Church shooting in Knoxville

ugh

i read about this a few mins ago, so sorry tracer

supposedly (according to the one article i read) the one death was a guy who intentionally stood in front of the blast - i dont know if its true or not, but it seems entirely possible - when i read that my thought progression was kinda hero-its a shame this guy wont be remembered-no one in that building is ever gonna forget him

Friends of the slain victim said he was friendly with everyone.

"Greg McKendry was a very large gentlemen, one of those people you might describe as a refrigerator with a head," said member Schera Chadwick, whose husband, Ted Lollis, arrived at the church just after the shooting. "He looked like a football player. He did obviously stand up and put himself in between the shooter and the congregation."

Schocking, terrible stuff.

Really glad my boyfriend had drinks last night instead of coming home and going to sleep early. If he hadn't have slept in, he would have been there.

Pretty sure they haven't released details about the other injuried parties. Can anyone confirm this?

I don't know.

Really glad my boyfriend had drinks last night instead of coming home and going to sleep early. If he hadn't have slept in, he would have been there.

Yeah, I felt the same way about myself on 9/11 actually.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080728/ap_on_re_us/church_shooting

"The suspect in a fatal shooting at a Knoxville church Sunday was motivated by frustration over being unable to obtain a job and hatred for the liberal movement, police said Monday."

Let's see - 'liberals' generally favor a strong social safety net, including free mental health care for those who need it and financial assistance for the unemployed. So...nice work, demented right-wing murderer! I'm sure you've done those kids in the play a big favor, too.

This is really unfair of me - the guy was clearly only barely responsible for his own actions, at least to the degree that his politics are pretty irrelevant to the fact that he went on a shooting spree, but when I listen to my rightist co-workers fantasize about the grisly ends of people they disagree with (unaware or uncaring, apparently, that they'd be shoving me in the ovens with all these faceless strawmen) I have a hard time not associating murderous impulses with an "R" on your voter registration card.

guy hated liberals and flipped when his food stamps ran out

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/7/28/10745/5015/230/558105

You want your Second Amendment, here's where you keep right on paying for it.

hey look a british person

he'll make sense of this tragedy

http://patriotshop.us/images/lib_hunting_large.jpg

http://patriotshop.us/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=584

http://photos17.flickr.com/21550917_2a6e32749b.jpg

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/07/of-madmen-and-martyrs.html

The people who "paid for it" at TN Valley were almost certainly opposed to our current gun laws but thanks for the thought.

Were it not for your current gun laws these people would still be alive. Think about that.

I...uh. Huh.

Where can I get a troll retard hunting permit?

I have to go out on a service call, but if anybody wants to take over, there's bound to be a few dozen rightwinger/conservative t-shirt sites featuring more of the same, perhaps even the portrait of a prominent democrat or three with a bulleye.

Were it not for your current gun laws these people would still be alive. Think about that.

Yeah because if there's one thing that crazed people who want to shoot people do it's scrupulously follow the gun laws.

is this the first time in recent memory that a right wing type has specifically targeted liberals for murder? just wondering if we're finally seeing the kind of things orcinus has been writing about for a while now.

them liberals, always takin away people's foodstamps

Were it not for Britain, America wouldn't even exist, and these people wouldn't be dead. Think about that.

is this the first time in recent memory that a right wing type has specifically targeted liberals for murder?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion-related_violence#Murders

god, i really shouldn't post when i'm half asleep. sorry for being thick.

first article i read about this said the guy had some kind of anti-christian beef, i wonder what that was about.

> first article i read about this said the guy had some kind of anti-christian beef

I saw this too, and my first thought was "so he's going after Unitarians? waht?"

please let's dwell on making sense of the politics of a seriously deranged man who murdered people in a church so we can grandstand more please, yes so fucking awesome thx.

my friend from gradeschool is an asst. DA (not sure how many there are, hence "an" vs "the") in knoxville. i hope she doesn't get assigned to this dude's case.

(not directed at you guys, but just commenters all around the nets in general about this - xpost)

actually her official title is "asst. pub1ic defender"
same thing?

no not the same thing
anyway
i hope she doesn't have to defend this dude

PD is an awesome & thankless job, even/especially hateful asshole murderers deserve the best defense our system can give them - I would assume anybody who goes to work in that office looks forward to defending those who have no ground on which to stand

yeah, she probably does. i just don't envy her job. fortunately, she's really really smart and totally unflappable, so if she does get the case, she'll give it what she can.

i was worried she was at the church.

I've never understood -- well, I understand, but I find abominable -- why we don't fund public defenders offices as well as we do district attorneys.

because the state has an interest in populating the jails?

Well, yeah. And being "tough on defense" never won anybody an election.

From all reports, Greg McKendry must have been an amazingly brave and quick-thinking guy. R.I.P. to him, and to the other person killed.

is this the first time in recent memory that a right wing type has specifically targeted liberals for murder?

I'm waiting to see whether this is portrayed as a terrorist attack, for that very reason. I can't make up my mind on whether it is or not; am leaning towards "yes".

huh? how can you politicize insanity

ladies and gentlemen, deeznuts

(suicide bombers obviously totally sane, politically motivated folks amirite)

I'd lean to no - so far in the coverage I've seen it hasn't been suggested that he was acting on behalf of any group, and it doesn't seem that he had any particular agenda (if his purpose was to regain his food stamps, I'm not seeing any potential cause-and-effect - unless the fact he'll get three squares a day in custondy counts.)

xp

is this the first time in recent memory that a right wing type has specifically targeted liberals for murder?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing ?

Terrorism is "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion."[2]

look out ilx! deeznuts knows how to find wikipedia on the internets

news reports already say it's being investigated as a hate crime.

This guy sounds like a depressed, unemployed alcoholic who went for suicide-by-cop and fucked that up too.

Interestingly, the relevant criminal statutes in the United States Code just say, "See wikipedia."

so you guys consider all church shootings terrorist acts, i guess? that dude who went on a rampage against the amish awhile back, also a terrorist? i think theyre homicidal maniacs myself

I'd lean to no - so far in the coverage I've seen it hasn't been suggested that he was acting on behalf of any group, and it doesn't seem that he had any particular agenda

Fair point, and it's hard to define the line between madness, terrorism, and whatever the political equivalent of a hate crime is.

OTOH, I think there's a fair bit of evidence that his agenda was "kill a lot of liberals", which starts drifting towards terrorism if you accept the idea that independent agents can operate as terrorists; I don't know enough about McVeigh and Nichols to compare.

xpost of course, if he was shouting anti-gay invective (for example), then there's no need to find "the political equivalent of a hate crime"

deeznuts, the guy who shot the Amish shot them because they were easy targets, not because they were Amish per se, no?

so you guys consider all church shootings terrorist acts, i guess?

plz to explain how you got from "this shooting" to "all church shootings" without sounding like a fucking retard

I think suicide bombers are homicidal maniacs, too.

mcveigh had an agenda & political foundation for his actions, this guy was an asshole nutjob

to call this an act of terror ascribes some kind of goal to his actions other than 'kill a lot of people i have a grudge against for totally nutty reasons'

"There have been several church shootings in the United States in the past few years, including a 24-year-old man with a grudge against Christians who attacked a missionary training centre and a megachurch in Colorado in December, killing four people before being wounded and killing himself."

they are tracer, but the (massive) difference is suicide bombers are not acting on impulse or alone, theyre pawns in a game

and before someone gets me for that i in no way mean that mcveigh wasnt an asshole nutjob as well, just that i dont equate the two actions because they both happened to be right-wing asshole nutjobs who killed people

None of these shootings are "on impulse" either. Regardless, I don't see this as terrorism in any meaningful sense, and numerous counts of murder and attempted murder should be sufficient to put this guy away forever.

I'm not sure that I see such a big gulf between that and McVeigh, who (per Wikipedia) "claimed that the bombing was revenge for 'what the U.S. government did at Waco and Ruby Ridge.'" But then again, I'm not sure that making a binary, "is/isn't" distinction is useful here.

This is all very premature, though -- there's so much we don't know yet, and for that matter may never know.

xpost Well, the "terrorism" question isn't so much about how this guy is prosecuted, but rather how it affects public discourse about the whole thing

I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, deeznuts, but it just seems to me that the difference between crazy liberals who want to die and crazy conservatives who want to die is that crazy conservatives want to take a bunch of innocents with them when they go. I don't have a problem politicizing that.

This whole thing has got me pretty upset.

uh, what?

mackro mackro otm, this is a great conversation and you all deserve ribbons

did somebody already temp ban marcello

"I'm not sure that I see such a big gulf between that and McVeigh"

between what & mcveigh? do you see a big gulf between a guy walking into a church with a shotgun & a guy blowing up an entire building with a truck full of explosives?

mackro mackro otm, this is a great conversation and you all deserve ribbons

I think everyone's just trying to figure out what happened, why, and how it's going to affect things in the future, if at all.

It's not exactly commonplace in the U.S. for innocent folks to be gunned down because of their political affiliation; even if you think this guy was just a random nut (rather than a symptom of the way things are right now), that's still a big deal. People will grandstand and their agendas will be on display, but that's an inevitable part of trying to make sense of all this -- and I don't think that (trying to make sense out of all this) cheapens it.

For most of us, the alternative is to post a quick "R.I.P." or the occasional news update, and otherwise just keep on doing whatever we were doing. Maybe that's what we should do. Neither your post nor mine will do the victims any good, we can both be sure of that.

xpost

Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church

http://www.tvuuc.org/

Are there any programs that will allow folks to help donate money and/or time to help this church regain from this?

These are exactly the types of institutions that need our support these days, even if you're a complete atheist. Even if you just send out an e-mail wishing the TVUUC the best, and let them know that you really appreciate their strength at this time (that is if you feel that way), it would probably accomplish a heck of a lot more than arguing about liberal vs. conversative homicidal nutjobs on ILX.

Money-wise, I'd imagine you could just send a check to them directly, with a note saying that it's for their recovery fund, general fund, or whatever.

Thanks for posting that link, btw. The UUC is certainly an organization worth supporting in any event, let alone under the present circumstances.

did somebody already temp ban marcello

-- El Tomboto, Monday, July 28, 2008 1:26 PM

o wat an asshat he is

Say, have you wondered what the comments on far-right blogs are like on this? My advice is don't.

links plz

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/07/28/the-tennessee-church-shootings/#comments

im not seeing anything terribly outrageous about the general vibe there

"You know what I think? He didn’t hate liberals. He hated Christians. He wanted to leave the impression that he is a conservative who hates liberals, however, to discredit conservatives.

Evil."

it's not the second amendment you guys have trouble with, its the first

"My church is a Bible based evangelical Christian church and we would never condone hateful behavior... Having said this, evil is to be confronted but violence should be a last resort."

Hah bleakly hah.

it's not the second amendment you guys have trouble with, its the first

-- DG, Monday, July 28, 2008 8:57 PM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

WTF are you talking about?

retards on blogs, it was a joke :(

hold everything, we gotta hear what jonah goldberg has to say about this.

He's in Fairbanks but doubtless he'll have deep thoughts.

what about andy schlafly

Checking in with Dsouza, he seems to have not covered this yet. today he's on about yakking with/against Dawkins on Al-Jazeera.

From Schlafly's site:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Unitarian_Universalism

Unitarian Universalism is a liberal association which describes itself as a religion...

Are there any programs that will allow folks to help donate money and/or time to help this church regain from this?

Knoxville Relief Fund
http://www.uua.org/giving/donatenow/117168.shtml

Unitarian Universalist Association
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The Unitarian Universalist Association was formed in 1961 by a merger between the main body of American Unitarians and the Universalist Association of America. It is a liberal, nondoctrinal denomination, whose members' beliefs can be summarized as follows:

God--There is a God or there is not a God, depending on what you believe, or there may be a God, or several Gods, or anything.

Jesus--There are no incarnations of God, or that all incarnations are the embodiment of God, or Jesus is God's Son, or Jesus is not Son but prophet, much as Muslims believe.

Creation--Most say the Bible is fake or symbolic and Creation is a myth, and that evolution is real.

Heaven--Heaven and hell are symbolic and are not actual places, or are states of consciousness either in life or continuing after death, or there is reincarnation like Hindus say, or that there is no afterlife, or that it doesn't matter because only life matters.

Sin--Most do not believe in sin and say that Satan does not actually exist. People are good but immoral behavior comes from free will. Some believe in "karma," like Hindus and Buddhists do, that what goes around comes around.

Salvation--Salvation is either through faith in God and Jesus Christ for the few who are truly Christians, or by doing good works and doing no harm to others, or others say everyone will be saved, or that there will reincarnation and we have to be like Buddha to achieve enlightenment or salvation, or that there is no such thing as salvation or enlightenment and this concept is irrelevant.

Political views--The Unitarian Universalism Association’s stance is that there should be free abortions. Also they say there should be equality for homosexuals, gender equality, a secular marriage and divorce and remarriage, working to end poverty, promoting peace and nonviolence, and environmental protection.

Along with the free abortions for some, they also believe that there should be miniature american flags for others.

kingfish i'm not sure what purpose is served by reposting ignorant bullshit, but the last sentence did make me laugh.

its a simpsons quote

TVUUC does support abortion and has, in fact, run an abortion fund for many years. During my tenure at a local clinic, I often called them up asking for $$$ to help women who needed it. Best church ever.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2008/07/a_whole_lotta_ugly_in_church_s.html

Adkisson, who had served in the military, said “that because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement he would then target those that had voted them in office,” the search warrant states. Among the items seized from Adkisson’s house were three books: “The O’Reilly Factor,” by television commentator Bill O’Reilly; “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder,” by radio personality Michael Savage; and “Let Freedom Ring,” by political pundit Sean Hannity.

Enh, I dunno. What if he played violent video games and listened to heavy metal, too?

I happen to be from a suburb of Knoxville (hint: the one that worked on the Manhattan Project, a liberal attempt to make our great country obtain WMDs and become Communist), and I can tell you with truth that there were no liberals or gays to be shot at, just Christian church-goers. If he really hated liberals and gays, he would have gone to either a college campus or an Abercrombie & Fitch store, respectfully. However, he went to a church. This leads me to believe that the note about hating liberals and gays was forged, perhaps by some Marxist wanting attention.

Marxism is an invasion of the body’s privacy, a cancer upon the politic thinking, a virus that spreads only because of Darwinism and Helioleftism. It is no coincidence that Saddam Hussein, the wellspring of Islamism, was a Marxist. It is no coincidence that Ward Churchill, Richard Dawkins, or PZ Myers, being professors, all sympathize with Marxists, and all encourage abortion, acid, and amnesty. While Marxism continues to invade our societies and infect us with food stamps, the United States Postal Service, and multiculturalism, we allow Marxists to live in our cities. When Marxism is not kept in check by the powers that be, or balanced by society, we end up with lunatics like this man.

This man was angry at conservatives for taking him off of food stamps. Conservatives are well aware that food stamps, like tattoos, increase violence. Some good conservatives took him off of welfare so that we could attempt to help him to live on his own. Unfortunately, he took offense at this, and went on a rampage in a Christian church, and killed two people, and wounded seven. At least those people were all old.

Hopefully, this event will help my fellow Americans to see the light, as it did Miss Malkin. Only by grabbing Marxism by the horns and stuffing it into a steel container can we be ensured that atrocities like this will never happen again.

If he really hated liberals and gays, he would have gone to either a college campus or an Abercrombie & Fitch store, respectfully.

oh my

Helioleftism

new album name!

At least those people were all old.

At least.

abortion, acid, and amnesty

this is actually the name of my weekly dance party here in town

What about the competing party "Bongs, Beef and Blowjobs"?

afterparty

http://calvinists4conservatism.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/tattoos-are-responsible-for-the-economic-slump/

Have you ever been in line at an amusment park or a stadium, patiently waiting for your turn to be serviced, only to be scared off by some scary looking person with a tattoo? Most Americans would say, “Yes!”, since it is a well known fact that most people that brandish their hideous emblems of deprivation tend to be turned away from jobs, and enjoy a negative reputation from anyone with an annual salary of over $75,000.

---

Again, poe's law is in effect here.

john are not familiar with the famous bob novak quote about george mcgovern

The tattoo parlors do not deserve any sympathy, either _ they are the ones that can’t spell ‘town’.

Yeahbutwha?

My favorite tattoo shop sign in Knoxville was for one along Alcoa Highway on the way to the airport - "Tattoos While U Wait"

ok wtf

ok. my friend is the son of the man who took a bullet for everyone else in the church. to all those who share the shooter's concept of ethics, well, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, is what I heard. Also I'll fucking eat your blood.

Most importantly, I'll not forget Greg McKendry.

Was some post deleted here, or what are you two replying to?

that's what i was wtfing at, there seems to be a bumping by an invisible post ??

Admin log says post deleted.

Tombot, so sorry to hear that :/

police interrogation videos of the shooter have been posted. could only bring myself to watch the first one. chilling but i guess unsurprising that he sounds exactly like any talk-radio caller. stuff about his ex-wife and his lost jobs all jumbled up with the great marxist menace that's destroying this country.

"i drove down there..." (takes swig of water) "...and i killed some democrats."

patiently waiting for your turn to be serviced

okay I can't believe how CHIPPER he sounds

man