Gunman @ NC nursing home kills 8
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| Mon, 03-30-2009 - 1:57pm |
Gunman at North Carolina nursing home kills eight
WILMINGTON, North Carolina (Reuters) - A gunman opened fire inside a nursing home in a small North Carolina town on Sunday, killing eight people, including elderly patients in wheelchairs, local authorities said.
A 45-year-old local man was arrested and faced eight counts of first-degree murder after the shooting at the retirement care home in Carthage, about 60 miles southwest of Raleigh.
"There are eight dead," Moore County District Attorney Maureen Krueger told a news conference. Neither she nor other officials were able to immediately offer a motive for the killings in what was the third major shooting incident in the southeastern United States this month.
Those killed at the Pinelake Health and Rehab Center in Carthage, which offered care for the elderly and Alzheimer's sufferers, included seven patients in their 70s, 80s and 90s, and one 39-year-old staff member, officials said.
"The shooter entered the facility heavily armed and began shooting at people in wheelchairs," WRAL News quoted North Carolina state Senator Harris Blake as saying.
Remainder of article: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE52S1V320090330





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This horrific crime was committed by a MURDERER, not by a gunman. The criminal and the police used the same tool. The difference between them is that the MURDERER killed innocent people.
My condolences to the families.
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martinisnsushi - living the good life since 1963
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martinisnsushi - the two most important food groups!
/ˈgʌn
1.
a person armed with or expert in the use of a gun, esp. one ready to use a gun unlawfully.
2.
a person who makes guns.
If that's the definition you're going to use, then this crime was stopped by a gunman. Gunmen save millions of livs each year. We have aprox 1.5 million gunmen serving in the US military. Every state, county, and incorporated city in the US hires gunmen to patrol and combat crime.
Words mean things. When a murderer with no regard for human life commits an attrocity call him what he is - a murderer. The fact that he used the same tool as the police called out to stop him has nothing to do with his intent to kill innocent people. He also drove a car, wore clothes, spoke English, etc. just like the cops who came to stop him. The thing that made him unique and a threat was his intent to commit murder.
Interestingly, when violent criminals use other tools, I don't see them referred to as "knifeman", "car man", "poison man", or "match man". Somehow, we manage to recognize that the thing that made these people newsworthy was their intent and willingness to commit violent crime, not the fact that they used common tools to do so.
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martinisnsushi - living the good life since 1963
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martinisnsushi - the two most important food groups!
I posted the story because of the horrific crime committed by this individual.
Wow. Talk about splitting hairs! Yeah, it was a gunman who killed people. His weapon of choice was a gun. If he hadn't had access to a gun, would he have been able to kill so many, so quickly?
Do you defend poisoners with the same ardor?!
Jabberwocka
What gave you the idea I was defending a murderer?
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martinisnsushi - living the good life since 1963
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martinisnsushi - the two most important food groups!
I've always found the argument specious since it's people with guns (aka "gunmen") who kill.
IF the shooter had been a woman, I could see taking umbrage at the word "gunman". Otherwise, insisting that "GUNMAN" is incorrect, does seem very much like pointless hair splitting. By that logic, someone who killed with poison (say, like the former FSO agent did to the Russian expose author in London http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko_poisoning), couldn't be called a "poisoner", since it's people, not poison, which kills.
Remarkable daffy "logic", is it not?
Jabberwocka
Name calling and innuendo does not an argument make. There is absolutely nothing wrong with their logic.
I've always found the argument specious since it's people with guns (aka "gunmen") who kill.
It is also people with fists, knives, poisons, matches, blunt objects, drugs, plastic bags, etc. Further,
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martinisnsushi - the two most important food groups!
How sick.
The NRA's logic is feeble or they are deliberately sinning by omission in hopes that the weak of mind won't notice. Either it has never occurred to them that it's not GUNS which have membership in the NRA; or they CHOOSE to disregard the same glaring fact. Laughable, really.
Given the huge amount of destruction which can be wreaked in a very short period of time with firearms, comparisons to other potentially lethal "weapons" is spurious at best and ridiculous at worst. Plastic bags?! OMG!
And we get back, once again, to the primary intent of firearms versus those other ****gasp, cough, choke, wheeze*** "weapons" you mentioned. Firearms are meant to physically damage the objects at which they are aimed and fired. THAT'S THEIR PRIMARY PURPOSE. And "advances" have "improved" the portability, ease of concealment, and the speed of fire far beyond that which existed at the time the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written.
There are substances which are toxic, poisonous, to humans if ingested, inhaled, or exposed to over time. And some are relatively benign in their original purpose. Take anti-freeze, for instance.
Did it not occur to you that there would have been NO need to call a law enforcement officer to the North Carolina nursing home (who need not necessarily have been equipped with a gun to stop a rampaging gunman--see: Taser, pepper spray, tear gas, etc), had there not been a gunman in the first place? Escalating the cycle of defense has not been particularly effective, either in stopping criminals or in preventing episodes like that which took place in Binghampton. What next? Personal nuclear devices?!
We do NOT live in the days of the Wild West when "justice" was a matter of individual perception and people shot "each other for legal reasons". Unfortunately, the insistence of RKBA by some, has been responsible for the needless deaths of many, particularly in the past week or so. There is no mechanism to keep firearms out of the hands of the first-time berserk. As we come up on the tenth anniversary of Columbine, I hope that the nation will realize that RKBA has NOT made us any safer, either individually or societally.
Edited 4/3/2009 9:40 pm ET by jabberwocka
Jabberwocka
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