Mass Shootings Here and Abroad Over the Last 30 Years or So

[Christel]

I have spent many hours over the last few weeks reading up on mass shootings, who did it, where it happened, why it happened, the effect on society, how the media reported it, the reaction from the law and the reaction from the shooting community.

The knee jerk reactions that are part of shaping how we as shooters can enjoy our sport.
How there sometimes is a joyous vibe from the antis when a shooting happens, of course saying all the right words to the bereaved is important but at the end of the day the antis have unexpectedly (or is it) been given a powerful boost to their agenda.

Very often medication or lack thereof is part of the why. Very often some people feel they do not fit in anymore because society is moving too fast and nobody is there to grab hold of them to make sure they are ok. Sometimes it is a political or religious reason for why they did it.

The feeling of isolation is the most common in my opinion. We see it in the class room as we go through school so why should living in society be any different. Of course we lash out when feeling isolated.

Unfortunately shooting as a sport takes the kicking when someone lashes out with a firearm, because society is run by a media mob who has it's own agenda. One that is linked in with the government. Instead of asking how can we prevent this from happening again, a new law is introduced, one that makes shooting as a sport even more restrictive and the media/government clap their hands. Yet again.

Did you know that if you ask foreigners at random then some think that the UK, Australia and Hong Kong are all countries where the population is not allowed to own firearms. The media and the rumour mill are two very powerful tools.

One shooting that I would like to mention is the Port Arthur in Tasmania. It happened in 1996. Same year as Dunblane but a month later.
Chap who is jailed for the shooting is called Martin Bryant. Some say that there are too many inconsistencies, with the shooting, aftermath and how and when the plea was entered.
Judge for yourself if you choose to Google it. One thing I struggle with is his IQ (66) and the head shots he killed most people with. I have shot for many years and I could not be that accurate. Just like Dunblane and the knee jerk reaction the UK saw, so did Australia.
It is all very political...

This is my opinion, very summarised, based on what I have read and the people I have spoken to.

[dave_303]

The feeling of isolation is the most common in my opinion. We see it in the class room as we go through school so why should living in society be any different. Of course we lash out when feeling isolated.

I came to the same conclusion as well when I did a similar study a few years ago, the interesting part of it, especially when it came to school spree shootings was the perpetrator either being isolated for being different or outright bullied, but those who noticed it did nothing.

When I finished my A-levels (I was in the same school through year 7 till I finished my A Levels), the teacher of the class instructed us to write our name on a piece of paper, it was subsequently handed around for everyone, including her to write on. What I, and most of the others got back was generally positive. Until I read the teachers remark, a woman who then as now I consider a friend.

'when I first came to this school (which was 2 years previous) I was told you were the student most likely to 'do a Dunblane'' She went on to say that she found this to be completely untrue, and she tore into the teachers (one of whom had held a grudge against me for years) for making such slanderous comments. She spoke to me about this as I was clearly deeply offended and extremely hurt that anyone could actually say such a thing!

It all stemmed from the fact that when I was 11-14/15 I was heavily bullied at school, both verbally and physically, I didn't strike back, I was a big kid, even at 14 I was well on the way t being 6 foot. It stopped when I one day lost it and gave the 4 kids who tormented me a f*** good hiding (a matter the school left alone as it was clearly self defence!) This was well known within the school and especially by the teachers who made the Dunblane remark. Instead of actually doing their jobs and helping a student who wanted a quiet life and to study they just let it ride and instead blamed the well known fact that I was a shooter.

Fortunately the view was limited to a few teachers, the History department regularly got me in to speak to younger years on the subjects of weapons development and occasionally bring in deactivated firearms. When I was a House Captain, the head of house let me give talks on shooting sports. Most impressively of all, the school had a grant left by a former student to allow students to buy sporting and professional equipment. I was awarded (whilst doing my AS Levels) the sum of £500 to buy a new CZ452, a scope and a couple of extra mags to compete in Sporting Rifle competitions!

[25Pdr]

Agree Christel....A lot of inconsistencies in the official story.

Google Port Arthur Massacre and you will come up with a lot of reading material. Here's 50 Questions for a start.

e.g. . How could Bryant, an unskilled person of low intellect, kill 20 and wound 12 people in the café mainly by head shots? And wound numerous others fired from the hip in 90 seconds?

He was supposedly armed with a Colt AR15 and a 7.62 FAL Although when found they couldn't positively identify them as the murder weapons because they were damaged.

Details.....

Both weapons were very badly damaged, a critical fact the Australian television networks rather artfully forgot to tell you.




If we are to believe the media and Tasmanian Government, the Colt AR-15 serial number SP128807, cycled and fired a minimum of 35 rounds faultlessly at Port Arthur and other crime scenes. Then, inexplicably, the AR-15 allegedly had an "accident" at Seascape Cottage, which destroyed part of the rifling in the barrel, most of the breech, and part of the receiver - the moving part of the weapon which includes the firing pin and extractor claws for the cartridge cases.

This was attributed to a "faulty cartridge" which exploded in the breech.
Oh, really, and how did it do all that damage in a weapon proofed to withstand 55,000 p.s.i?


In Sergeant Dutton's own words, the damage caused by the burst cartridge showed "Amazingly high chamber pressure", and "I had never seen a cartridge case that had been subjected to so much pressure that it caused brass to extrude substantially into apertures in the bolt face."

What would normally be needed to cause this kind of damage is too much of the correct powder in the cartridge case, or a different much faster-burning powder or explosive in the cartridge case. Because the correct power in this particular cartridge case fills it right up to the neck, it could not have been the first example, i.e. too much of the correct powder.

This leaves us with a different much faster-burning powder or explosive. With such powders the grains are typically much smaller, allowing a greatly increased flame front, and thus the ability to increase pressures at a far higher rate. Special Forces put this knowledge to good use if they wish to destroy enemy artillery pieces behind the lines. A sizeable chunk of C3 plastic explosive is strategically placed inside the breech of the artillery piece, then later detonated, destroying the breech and rendering the weapon useless.

What this process achieved with the AR-15 at Seascape was so much damage to the barrel, breech and receiver, that forensic "Individual Characteristic" matches could not be made with the fired bullets and cases found at Port Arthur.

Now why on earth would you do that, if the AR-15 in question really was the same one used at Port Arthur, then afterwards positioned neatly next to alleged gunman Martin Bryant in Seascape, ready to be collected and identified by the local constabulary the following morning?

Martin Bryant (or his body), and a weapon that could be individually matched to the bullets and cases at Port Arthur. Perfect! But only if the gunman at Port Arthur really was Martin Bryant, which we now know he was not.

Best to look at the effect of the damage in reverse then. What the explosion and resulting damage really achieved, was preventing police and others from proving that this particular AR-15 was not the weapon used at Port Arthur, but merely a decoy designed to draw attention towards Bryant.

As Arthur Conan-Doyle once wrote: "When you have ruled out the impossible, then whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth."

There is one other critical point of evidence about the "exploding" AR-15. When the charge in the cartridge detonated, the resulting blast was sufficient to blow the bottom of the magazine right off, and cause severe damage in the immediate vicinity of the trigger, where Martin Bryant's finger would have been if he was handling the weapon at the time. Most explosions of this kind neatly amputate a finger or two, and shred the skin on the rest of the hand. In addition there is very significant marking of the flesh by firearms discharge residue (FDR for short), caused by microscopic particles of burned or unburned propellant impregnating the flesh at high velocity.

When Bryant was taken into custody he had severe burns to his back and left-hand side caused by the Seascape fire, but no injuries or serious burns to his hands, and no trace of FDR. So Bryant did not fire the Colt AR-15 found at Seascape Cottage, end of story.

The other weapon displayed so enthusiastically by police was a Belgian FN-FAL serial number G3434 in 7.62-mm calibre,



There was no exploding cartridge in the breech of the FN-FAL, but by a rare coincidence beyond the calculations of most actuaries, the effect of the damage was exactly the same as that inflicted on the AR-15. The barrel, breech, and receiver were damaged beyond hope of making "Individual Characteristic" matches with bullets and cartridge cases found at the various crime scenes. So, once again, police and others were unable to prove the FN-FAL was not one of the weapons used at Port Arthur.

Tell me that it wasn't a Government setup!

PRELUDE: New South Wales Premier Barrie Unsworth said in 1987 "There will not be any change to gun laws until there is a massacre in Tasmania" following the meeting of the States failing to agree on uniform national gun laws. (Was this setting the stage?)

[Sandgroper]

After Port Arthur, the Federal Govt bullied the States into unifying firearms laws across Australia. It was probably one of the few times the WA and Federal Govts saw eye to eye.

Apparently the killer be it Bryant or not set up a video camera in the restaurant which was later used as part of a Police training video, this was later stolen and posted on the internet. If you like conspiracy theories, then it apparently proves Bryant wasn't the killer - which is why the Police weren't too happy. However, nothing came of this 'evidence' and Bryant is still locked away and still evidently as mad as a hatter.

The firearms used were illegally held by Bryant, although given the lax state of firearms laws and enforcement in Tasmania at the time that is up for debate.

Whatever the case, the end result was the Howard Govt did a hatchet job on Australian shooters. You might think things are bad here but at least you don't have to prove good reason and need to own most classes of firearms.

[Blackknight1974]

It's a conversation I often have with people, regarding the three biggest mass shootings in the UK of recent times. Neither Ryan nor Hamilton should have had firearms - Bird had convictions for dishonesty and had been making threats. If the law had been applied correctly, the shootings wouldn't have happened.

Also, the media glorifies these tragedies to the point of encouraging them.

I don't agree with everything Charlie Brooker says; however I do in this case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVrBxprGXv4

[Gaz]

If the police applied the law correctly we wouldn't have had Hungerford or Dunblane. Derrick Bird was perhaps the only case where nobody could have predicted what he went on to do, and I don't think the police did anything wrong by granting an FAC to a man with a decades-old suspended sentence on his record who'd lawfully held an SGC for many years.

Very often medication or lack thereof is part of the why. Very often some people feel they do not fit in anymore because society is moving too fast and nobody is there to grab hold of them to make sure they are ok. Sometimes it is a political or religious reason for why they did it.

I think, with the latest Home Office guidelines which explicitly state you must be registered with a GP for grants and renewals, that we're storing up a really large problem as privacy-conscious shooters quietly deregister from NHS services in the years between renewals to stop blanket, unregulated access to sensitive medical records by non-medically trained firearms licensing employees. There's plenty of forum anecdotes of police dithering about individuals' medical conditions, and I have a totally untested theory that this is because licensing departments don't have the medical knowledge to understand what they're reading and refuse to pay for a professional opinion to confirm/deny their suspicions.

Kneejerk reactions to police licensing failures are harder to counter. We don't have a huge amount of support at the political level, and frankly we need to pour a lot more money into lobbying and schmoozing politicians to build support for our sport and to safeguard what little we have left. I don't know where we'll get that money, but we really need it.

[Christel]

25pdr, you have only just uncovered the tip of the iceberg.
The whole event simply does not add up.

All those people present that day at Port Arthur, not a single one identifying Martin Bryant. No DNA, no forensics.

The link posted is scary reading. What is most disturbing is the bit I have quoted here.

Mr Avery, who is credited with convincing Bryant to change his plea to guilty to avoid a farcical court case, says he gave Bryant a drawing pad to help communication between them.

So why did he change his plea?

"It was never quite as simple as asking 'did you do it, mate?' We talked at length about what he said he did. It was through a process of talking, not grabbing him by the throat and forcing him, to bring him around to changing his plea. I wanted him to come to the decision.

How much manipulation does it take from a trained lawyer to convince someone that they have done what people say they have, when their IQ is 66? Not a lot I would have thought. Let's not forget that Martin Bryant from the start was confused and denied the accusations.
Two weeks before the trial date he changed his plea.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/ ... ntentSwap1

[Christel]

dave_303

Imagine that, school teachers having that approach to their students. (Said in a sarcastic voice)

The very same people whom we look towards to educate and support us.
Shame on them

[Chuck]

Virtually all the mass shootings have suspect circumstances...and of course the media and handwringing antis love a good slaughter. They wallow in it, they get off on it and they never let dead kids get in the way of their pompous and arrogant bullsh1t...even the POSPOTUS gets in on the act with sham tears and "Hitleresque" photo ops.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHDlQNHOnJo This bint is DUMB!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... /?page=all

[Christel]

http://loveforlife.com.au/content/07/10 ... tin-bryant

Anyone read this?

Do you think it is true?