Classmates: Ohio shooter kept a ‘hit list’ and a ‘rape list’
DAYTON, Ohio (AP) — High school classmates of the gunman who killed nine people early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, say he was suspended for compiling a “hit list” of those he wanted to kill and a “rape list” of girls he wanted to sexually assault.
The accounts by two former classmates emerged after police said there was nothing in the background of 24-year-old Connor Betts that would have prevented him from purchasing the .223-caliber rifle with extended ammunition magazines that he used to open fire outside a crowded bar.
So if people knew this in advance of the shooting, how in the heck did he NOT end up on a NICS denial list?
We have a MASSIVE societal failure, having nothing to do with caliber or magazine capacity, and EVERYTHING to do with the failure of students, teachers, school administrators, psychiatrists, and police, to ACT when they know something ain’t right.
The Stoneman Douglas High School shooter had over 30 police contacts, an FBI investigation, AND a psychiatric record, and he was CLEARLY disqualified from buying or owning a firearm, but nobody acted. Nobody reported his information to NICS. No family member intervened and confiscated his guns. Nobody did a thing. And the result is 17 dead, 17 wounded, and David Hogg’s movement to crush the 2nd Amendment.
Nobody in the DOD reported the Sutherland Spring's disqualifying UCMJ violations, or his disqualifying psychiatric diagnosis, or his disqualifying domestic abuse record to NICS, and the result is 26 dead and 20 wounded. The fact that a good guy with the same kind of rifle used by the shooter responded and was able to drive him off, only
barely gave our side a valid counter-argument to the totalitarian impulse to outlaw AR15s.
Nobody in any kind of position of authority or with first-hand knowledge reported the Columbine, Aurora, Washington Navy Yard, Pulse Night Club, etc, etc, etc, shooters, and on and on and on. NOBODY did anything to intervene BEFORE the shooter was able to carry out his mass murder, even in the face of social media posts, official visits from law enforcement and/or mental health personnel, disqualifying criminal records, etc. NOBODY REPORTED ANYTHING TO NICS. NOBODY MADE A SINGLE ATTEMPT TO REMOVE FIREARMS FROM THE POSSESSION OF
CLEARLY DISTURBED INDIVIDUALS.
Nobody.
EXAMPLE: Police and a mental health crisis team visited the Thousand Oaks nightclub shooter in 2017 for his irate and irrational behavior, the SAME year as the shooting, but they decided not to detain him at a psychiatric facility. A high school teacher of his claimed that he had physically assaulted her as a student but she was "encouraged" not to push the incident so as to not endanger his future in the Marine Corps.
Probably the lone exception is the Las Vegas shooter, who although he had obvious gambling and drinking problems, had no investigative contacts with law enforcement or mental health professionals, and had no disqualifying criminal convictions. Imagine how different the problems we gun owners face would be if
he was the
only mass shooter in the last 100 years.
In nearly EVERY. SINGLE. CASE of a mass shooting, NOBODY exercised their moral agency to act. Nobody in the shooter's family, or his friends and acquaintances. Nobody who is PAID to act did anything to exercise their lawful authority. Nobody in education, mental health care, or law enforcement. And the leftist impulse is to blame the weapon, instead of blaming the culture that THEY created, and the social fabric that THEY weakened; and their response is to seek to crush the rights of the 100 million or so gun owners who have never put a wrong foot forward.
Somehow, WE are to blame for insisting on the preservation of the 2nd Amendment's original and
primary purpose—the right of the individual citizen to participate in the security of a free state, by possessing and bearing the weapon most closely resembling the one needed by a well-regulated militia, to approximate (but "thanks" to the NFA, not
duplicate) the weapon in most common military use.
CITIZENS have guns. SUBJECTS do not. The totalitarian left does not
want citizens who can object to and reject their illiberal policies. They
want subjects who must be obedient to those policies or face the wrath of the state.
How can this un-American viewpoint gain power of the entire nation?
ONLY by removing the ONE thing that preserves the citizenry's power to reject it—the 2nd Amendment.
And every time society fails to act when people KNOW that an individual is dangerously unstable, by exercising either one's moral or lawful authority, resulting in another mass shooting, the totalitarian left is
that much closer to what they want—the Animal Farm.
Patriots must resist this, by whatever means the situation calls for at the moment, when
they come face to face with either the evil of a mass shooter, OR the evil of the totalitarian left if it ever gains the upper hand. Yes, it has become a
moral obligation of Citizenship to be armed at all times, to be prepared for
either sort of defense.....defense of self and others, and defense of a free state.
Excellent analysis, as usual.