Sniper News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2346921.stm

Anyway, eye witnesses say the guy is hispanic and in his early 30s.

I certainly don't think he's sensible enough. He'd be so busy dancing to La Vida Loca while trying to find third gear he'd probably crash it.

I live 5 minutes from Richmond, Surrey, and can report that the duck scarer who's been terrorising area wildfowl has also been apprehended. Hurrah!

Mark C - did the Richmond wildfowl terrorist use the Four Sprung Duck Technique, I wonder?

Joking aside, if this is the sniper, then - phew. It is more than a little tempting sometimes (when you're miles away and safe) to wish the perpetrator continues to outwit the police, assuming (s)he wants to that is. But this guy needs help, and clearly the sooner he is off the streets and getting that help the better. Sorry if I'm stating the bleedin' obvious.

Shooting passers-by.

(sorry)

Actually, none of anything in this paragraph is obvious.

you too.

Fine you are being honest, but this is exaclty why the world is such a fucked place right now.

I'm sure lots of people have been morbidly fascinated by all this, but none of us has seen him as a hero, I'm sure. Let's just hope - if this Richmond guy isn't the right one - that the sniper's caught soon, eh?

On the contrary. Black humor is probably an important means of coping with stress.

!!!!!!!

I don't see why this is so - as I said, just cause I don't *feel* it, doesn't mean I'm not capable of my head thinking it would be best if he/she were caught ASAP.

there's an obvious difference between saying "i don't care for the people who were already killed" and "i want more people to be killed". you are saying the latter -> g is OTM

Around 9:30 this morning a person was shot at a (Sheetz) gas station - convenience store in Opal, Virginia. (45 miles from DC, and about 90 miles north of Richmond). This is at the intersection of Rt. 29 and Rt. 17, also near Rt. 28 and several secondary roads. Schools are now on total lockdown. Rural area, easy getaway.

The person shot was flown out by MedStar helicopter to a Fairfax hospital. They have set up another command post, brought in the dogs and are, again, blocking traffic and searching cars. Helicopters and planes joined the "search" at 10:30 am. It took them at least 40 minutes after the fact to set this up.

As if he'd wait around for them...uh huh...

They are treating this the same way as the other sniper incidents, but are not reporting it on the news at this time. Rather they are talking about the note left in the woods in Ashland, and the van stopped in Richmond.

This is the third such incident (in THIS area) that has occurred since last week. Road blocks, feds, dogs, helicopters, etc. But no mention of it on the news. I would wager that nobody living outside Fauquier County will hear of this.

Why are they keeping some of these shootings quiet?

If I actually *knew* the victims and their families, or felt like I knew them through something like a sensitive TV documentary, then my empathy would be naturally raised and there would need to go through this mediated process.

(also, as you kind of said earlier, if empathy worked perfectly in the first place, then all the world's ills would have been sorted out long ago, but it doesn't, and we kind of have to strategise intellectually to make up for that)

It'd just seem strained and false to be all "oh gosh, it's terrible someone stop it now", I enjoy reading about it in the papers each day - it's good to have something replacing Big Brother.
I'm wary of people who feel great waves of sympathy for someone who they never knew - take the recent spate of kid killing over here in England, kids die every day so why the intense grief over a certain few? For myself and the people I know the Sept 11 happening was just some impressive fireworks on a massive scale - any sympathy for the American people would just seem fake. We didn't exactly laugh, but we certainly didn't sob. My gran died of cancer last month, did New York weep for her?

This whole sniping rampage is the kind of killing I'd love to embark on if I had the balls - picking off random members of the public becomes much more appealing after spending 2 hours a day using public transport.

No link yet, and I have a feeling this won't be reported.

Someone I know works at a local (weekly) newspaper there, and has access to a police scanner, and her next door neighbour is a deputy
sheriff. I heard about this from her.. Apparently the local police have been told to shut up about this, but no-one knows why.

Perhaps they are embarrassed by their inability to apprehend
this person, and they are trying to give a false sense of security. Maybe there ARE several people doing this.

Of course, the possiblity remains that these shootings are unrelated to the original sniper ... but the feds, dogs, helicopters, roadblocks and searches are continuing at this time, as if that was the case.

I don't know what's going on in Richmond, but I doubt
it's the same person(s) unless they drove south at 300 mph.

why the hell would anyone want a gun anyway? you can hurt people with those things!

It is easy. Congress passes an amendment to the constitution or 4/5 (or whatever it is) of the state's approve it. Bam. Done. Guns banned. Now that they've been banned, have you removed them? Are you somehow going to stop them from continuing to enter? Of course not. Its impossible.

>>I think you can follow both arguments to their logical solution. Ban guns whilst at the same time trying to work out why the US is such a violent culture and cure that too. Guns don't have feelings after all - I bet they won't mind so much. <<

Perhaps. I'd prefer we work on the latter first and get rid of the former once we've worked on America's psyche. I certainly wouldn't mind living in a country without guns, but I honestly can't see any immediate benefits from it in its current state.

-
Alan

Er - so you can hurt people with them. A gun is no defence. The man who wrote the best form of defence is offence was someone who did not know what the word defence means.

(Although being offensive - in its more usual ILE sense - is a good way of guaranteeing that people stay away from you in general).

switzerland is an interesting country that has not been mentioned. i believe it is illegal not to have a gun. ie everyone has them, but the penalties for taking them out of the house without valid reason are severe.

pete, what a great defence for having guns! "why you got that gun?" "so i can hurt people!"

You're right. Many guns used in crimes have been stolen from their rightful owner. Nonetheless, I know if I had someone break into my house, I'd feel a lot better if I did have a weapon in my possession to protect myself (which I don't).

>>I don't think that either Alan C or I have been saying, "Everyone must be allowed to have guns." In fact, I explicitly said I was in favor of stricter gun control laws. We've been saying, "Gun control masks the problem instead of fixing it." Pete's the most OTM in my book. <<

Exactly. Want to get rid of gun shows? Okay. I won't lose sleep over it. Hell, I'm alright with registration of weapons. But I'm not gonna actually believe any such measures will truly make huge waves in terms of changing violent crime in the US.

-
Alan

They see it as a violation of privacy.

What? even though this makes you MORE likely to mean you end up dead? you believe that you'll feel safer if you have, in your house, a device specifically designed to make killing a person really easy. ok.

Alan's absolutely right about owning a gun making those in your household more likely to die. There's always this assumption on the part of the owner that a gun provides safety and stability and protection, but in the end it more often just introduces a really volatile element into your household that raises the mortality stakes on everything that happens.

I think I said on another thread that this is basically a policy-versus-rights tradeoff. Assuming a removal of guns could take place in the U.S., we would all individually be a lot safer -- the tradeoff would be that when someone did try to victimize us, we wouldn't have this absolute leverage to protect ourselves. It strikes me as somewhat self-centered and personally concerned not to want to make that trade, and it strikes me as a vicious cycle to want to go in the other direction -- our fear of violence encourages us to arm, our arming encourages violence, that violence encourages fear.

That makes absolutely no sense to me. If I was mad enough at someone to want to cause them physical harm, I would go for a bat or a knife before going for a gun; it's much easier to get your hands on either and both can royally fuck someone up. And I am just not a powerful guy.

It seems to me that the whole concept of "self-defence" has got lost in the mire of the gun control arguement. The defence that I employ must surely be reasonable. F'rinstance I have a burgalar alarm, windows, doors, walls. What I'm not allowed to generally in a suburban neighbourhood is fifty foort tall barbed wire steel walls. If planning authorities can deal with the notion of reasonableness then why not the law?

What is appropriate force for self defence. It certainly isn't mutually assured destruction which is a likely outcome of a gun vs gun scenario. Of course such things rarely get to the Mexican standoff position, instead we just shoot whoever that is crawling around in the darkness. Who just happens to be our five year old daughter sneaking downstairs for a glass o'water not wanting to wake us.

Even a taser probably wouldn't kill her.

i wish i had 'nearly' shot my brother. that would teach not to act like such a prat all the time.

Really? I'm way more passionate than the average person, then. (Not quite analogous, but I did stab someone in the shoulder two or three times with a seam ripper when I was in middle school, in addition to attempting to strangle someone during social studies and the incident I think I mentioned before where I grabbed a kid by the ears and banged his face against the lockers several times before throwing him into his open locker after he passed out pictures he drew of my brother being run over a truck titled "Nigger-killer". My entire life from ages 13 through 16 could be played back as an extended crime of passion.)

I still don't know why people are approaching me as if I was in favor of everyone having guns (unless I'm just being a screaming egomaniac and you're actually talking to someone else).

now i'd buy that for a dollar!

If this guy turns out to be one of those assholes who clogged up Thekla on Fri. and Sat. nights, I hope they hang his ass in a freezer and his balls in a humidor before sticking him in a very small cell with Mitchell Rupe. Bastards.

The trouble always comes when the public want revenge on the first person arrested, even before any real evidence against them - this is particularly unrestrained in child murder cases.

but it will take a few months to bring the case to trial won't it? and if its ppl from another state on that jury then surely their brains would be bombarded with other shit from the media.

I have a feeling that this is why the PD declared the pair "persons of interest" and not suspects -- to lessen the chance of citizens taking care of this themselves, which many were eager to do.

And your point is, David? It's a technical point that I might not have articulated very well. An attempt at 'precis': this PoG evidence here is of a great degree rather than the small evidentiary 'burden' of bringing a case to pay in the court.

God.

Sorry.

wait up, when did they catch the zodiac killer?

(This is not necessarily a good thing.)

TO THE TANK!

Death.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iusIZC8PvRjuCm5Im_c_yzitM93AD9BJIG986

Dead. Pronounced at 9:11 no less.

http://www.inquisitr.com/47199/dc-sniper-john-allen-muhammad-executed-in-virginia/

http://m.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/lee-boyd-malvo-10-years-after-dc-area-sniper-shootings-i-was-a-monster/2012/09/29/a1ef1b42-04d8-11e2-8102-ebee9c66e190_story.html