s65/index.html

Now here's the dirty secret: muri-shinju literally translates to "forced suicide" and all victims of such an incident are listed as suicides, which goes a long way toward explaining why Japan has such a comparatively low homicide rate, and such a high suicide rate.

Another factor is that Japanese police are evidently somewhat over-eager to class possible homicides as suicides, because a ruling of suicide allows them to close the case. For example, in 2003, an unidentified prison inmate confessed to having murdered a 21 year-old man named Yoshiki Koyama in 1980, by tying his wrists and ankles and throwing him off the Ikusaka dam. The police and public prosecutor at the time ruled the death a suicide, blithely ignoring the question how someone could bind his own wrists before throwing himself into the reservoir (http://www.glocom.org/special_topics/social_trends/20040120_trends_s67/index.html).

Oh, here's an odd thing: Japan has one of the most stringent sets of restrictions on private firearms ownership in the world. Of the few officially acknowledged homicides, even fewer are committed using a firearm. Now, if I may display a certain amount of racism, due to having had at least one family member murdered by Japanese troops during World War II, I have little objection to any system that prevents Japanese nationals (as distinct from persons of Japanese descent who are citizens of countries other than Japan, i.e. Nisei and Sansei in the Americas and Australia) from possessing any kind of weapon, though that applies to agents of the Japanese state even more than it does to private citizens.

My personal prejudices aside, the example of Japan makes it painfully obvious that familicidal murder-suicides can and do occur even in the most restrictive regimes concerning private firearms ownership. Evidently, it's not a question of availability of firearms, but rather, the culturally induced tendency that regards such an action as acceptable, even laudable.

The overwhelming majority of homicides (choose your weapon) is committed by people known to the victim and, in the case of women in particular, people with whom the victim is or has been intimate. And the fact is that those homicides are not predictable.

The hell they aren't. Seriously, pick up a copy of The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker. It's a serious eye-opener, and for what it's worth, he takes a dim view of private citizens owning guns too (though he has no compunction about assigning armed bodyguards to his clients, but just because the guy's more than a little hypocritical when it comes to guns it doesn't invalidate everything he says). He points out that we predict other people's behavior in traffic every day, almost always correctly, and then we pretend we can't predict human behavior when it comes to violence. Yeah, that notion is so much horsecrap.

[krispos42]

32. We have to exclude planned, premeditated shootings

The idea against CCW is that, by being constantly armed, it makes unplanned mass slaughter not only possible but likely. Therefore, the planned killings, like Case 2 in Alabama, can't be relevent to the no-CCW argument.

http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/ccwtotalkilled.pdf

Case 2: CCW holder kills 5 family members (including mother and grandmother), 5 more at the factory he works at, then kills himself as the police close in. Now, since he planned this shooting, the fact that he could legally carry concealed had nothing to do with this shooting. This was not a spontaneous act; it was planned.

[Callisto32]

34. But the close proximity to a gun for long hours precipitated this, you see.

The family got it wrong. It was obviously the guns that are pure evil, and they warped the mind of an otherwise stable person.

[Euromutt]

41. The premise of the VPC's "study" is simply incoherent

It would be one thing if the VPC limited itself to demonstrating that less than 100% of CCW permit holders refrain from violating the trust placed in them by society; their examples do support that assertion. Then again, since this also applies to other groups in whom society places its trust--such as doctors, law enforcement officers, elected officials and representatives, accountants, and of course licensed drivers--this is hardly a revelation.

So the VPC has to go one further by claiming that issuing CCW permits actually makes it possible for permit holders to commit homicides they would otherwise not have been able to. But the VPC then includes cases that are irrelevant to that latter premise, such as CCW permit holders committing homicides in places where their permits were not valid (Aubrey BERRY, who committed a homicide in California, where his Georgia Firearms License was not valid), in locations where they wouldn't have needed a CCW permit to possess a firearm (every homicide that occurred in the permit holder's home), and permit holders who didn't use a concealable firearm to commit the homicide (Tony VILLEGAS, who killed a friend of his estranged wife by strangling her).

There are cases counted in which the CCW permit holder did not directly shoot anyone (David NESBITT, whose son shot himself with a loaded gun he'd found in a closet), who only shot themselves (Marc KIDBY), or indeed, did not possess a CCW permit at all (Richard TAUCH, who possessed a California "Security Guard Firearm Permit," which only permits open carry while in uniform).

And, as you rightly point out, any shootings that were premeditated should be excluded, since in such a situation, the shooter didn't just happen to be carrying when, absent a permit, he would not have; after all, when you're already intent upon committing first-degree murder (possibly several instances), it's not like you're going to be deterred by having "illegal possession of a firearm" added to the charges.

[krispos42]

44. You said it better than I did

So I'll give you a :thumbsup:


I didn't have time to go through all the cases in the PDF (it's 109 pages) but after the first three I could see it was not rigorous enough to be useful. They had one cop-killer (no excuses for that from me), one premeditated mass shooting (the factory killings in Alabama last year) and one case of a CCW holder killing an armed robber trying to make off with the guy's car.

So it's probably 1/3 valid and 2/3 fluff.

[Callisto32]

33. So known, previously violent people are conducting mass killings?

Shocking.

Do you really think that this guy would have said "damn, I really want to commit mass murder, but I just can't get a concealed carry permit!"

[benEzra]

38. Lack of a CHL would have put a Spell of Binding +20 on him

and made him incapable of committing mass murder. Or something like that.

[friendly_iconoclast]

49. PSST! The poster of the OP claims a different cause on another thread

Here: It's the CCW holders

There: It's US policy towards Cuba

See for yourself:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x37475

[SteveM]

62. Whatever sticks to the wall. nt

[Remmah2]

51. And how many licensed drivers commit road rage?

How about licensed doctors as drug dealers?