Howie Hayman - Thoughts - America - Guns are being used in mass shootings.

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Home - Thoughts - America - Mass Shootings

Mass Shootings

After a lot of thought, I decided to post this information. For those of you who still believe Americans should be armed, you might want to think again.

Although mass shootings do not account for the largest amount of deaths per year, when compared to homicides, this type of crime is undoubtedly the worst. Think about it. If a couple of gangs or drug dealers what to go under a freeway overpass and shoot each other, great. But when someone walks into a shopping mall, a restaurant, and worst of all, an elementary school, and kills out half a dozen innocent people or more, then something needs to change.

For all of you gun toting NRA members, think of how you would feel if your wife was killed while shopping at the local grocery store or if your kids were blown away in a park by some random shooter. Nothing ever seems to matter to anybody until it hits home. Why do you wait until it's too late? Why do you need to promote such easy accessibility to something (guns) which makes killing so easy? Reach inside yourself, use your religion if you need to, and realize that guns are bad news and have no place in a truly civilized society.

I wrote this page in 2017 when we moved back to America and bought a home in a small, conservative, little mountain town in San Diego County, California. Literally all of the neighbors had guns, and stories to go with them, including many of them pulling guns on each other when they got angry. It took only three months to decide to move back to Japan, and then another three months to sell the house and move out of that dangerous place. I decided to make a list of the mass shootings up to the end of 2016. For more recent shootings, visit the following links.

United States Mass Murders 2016

On October 25, 2016, a shooting occurred at a FreightCar America building in Roanoke, Virginia. Getachew Fekede, a 53-year-old former employee and Kenyan refugee who moved to the U.S. in 2011, fired ten rounds from a 9mm handgun, killing an employee and wounding three others. He then committed suicide. Police said the shooting appeared to be an act of workplace violence, but added that the possibility of terrorism will be investigated.
On September 23, 2016, five people were killed in a mass shooting at the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington, U.S. The gunman was identified as Arcan Cetin, a 20-year-old who immigrated from Turkey as a child with his family. He was arrested the following day in Oak Harbor, Washington, his hometown. He confessed to committing the shooting on September 26.
On August 20, 2016, six people, including an unborn baby, were killed inside a home in Citronelle, Alabama. Two other people were kidnapped during the incident, but they were both released and one managed to alert authorities. The killings were described by investigators as the worst in Mobile County's history. A suspect, identified as Derrick Dearman, who was the estranged boyfriend of the escaped hostage, later turned himself in at a Mississippi police station. He was charged with six counts of capital murder and two counts of abduction.
On July 30, 2016, a mass shooting occurred during a house party held by students of the University of Washington and Kamiak High School in the affluent community of Mukilteo, a suburb of Everett and Seattle, Washington. Three people were killed and one person was injured. Afterwards, the gunman fled the scene. Ninety minutes after the shooting, a suspect, identified as 19-year-old Allen Christopher Ivanov, was arrested near Chehalis. On August 2, he was charged with aggravated murder, attempted murder, and assault; and he pleaded not guilty to all of the charges on August 22. The shooting led to calls for gun control in Washington state.
On July 17, 2016, Gavin Eugene Long shot six police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the wake of the shooting of Alton Sterling. Three died and three were hospitalized, one critically; of the officers who died, two were members of the Baton Rouge Police Department, while the third worked for the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office. Long, who associated himself with organizations linked to black separatism and the sovereign citizen movement, was shot and killed by a SWAT officer during a shootout with police at the scene. Police arrested and questioned two other suspects, but Long was confirmed to be the only person involved in the shooting.
On July 11, 2016, Larry Darnell Gordon, an inmate, opened fire on the third floor of the Berrien County Courthouse in St. Joseph, Michigan, killing two bailiffs and injuring a sheriff's deputy and a civilian. Gordon, who was facing a multitude of charges that carried a possible life sentence, was being taken to a holding cell following a courthouse hearing when he disarmed an officer and attempted to take hostages. Moments after taking hostages, other court officers shot and killed Gordon.
On July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed and fired upon a group of police officers in Dallas, Texas, killing five officers and injuring nine others. Two civilians were also wounded. Johnson was an Army Reserve Afghan War veteran who was reportedly angry over police shootings of black men and stated that he wanted to kill white people, especially white police officers. The shooting happened at the end of a peaceful protest against police killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, which had occurred in the preceding days. Following the shooting, Johnson fled inside a building on the campus of El Centro College. Police followed him there, and a standoff ensued. In the early hours of July 8, police killed Johnson with a bomb attached to a remote control bomb disposal robot. It was the first time U.S. law enforcement used a robot to kill a suspect.
On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a terrorist attack/hate crime inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States. He was shot and killed by Orlando Police Department (OPD) officers after a three-hour standoff. Pulse was hosting Latin Night and most of the victims were Latino. It was both the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter and the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in United States history. It was also the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since the September 11 attacks in 2001.
On the night of April 21–22, 2016, eight people were shot and killed in four homes in Pike County, near Peebles, Ohio, 60 miles (97 km) from Columbus, and 90 miles (140 km) from Cincinnati. Their bodies were found later on April 22. Seven of the victims—six adults and a 16-year-old boy—were discovered to have been fatally shot execution-style in three adjacent houses, while the eighth victim—an adult—was found shot to death in a fourth house in nearby Piketon. Three young children, including two infants, were left alive during the killings. At least two shooters are believed to be responsible. All of the victims were members of the Rhoden family, and investigators believe the killings were premeditated and the perpetrators known to the family. On April 25, the Ohio Attorney General's office confirmed the presence of marijuana growth and cockfighting operations at some of the crime scenes, but did not confirm a direct connection to the killings. The ensuing investigation soon became the largest in Ohio's history.
On March 9, 2016, six people were killed and three others injured in a mass shooting at a suburban house in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Two men, Cheron Shelton and Robert Thomas, have been charged in connection with the deadly massacre. One of the slain victims was a pregnant woman, and her unborn baby, who also died, was added to the number of fatalities on the day after the shooting.
Pablo Antonio Serrano-Vitorino is a Mexican illegal immigrant to the United States who is charged with murdering four men in Kansas and another shortly afterward in Missouri, in March 2016.
On February 29, 2016, four students were injured during a shooting in the school's cafeteria. Two of the victims were hit by bullets and the other two were injured by shrapnel. The suspected shooter, identified as 14-year-old student James Austin Hancock, fled the scene, but was later tracked down by police dogs and arrested by officers. He was charged as an adult with two counts of attempted murder, two counts of felonious assault, inducing panic, and making terroristic threats. The charges were later upgraded to four counts of attempted murder and one count of inducing panic. On June 6, Hancock was sentenced to six years in juvenile detention. The victims' families later filed a lawsuit against Hancock, his family, and the state on July 3. In it, the suit alleges that Hancock's parents entrusted him with the gun used in the shooting, and that the weapon was registered to other relatives who failed to properly secure it.
On February 25, 2016, three people were killed and fourteen others injured in a series of shootings in Newton and Hesston, Kansas, including in and outside an Excel Industries building. The shooter, identified as Excel employee Cedric Larry Ford, was then killed by a responding police officer.
On the night of February 20, 2016, a series of apparently random shootings took place at an apartment complex, a car dealership, and outside a restaurant in Kalamazoo County, Michigan. Six people were killed and two others were injured. Police detained a 45-year-old Uber driver, Jason Brian Dalton, as a "strong suspect" in the shootings. He was subsequently charged with murder, assault, and criminal firearm use two days after the shootings. After he was found competent to stand trial, Dalton's lawyers planned to a legal insanity defense for their client.
On January 30, 2016, a brawl involving gunfire and knives broke out between rival motorcycle clubs at the National Western Complex, in Denver, Colorado. One person was killed and seven others were injured.

United States Mass Murders 2015

On December 2, 2015, 14 people were killed and 22 were seriously injured in a terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, which consisted of a mass shooting and an attempted bombing. The perpetrators, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple living in the city of Redlands, targeted a San Bernardino County Department of Public Health training event and Christmas party, of about 80 employees, in a rented banquet room. Farook was an American-born U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, who worked as a health department employee. Malik was a Pakistani-born lawful permanent resident of the United States.
On November 27, 2015, a gunman attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A police officer and two civilians were killed; five police officers and four civilians were injured. After a standoff that lasted five hours, police SWAT teams crashed armored vehicles into the lobby and the attacker surrendered.
The Umpqua Community College shooting occurred on October 1, 2015, at the UCC campus near Roseburg, Oregon, United States. Chris Harper-Mercer, a 26-year-old enrolled at the school, fatally shot an assistant professor and eight students in a classroom. Seven to nine others were injured. Roseburg police detectives responding to the incident engaged Harper-Mercer in a brief shootout. After being wounded, he killed himself by shooting himself in the head. The mass shooting was the deadliest in Oregon's modern history.
On August 8, 2015, a mass shooting occurred inside a home in northern Harris County, Texas, near Houston. 48-year-old David Ray Conley allegedly broke into his former home and held hostage Valerie and Dewayne Jackson, along with six children, including his own 13-year-old son. Over the course of nine hours, he reportedly shot and killed the entire family. He then engaged in a shootout with responding police before surrendering.
On July 23, 2015, a shooting occurred at the Grand 16 movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana. John Russell Houser, age 59, opened fire during a showing of the film Trainwreck, killing two people and injuring nine others before committing suicide.
Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez opened fire on two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on July 16, 2015. He first committed a drive-by shooting at a recruiting center, then traveled to a U.S. Navy Reserve center and continued firing, where he was killed by police in a gunfight. Four Marines died on the spot. A Navy sailor, a Marine recruiter, and a police officer were wounded; the sailor died from his injuries two days later. On December 16, following an investigation, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James B. Comey said that the shootings were "motivated by foreign terrorist organization propaganda."
The Charleston church shooting (also known as the Charleston church massacre) was a mass shooting and hate crime that took place at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States, on the evening of June 17, 2015. During a prayer service, nine people, including the senior pastor, state senator Clementa C. Pinckney were killed by a 21 year old gunman named Dylann Roof; a tenth victim survived. The morning after the attack police arrested Roof in Shelby, North Carolina. He would later confess to committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.
On May 17, 2015, in Waco, Texas, a shootout erupted at a Twin Peaks restaurant where members of several motorcycle clubs (MC), including the Bandidos, Cossacks, and allies, had gathered for a regularly scheduled meeting about political rights for motorcyclists. Waco police, including a SWAT team, had gathered to monitor them from outside, and opened fire on the bikers after the shootout started. Nine bikers were killed, seven of them members of the Cossacks Motorcycle Club, while eighteen others were injured.
On February 26, 2015, a gunman shot and killed seven people in several locations across the town of Tyrone, Missouri, an unincorporated community about 95 miles east of Springfield. The gunman, identified as 36-year-old Joseph Jesse Aldridge, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound the next day. It was the worst mass murder in the history of Texas County, Missouri, which previously had an average of one homicide per year.

United States Mass Murders 2014

Rosemary Anderson High School (RAHS) is a private alternative high school in Portland, Oregon, United States. On December 12, 2014, at around 12:15 p.m., a shooting occurred near the school. Four people were injured; a 16-year-old girl was left in critical condition, while a boy and a 20-year-old man were hospitalized in fair condition. A fourth girl was grazed by a bullet and was treated at the scene. Police have stated the shooting appears to be gang-related. On December 13, a 22-year-old man was arrested in connection with the shooting, and was on parole at the time. On December 14, an 18-year-old male was arrested.
The Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting occurred in Marysville, Washington, on October 24, 2014, when 15-year-old freshman student Jaylen Fryberg shot five other students at Marysville Pilchuck High School, fatally wounding four, before fatally shooting himself. Fryberg's father, Raymond Fryberg, was arrested and convicted the following year for illegally purchasing and owning the gun used in the shooting, among other firearms.
On July 9, 2014, a mass shooting occurred in a home located in northern Harris County, Texas, near the Spring census-designated place, and a suburban area of Greater Houston, leaving six family members dead, four of them children, and a lone survivor. The suspected shooter, Ronald Lee Haskell, was apprehended after a standoff that lasted several hours. Haskell was related to the victims by a former marriage.
On April 2, 2014, a shooting spree occurred at several locations on the Fort Hood military base near Killeen, Texas. Four people, including the gunman, were killed, while fourteen additional people were injured, twelve by gunshot wounds. The shooter, 34-year-old Army Specialist Ivan Lopez, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

United States Mass Murders 2013

On November 1, 2013, a shooting occurred at around 9:20 a.m. PDT in Terminal 3 of the Los Angeles International Airport. Paul Anthony Ciancia, aged 23, opened fire with a rifle, killing a U.S. government Transportation Security Administration officer and injuring several other people.
The Washington Navy Yard shooting occurred on September 16, 2013, when a lone gunman - Aaron Alexis - fatally shot twelve people and injured three others in a mass shooting at the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) inside the Washington Navy Yard in Southeast Washington, D.C. The attack, which took place in the Navy Yard's Building 197, began around 8:20 a.m. EDT and ended when Alexis was killed by police around 9:20 a.m. EDT. It was the second-deadliest mass murder on a U.S. military base, behind only the Fort Hood shooting in November 2009.
The Ross Township Municipal Building shooting occurred just after 7:00 p.m. on August 5, 2013, in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, United States, a small town in Monroe County. A gunman went on a shooting rampage at a public meeting of township supervisors in the municipal building, leaving three people dead and three others injured. The gunman, identified as Rockne Newell, was described as having long feuded with township officials. While approaching the building on foot, Newel fired a .223 Ruger Mini-14 rifle into the building 28 times, through windows. Then, he went back to his car to retrieve a Six-Shot .44 Magnum Revolver before entering the building and the meeting room. There, he began shooting the handgun at meeting attendees. While the gunman was still shooting, two men struggled with him over the gun. They subdued, disarmed, and held him, preventing further deaths and injuries.
On July 26, 2013, a mass shooting occurred at the Todel Apartments, an apartment complex in Hialeah, a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Seven people, including the shooter, were killed in the incident. The shooter was identified by police as 42-year-old Pedro Alberto Vargas, a resident of Hialeah, who, after setting his apartment ablaze, opened fire from his balcony and inside the apartment, then held two people hostage before being fatally shot by a SWAT team on the early hours of July 27.
On June 7, 2013, a killing spree by a lone shooter occurred in Santa Monica, California, starting with a domestic dispute and subsequent fire at a home, followed by a series of shootings near and on the campus of Santa Monica College. Six people were killed, including the suspect, and four people were injured in the incident. The shooter, 23-year-old John Zawahri, was killed by police officers when he exchanged gunfire with them at the Santa Monica College library.
On the night of January 19, 2013, five people were found dead inside a house by police in South Valley, New Mexico. A .22-caliber rifle was used to shoot a woman and three children, while an AR-15-style rifle was believed to be the weapon used to shoot an adult male when he came home later. A 15-year-old male, who was another member of the family, was arrested in connection with the shooting. According to police, Nehemiah Griego first killed his mother with a .22 rifle at around midnight. His brother Zephaniah woke up and Nehemiah told him he had shot their mother, but his brother initially did not believe him until Nehemiah showed him her bloodstained face. He stated to police his brother became upset, and then Nehemiah proceeded to shoot him with the same rifle. He then went into the bedroom his two younger sisters shared and found them crying, and shot them both in the head. He then proceeded downstairs and waited for his father to return home, which he did at around 5:00 a.m., upon which his son shot him multiple times with an AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle with a scope.

United States Mass Murders 2012

In the early morning of December 24, 2012, firefighters responding to a fire in West Webster, New York, a suburb of Rochester, were fired upon by 62-year-old William H. Spengler, who was believed to have deliberately set the fire. Two of the firefighters were killed. According to police, Spengler set his house on 191 Lake Road and the family car on fire in the early morning hours of Christmas Eve, and then armed himself with three guns: a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver, a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun, and a .223-caliber Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle. When firefighters arrived shortly after 5:30 a.m., he ambushed them from an earthen berm across the street from his house. Two firefighters were killed, and two others were injured.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children between six and seven years old, as well as six adult staff members. Prior to driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the scene, Lanza committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. The incident was the deadliest mass shooting at a high school or grade school in U.S. history and the third-deadliest mass shooting by a single person in U.S. history. The shooting prompted renewed debate about gun control in the United States, including proposals for making the background-check system universal, and for new federal and state gun legislation banning the sale and manufacture of certain types of semi-automatic firearms and magazines with more than ten rounds of ammunition. A November 2013 report issued by the Connecticut State Attorney's office concluded that Lanza acted alone and planned his actions, but no evidence collected provided any indication as to why he did so, or why he targeted the school.
On December 11, 2012, a shooting occurred at the Clackamas Town Center in unincorporated Clackamas County, outside the city of Portland, Oregon. The gunman, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts, ran into the shopping center wearing tactical clothing and a hockey mask and opened fire on shoppers and employees with a stolen AR-15. He fired a total of seventeen shots, killing two people and seriously wounding a third person. Having attempted to reload his weapon and dropping three magazines, Roberts entered a stairwell and committed suicide after descending one level. Roberts had no connection to any of his victims, and it was believed to be a random act of violence. The Clackamas Town Center has a posted policy of prohibiting firearms on the premises.
On October 21, 2012, a mass shooting occurred at the Azana Spa in Brookfield, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. Four people, including the shooter, died in the incident; four others were injured. The shooter was identified as 45-year-old Radcliffe Franklin Haughton, the estranged husband of a spa worker killed in the shooting.
A shooting incident occurred at a firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on the afternoon of Thursday, September 27, 2012. The attack took place inside Accent Signage Systems, where a former employee walked into the firm's building and fired a Glock 19 9mm pistol. By the end of the day, five people were dead, including the gunman who committed suicide, and four others were injured, three of them critically. One of those critically injured died the following day, and another man succumbed to his wounds on October 10. It was the deadliest workplace shooting in Minnesota's history.
On August 13, 2012, a shooting occurred in College Station, Texas near Texas A&M University around 12:30 p.m. central time, in which multiple people, mostly police officers, were shot in a shootout. The suspect, who was shot and fatally wounded in the gunfight, was later identified as 35-year-old Thomas Alton Caffall III. Police found a Vz 58 Tactical Sporter rifle, a Mosin–Nagant M91/30 rifle with a bayonet, a .40-caliber SIG Sauer P226 pistol stolen from a police officer, and a PSL rifle with a scope in his house after the shooting.
On August 5, 2012, a massacre took place at the gurdwara (Sikh temple) in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, where 40-year-old Wade Michael Page fatally shot six people and wounded four others. Page committed suicide by shooting himself in the head after he was shot in the stomach by a responding police officer. Page was an American white supremacist and Army veteran from Cudahy, Wisconsin. Apart from the shooter, all of the dead were members of the Sikh faith. The incident drew responses from President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Dignitaries attended candlelight vigils in countries such as the U.S., Canada, and India. First Lady Michelle Obama visited the temple on August 23, 2012.
On July 20, 2012, a mass shooting occurred inside a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a midnight screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises. A gunman, dressed in tactical clothing, set off tear gas grenades and shot into the audience with multiple firearms. 12 people were killed and around 70 others were injured, making this the largest number of casualties in a shooting in the United States until the Orlando nightclub shooting four years later. The sole assailant, James Eagan Holmes, was arrested in his car outside the cinema minutes later. This also was the deadliest shooting in Colorado since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. Prior to the shooting, Holmes rigged his apartment with homemade explosives, which were defused by a bomb squad a day after the shooting.
The 2012 Seattle cafe shooting spree was a series of shooting incidents that occurred on May 30, 2012. The killing spree began with a mass shooting that occurred at Café Racer in Seattle, Washington, resulting in the deaths of four patrons. A fifth person was killed not long after. The shooter was identified as Ian Lee Stawicki, who later committed suicide.
The Oikos University shooting occurred on April 2, 2012, when a gunman shot at people inside Oikos University, a Korean Christian college in Oakland, California, United States. Within a few hours, the number of reported fatalities reached seven. 43-year-old One L. Goh, a former student at the school, was taken into custody and identified as the suspect in the shootings. Along with the California State University, Fullerton massacre, this was the fourth-deadliest university shooting in United States history, after the Virginia Tech massacre, the University of Texas Clock Tower shooting, and the Umpqua Community College shooting, and the eighth-deadliest U.S. school massacre overall. It is also considered the deadliest mass killing in the city's history.
The Chardon High School shooting occurred on February 27, 2012, at Chardon High School in Chardon, Ohio, United States. Three male students died within two days following the incident. Two other students were hospitalized, one of whom sustained several serious injuries requiring extensive rehabilitation, and the other suffered a minor injury. The seriously injured victim has since been declared permanently paralyzed. A sixth student sustained a superficial wound.
While rumors of a warning of the event having been posted on the Internet circulated, student witnesses identified the shooter as Thomas "T. J." Lane III, a 17-year-old juvenile. Although police were initially hesitant to publicly identify the juvenile after he was apprehended, by the evening of February 28, authorities confirmed that the suspect was Lane.

Conclusion

The gun laws in the United States simply need to be changed. Better yet, remove all guns from society. Take a look at other countries like Japan, where guns are illegal, and see what a kind and peaceful society looks like.

Additional Information

U.S. Mass Murder Information
Wikipedia: Mass shootings in the United States by year
Wikipedia: Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting conspiracy theories - This was the most disgusting of all that the grieving families involved in this terrible tragedy would be harassed by many crazy conspiracy theorists. WTF is this world coming to?