By now you've heard about the freak who murdered two police officers and three city officials in Kirkwood, MO. As background, apparently the shooter, Charles Thornton, owned a business and had been repeatedly cited for illegally parking commercial vehicles and had been arrested for disrupting previous city meetings. His lawsuit against the city following those arrests was dismissed.

There's an article in the St. Louis paper about reactions to the massacre. With the caveat that media promotes controversy to boost ratings/readership, it's still pretty clear that some people have very warped perceptions of right and wrong in the world. For example, this sick and twisted individual:

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"To me, Charles Thornton is a hero," said Ben Gordon of Webster Groves. "He opened a business. He went to court, but the system failed him. … We are sorry, we grieve, but (Kirkwood officials) share in this responsibility."
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Here's the entire article.

His mother, from another article:

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In an interview with a local television station, Mr. Thornton’s mother said that Kirkwood officials had kept after her son, “giving him tickets for everything they could.”

She said she never suspected that her son would be violent but described the events as “an act of God, just like a storm or a tornado.”
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Good God. I literally became sick to my stomach after reading that. This man shot five innocent and unarmed people in the head and would have killed more had responding officers not shot him dead. His family has also refused to condemn his actions. WTF are these people thinking?

As a St Louis local, I know a lot more about the circumstances around the shooting than the mainstream press is reporting. It was almost completely racially motivated. The shooting is devastating, as all the victims are wonderful people that were doing everything they could to serve their community. One of the police officers killed was an acquaintance of mine that I have done volunteer work with. My heart goes out to all of the victims' families.

This is really sad.

It's also disgusting the attitude of the lowlife's friends and family.

You could tell it was a racial thing from the articles. A black guy kills cops and city officials and his friend calls him a hero.

Welcome to the "diversity" that is modern America.

Is there anything to the claims that this guy was being unfairly persecuted? I'd be surprised because most who lash out because they're "oppressed victims" seem to just be people who don't want to follow the rules like everybody else has to.

My wife had a good point too...if, as the shooter's brother claimed, he "went to war" with the city, somebody might tell them that in war both sides know it's a fight. This wasn't war, it was a massacre.

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are packing their bags and heading to Missouri.....you know they are.

:rolleyes:

he owned a commercial building business. Supposedly, he parked his mixing trucks etc on the street where he lived. I dunno about your neighborhood that's illegal where I live and most certainly would have been ticketed.

This guy sounds delusional and felt entitled to special treatment cause he was black.

Very sad ending indeed.

Very sad that anyone thinks their only recourse is to start shooting...disgraceful.

Here come the gun grabbers...

Sadly, St Louis is a city still has lots of racial divide issues. It is not very racially integrated at all, and there is still a "voluntary segregation" going on in the neighborhoods. Whites tend to live in the more affluent West and South parts of town, and blacks are in the poorer North and East parts of town (of course, including the infamous "East St Louis"). The "interface" areas tend to have a more progressive population, and are generally gentrification areas with lots of investment even though there is still significant property crime. However, there are many "pocket neighborhoods" that contain large amounts of non-common races (including many ethnic neighborhoods in South St Louis).

Kirkwood City is towards the Southwest section of the St Louis area, and is generally considered a fairly run-of-the-mill white area. However, this a neighborhood in Kirkwood called "Meacham Park" that is almost completely black, and has a long history (both good and bad, but primarily bad in the news). Some years ago, there was a notable killing of a police officer in Meacham Park, which turned into a rather nasty racially-divided issue. Then shortly after that, there was the murder of pizza delivery driver which prompted a local pizza chain to ban deliveries to Meacham Park. This prompted a lawsuit by Meacham Park residents ("we're being oppressed of our right to pizza"), that the pizza chain sadly lost resulting in them being forced to deliver their pizza (and cash through regular muggings) to the place.

Meacham Park was then in the news due to very vocal opposition to the City's use of eminent domain to transform some of their neighborhood into strip shopping centers while other local "white" neighborhoods were spared the bulldozer. This may or may not have been ethical, but I bet anything that the whole damn neighborhood get eminent domain'ed in the next year after this incident, and a nice developer gets some nice TIF'ed and newly-vacated land to build what they please.

The Kirkwood City area is just a microclimate of the race issues that occur all over St Louis. While this particular incident was total BS, I'll say that I'm fairly ashamed of the majority of St Louis' residents of ALL colors. I grew up in the "white" part of town (and still live there, although now in a more urban, developed part of town), and have been sickened by the racist attitudes of both blacks and whites. In fact, local politicians have even been successfully elected on a very-thinly-veiled platform of racial division.

I visit the stereotypically-racial South frequently, and often marvel at how little racial tension there is in Alabama as opposed to right here at home. Come on folks, the Civil War ended over 140 years ago. There are people around with different skin pigment than you, and you have to live with them. F*cking get over it.

I don't expect that to be an issue here at all. Missouri has recently gone through the CCW battle, and it has pretty much settled down. St Louis sued the state saying they didn't have to honor CCW, and they lost. CCW has validated responsible weapon owners, and most people have accepted it. Everyone knows that weapons are around, and that they are forbidden in most public places.

Besides that, we have one of the highest violent crime rates in the country, and around here it is generally assumed that if you have an altercation with someone there's a good chance that they're packing. Road rage around here can be extremely dangerous. There's enough illegal guns around here that they'll never get rid of them. Noone really seems to care about the legal gun owners in comparison.

I was talking about the federal assholes.

So, Missouri passed a CCW law but doesn't let their CCW holders pack in most public places? I have to be missing something here. Denver tried to do the same thing as Seattle, only it was on a bunch of issues (high cap mags, "assault" rifles, CCW, etc...) and they lost on everything except the "assault" rifles. So pointless.

I'm not sure of the exact legal wording, but basically any "place" has the right to post a "no weapons" sign and CCW holders have to respect it. For example, I work at a college and there is a sign at each entrance to the campus letting people know that no weapons are allowed on campus. You see the signs posted in almost all public places.

So....ummmm.....Chris Mc.....I guess a future career for you in the St. Louis Tourism and Visitors' Center is not in the cards?

Ah, gotcha. We got off kinda lucky in Colorado, only owners of property can put those signs up (there's a few guidelines of where you can't carry regardless of signage as well but there are very few of those). Even if you see the sign, the punishment is the owners have to ask you to leave and if you don't it's a trespassing charge.

Wouldn't City Hall be a federal building? CCW holders cannot carry here in AZ at least in Federal Buildings.

No....but it would probably be a municipal building.

I love the city, don't get me wrong... It has tons of things to offer (one of the best sports towns anywhere), and one of the best cost-of-living to income ratios in the country. Everyone here is just painfully aware of our bad spots, though some try to spin things different ways than others.

I had no idea that Assault weapons are banned in Denver! WTF! I found your ordinance.. what a load of horse shit! http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wbardwel/public/nfalist/denver_ordinance.txt

While searching, I also found this peach of a story by the Denver Post. I liked this nugget at the end "Frankly, we can't figure out the benefits of having assault weapons easily available. Law enforcement officers universally agree that people wanting self protection don't carry assault weapons. But criminals do."

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_7716133

Wow...reading about the racial situation in St. Louis, I thought Atlanta was bad. That was an eye-opener, kind of at odds with the wholesome image many hold of Midwesterners.

Turning to guns, I'm not against owning weapons, though I would agree that most normal people have no need or want for an assault weapon. I would also be interested to know - though it would be difficult if not impossible to calculate - how many guns kept for self-defense are ever needed and successfully used for that purpose. Very, very few would be my guess.

In this shooting, there were armed police officers there. Would an armed citizen have been able to stop the guy? Maybe, because obviously the guy knew the officers would be armed and acted accordingly. But this also sets up a situation where responding officers, not knowing the situation, could easily have shot a good samaritan by mistake. Cops get a little crazy when there are officers down.

Society's growing want for guns reminds me of my airline days, when obese people who smoke like chimneys and can't be bothered with wearing seatbelts would say, "I ain't gettin' on no airplane, that ain't safe!" :rolleyes:

If a thousand people die worldwide in commercial plane crashes, that's a bad year. About 1.3 million die annually worldwide from lung cancer; in the U.S., over 40,000 people die annually in car accidents and over 10,000 die in accidental falls. Where's the real danger?

Perception is everything, especially when it comes to risk. Usually people freak over things that really don't pose much of a threat while blowing off the real killers.

Many police officers go an entire career without ever firing their weapons. It may make people feel better to have a gun, but really, how likely is it that John Q. Public is ever really going to need one?

It doesn't matter, the second amendment says I can, period. As for the self defense weapons, those that are prepared are, on the whole, more careful and plan ahead. Which skews the numbers.

In light of the upcoming election, I will be picking up either a CZ75-P01 or Springfield Armory XD with hi-cap mags.

I'd like to swing an AR this year, but I doubt it's happening.

I did read an interesting article, wish I could find it, about the Democratic party giving up on the entire "gun" issue as statistics more and more are proving the anti-gun crowd wrong.

"Amendment II (the Second Amendment) of the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights declares a well-regulated militia as "being necessary to the security of a free State" and prohibits infringement of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms"

What I don't understand is how the SA can be construed as anything but an individual right? I mean if the whole purpose of it is to prevent a tyrannical government from gaining too much power, what good is the SA if a "collective" has to have some form of government approval whether at the state or federal level, to even bare arms?

Easy, the very vocal and irrational anti-gun crowd will try to skew anything to prove their "point"

Exactly, and not with just guns, the hard core liberals are pretty much for anything that goes against the constitution. I am tired of our sacred document being treated like a question mark.

Ray Moore and I wholeheartedly agree.

Err...nevermind.

Relax, I have no interest in taking anyone's guns away. I'm simply curious about the actual figures in terms of self-protection with guns.

I'm not speaking of you when I say this, but it is interesting that gun enthusiasts can be just as shrill and irrational as anti-gun activists can be.

Whether you like your arms bare is no business of mine.

Seriously, while your point about preventing the government from becoming too powerful may be valid, look at the amendment's exact wording:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

It seems very clear to me that the intent was that the Federal government can not prevent individual states from keeping a militia. As you yourself pointed out, the concern was obviously that the Federal government could easily impose its will on the states if they had no means to resist. So the people whose right to keep and bear arms "shall not be infringed" are those who belong to such a "well-regulated" state militia, not every John Q. Public in the country.

Why else would they make a point of saying "well-regulated", or mention a militia at all for that matter? If they were addressing individual rights, why wouldn't they have just written, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"?

Again, I'm not arguing the point of gun control, just the meaning and intent of the words that were written.