Sunday, November 13, 2011

Triple Murder / Suicide in Pittsburg CA

SF Gate reports

A Pittsburg man suffering from financial problems posted a suicide note on Facebook, then shot and killed his wife and her parents early Thursday in his foreclosed home before turning the gun on himself, police said.
Do you think anyone checked if this guy was a concealed carry permit holder? I don't. I don't think anyone cares if he is in cases like this. That's why the claim that CCW permit holders are responsible for so little trouble is wrong. No one knows how much trouble they actually cause.

Was this the economy's fault. Yes, in a sense, at least partly.

Was the fact that they guy had a gun available partly responsible? Yes, very likely. It's too easy to kill people with a gun. Without one, it takes more resolve and motivation, which many distraught people do not have.

Would mental health screening have identified this guy as a risk? Perhaps, it certainly would pick up some, the worst cases for sure.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

13 comments:

  1. Are you serious about these remarks? Did anyone check to see if the shooter were a concealed carry license holder? How is that relevant?

    1. As a California resident, he likely wasn't. Hardly anyone but politicians and celebrities there are.

    2. There's a good chance that he bought his gun legally in California's onerous system. As is typical, here's another news article that doesn't give full details on the gun in question.

    So you have no facts about the shooter, but in the absence of evidence, you suggest that there are more bad concealed carry licensees than we know.

    Laci the Dog and Dog Gone,

    Point out this piece of faulty reasoning: We have no evidence, therefore our conclusion must be correct.

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  2. There's apparently a couple of facts about the shooter that can't be ignored.

    1.) He was fucking pissed.

    C.) He shot three people to death and then took his own life.

    and

    9.) CA is bordered by three states that have much less stringent gun laws, so getting a weppin is not nearly as difficult as people like Greg Camp seem to to think it is.

    I just wish that there was, like, a bazillion Greg Camps ready to blow away any perps, actual or potential so that I could sleep at night.

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  3. Democommie,

    My point was that this article takes an absence of evidence to reach an unsupported conclusion. Any comment on that?

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  4. Whether he had a concealed carry permit or not is relevant, Greg, because you guys keep telling us how safe the CCW permit guys are. They're not, not all of them and there's no way to know how bad it is. No one's keeping count.

    ReplyDelete
  5. And at least some conservatives want to do away with any permit requirement whatsoever anywhere. THAT is what is really behind the legislation in Congress now. At least, that was the statement made by Minnesota Congressman Chip Cravaack just last night.

    Just one of the many stupid things he says; another factually inaccurate conservative. He was also claiming that the Keyston pipeline would provide 20,000 new jobs and one million 'ancillary jobs'.

    Except that it turns out that of course, the pipeline won't do that, which is why there is a state department investigation into the approval process. And the pipeline would net zero jobs, and even destroy some existing businesses and jobs.

    But hey, so long as big oil pays big money to stupid congressmen and so long as we have our low information conservative propaganda swallowers, who cares right? Big oil, big money from gun manufacturers, and those facts stop being the basis for your position.

    It's like magic. Or corruption and stupidity.

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  6. Well, one thing we do know for certain is that the guy who killed himself and three other people used a gun. That gun might have been stolen from someone too stupid, lazy or sociopathic to store it properly. It might have been purchased without any paperwork from one of a number of sources. He may have been one of the InstaPerps--an "otherwise law-abiding citizen" who just snapped.


    I contacted the reporter of the story that was linked to in the original post and he said that the police don't know/aren't saying how the gun came to be in the killer's hands.

    However it happened, the odds are way better that it was a gun that found it's way into a killer's hands because of lax gun laws or someone's greed or stupidity and it likely was some combination of those. It did not appear out of thin air.

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  7. Mikeb302000,

    It does matter. You raised the question. You asked if anyone checked to see if the shooter had a carry license. You said that those with licenses are obviously a worse bunch than is claimed. You used this shooter as an illustration of that assertion.

    Your argument went this way:

    We don't know if the bad guy had X. Therefore, people with X are bad people.

    Why don't Dog Gone or Laci the Dog criticize your logical fallacies?

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  8. Because, Greg, my experience has shown that there ARE people who should not have been granted licences, yet shall issue grants them licences.

    In addition, these people go on to commit crimes with their firearms and licences.

    Since this is experiential, I cannot cite to all my cases. That means you would not accept it.

    So be it.

    So, I see more logical leaps coming from your side than ours.

    The real problem is evidential. The gun lobby makes it so that it is hard to demonstrate the detrimental effects of their policies until someone like Cho Seung-Hui, Jared Loughner, or Steven Kazmierczak goes postal with legally purchased firearms.

    Not to mention we have convicted felons who are allowed to have their "gun rights" restored, only to commit more crimes.

    It's pretty obvious from the amount of dead and wounded bodies piling up that the system is broken.

    So, the real logical error, greg, is that your head is so far up your ass and has been for some time that it seems normal to you.

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  9. Laci the Dog,

    You didn't answer my question. I showed how Mikeb302000 used a non sequitur. You blame a lack of evidence and say that the lack is our fault. Again, there's a lack of evidence, therefore the conclusion must be accepted? Hold yourself to the standard that you require from others.

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  10. Greg, There's no logical fallacy and no non-sequitur, that's why the co-bloggers didn't call me on it.

    Let me tell you like this. Let's say there are 1,000 CCW permit holders. You provide a stat which shows only one of them was convicted of shooting someone wrongly. You say this proves the CCW guys are much safer than cops or other gun owners or any other group on Earth.

    I say, but wait a minute, the survey or analysis that turned up that one bad guy out of 1,000 was not exhaustive, it was not comprehensive. There were others.

    You say prove it. I say I can't. You say aha, gotcha. I say fuck off because you know damn well that 1 out of a 1,000 is bullshit, all you have to do is use some common sense and honesty.

    Are you lacking in common sense and honesty, Greg?

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  11. Mikeb302000,

    Pay attention. You said that we don't know if the shooter in this case had a carry license. Therefore, the claim that licensees are generally responsible is wrong.

    We don't know if Mr. Smith had X. Therefore, people with X cause more harm than we realize.

    How does that conclusion follow from the premise?

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  12. Greg said, "You said that we don't know if the shooter in this case had a carry license. Therefore, the claim that licensees are generally responsible is wrong."

    That's basically right, Greg.

    What I said is we don't know if this guy had a license or not. Therefore, the claim that guys with licenses are safer is bogus because we don't know how many of the guys we read about every day actually have concealed carry permits.

    In other words, you claim something based on faulty and incomplete data.

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  13. Mikeb302000,

    We can claim nothing from what we don't know. I point out that there are some six million licensees in this country. If a lot of us were out committing crimes, you'd know. There'd be no doubt.

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