Tag: guns

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West Virginia: White man shoots/kills new black neighbors wrongly thinking they were on his property

Alleged shooter Rodney Black

A West Virginia man shot and killed his new neighbor and the man’s brother without warning as the two inspected their land.

The shooter told police he thought his alleged victims were breaking into a building he mistakenly thought he owned, and police are baffled as to why he chose such a drastic measure to preserve something of no value to him.

The Cabell County Sheriff’s Department charged Rodney Bruce Black, 62, of Barboursville, with two counts of first degree murder after he killed Garrick Hopkins, 60, of Milton and his brother, Carl Hopkins Jr., 61, of Oak Hill, at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Sherriff Tom McComas told the Daily News on Monday.

Garrick Hopkins and his wife had just purchased land next door to Black and planned to start building a home in the next few weeks, McComas said.

The landowner had invited his brother over to check out the property Saturday afternoon. Black saw the two men — who were both married with children — looking inside a shed. Then, allegedly without warning or calling the police, he grabbed a rifle and fired once at both men. They died at the scene.

“He shot first and then called 911,” McComas said. “He said they were breaking into his house but it wasn’t his property.”

Read more at New York Daily News.

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House passes bill extending ban on plastic guns

The House has voted to extend a bill that bans guns made of plastic after recent advances in technology have made the guns a reality.

The law helps law enforcement in situations like air travel where plastic guns, made on new 3-D industrial printers, would be undetectable when passing through x-ray machines. From MSNBC:

The House on Monday passed a bill to extend a law banning plastic weapons and undetectable firearms in the United States for another decade.

The Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, passed amid growing concern that gun makers produced the weapons to bypass security measures in public buildings, would have expired by Dec. 9 if Congress failed to act.

The bill bans weapons that are not detectable by metal detectors after removal of grips, stocks, and magazines. It also prohibits weapons that do not generate accurate X-ray images.

The Senate’s eventual vote could extend the 25-year ban on manufacturing, importing, selling, shipping, and receiving the firearms in this country.

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Chilling :30 video of Navy Yard shooter entering and moving through Navy Yard

Chilling video footage from closed-circuit video cameras shows Aaron Alexis, now deceased, at the Washington Navy Yard on September 16, 2013.

The footage includes:

– Alexis drives his rental car, a blue Toyota Prius, through the Washington Navy Yard main gate.

– Alexis enters Building #197 carrying a backpack. Alexis had legitimate access to the Washington Navy Yard as a result of his work as a contractor and he utilized a valid pass to gain entry to the building.

– Alexis moves through the hallways and a stairwell of Building #197 carrying a Remington 870 shotgun.

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BREAKING: George Zimmerman taken into custody in incident involving a gun

George Zimmerman has been taken into custody in Central Florida after an incident involving a gun.

Lake Mary police say they were called to a house on Sprucewood Road Monday afternoon after a report that Zimmerman was involved in an altercation with another person with a threat involved.

ABC News is reporting Zimmerman was taken into custody after the domestic dispute involving his wife and father-in-law.

Since being acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman has been pulled over twice for speeding. And his wife recently filed for divorce.

UPDATE:  Think Progress has shared this audio file of the 911 call from Zimmerman’s wife to the police.

Story still developing.

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Elementary school bookkeeper talks gunman into putting down his weapons

From Huffington Post: When an armed gunman entered an elementary school in Decatur, Ga., yesterday, the school’s bookkeeper, Antoinette Tuff, was able to talk him into putting down his weapon and giving himself up to the police, AP reports.

Miraculously, no one was injured and Tuff is being hailed as a hero for possibly saving the lives of more than 800 students at Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy.

The suspect, later identified as 20-year-old Michael Brandon Hill, walked into the elementary school’s office with an assault rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, DeKalb County officials told the press Wednesday.

“[I saw] a young man ready to kill anybody that he could and take any lives he wanted to,” Tuff told ABC.

She asked the gunman his name in an attempt to keep him calm, but told ABC that at first he wouldn’t tell her.

“He told me he was sorry for what he was doing. He was willing to die,” Tuff said. She remembered him loading his gun in front of her and the rest of the staff.

“I just started telling him stories,” she said, saying things like, “You don’t have to die today.”

Tuff told him about the tragedies she had endured in her own life, like her divorce, and was eventually able to convince him to surrender to the police.

“I told him, ‘OK, we all have situations in our lives,” she said. “It was going to be OK. If I could recover, he could, too.”

The gunman’s brother, Timothy Hill, told NBC News that Hill “was bipolar and suffered from ADD.”

According to AP, Hill has been charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, terroristic threats and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.