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Wade

Wade

FeralNormal master
Santa Monica College: 'Surreal' scene as gunman shot up bus - latimes.com

Santa Monica College Shooting: 1 Dead, 5 Hospitalized - ABC News

This event occurred about 3 miles from me. The presidential motorcade passed down our temporatily "locked down" boulevard because of what happened. The original motorcade route was too close to the hot zone in Santa Monica. This is, for all intents and purposes NOT a school shooting but the school was involved as the gunman apparently tried to hunker down there, but the story is still changing as I write this.

There is one assailant dead, a person of interest being held and six victims dead, apparently all women...according to KCRW which is a radio station on campus but relocated because of the shooting.
 
2 wounded in alley shooting near Santa Monica College, police say - latimes.com

Cyclist shot, wounded near scene of Santa Monica rampage - latimes.com

I'm still undecided if events like these are one of those law of numbers things or self perpetuating acts like a meme (Ala the copycat effect) or merely just more widely known and disseminated in part because of the growth of social media and the internet.

More and more I'm leaning towards some kind of cultural psychosis that envelopes us. Both events are likely not related to the SMC shootings except because they happened near each other in the space of a few days it puts ideas into those that are alienated and easily influenced.Yorkshire Ave. Is about all of four blocks long and is not in a particularly troubled area and is the one thing these three things have in common


BTW the campus did have two bomb threats within a month or so after the Boston bombings.
 
if more citizens had the balls to arm and defend themselves there would have been fewer deaths.
 
Nah I think it's the opposite. If this wimp wasnt allowed to buy a gun he would have been harmless. These types don't have the balls to fight people, they are only hard with a gun. I'd place a bet that these were legal guns he was using. It's a joke.

Where I come from, if you arm yourself, that means you don't have balls.
 
where do you come from?
I doubt it was a legal gun. It sounds like a gang shooting.
 
it was in all likellihood a gang related shooting...one of the victims died...and in all probability a retaliation shooting for the saturday event .the area is a little seedy compared to the rest of the city and includes a gang element. having said that, crimes involving shootings, gang and non-gang related are pretty rare in Santa Monica.

Because it was gang related the argument for gun restrictions isn't really valid here as there is a pipeline from Mexico from the Central American gangs that would exist whether guns were legal or not so I suppose these shootings were inevitable, but I truly wonder if the nonrelated rampage hadn't happened last weekend would the other two events had happened that weekend? I wanted to point out...as if it really to be pointed out...how it can take a singular event to open up the floodgates and plant an idea in the masses head and everyone thinks that killing people is the solution, I know the rampage shooter was mentally ill but why does having family trouble equate with killing innocents? Being mentally ill just doesn't cut it for me as a rational. I have no doubt whatsoever that on the block I live on, more than a few people have guns but we don't go around waving a piece if we fight over a parking space...yet...but we did back in the 80s have a welll documented series of freeway shootings, it still happens I'm sure, but I don't hear much about it. back then you couldn't open up the paper without hearing about shootings within a couple of months of each other. I don't remember much about it as far as who was or wasn't caught so maybe it was the work of a few mentally ill individuals but if not, I wonder what are the dynamics involved that these seemingly contained events can flare up and just burn themselves up.

I suppose I'm just in a "mood " of sorts because I just finished reading " Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior " so the fact this phenomena exists is not a revelation, but it gets me curious about "meme theory" and how us talkingmeatsuitts :cool: are such efficient vectors for any virus either physical or mental.
 
Because it was gang related the argument for gun restrictions isn't really valid here as there is a pipeline from Mexico from the Central American gangs that would exist whether guns were legal or not so I suppose these shootings were inevitable, but I truly wonder if the nonrelated rampage hadn't happened last weekend would the other two events had happened that weekend? I wanted to point out...as if it really to be pointed out...how it can take a singular event to open up the floodgates and plant an idea in the masses head and everyone thinks that killing people is the solution, I know the rampage shooter was mentally ill but why does having family trouble equate with killing innocents? Being mentally ill just doesn't cut it for me as a rational.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing the links, Spookymulder. I'm glad I'm not the one who thinks these things when I see multiple incidents happen. Not that that is any comfort. I think it's hard to say in some situations, but I don't doubt that seeing one event could encourage someone who is already on edge. I stress that I think they must be pretty far gone to begin with to seriously consider this approach let alone follow through (gang related or otherwise). And chances are that if it didn't happen when it did, it likely would eventually anyway.

And I'm a bit too drained this evening to dive too far into the gun control argument. Suffice it to say, while fisticuffs is more manly, there are MANY ways to obtain weapons outside of a legal purchase. So I must strongly disagree with the implication that this type of violence is always or even frequently caused by a legal gun owner. If I had to make a bet, based on the fact it was gang related I would have to agree that chances were very high the gun ownership was illegal which, as Spookymulder stated, makes the gun restriction argument a pointless one in this case.
 
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