Early this morning, at St Vincent’s Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, a man was walking around with a gun. He opened fire wounding three people before he was shot dead.
Birmingham Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Johnny Williams told WAFF that the gunman positioned himself in a hallway and shot at the officer and the hospital staff members as they stepped out of an elevator. Another police officer reportedly came around the corner, alerted by the noise, and fatally shot the gunman.
The AP story reports detectives are still trying to find out why he was in the hospital with a gun.
Does it matter why?
From the first linked story:
…police are confident that the unnamed shooter acted alone and that the attack was an isolated incident.
How many similar incidents does it take before they’re, you know, no longer isolated?
Yes, it matters why. Yes, limiting access to guns is top priority, but why are so many ppl in such a state and why do they attempt to resolve their distress by shooting other ppl?
Overlearning from how this nation resolves its distress with other people in the world? Difference is that as a nation, we kill and injure more people and destroy more lands than any homegrown homicidal maniac could ever accomplish.
not at all the direction that need to be pursued. what about GB? what about France, Germany? Belgium for gd’s sake and the Congo? they’ve all done the same. we’re not going to solve this by talking about what the USA is doing abroad. although they are connected. we need to focus on what kind of communities we create here in our own country- and I think Obama is our first president to take on this issue. of course, access to weapons for acting out is a huge issue but only the symptom I’d argue. We just finished an election where a guy who cuts ahead of his own kids to get dinner is considered a role model for many because of the $ he’s accumulated, to a large extent by cutting corners (a euphemism I know) on what he owes our country. And we saw that this is a guy with NO FRIENDS. this is what I’m talking about. that this guy even got as far as he did is our problem. He should have been laughed off the stage as a loser.
Not getting your point wrt:
What countries have they unilaterally conquered in the interest of their imperialist aims in the past fifty years? To say that “they’ve all done the same” ignores the fact that the US is still doing it and they aren’t and have withdrawn from countries that were once part of their empires.
I’m all in favor of “focusing on our communities” — but what that means to a resident of Marin and Napa is that low income workers in their communities are expected to live somewhere else. So, looks to me as if “community” isn’t well defined.
they haven’t in the past 50 years, we all were doing it in the first half of the 20th century. What I’m saying, but not very clearly, is that discussions of actions abroad shouldn’t replace self scrutiny about issues at home. I think the issues go very deep about our understanding of individuals and society.
Well, yes. What you’re talking about with Marin and Napa is about residential contiguity. I shouldn’t have used the the word “community” though, because I don’t mean it in the sense of living space but of belonging to a group that is more than an aggregate of individuals, i.e. humanity, the human community. Obama started a good discussion during the campaign, but look how Obama was ridiculed abou the “build It” and before about being a community organizer. I guess what I’m getting at in this situation is if a person isn’t blessed with a supportive nuclear family they’re pretty much on their own and there’s not a lot of reinforcement for values other than being successful financially. We are changing that, but have a long ways to go. It’s not about racism – this guy was white and the ppl he shot were white. It’s about an impoverished sense of self and desperation and starting on a track that says killing in an answer
The Newtown mass murderer was a member of that upscale community. So few details — and so much misinformation — has been released so far that it’s probably best not to say more at this time.
yes, we know little about him or his family. I know the area very well.
Why the fuck do we ask “Why”? There are many crazy people. As a psychologist, I am not 100% familiar with the literature, but I will say that it is very difficult.
The question is “How”? We can address “How”. “How” is “with a gun with a large cap mag that can be quickly changed”.
Large cap magazines are not protected by the 2nd Amendment. We need to get rid of them.
Thanks for stating my point for me better than I could.
Yes, it matters why. Certainly to the police. Gunmen often target specific people or groups of people. Sometimes they have accomplices. And often, as in the case at Sandy Hook elementary, they’ve left other victims behind at other places.
You seem to be assuming that this man walked out of his home planning to shoot any random stranger. But he didn’t shoot the first person he saw on the street, he went to a hospital. Adam Lanza didn’t pick that school at random, either.
Where did he get the gun? Why did he get the gun? Why was he in that hosptial and why did he shoot 3 people? Those questions matter, because we want to protect people from future attacks.