All posts tagged: mass shootings

Chief US Gun Laws Enforcer Fears Americans Becoming Numb to Violence

Chief US Gun Laws Enforcer Fears Americans Becoming Numb to Violence

Published by skeptic

LEWISTON, MAINE —  The head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says he fears that a drumbeat of mass shootings and other gun violence across the United States could make Americans numb to the bloodshed, fostering apathy to finding solutions rather than galvanizing communities to act. Director Steve Dettelbach’s comments to The Associated Press came after he met this past week with family members of some of the 18 people killed in October at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston, Maine, by a U.S. Army reservist who later took his own life. He said people must not accept that gun violence is a prevalent part of American life. “It seems to me that things that we used to sort of consider memorable, life-altering, shocking events that you might think about and talk about for months or years to come now are happening with seeming frequency that makes it so that we sort of think, “That’s just the one that happened this week,’” he said. “If we come to sort …

Stopping a School Shooting – The Atlantic

Stopping a School Shooting – The Atlantic

Published by skeptic

Scot Peterson served for many years as a school resource officer in Broward County, Florida. His job was largely uneventful—he might catch a kid vaping or break up a fight—until just after Valentine’s Day 2018. That day, a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and killed 17 people. Shortly after, a video circulated showing Peterson taking cover beside a wall while the gunman was inside shooting. From then on, Peterson became known in his town, and in international media, as the “Coward of Broward.” (The accidental rhyme probably helped spread the infamy.) Peterson was later charged with seven counts of felony child neglect, three misdemeanor counts of culpable negligence, and one count of perjury. He was tried in the same courthouse where they tried the gunman, Nicholas Cruz. A jury found Peterson not guilty. However, the verdict did not resolve the major cultural questions. Should we expect a lone, sometimes poorly trained police officer with a pistol to face down a shooter with an assault rifle? And if the officer fails to do …

The Atlantic’s March issue: On the Coward of Broward

The Atlantic’s March issue: On the Coward of Broward

Published by skeptic

January 29, 2024, 8:10 AM ET On February 14, 2018, 17 people were murdered and 17 others injured at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. As the shooting unfolded, sheriff’s deputy Scot Peterson stood outside, pistol drawn and taking cover, but never entered the building to confront the killer. Condemned as the “Coward of Broward,” Peterson was put on trial for his inaction but eventually acquitted of charges that carried a maximum prison sentence of 96.5 years. As we approach the sixth anniversary of the Parkland shooting, and against the backdrop of the Justice Department’s recent finding of “significant failure” in the police response to 2022’s Uvalde school shooting, the journalist Jamie Thompson revisits these events in the March cover story of The Atlantic, “To Stop a Shooter,” which exposes the broad systemic failure by America’s police forces to properly equip and train their officers to confront mass shooters, and indicts a society in denial about what it would really take to stop such tragedies. Thompson writes: “Over the past few years, the …

Gun Laws Are Broken. Local Cops Get the Blame.

Gun Laws Are Broken. Local Cops Get the Blame.

Published by skeptic

Instead of addressing lax gun laws, Americans fixate on what the authorities might have done differently. Hilary Swift / The New York Times / Redux November 5, 2023, 7:30 AM ET After the devastating mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, late last month, an all-too-familiar ritual began to play out: The initial horror over the deaths of 18 victims gave way to second-guessing about what more local authorities might have done. The gunman, Robert Card, went on a rampage at a bar and at a bowling alley. He crossed town without any police intervention, abandoned his car, and disappeared for days, until he was found dead of a self-inflicted wound. Later, the public discovered that Card was known to law enforcement. His behavior in the weeks before the shooting had alarmed those around him, including his family members and Army Reserves colleagues. In a report filed after an attempted wellness check at his home weeks earlier, a Sagadahoc County sheriff’s deputy noted that one reservist was concerned that Card was “going to snap and commit a …

The Origins of the AR-15

The Origins of the AR-15

Published by skeptic

Eugene Stoner was an unassuming family man in postwar America. He wore glasses and had a fondness for bow ties. His figure was slightly round; his colleagues called him a teddy bear. He refused to swear or spank his children. “Boy, that frosts me,” he’d say when he was upset. He liked to tweak self-important people with a dry sense of humor. He hated attention. A lifelong tinkerer and a Marine veteran, he was also fascinated by the question of how to make guns shoot better. When an idea came to him, he scribbled it down on anything he could find—a pad of paper, a napkin, the tablecloth at a restaurant. He had no formal training in engineering or in firearms design. Yet it was inside Stoner’s detached garage in Los Angeles, during the 1950s, that the amateur gunsmith, surrounded by piles of sketches and prototypes, came up with the idea for a rifle that would change American history. Today, this weapon is the most popular rifle in America—and the most hated. The AR-15 is …