The Texas shooter
Yesterday, we talked a bit about Devon Kelley, the fellow who shot up the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The 26-year-old was indeed an Air Force veteran of two years;
The DoD counts the time he spent at trial and the time he spent in prison as his active duty time, I don’t.
Military.com says that he was booted from the Air Force for committing domestic violence against his family;
The man who shot and killed at least 26 people at a Texas church on Sunday had previously served in the U.S. Air Force but received a bad-conduct discharge after being court-martialed for assaulting his wife and child, a Pentagon official said.
[…]
Ann Stefanek, a spokeswoman for the service at the Pentagon, said Kelley was an airman who served in Logistics Readiness at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., from from 2010 until his discharge.
Kelley was court-martialed in 2012 for two counts of Article 128 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: assault on his spouse and assault on their child, Stefanek said. He received a bad conduct discharge, confinement for twelve months and a reduction to the grade of E-1, she said.
The Bad Conduct Discharge (Big Chicken Dinner) wouldn’t necessarily prevent him from purchasing a firearm, but the domestic violence conviction would.
He is prohibited from buying and possessing firearms, if we are to believe the AFT Form 4473 (Question 11(i));
So he either purchased the gun he used illegally or he just didn’t bother to be truthful on the form and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) failed to flag his purchase. People with criminal intent usually aren’t bothered with laws anyway.
There was, however, one American in legal possession of a firearm who stopped Kelley, according to the New York Post;
A concerned neighbor who heard the Texas church massacre unfolding on Sunday went and grabbed his rifle and tried to stop it — opening fire on the shooter and chasing him down in a stranger’s truck, a report says.
The man, who has not been publicly named, is being hailed online as a “hero” after state officials described his actions during a press conference.
A resident told the local ABC affiliate KSAT that he teamed up with her boyfriend and the two gave chase for several minutes inside his truck before the alleged gunman, Devin Kelley, eventually crashed the car he was in.
Authorities said the armed neighbor may have saved countless lives by opening fire on Kelley and forcing him to flee the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs during his 11:30 a.m. massacre.
It’s still not clear whether Kelley was killed by this citizen’s gunfire or if he offed himself, but what is clear is that more stringent gun laws would have only disarmed the hero, not the villain, in this case.
Update: Fox News reports that police told them that the gunman shot himself when he lost control of his vehicle, but the unnamed hero did prevent him from causing more deaths and injuries at the church.
However, valor thief Richard Blumenthal took the opportunity to lobby for more gun laws, according to CBS News;
“Horror, heartbreak, shame. Prayers are important but insufficient. After another unspeakable tragedy, Congress must act — or be complicit,” Blumenthal wrote in the wake of the shooting.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “Now is the time for commonsense gun violence prevention steps. Congressional complicity must end.”
While they’re at it, Congress can make murder illegal, too.
Category: Guns
Blumenthal, Schumer, and the usual band of idiots chiming in before the bodies are even cold.
Fuck them all.
And rot in hell, murderer. I won’t bother using your name to give you the attention your cowardly ass sought.
Took the words right off my keyboard, NHSparky…
Who’s buying the first keg after they plant this POS? I imagine the plot will need plenty of “watering”
“Blumenthal, Schumer, and the usual band of idiots…”
Mega-hypocrites as well, they want US as unarmed as Germans under Nazi Rule while they enjoy life in gated communities protected by armed guards!
Well, at least that piece of shit was Air Force.
Had he been Army, the news would be “Ex Army sniper use his deadly skills to kill people”.
Hell, if the guy had been a Coast Guard fueler or cook, the news would be “ex Navy Seal goes on rampage”.
They would have added he got PTSD too.
Eat a bowl of dicks, Yef
Yef, based on what you wrote, HIGHLY recommend you watch this video:
https://youtu.be/YyZ9b4My6NU
Making friends again, Yef?
Good riddance to the worthless SOB, I hope your lost minutes were filled with the same pain and suffering you inflicted on others. Now of course we will be subjected to the politicians thumping their chests and screaming for gun control and banning scary guns, hell Fauxcahontas Warren (the fake Cherokee senator who “represents” MA) is already shrieking about it. Glad I stopped watching the news first thing in the morning, can’t handle stuff so well when caffiene is below life sustaining level, then it’s just the hate that keeps me going…
Reports are that he called his father, and told him he’d been shot, and wasn’t going to make it, just prior to offing himself, so it does sound like the armed citizen scored at least one hit, and that the bastard did suffer at least a little bit
Doesn’t a court-martial count as a felony conviction?
The 4473 says convicted “for which the judge could imprison for more than 1 year” not actually served more than 1 year.
It would appear 11b was should have been a yes.
Article 128
Assault consummated by a battery upon a child under 16 years. Dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 2 years.
Depends. Under Federal law, a crime is defined to be a felony if the maximum sentence the perp could have received was more than 1 year. But because different courts-martial have different maximum sentence limits, the kind of court-martial the perp faced comes into play.
If he was booted by a GCM, it’s a felony – plain and simple. A GCM can pronounce any sentence listed in the MCM for a given crime. However, if he was booted by a “BCD Special”, I’m pretty sure (based on prior conversations with a military lawyer who comments here) that technically it’s legally a misdemeanor.
A Special Court Martial can only give 12 months as a maximum sentence – exactly one year – and no more. The way the wording in Federal law defines a felony (18 USC 3559), the maximum sentence the individual could have received for the crime governs – and the max he could have received from a Special Court Martial is 12 months, not “more than one year”. So that implies it would be considered a misdemeanor.
It should still have been disqualifying for his possession of a firearm, as it certainly appears to have been a conviction for an offense that meets the definition of misdemeanor domestic violence. But as I understand it, it wouldn’t have counted as a felony conviction if the conviction was in a Special Court Martial.
Mil lawyers, please correct if I’m wrong above.
But according to the Lautenberg Amendment, domestic violence, he should’ve shown up as NOGO for a firearm in the NICS system though. So why didn’t that happen?
Does the Military conviction not convert to civilian or something? Domestic violence is domestic violence, so that is very strange.
I worked in the Intell Squad of a major Urban sheriff’s office for 20 years and I can tell you that DOD does NOT dump courts martial records to NCIC. There are even a few civilian jurisdictions within the US that fail to do this. If we needed to know something re a military conviction, I would have to contact one of my military CID contacts to get the info for me. So the shooter could have, and likely did, lied re the 4473 questions and no one in the civilian sector would know.
I too worked for a large S/O back in the 80’s. We would book 50-60 people a shift and had to roll ink fingerprint cards, 5 of them for a felony if my memory serves. 2 would go to the FBI so the arrest would be added to the persons rap sheet. The FBI has very strict criteria about adding arrests and convictions, no readable 10print card, no add. So, we had some guys that were lazy or just not good at rolling prints and about every 2-3 months we’d get a stack of print cards back from the FBI as “unreadable” with instructions to resubmit. Usually by then the suspect was no longer in custody, so that arrest or conviction would never get added to their criminal history/NCIC report.
This got a lot better when we went to the LiveScan inkless system which tells you right away if a print is readable or not. Still, I’m sure there are thousands of people who have disqualifying convictions but their crim history never shows it.
So, John Seabee, you are saying what we have here is a failure to communicate?
joy [not]
some people… you just can’t get their minds right.
Indeed…but I bet everyone in the responsible USAF office is current on their all-important diversity/ SHARP/anti-bullying training.
Loss of focus on actual important “mission stuff.”
https://wtop.com/national/2017/11/air-force-failed-to-submit-texas-shooters-criminal-history/
Per the AFCCA opinion, he was convicted at a GCM, making his conviction a felony. In fact, as we’ve previously discussed, a BCD at a SPCM is significantly less harsh than a BCD awarded by a GCM.
Anyway, not only was the guy a wife beater, he was a felon. He had no lawful right to obtain a weapon in the first place. I know on the Navy/Marine Corps side, we entered the information into NCIC once they reported to the brig, but I’m not sure who’s responsible for that on the Air Force side.
http://afcca.law.af.mil/content/afcca_opinions/cp/kelley-38267.pc1_-_corrected_copy.pdf
Bingo. The perp should have been legally barred from firearms purchase or possession on two different ways: felony and domestic violence convictions.
Fox is reporting this AM that the USAF never reported the conviction to the DoJ for entry into NICS. The USAF is reportedly now investigating the circumstances regarding the failure to report the conviction to the DoJ.
Bottom line: current Federal law should have made it impossible for the perp to purchase the weapons he used in his crime from any legitimate source. But existing statutory and regulatory procedures weren’t followed, allowing him to bypass the existing legal prohibitions.
Passing yet another meaningless “feelgood” law won’t help one bit if existing laws and procedures are already sufficient but are not being followed.
Sounds like NICS doesn’t even have military convictions in the database. Somebody watch bergdahl’s traitor ass.
You are absolutely correct sir.
There is always one who slips through the cracks somehow.
The louder the ‘NOGUNNZZ!’ politicians squawk at every opportunity, the further away they drive people who might otherwise vote for them.
If that’s the only thing they have going for them, they don’t amount to anything at all. When such episodes of violence are the ONLY time they pop up in front of the camera, it supports my view that they are airbags needing deflating. After all, did Blumenritches yelp about trucks driving on sidewalks after that Uzbek ran over people in New York City? I didn’t hear anything coming from his corner of the room.
Fire them and send in people who are not clowns.
Let’s all keep in mind that gun restriction laws don’t have any effect on people determined to commit dangerous felonies, including mass murder. Gun control laws don’t have any effect on any felon, even with multiple convictions, getting a firearm. All this POS had to do was find someone with that rifle that was willing to sell it or loan it to him. Any guy that has no problem beating his own wife and child is not going to be deterred by some gun control law. Unless I am mistaken, beating your wife is “against the law.”
If you remove guns, gun control, gun restrictions, etc., from that and simply use the term “law”, it still applies.
Specifics don’t matter to any of these people. They can wreak havoc with anything. The law means nothing to them.
EX; Guns have two enemies- RUST & POLITICIANS.
Dickless Blumenthal, Chuckie Schlumer, Dingo Fineswine, and Nasty Piglosi doing the bloody dance on the still-warm bodies…
This past spring, my Dad showed me an article suggesting that every Christian church and Jewish synagogue should have armed congregation members in attendance for this type of contingency. As firmly as I believe in always being able to return fire, I was nevertheless hesitant to jump on that bandwagon. It wasn’t out of any misunderstanding of doctrine that supposedly commands us to be pacifists (it doesn’t, by the way—common mistake). Instead, I felt that it might conflict with the respect I hold for the church as a House of God. Specifically, there’s lots of things I don’t ever do in church: I don’t wear a hat in the sanctuary, or use my cell phone, or speak above a whisper, or attend Mass without a button-up collared shirt that’s neatly tucked in (I don’t usually go full Sunday best, but there is a minimum standard), and it pisses me off to see anyone violate any of these, especially hats—at what point did they stop teaching kids that we show respect and deference by removing headgear? Now, though, this has become something I will advocate to my Priest. I still don’t feel like I should pack a weapon to Mass without talking it over with him first (it’s his parish, and I hold my Priest in high regard). But I will talk to him about it. I’m guessing he will most likely be in favor of armed security for the parishioners, and since rent-a-cops are well beyond the budget, and ours is a congregation that handles most things through volunteerism, it would logically fall to us. Given that our Priest hunts deer every fall, drives an ‘87 Bronco he fixed up himself, digs the pit by hand to smoke the pig at the annual parish barbecue, and is commonly seen running a chainsaw to keep the chemise from overrunning the Stations of the Cross, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he has a bullet launcher handy somewhere, too. As for the pacifism thing, Jesus of Nazareth deliberately incited a riot at the Temple in Jerusalem when He assaulted the money changers… Read more »
Well said, TOW.
Our biggest Baptist church’s leadership decided last year to have CC men circulating in the parking lot and stationed at various positions inside the church. No unarmed mall cop/cheese eater security guards. Just been there done that veterans and LEOs. They ain’t playin’.
In Texas, the legal nuances of a church having a paid security guard make that an unpalatable option. A church’s security cannot have badges, uniforms, etc. unless they are LEOs and on-call. The church can, of course, hire a private security company if it chooses.
The congregants can be organized, have communication devices, and even, if they have their LTC, carry openly (although I think that foolish). They have to be volunteers from the congregation, not recompensed.
Other states may have different requirements.
All of the CC men are members of the church. Outside threat would not know who all of them are. Inside threat would not be able to take them all out at once.
I don’t know any other particulars, but do know from other congregants that they have thought this out well after Charleston.
Our church, as well as my kids’ church, has thought through their response strategy quite thoroughly. It helps a lot that we have current and former LEOs and military involved.
But we keep it unobtrusive. The church is to be welcoming – and ours is.
But a shooter would find a different kind of warm welcome.
Interesting that you mentioned armed people attending religious services. There is a storefront Jewish Orthodox place of worship in the shopping plaza where I shop and during the Jewish holiday’s, they have an armed security guard outside the premises. The private Jewish schools down here also have armed security during the day classes are in session. I went across the street to the large Synogogue to see a Doowop group perform and standing against the wall is an armed security guard wearing an all black tactical outfit with bloused boots and a baseball cap with the company name on it. NOW, this is what get’s me pissed off is that the same peeps who have armed guards are the same ones that don’t want me to own/carry fire arms. Not all though. Sounds like the Diane Feinstein do as I say but not as I do deal.
Of course! Because those same dirtbags claim they “deserve” that armed security.
Totally agree.
You said what I was trying to say yesterday much better.
Thanks
I hope there are men or women in my parish that can and want to do exactly what you propose here.
I went to a 7:30 mass last night and after I sat down 8 or 9 rows from the front.. I wondered if I should be sitting in the back row from now on.. would that give me a better chance to react if someone came in with bad intent.. what an unwelcome thought to have while sitting in church.
I don’t want to let worries like that invade my time at mass and relying on people in the congregation to work as protective sheepdogs for the Shepherd sounds just right to me. Thank you for the intelligent and insightful post.
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/05/14/are-you-a-sheep-or-sheepdog/
The Catholic church does in fact promulgate the Just War doctrine, so yes, it dos not support a completely pacifist line.
One might also note that He only suggested turning the other cheek once. Far as I am concerned, anything after that is “Game on!” without any theological hindrance. (Although, practically speaking, at my age I want to get in the first licks while I can. I’m not THAT religious.)
At my humble little Anglican church, no less than four of our members are CC … our vicar is not CC, but he is a retired Tae-Kwon-Doe instructor.
My understanding about “turning the other cheek” arose, not as a call to pacifism, but because the people at the time would sue for any little offense, take one another to court for the smallest reasons. Remember, He was in conflict with the Pharisees who had quite a strict interpretation of anything and everything connected with the scriptures with which they’d been entrusted. They ‘strained at a gnat’ but swallowed a camel (Matthew 23:24) meaning that they just didn’t get the larger point; and they encouraged this picky-picky-picky little details view of biblical law, getting offended at the tiniest insult or infraction. He wished to make the scriptures more clear.
Pacifism in Christianity appears to me, to be something that crept into the church over time. To me it is unbiblical. Do we believe, or do we not, that His sacrifice was the ultimate sacrifice? Why do some “play at” being Christ when He has already given the ultimate sacrifice? Was that not enough? He wasn’t “modeling pacifism”! He was taking on all our sins, and who among us is God enough to do likewise?
Bottom line, yes, please do have people who carry in all churches and synagogues.
When Kelley bought the gun in 2016 he indicated that he did not have a disqualifying criminal history. Big surprise, a convicted criminal being untruthful. http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/05/us/devin-kelly-texas-church-shooting-suspect/index.html
Whether his conviction was a felony, or a misdemeanor involving domestic violence (invoking Lautenberg), either way he should not have been able to buy that weapon. So for those calling for more gun laws, it’s worth pointing out that had existing law been properly enforced, he wouldn’t have been able to go to a sporting goods store and but that gun.
…”buy” that gun.
Yes, but that would not have stopped him from acquiring a firearm. All he had to do was go somewhere someone wanted to sell that weapon or a similar one. He likely could have found one on Craigslist. Would-be felons are not deterred by laws.
Fox News is now reporting that Kelley was denied lawful possession of a weapon by the State of Texas. So gun control wasn’t enough to stop him.
This is my shocked face. /s
So that just proves that we need many more useless gun control laws to keep guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens?? When do you think they will start outlawing bullets??
Only if those extra laws get more politicians re-elected!
Go to Illinois, and soon, California.
There you actually need a permit to buy ammo.
ISYN.
According to the girlfriend of the guy who ran him off the road (per her FB post), the police shot the shooter when they arrived on scene.
The guy driving the chase vehicle says there were no shots fired after the guy ran off the road by either party.
Some of media is calling his BCD a “Duck dinner”, I hadn’t heard a DD called that before.
Probably someone totally unfamiliar who confused ‘Big Chicken Dinner.’
Jonn, minor correction – think I read he was refused an LTC, License to Carry. LTC denial is generally for reasons similar to those which would deny purchase, but not always.
Although others have already posted good responses, here are my thoughts, FWIW: According to what I’ve seen so far, the perp was armed with an AR and protected by body armor. I have a friend who has been up against a rifle with only a pistol, and his thought was “this ain’t fair.” Even if some of the congregation were carrying (undetermined at this time AFAIK) pistols vs AR+body armor gives tactical advantage to the perp. It was a fellow outside the church with, it seems, his deer rifle (season’s open in TX, btw) who aimed & got him between the armor, causing him to drop the AR & run. As to the issue of a Christian carrying in church – something I wrestle with personally: Christ’s “turn the other cheek” dictum refers to insults. A slap in the face is just that, a slap in the face, an insult. Assault and attempted murder do not fall under that dictum necessarily. As Christians, we believe all of Scripture to be God’s Word, and consistent in teaching and guidance. David’s giving thanks to God for training his arms for war is just as Christian as Paul’s encouraging believers to take up an offering to help those in need. Throughout Scripture one of the major obligations on those who are obedient to God is to care for the helpless, the widows and the orphans. As a Christian today, it is obligatory on me to care for the helpless. Either by contributing to our various ministries which provide food, clothing, shelter, education, and healthcare for those in need, or being prepared to kill someone who is attacking and attempting to kill the innocent. We who are Christians have no obligation to stand by and let evil men go unchecked. Rather, we have every obligation to overcome evil – preferably by bringing others to a saving knowledge of Christ, but in the case of an active shooter by some well-placed lead-pills. As a Christian I would much rather share the Gospel with my enemy, and make him (or her) my brother (or sister) in… Read more »
Since ARs will undoubtedly be in the news again, it’s worth pointing out that one of the guys who gave chase and likely saved additional lives from being lost … also carried an AR. According to the driver, who gave an interview on the news this morning. Good on both those guys for acting without hesitation.
As for the Christian aspect of this, I’m not a religious person at all, but I do remember the story about the ardent believer who, as a flood was coming in, decided to stay put because God was going to save him. A neighbor came by in a truck before things got bad and offered him a lift, and he said, “Nah, god’s gonna save me.”. Things got worse and the waters rose, but a guy in a boat came by and offered to take him to safety, and he said, “Nope! I trust in god to get me out of this!”. Finally, as things are really bad, a rescue crew in a chopper came to help, and he waved them off, saying, “God will save me!”.
And he drowned. And, upon reaching the pearly gates, he said, “Hey, what gives, God? I thought you were going to save me?”, and a voice echoes out, “Look, dumbass… I sent your neighbor in his truck, a guy in a boat, and a freaking helicopter rescue crew — you turned ’em all down!”
I’m not sure whether guns in church will really help or not, but if you’re the kind who believes they will, and the kind who believes in the Christian god, I don’t see why you can’t say he’s giving you the tools to protect yourself by your rights to a gun.
Indeed.
God sent a wheel man to the good guy with a gun to help, that’s how I choose to view it.
“The Lord is a man of war; His name is God.”
—Exodus 15:3
Some seem to forget that.
Blumenthal knows about AR style rifles ’cause that the kind he imagined he carried when he imagined his service in The Viet of The Nam.
It’s still to early to play Monday morning quarter back, but my news station mentioned that the man that shot the perp between his body armor was never in the service but does a lot of shooting. LEO says there was a self inflicted GSW but an autopsy will clear everything up. It’s possible that the Police do not want to let on that it was the civilian shooter that took the perp out which would make it a pro gun issue.And if this was true, it would not be covered on MSNBC or CNN. This is my early opinion so WTF am I playing Monday morning QB for. I apologize to everyone on TAH if the story comes out different.
Nah, fuck ’em…
We already know more about what happened here than we do in Las Vegas and that’s been a few weeks…
Things that make you go hmmmmm…..
These are Texas LEOs.
Small-town Texas LEOs and Texas Rangers.
These guys encourage you to get your LTC and then carry.
One of my friends (a beautiful lady with a LTC) was recently stopped for going a little too fast. The LEO asked her about her pistol. She confessed that she had not been practicing and so did not feel right about carrying it.
He chewed her out. Told her to go practice, and to always carry.
Texas LEOs generally have that attitude.
Timothy McVey blows up the building so they blame the bomber. Homicide bombers over seas blow up people and they blame the bomber. Guy uses a vehicle to run over people which is now the norm over seas and in the States, so they blame the guy driving the vehicle. Guy kills people with a knife attack and they blame the knifer. Guy uses a firearm to kill many people and they blame the firearm but not the shooter. WTF, and I don’t have to tell everyone out there that the shit is really going to hit the fan as the DEM. liberals are going to use this as a reason to disarm us. On Nov.11-12 at the Palm Beach County Fairgrounds is the monthly Nov. Gunshow, and I can see the lines to get in to purchase beaucoup firearms after this latest tragic incident.
Do you believe in evil? Pure evil that exist in the hearts of mankind? If you don’t you will have a hard time reconciling the acts with motivation and reality. The people who just can’t understand why a person would commit an egregious act of violence against their fellow man will forever be wondering, why?
You can find a root cause for the hate but, it takes pure evil in the soul to act on that hate.
For some, yes; simply being evil may well be the case. Psychopaths like Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, and the BTK killer come to mind.
Others IMO have a “broken” mind – either physically, or mentally. The UT Clock Tower shooter back in the 1960s may well have been a case of the
latterformer.DittoAn example of the latter could well be Jim Gordon (drummer for “Derek and the Dominos”), who’s still incarcerated in a CA mental institution today after having murdered his own mother.Too early to tell either way IMO with this guy. You might be right; you might not.
Just my $0.02 worth.
(Edited for clarity above; subsequent response made me realize that the original comment didn’t say precisely what I had intended to day.)
From what I remember about the Texas tower shooting, an autopsy revealed a brain tumor which I guess was very painful and that most likely led to him going Bots.
Correct – and your comment made me realize I hadn’t said exactly what I intended to say in my comment above. It’s fixed now.
Scripturally, the Genesis account of The Fall of Man explains that we all are sinners as descendants of Adam and Eve. We are born morally broken and damaged.
Another way this is put is “there is none righteous, no, not one.”
Any evil ever committed by anyone in the history of the world is something each of us, in the right circumstances, is capable of committing.
Very true, amigo.
Actually it tends to be less about hate and evil than about indifference. Many of these killers are simply indifferent to the suffering of others and are detached from their own emotions regarding the well-being of others.
When you don’t matter in the mind of these individuals you are no more than any other less being with respect to being killed by these individuals. They’ve no more concern about killing you than they do about a killing a dog or a cat because you don’t matter any more than a dog or a cat to them.
Good or evil are often open to discussion, especially depending on the situational ethics. Is it good to kill everyone at a family gathering if a terrorist is also killed in the process? Depending on your perspective it is absolutely a good outcome. Even if those others in the family are children.
Was it good to burn women, children, and the elderly to death in a firebombing campaign? Of course it was if it kept one’s fellow soldiers from being killed.
We are all of us quite capable of evil, we seek reasons for these killings. Unfortunately the most uncomfortable reason is that we are human and we are killers. We’ve been killers since we crawled out of the slime and started seeking dominance over other species so we could spread across the globe.
We like to pretend we are not red in tooth and claw like the animal kingdom, but our history and our present displays the pretense for the lie it’s always been.
This turd was convicted of animal cruelty. So that answers the question of his capability for evil.
Many serial killers, like Ted Bundy, started out killing and torturing animals.
I heard the charges were dropped, but the point remains.
He was a weak fucking coward, capable of bullying and abusing only those who could not fight back.
But now he’s dead, and the world is better off with his passing.
I saw this guy on youtube who looks like Patrick Kelly. He’s an atheist and believes in armed violence against the innocent. We all need to be prepared because of people like this.
LITTLE SHITS like him are why I have a Valid CCW License and stay armed.
Evil is it’s own entity searching for free will.
When liberals outlaw guns, only liberals will have guns. There is a spooky thought.
Killing for killings sake is evil. In this case it was him targeting his ex in laws church. So this was a personal reason attack. He did not intend to give up easily. Hence the body armour.
As for Evil. When one feels no emotions about killing that is a huge sign of mental illness but also of just evil. Killing a terrorist with their family around is avoided as much as possible. METT-C goes into all actions.
You do have a point about us being animals. But we separate ourselves from our most basic emotions and actions with reason and the realization that our actions carry consequences. If we do not recognize that then we’re no better than the animals we claim to be separated from.
Good discussions BTW
Veteran of two years or four years? It says two in the writeup but four in the posted dates of service.
Duh, never mind. I needed to read further. Please delete this post.
apologies if this has been posted and I missed it…ABC is reporting the Air Force failed to report his information that would have prevented him from purchasing firearms…at least somebody got it right and did not approve his application for carrying a firearm…(this is where I sometimes go astray because I’m expecting common sense) if he was applying to carry a firearm and was denied, wouldn’t it make sense that he had a gun he was hoping to carry, and depending on what was revealed that led to the denial, some further checking might have turned up showing his possession of firearms?
And memo to Matthew Joseph Hagan: Welcome to TAH.
Because most of us are 1-veterans, 2-tend to run on the conservative side politically, the weak-minded knee-jerk reaction to a fundamental misunderstanding of the post and subsequent discussion is that we’re a bunch of troglodytes practicing groupthink because His Holiness Rush Limbaugh told us to.
Uh, fucking wrong, numbnuts.
RIF. If you’re not old enough to remember what that means or Schoolhouse Rock shit, it means Reading Is Fundamental.
Nobody here has suggested we not follow laws. Quite the contrary, had you bothered to read other posts before running your festering suck hole here, you’d see many, many examples of people who “slipped through the cracks” and obtained weapons despite prohibitions against them even being allowed to poses them, such as Dylan Roof, Adam Lonza, etc., along with mental health professionals who saw numerous “red flags” which SHOULD have been a bar to their obtaining weapons, yet said nothing (see James Holmes.)
No, you myopic obtuse waste of a zygote. I realize you have fewer functional brain cells than a severely autistic goldfish, and I’m using small words where possible as you mouth this while you’re reading it. NOBODY here is advocating breaking or ignoring the law. What has been pointed out here many, many, many times now, is that this douchetool is just one more case of someone “slipping through the cracks” who, had TBTP actually ENFOECED the over 20,000 gun laws on the books in this country, would have been unable to purchase a weapon because he would have been flagged in NICS.
So before you start pounding on the table and bleating along with the rest of your liberal sheeple that we (whoever that we may be) need to “do something”, how about demanding (as I have done in numerous messages, phone calls, and even in-person meetings with my elected representatives) to actually ENFORCE the laws we already have?
Now pretty please, while I still have my tact about me, do be so kind as to ponder these thoughts as you inhale your morning steaming bag of dicks.
For once I wish the people paying “the price of freedom” weren’t seven or five or one year old children, but gun fanatics like you guys. It would only be fair. Yeah, Ex-PH2, I know…the gulags, the gulags. Too bad these innocent children didn’t live long enough for your gulags to get them.