Tag: guns

Posted on

Army Warns Recruiters: Treat Armed Civilians At Security Threat

I know I would feel safer with this crew standing guard

Earlier today an armed civilian who appointed himself as a guard for a military recruitment center in Lancaster, Ohio, was ordered off the property after he accidentally discharged his rifle on Thursday.

No one was injured.

Christopher A. Reed, 28, of Lancaster, was charged with discharging a firearm in the city limits, and was issued a summons to appear in Fairfield County Municipal Court on Tuesday, after he accidentally fired his AR-15 rifle.

The shopping-center owner issued a statement saying it was decided that “for the safety of tenants, customers and construction personnel working in the immediate vicinity of the Military Recruiting Center, it would be best to request the removal of the armed individuals.”

Because, after all, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

According to Stars and Stripes, Army has warned its recruiters to treat gun-toting civilians gathering at centers across the country in the wake of the Chattanooga, Tenn., shooting as a security threat.

Soldiers should avoid anyone standing outside the recruiting centers attempting to offer protection and report them to local law enforcement and the command if they feel threatened, according to a U.S. Army Recruiting Command policy letter issued Monday.

Armed citizens — some associated with activist groups and militias — were standing vigil outside recruiting centers in Wisconsin, Georgia, Tennessee, Idaho and elsewhere this week, saying they want to provide protection to servicemembers barred from carrying firearms on duty.

Four Marines and a sailor were killed by Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a 24-year-old Kuwait-born resident of Tennessee, during an attack Thursday on a strip mall recruiting center and a Navy facility that is being investigated as an act of terrorism.

Posted on

Oklahoma Run ‘N Gun Event Features Rainbow Flag As Shooting Target

An Oklahoma group organizing a biathlon event called Oklahoma Run ‘n Gun, which combines running and shooting. raised eyebrows when they featured a rainbow flag as a shooting target in a recent Facebook post.

From Oklahoma City’s NBC affiliate:

The post angered many people who took it as a direct threat to the LGBT community.

Event organizers say they did not expect the response they got and that it was all meant as a joke.

“People got really offended and really upset and people were really feeling threatened,” said Freedom Oklahoma Executive Director Troy Stevenson.

The picture shows two men with rifles standing beside a rainbow flag and the caption reads “new high visibility targets on the 500 yard range.”

“People took it as a threat, people felt very threatened,” said Stevenson.

“Since it said our new target and it had guns that I took it as a threat,” said human rights activist, Mahkesha Hogg.

“I think for many gay men and women in the state of Oklahoma, we feel as if we walk around as targets,” said Scott J. Hamilton, an advocate for the LGBT community.

Stevenson says he reached out to event organizers after seeing the picture.

“He assures us that it wasn’t meant as a threat. It was a situation where I don’t think the people doing it understood social media or how bad their joke was,” said Stevenson.

The race organizer tells NewsChannel 4 some people had been complaining about not being able to see the targets, so this was their response… a brightly colored one.

He says it was meant to be funny.

The event organizer tells us they are a fitness and liberty minded group, not a hate group.

Making the symbol of LGBT Pride your target to shoot at? Gee, I can’t imagine why gay folks would feel threatened.

You’ll all recall when former half-term governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, promoted “targeting” Democratic lawmakers during an election cycle and soon after Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot by a gun nut.

Words and images matter people.

Posted on

GOP Presidential Candidate Rick Perry Calls South Carolina Shooting “An Accident”

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry

“This is the M.O. of this administration, any time there is an accident like this — the president is clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message.” – GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry in response to President Barack Obama’s Thursday remarks.

Perry also shifted the discussion from guns to drugs, saying, “It seems to me, again without having all the details about this, that these individuals have been medicated and there may be a real issue in this country from the standpoint of these drugs and how they’re used.”

More at Right Wing Watch.

Posted on

South Carolina Church Shooter Admits He Wanted “To Start A Race War”

According to CNN, Dylann Roof, the 21 year old gunman who shot and killed nine at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wednesday night, told investigators that he wanted to start a race war.

One survivor of the incident said that Roof responded to a man’s pleas to stop shooting by saying, “No, you’ve raped our women, and you are taking over the country … I have to do what I have to do.”

His roommate told ABC News that Roof was “big into segregation.” And the Berkeley County, South Carolina, government tweeted a picture of him wearing a jacket with flags from apartheid-era South Africa and nearby Rhodesia, a former British colony that was ruled by a white minority until it became independent in 1980.

By telling authorities his aim, Roof admitted he attacked unarmed civilians for political purposes in an act of terror.

John Mullins recalls “racist slurs in a sense” that Roof made while the two attended White Knoll High School in Lexington, South Carolina, though he also remembers him having black friends.

“He would say it just as a joke,” Mullins told CNN. “I never took it seriously. But … maybe they should have been.”

Joey Meek told ABC that talk of reinstating segregation was nothing new for Roof, his roommate. He’d been plotting something for six months, though “he never did any of that,” and authorities weren’t tipped off.

“I think he wanted something big like Trayvon Martin,” Meek said, referring to the black Florida teen whose shooting death at the hands of George Zimmerman — who was acquitted of murder — provoked huge protests. “He wanted to make something spark up the race war again.”

More at CNN.

Posted on

Jon Stewart On South Carolina Church Shooting: “This Wasn’t A Tornado, This Was a Racist”

In a stone cold sober opening, Jon Stewart began last night’s edition of The Daily Show with a joke-free monologue on the shooting deaths of nine black Americans in a South Carolina church by a white racist.

“I’ve got nothing for you in terms of jokes and sounds, because of what happened in South Carolina.”

“Nine people were shot in a black church by a white guy who hated them who wanted to start some kind of civil war.

“The confederate flag flies over South Carolina. And the roads are named for confederate generals.

“And the WHITE guy’s the one who feels like his country is being taken away from him.

“We’re bringing it on ourselves. And that’s the things —al Qaeda, all those guys, ISIS – they’re not shit compared to the damage we can do to ourselves on a regular basis.”

Posted on

South Carolina: Nine Dead In Hate Crime At Church Shooting

Police in Charleston, South Carolina say a white gunman killed nine African-Americans during a Bible study class at an historic black church on Wednesday night.

Police are searching for a white male, approximately 21 years old, with sandy blond hair. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime.

More at CNN.

UPDATE:

The suspect, Dylan Storm Roof, had been apprehended about 245 miles northwest of Charleston, according to USA Today.

Police said the suspect, from Columbia, S.C., had been sought in a black Hyundai with vehicle tag LGF330 and appealed to the public for any information on his whereabouts.

A Facebook page for a Dylann Roof’ carries a photo of a young man in a bowl-like haircut similar to the image in a surveillance photo outside the Emanuel AME church just before the killings Wednesday night. The page says he attended White Knoll High School in Lexington.

The Facebook page also carries a photo of Roof standing in in front of a swamp forest wearing a jacket with patches of the racist-era flags of South Africa and Rhodesia, the one white-ruled country now called Zimbabwe.

Posted on

George Zimmerman Involved In ANOTHER Shooting Incident

George Zimmerman

Some people go through life with absolutely no problems with law enforcement or trouble involving guns.

And then, there’s George Zimmerman.

Zimmerman, who gained attention nation-wide for the 2013 shooting death of Travon Martin, has once again been implicated in an incident gun fire. He apparently suffered a minor gunshot wound today in an altercation involving another man who authorities say may have an “ongoing dispute” with Zimmerman.

The shooting involved Zimmerman and another man and happened on Lake Mary Boulevard about 12:45 p.m., police said.

“He walked normally into the ambulance, so he wasn’t being helped or nothing,” said witness Ricardo Berrare. “They actually backed up the ambulance next to his driver side so he could walk into the door.”

Chopper 2 video showed a bullet hole in the passenger window the vehicle Zimmerman was in.

“The officer was talking to him through the back window because the other one had a hole in it. It was all shattered,” Berrare said.

In January, Zimmerman was accused of assault by his girlfriend, but no charges were filed after she recanted her allegation.

He was also arrested in November 2013 on domestic violence allegations after his girlfriend called police. His girlfriend later recanted her story and charges were never filed.

Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in 2013.