Sunday, January 15, 2012

Philly Mass Shooting Update

May I point out that we have had multiple mass shootings and we're less than 30 days into the new year.  That is something that just doesn't happen nearly as often, per capita, in other countries, with fewer guns.

FAR fewer guns.

Update on the recent Philly mass shooting.

From MSNBC.com :

Philadephia mayor: Slain 14-year-olds' 'little butts' should have been in bed

PHILADELPHIA - An outraged Mayor Michael Nutter lashed out after three 14-year-olds in his city were killed, calling the shooter "a dog," "idiot" and "a**hole." He also fumed at the dead boys' parents for not adequately supervising their children, saying that "their little butts" should have been in bed.
The mayor's on-camera remarks came after a 30-year-old stepfather opened fire on a car full of kids who came over to fistfight with his three stepsons Tuesday night, according to police, reported NBCPhiladelphia.com.  A source told NBC Philadelphia that Axel Barreto confessed to firing shots at the car, killing three teenagers inside. He was arrested Wednesday night in a Bensalem, Pa., motel.
Police said that around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, seven teens drove over to a house in Philadelphia's Juniata section. Barreto was waiting with a semi-automatic in the driveway, NBC Philadelphia reported. He fired about a dozen shots into the car, hitting four of them, police said; the 16-year-old driver, whose neck was grazed by a bullet, is expected to make a full recovery.
While Mayor Nutter expressed satisfaction over Barreto's swift arrest, on Thursday night, he told reporters that the situation left him exasperated.
Read the full story on NBCPhiladelphia.com
“Seven young people, somewhere between 14 and 16 years old, on a Tuesday night -- a school night -- are out in a car going to somewhere to have a fight with some other teenager. That is completely insane, it is irresponsible," he said. "Parents have to know where their children are and what they are doing.
“The least you can do is know where the hell your kids are, in the daytime, in the nighttime, or at any time during the week or on the weekends. That’s the minimum we should ask and expect from our parents. You want to have kids? Take care of them.”
The victims were looking for trouble, he said.
“Their little butts should have either been in bed, getting ready for bed, or doing some homework,” Nutter said, reported CBS 3 in Philadelphia. “Not out in a car, not in some other neighborhood, and not up to this kind of nonsense. I’m not your mom and I’m not your dad. We cannot completely legislate, or by policy, make people responsible for their children.”
And to Barreto, he said this: "If you want to act like an idiot, you want to be an a**hole, you want to be a lowlife in this town, we will track you down like the dog that you are."
The other teenagers who were in the car on Tuesday night were cooperating with police to help investigators figure out the timeline of events that led up to the deadly shooting, according to NBCPhiladelphia.com. One of the people in the car that night allegedly received a call asking them to meet in the driveway that night, they told police.
The shooting resulted from an argument that originated on Facebook, reported NBCPhiladelphia.com. Nutter said he hoped this would serve as an example for other teens to avoid retaliatory acts. “It is not going to work out well for any of you," he said.
Barreto was formally charged with the murders of the three 14-year-olds on Thursday morning.

8 comments:

  1. The Mayor does make a good point: If the parents of these children had been real parents, none of this would have happened.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "That is something that just doesn't happen nearly as often, per capita, in other countries, with fewer guns."

    Of course they have other problems--like bombs that kill scores of innocents.

    ReplyDelete
  3. FWM writes:
    Of course they have other problems--like bombs that kill scores of innocents.


    That appears to be unique to countries engaged in civil war, and does not appear to be a problem anywhere else.

    You are conflating very dissimilar things again FWM. Not an honest or reasonable argument when you do that.

    GC writes: The Mayor does make a good point: If the parents of these children had been real parents, none of this would have happened.

    It wouldn't have happened with fewer guns GC. I think we can reasonably argue that we have always had teens who eluded parental supervision, to get into trouble, even with parents who were good or who tried to do a good job of parenting.

    The parents appear to have had a serious lapse here; but it was a firearm that turned a lapse like that into multiple fatalities.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "That appears to be unique to countries engaged in civil war, and does not appear to be a problem anywhere else."

    Interesting. I didn't realize that Switzerland, Italy, Ukraine, Morrocco, Belarus, Russia, France, Belgium, China, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Turkey, Mexico, Thailand, Ireland, Germany, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Myanmar, Greece, Philippines, Malta and Iraq were all in a state of civil war! All of those nations experienced bombings in 2011. I didn't even include Northern Ireland or England because the government there was quite proficient in detecting and disarming dozens of bombs before they detonated last year.

    A bomb going off in Europe? Why thats almost as ludicrous as muslims attacking muslims. LUDICROUS!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ukraine, Morrocco, Belarus, Russia, China, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Turkey, Mexico, Thailand, Ireland, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Myanmar, Greece, Philippines, Malta and Iraq

    Every one of those countries is experiencing severe political unrest.

    They don't have mass shootings, and they only rarely have bombings - like the one in Norway. Yes, you lef out the right wing nut schziophrenic Christian who was an Islamopobe.

    You are once again conflating gun violence with political unrest. The Philly shooting doesn't qualify for a comparison with political bombing.

    They are two very different things.

    Well, maybe less so the right wing nut Christian who also committed a mass shooting in conjunction with his bombing...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Doggone,

    I guess you feel that shootings and bombings that occur in Europe are more noble because they are from "political unrest" and ours are from street gangs and criminals. I am sure the families of the victims will take great comfort in that. I am sure that victims in other parts of the world do not matter--such as the three school children killed Friday in Iraq. Or do they not count because they are not from a wealthy country or because they were victims of a religious war? After all, whenever you quote your stats on how violent the U.S. is in comparison, you always start cherry picking which countries you compare us to and prefer to leave out the really bad ones.

    The truth is this is a sick and violent world. It would be nice to change that but blaming guns is not much of a solution really. We had violence before guns and we have had less violence when gun availability was far less controlled than it is now. Sorry, gun control is failure as a policy. We will not be permitting any more. Time to move on.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dog Gone,

    And yet, you just can't get rid of guns in America.

    ReplyDelete
  8. It's all relative. I met a guy recently from Tel Aviv. He said he loved it there and it's completely safe.

    ReplyDelete