‘Evil’ like Texas massacre a reason to arm, not disarm: Trump

Former US president Donald Trump rejected calls for tightened gun controls Friday following the Texas school massacre, saying decent Americans should be allowed the firearms they need to defend themselves against "evil." 

"The existence of evil in our world is not a reason to disarm law-abiding citizens... The existence of evil is one of the very best reasons to arm law-abiding citizens," he told members of the National Rifle Association.

Trump's remarks came as he headlined an NRA event in Houston, three days after a gun massacre at a Texas elementary school reignited the tinderbox debate about US gun control.

"The various gun control policies being pushed by the left would have done nothing to prevent the horror that took place. Absolutely nothing," he said.An 18-year-old gunman with a legally-bought AR-15-style rifle killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, marking the deadliest school shooting in the state's history.

Trump read out the names of all 19 children, whom he described as victims of an out-of-control "lunatic," before suggesting that efforts at gun control were "grotesque." 

"All of us must unite, Republican and Democrat -- in every state, and at every level of government -- to finally harden our schools and protect our children... What we need now is a top-to-bottom security overhaul at schools across this country," he added.

Multiple speakers, including Texas Governor Greg Abbott, pulled out of the event after the murders but Trump confirmed on Wednesday he would not be canceling his appearance at the NRA's annual "Leadership Forum."

President Joe Biden, who upbraided the US gun lobby in the wake of the shootings, is due in Uvalde on Sunday with first lady Jill Biden to "grieve with the community," White House officials said.

The NRA is considered the most powerful gun rights organization in the country, although its influence has waned as it has become mired in legal battles linked to a corruption scandal.

It has rejected most initiatives to prevent mass shootings, including expanded background checks on gun purchases, although it said ahead of Trump's speech that audience members would not be allowed to carry firearms.

Republicans in Washington have suggested "hardening" schools with beefed up security -- including armed guards posted at a single entry and exit point -- rather than restrictions on gun ownership. 

They have also spoken of the need to focus on mental health, although critics point out that other nations with stricter gun controls face the same issues and don't see regular mass shootings.

There have been 214 mass shootings this year in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive. 

They include a racist massacre at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, just 10 days before the Texas killings.

Agence France-Presse

Florida school shooting suspect a troubled ex-student who loved guns

PARKLAND, Fla. — The man accused of opening fire at a Florida high school on Wednesday, killing 17 people, was a troubled former student who loved guns and was expelled for disciplinary reasons, police and former classmates said.

Nikolas Cruz, 19, was arrested about an hour after a shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel told reporters.

Cruz, who had been expelled from the school for reasons that have not been made public, was found with multiple ammunition magazines and one AR-15-style rifle, Israel said.

“We already began to dissect his websites and the things on social media that he was on and some of the things that came to mind are very, very disturbing,” Israel said.

Chad Williams, 18, a senior at Stoneman Douglas High school, remembered Cruz as a troubled classmate from when they attended middle school together. He said Cruz would set off the fire alarm, day after day, and finally got expelled in the eighth grade.


More recently, Williams saw Cruz carrying several publications about guns when they ran into each other at the high school. Williams thought Cruz was there to pick up a younger sibling.

“He was crazy about guns,” Williams told Reuters, speaking by the side of the road near the high school. “He was kind of an outcast. He didn’t have many friends. He would do anything crazy for a laugh, but he was trouble.”

Jillian Davis, 19, said she was in a school Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps with Cruz in the 9th grade. She remembered him as a quiet and shy young man who would almost change personality when angry. He talked a lot about guns and knives but no one took him seriously, she told Reuters.

“I would say he was not the most normal or sane kid in JROTC. He definitely had a little something off about him. He was a little extra quirky,” said Davis, who graduated from the school last year.

Math teacher Jim Gard told the Miami Herald that Cruz had been banned from returning to campus while carrying a backpack.

“There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus,” Gard told the newspaper in an interview.

Administrators sent an email to teachers warning them about Cruz, Gard told the paper.

Another student at the school told local WSVN-TV that Cruz was known to have guns at home.

source: interaksyon.com

4 dead in Canada school shooting, suspect caught

WINNIPEG, Manitoba -- Four people were killed and others injured in a school shooting in a remote part of Saskatchewan on Friday and a male suspect is in custody, Canadian police said.

Officials have not given a motivation for the shooting in La Loche, about 600 km (375 miles) north of the city of Saskatoon.

"Obviously this is every parent's worst nightmare," said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who initially reported five people were killed. He was in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum.

Mass shootings are relatively rare in Canada, which has stricter gun laws than the United States. In the country's worst school shooting, 14 college students were killed at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in 1989. A shooting in 1992 at Concordia University in Montreal killed four.

The latest shooting occurred in the high school, called the Dene Building, and another location in Saskatchewan, Trudeau and Canadian police said.

Police took the suspect into custody outside the school and seized a gun.

La Loche acting Mayor Kevin Janvier told the Canadian Press the incident may have started at the suspect's home.

“I’m not 100 percent sure what’s actually happened but it started at home and ended at the school," Janvier said.

Among Canada’s provinces, Saskatchewan had the highest rate of police-reported family violence in 2014, double the national rate of 243 incidents per 100,000 people, according to a Statistics Canada report on Thursday.

Extra doctors and nurses were sent to treat patients in Keewatin Yatthe Regional Health Authority's 16-bed hospital, said spokesman Dale West. He declined to say how many people had been injured.

Teddy Clark, chief of the Clearwater River Dene Nation, said his daughter told him about the shooting, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

"We're just trying to pull together here and make sense of all this," Clark told CBC television. "It's not a very pretty scene right now."

La Loche student Noel Desjarlais told the CBC that he heard multiple shots fired at the school, which has about 900 students.

"I ran outside the school," Desjarlais said. "There was lots of screaming, there was about six, seven shots before I got outside. I believe there was more shots by the time I did get out."

A cellphone video taken by one resident and broadcast by the CBC showed students walking away from the school across the snow-covered ground and emergency personnel moving in.

In 2014, a teacher expressed concern about violence at the La Loche school, noting that a student who had tried to stab her was put back in her classroom after serving his sentence, and another attacked her at her home.

"That student got 10 months," Janice Wilson told the CBC of the student who tried to stab her in class. "And when he was released he was returned to the school and was put in my classroom."

source: interaksyon.com

Oregon gunman in massacre had cache of 13 weapons, US agent says

ROSEBURG, OREGON - The Oregon gunman who carried out an execution-style massacre at a college classroom had a cache of 13 weapons, body armor and ammunition, authorities said on Friday as they sought a motive for the bloodiest US mass shooting this year.

Celinez Nunez, assistant special agent of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, disclosed the cache as details emerged about the suspect in Thursday's rampage at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, about 180 miles (290 km) south of Portland.

Six of the guns, plus body armor and five magazines of ammunition were recovered from the campus where the gunman stormed into a classroom, killing nine people before he was shot dead by police, Nunez told a news conference.

Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin declined to name the gunman, saying, “Again, you will not hear anyone from this law enforcement operation use his name. I continue to believe that those media and community members who publicize his name will only glorify his horrific actions. And eventually, this will only serve to inspire a future shooter."

Law enforcement sources confirmed reports identifying the suspect as Chris Harper-Mercer, 26.

The gunman shot a professor and then ordered cowering students to stand up and state their religion before he shot them one by one, according to survivors' accounts.

Another seven guns and a significant stockpile of ammunition were found at the apartment he shared with his mother in nearby Winchester, about 170 miles (273 km) south of Portland, Nunez said.

Although authorities have disclosed scant information about the gunman, they appeared to be learning more about him and why he might have opened fire.

The shooter left behind a "multipage, hate-filled" statement in the classroom, according to a tweet from an NBC reporter, citing multiple law enforcement sources who were not identified. Citing unspecified sources, CNN said the statement showed animosity toward blacks.

Hanlin declined to comment when asked about the writings at a news conference.

Harper-Mercer, who identified himself on a blog post as "mixed race," enlisted in the US Army and served for about a month in 2008 before being discharged for failing to meet administrative standards, military records showed.

A man identifying himself as the gunman's father Ian Mercer told reporters outside his home in Los Angeles on Thursday night, "It's been a devastating day, devastating for me and my family."

At some point of his life, Harper-Mercer appears to have been sympathetic to the Irish Republican Army, a militant group that waged a violent campaign to drive the British from Northern Ireland. On an undated Myspace page, he posted photos of masked IRA gunmen carrying assault rifles.

Harper-Mercer was born in the United Kingdom and arrived in the United States as a young boy, his stepsister Carmen Nesnick told CBS Los Angeles.

After the shooting, Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg received 10 patients, including one who died in the emergency room, hospital officials told reporters on Friday. Three were transported to other facilities because they needed a higher level of care, four required surgery, and two were treated and released. All were treated for gunshot wounds.

Gun control debate
The violence, the latest in a series of high-profile mass killings across the country, has fueled demands for stricter gun control in the United States.

Not counting Thursday's incident, 293 US mass shootings have been reported this year, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker website, a crowd-sourced database kept by anti-gun activists that logs events in which four or more people are shot.

Hours after Thursday's shooting, a visibly frustrated President Barack Obama urged Americans to press their elected leaders to enact tougher firearms safety laws.

"Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here, at this podium, ends up being routine," he said. "We’ve become numb to this."

Gun control advocates say easy access to firearms is a major factor in the shooting epidemic, while the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun advocates say the Second Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees Americans the right to bear arms.

Oregon Governor Kate Brown declined in television interviews on Friday morning to discuss gun control, as did the sheriff, and both said it was a time for healing the community.

A month after the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Hanlin wrote a sharply worded letter to Vice President Joe Biden saying he would never enforce a federal law that violates the Constitution.

"Gun control is NOT the answer to preventing heinous crimes like school shootings," Hanlin wrote in the letter, dated Jan. 15, 2013. (Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington; Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Jane Ross in Roseburg; Shelby Sebens in Portland, and Katie Reilly and Angela Moon in New York)

source: interaksyon.com

Oregon gunman kills 10 before being slain in latest US school shooting

LOS ANGELES -- A 20-year-old gunman went on a shooting rampage at a community college in the US state of Oregon on Thursday, killing 10 people and wounding seven before he died in a shootout with police.

A visibly angry President Barack Obama made an impassioned plea for gun control in the wake of the shooting, blasting Congress for its failure to act in the face of "routine" mass killings.

The gunman opened fire in a classroom at Umpqua Community College in rural Roseburg, and moved to other rooms methodically gunning down his victims, witnesses said.

Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said 10 people were killed and seven were injured, several critically. He said the identity of the victims would not be released for 24 to 48 hours.

But US officials have identified the gunman behind the deadly shooting at a community college in Oregon as Chris Harper Mercer, 26, media reported Thursday.

Several media outlets including CNN, CBS and NBC, released Mercer's name.

Media reports said investigators had interviewed Mercer's family and friends and were closely looking at his social media postings for clues.

Reports also said he was not a student at Umpqua Community College, located in rural Roseburg.

Student Cassandra Welding was in an adjacent room when the shooting broke out.

"I probably heard a good 35 to 40 shots," Welding told US media.

She saw a fellow student be shot after opening the classroom door to see what was happening, she said.

"Then we locked the doors, turned off the lights and ... we were all pretty much in panic mode and called 911 (emergency services) and our parents and (said) 'I love yous' because we didn't know what would happen, if those were our last words."

Voicing his anger and sadness at the latest loss of life, Obama threw down the gauntlet to lawmakers -- and the people who vote for them -- on the thorny issue of gun control.

"Somehow this has become routine," said the president. "We become numb to this."

"We can actually do something about it, but we're going to have to change our laws," said a stony-faced Obama. "This is not something I can do myself. I have to have a Congress and state legislatures and governors who are willing to work with me on this."

"It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun," Obama said.

"Prayers are not enough," he added. "This is a political choice we make."

'Waiting for last bus' 

Police were alerted to the shooting shortly after 10:30 am and rushed to the site as it was still unfolding.

"Upon arriving there, they located the shooter in one of the buildings," Hanlin said, adding that police exchanged fire with the gunman who was later confirmed dead.

It was not yet known if the shooter, identified only as a male aged 20, was a student at the college.

Authorities said investigators were examining social media postings thought to belong to him. Several reports said he may have shared his intentions online beforehand.

Other reports said police recovered a cell phone at the scene, presumably the shooter's, that contained messages linked to the massacre.

Authorities said four weapons were recovered from the scene, according to local news reports.

Police searched the entire campus after the shooting aided by sniffer dogs and patted down students and staff as they left and boarded buses that transported them to local fairgrounds.

College interim president Rita Cavin said the priority was to reunite students and staff with their loved ones.

"We have families waiting for the last bus of students to arrive and have grief counselors for those who have no children coming off the bus," she said.

"It's sad to watch the families wait for the last bus."

We all froze 

Roseburg is described as a close-knit, logging community with many locals attending the college, which caters to some 3,300 students.

"Most of us have relatives taking classes here," said Douglas County fire Marshall Ray Shoufler. "Pretty much everybody knows everybody type scenario.

"So something like this affects many, many, many people."

Brady Winder, a student at Umpqua, said he was in class when suddenly he heard a loud pop coming from an adjoining classroom.

He said his teacher called out through the door to see if everything was OK and then further shots rang out.

"We all kind of froze and bolted out the door," Winder said. "I didn't really have any time to think. It was fight or flight."

School shootings are a disturbing reality of American life and many facilities have reinforced security in recent years, especially in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012.

Twenty students and six adults were killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.

On Wednesday, a student who got into an argument with the principal at a high school in South Dakota pulled a gun and shot the school official in the arm before he was tackled and subdued by staff.

source: interaksyon.com

Two dead in US school shooting after online warnings

LOS ANGELES - A US student who had issued chilling warnings on Twitter opened fire in a school cafeteria on Friday, killing at least one person and critically injuring three before taking his own life.

Terrified classmates dived for cover as the gunman, identified by media reports and fellow students as Jaylen Fryberg, launched his attack in a school in the northwestern state of Washington.

Police said the investigation was still ongoing and would likely continue into the early morning Saturday.

"This continues to be an active homicide investigation. We want to make sure we do this right and have all of the right answers," local police spokesman Robb Lamoureux told a press conference late Friday.

As with previous such shootings, the episode revived debate on gun control, even though the gun involved was legally acquired.

"I heard one loud bang and I was wondering what it was. Then I heard about four or five more. People started screaming and people started getting to the ground and going for the nearest exit," said a student identified as Jordan.

"So I hit the ground. But after he'd already put some bullets into the backs of students," he told CNN.

The shooting, just the latest in a long line of such rampages in the United States, erupted in Marysville, 35 miles (55 kilometers) north of Seattle.

Lamoureux declined to identify the shooter or comment on online suggestions, including on Fryberg's social media posts, that the attack might have been triggered by a failed romance.

"The shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound," he said earlier in the day.

Television footage showed swarms of police descending on the Marysville-Pilchuck High School as students, some with hands on heads, came out of the sprawling campus, which has some 2,500 students.

A student identified as Austin told KING 5 television how the gunman was initially "quiet" before opening fire on fellow diners.

"There was just a big group of kids... He was quiet. He was just sitting there. Everyone was talking. All of a sudden I see him stand up, pull something out of his pocket," he said.

"At first I thought it was just someone making a really loud noise with like a bag, like a pretty loud pop until I heard four more after that, and I saw three kids just fall from the table like they were falling to the ground dead."

source: interaksyon.com

First school shooting victims buried

Townspeople in Newtown, Conn., Monday began burying the 26 victims of last week's massacre at an elementary school -- two 6-year-old boys.

One eulogizer at Jack Pinto's funeral said the boy commanded attention as soon as he "arrived into this world," The New York Times reported.

"Who could ignore that beautiful energy, the sparkle in his eye, or that spirit that clearly said, 'I am here and I am something special'?" asked Mary Radatovich, a family friend.

Pinto and Noah Pozner were the first of the funerals for the victims of the slaughter inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School in which 20 children and six adults died, before shooter Adam Lanza killed himself Friday. Police said Lanza also killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at the home they shared before he went to the school.

Police on Sunday officially confirmed Lanza, 20, was the killer in all 27 deaths before he shot himself.



Also Monday, investigators said it could be months before a complete account of the events up to and during the shooting spree on the school is available.

Connecticut State Police spokesman J. Paul Vance said investigators still had to talk to many witnesses, including two adults who wounded during the shooting at the school, as well as analyze the ammunition and details of the weapons.

When asked about reports that authorities were analyzing a computer hard drive taken from Lanza's home, Vance declined to comment, but said computer specialists were available if investigators needed them, the Times said.

Police said most of the shots Lanza fired were from a .223 Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle. Lanza had a 10-millimeter Glock and a 9-millimeter Sig Sauer. A shotgun was found in the car.

The guns were legally bought and registered by Lanza's mother, who sometimes took her son shooting ranges, law enforcement officials and the mother's friends said.

Because the school has been seized as a crime scene, Sandy Hook students will attend school at another facility in a nearby community, police said. It was unclear when, or if, the building would reopen.

Authorities also seized the Lanzas' home.

Vance said Monday the faculty and staff at Sandy Hook did all they could to protect the children, and that the emergency responders' arrival also saved lives.

"It broke our hearts when we could not save them all," he said.

At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney said Monday there is no single answer to the complex issue of gun violence.


"It's a complex problem that will require a complex solution. No single piece of legislation, no single action will fully address the problem," Carney said, repeating the gist of Obama's comments on the matter. "So I don't have a specific agenda to announce to you today. I would simply point you to what the president said last night about moving forward in coming weeks. And I would look for him to do that."

Repeatedly saying he had no specific policy outline, Carney said Obama supports reinstating the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.

"I think that it's important to remember that this is about our gun laws and enforcing them, but it's also about a broader series of issues, including issues of mental health and education and -- and the like," Carney said.

"So the president's position on the assault weapons ban has not changed. He still supports its re-enactment," the spokesman said. "But, you know, you'll hear from him, I think, as he said last night, in the coming weeks to -- to speak more specifically about what he thinks we can do moving forward."

In Newtown, all schools in the district were to resume classes Tuesday except for Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Meanwhile, school buses brought students to Branchville Elementary School in Ridgefield, Conn., after police declared the school safe following a report of a man carrying what appeared to be a rifle along a road near the elementary school, The Ridgefield Press reported.

A modified lockdown at other schools in the area was lifted as well.

The Press said unconfirmed reports later indicated the man was going to work with an umbrella slung over his shoulder.

During a multifaith memorial service Sunday at Newtown High School, President Obama vowed to "use whatever power this office holds" to stop massacres like the one in the Connecticut community.

"No single law, no set of laws, can eliminate evil from the world -- but that can't be an excuse for inaction," Obama said. "Surely, we can do better than this."

source: upi.com

Official: 27 dead in Conn. school shooting

A gunman opened fire inside a Connecticut elementary school Friday, killing 26 people, including 18 children, and forcing students to cower in classrooms and then flee with the help of teachers and police.

The death toll was given to The Associated Press by an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still under way.

The shooting appeared to be the nation's second-deadliest school shooting, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007.

Parents flooded to Sandy Hook Elementary School, about 60 miles northeast of New York City, looking for their children in the wake of the shooting. Students were told to close their eyes by police as they were led from the building.

A photo taken by The Newtown Bee newspaper showed a group of young students _ some crying, others looking visibly frightened _ being escorted by adults through a parking lot in a line, hands on each other's shoulders.

Students and staff were among the victims, state police Lt. Paul Vance said a brief news conference. He also said the gunman was dead inside the school, but he refused to say how people were killed.

Another official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still under way, said the gunman apparently had two guns.

A law enforcement official in Washington said the attacker was a 20-year-old man with ties to the school and that one of the guns was a .223-caliber rifle. The official also said that police were searching a location in New Jersey in connection with the shootings. That official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to speak on the record about the developing criminal investigation.

Robert Licata said his 6-year-old son was in class when the gunman burst in and shot the teacher.

"That's when my son grabbed a bunch of his friends and ran out the door," he said. "He was very brave. He waited for his friends."

He said the shooter didn't say a word.

Stephen Delgiadice said his 8-year-old daughter heard two big bangs and teachers told her to get in a corner. His daughter was fine.

"It's alarming, especially in Newtown, Connecticut, which we always thought was the safest place in America," he said.

A dispatcher at the Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps said a teacher had been shot in the foot and taken to Danbury Hospital. Andrea Rynn, a spokeswoman at the hospital, said it had three patients from the school but she did not have information on the extent or nature of their injuries.

Mergim Bajraliu, 17, heard the gunshots echo from his home and raced to check on his 9-year-old sister at the school. He said his sister, who was fine, heard a scream come over the intercom at one point. He said teachers were shaking and crying as they came out of the building.

"Everyone was just traumatized," he said.

Richard Wilford's 7-year-old son, Richie, is in the second grade at the school. His son told him that he heard a noise that "sounded like what he described as cans falling."

The boy told him a teacher went out to check on the noise, came back in, locked the door and had the kids huddle up in the corner until police arrived.

"There's no words," Wilford said. "It's sheer terror, a sense of imminent danger, to get to your child and be there to protect him."

Melissa Makris, 43, said her 10-year-old son, Philip, was in the school gym.

"He said he heard a lot of loud noises and then screaming. Then the gym teachers immediately gathered the children in a corner and kept them safe in a corner," Makris said.

The fourth-grader told his mother that the students stayed huddled until police came in the gym. He also told her that he saw what looked like a body under a blanket as he fled the school.

"He said the policeman came in and helped them get out of the building and told them to run," Makris said. "And they ran to the firehouse."

The White House said Barack Obama was notified of the shooting and his spokesman Jay Carney said the president had "enormous sympathy for families that are affected."

source: thetandd.com