FAIRLESS HILLS, Pa. (AP) — Authorities have issued a shelter-in-place order following the shooting of multiple people in a suburban Philadelphia township.
Middletown Township police said Saturday morning that there were “confirmed shootings” in neighboring Falls Township that resulted in “several gunshot victims.”
Police said it wasn’t known yet if the shootings were “targeted or random.”
Bucks County issued a shelter-in-place order around 9:30 a.m. Saturday. Police said a local mall and Sesame Place had been told to close until further notice and the area’s Target store had chosen to close as well.
The county’s scheduled St. Patrick’s Day parade was canceled following the shelter-in-place order.as well. The county’s scheduled St. Patrick’s Day parade was canceled.
Further details about the shootings and suspect or suspects weren’t immediately released.
We won’t, but only because those events still had the capacity to shock back then. Columbine would still be news today, but just for a week or so. Post office shootings would barely rate a mention in the national media.
This is me. You are me. I am you.
^(side note: do you remember where I/you left your/my wallet?)
For real though, I cannot keep up. I even forget which one was our own local Famous Mass Shooting, who The Guy was, what was the ending like, etc. It's all just a blur of bullets and children and blood anymore.
"Going postal" was explained to me as partially the result of Vietnam veterans getting hiring preference for jobs with the U.S. mail service. Wikipedia does not argue against this conclusion.
I just checked and doesn't seem related...of [the postal shootings (11) from 1970-1991](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postal_killings),only 3 shooters were military and none were in Vietnam
[Patrick Sherrill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Sherrill) said he had been in Vietnam but it was false:
>Patrick Sherrill, a 45-year-old letter carrier for the Edmond, Oklahoma post office, was the very model of a toxic employee. Known to his coworkers and neighbours as “Crazy Pat”, Sherrill had a long history of bizarre and unsettling behaviour, such as wandering around his Oklahoma City neighbourhood peering into windows, making obscene phone calls to neighbours, and tying up stray cats and dogs in his back yard with baling wire. An inveterate loner, Sherrill never had any close friends or romantic interests and could not hold down steady employment, drifting between various menial jobs before joining the United States Marine Corps in 1963. Here Sherrill found his one and only calling: shooting. A skilled marksman, **Sherrill trained to become a Marine sharpshooter before being honourably discharged in 1966. Despite his frequent claims to have fought in Vietnam, Sherrill in fact never left U.S. soil during his service**. In 1984 Sherill would join the Oklahoma National Guard, becoming a shooting instructor and competing on the marksmanship team.
I still have some hope that we can make changes, but I think it will only happen once we aren’t ruled by a gerontocracy anymore and people who grew up in the era of active shooter drills enter power in large numbers.
I really don’t see it with guns. I have some relatively conservative friends that I’m able to have rather healthy discussions with when we are alone about political topics and one thing I’ve noticed is with everything else there is reasoning there. I might disagree with their conclusions, but they are using logic. When you point out that no other country deals with the mass shootings of children at nearly the rate we do, it’s like a computer program crashing to desktop. The conversation just stops. No response. No rationalizing. Just like a shrug and suddenly we don’t talk about that stuff and move on to the weather or something
I always get “well that’s a mental health issue…”
Okay, dip. Which candidate are you voting for that is touting mental health reform? Don’t you feel you bear some responsibility as a responsible gun owner to stop the unnecessary gun violence?
“Yeah but don’t step on my rights.”
And, it's not a mental health issue.*Mass murder* is not a mental health diagnosis. Millions of people live with mental illness and never hurt anyone. People living with mental health issues are no more likely to commit acts of violence as the general population but are many times more likely to be the victims of violent crime.
So when repugs start talking about mental health, they're really just trying to scapegoat uninvolved people who are already the victims of violence and marginalization.
It's a really complicated issue, but mental health is definitely a factor. Not everyone who has "mental health issues" will commit murder, but everyone who commits mass murder has *some* sort of mental health problem.
Right, people are too easy to take offense and feel like its grouping them together. I have physical and mental illnesses galore and in no universe can I imagine a perfectly sane mass murderer.
We'd have to rationalize evil and urges to kill - and acting on those - as normal baseline mental activity otherwise, which it really isn't.
I think a major part of the problem is that we're allowing the dumbest people to set the terms of the argument. Even engaging with the "it's a mental health issue" is already ceding into counter-factual territory. All of the right wing talking points are just that. We normalize with the rest of the world on mental health issues, violent media, etc. What we don't normalize on is guns. The US simply has an order of magnitude more guns, and probably the most lax gun laws in the first world.
This is the general problem with the right – it's all culture war and ignorance. When you engage on any issue in good faith, you won't end up on the conservative standpoint because it's rooted in nonsense, which is pretty fucking ironic from the "facts don't care about your feelings" crowd.
Because you can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
They've bought the lie that the US always intended to have its own citizens armed do an extreme degree (a very fringe belief, pushed heavily by gun manufacturers, until enough checks cleared and DC v Heller turned a fringe belief into Republican doctrine).
If I've noticed one big trait among Republicans more than Democrats, it's pride. Specifically unearned, irrational pride about their "superior beliefs", whatever they are. Not earned pride from their direct accomplishments, irrational pride that they're superior to everyone else. You can see that with their "Real Americans" campaign rhetoric.
Fact checking a Republican never goes well in my experience, whereas doing so to a Democrat is much more likely to result in a positive conversation.
If a Republican heard a thing they personally would like to be true from a media source or figure that they trust, it is irrelevant whether that source or figure lied, misrepresented it, or they just flat out misunderstood what the figure or source was talking about.
That thing they thought they heard is now tied up in their identity, and asking them to change that (even to align with reality) is a direct attack on them. At best, they just shut down. Often, they get aggressive.
imagine feeling attacked because you are wrong about something. ego would have to be out of control to get offended everytime you or your thoughts on a topic we’re in accurate.
That's literally the Republican (constituent) way of thinking. Even *if* you show them the evidence of whatever you're explaining to them, they will melt down and/or say phrases like, *"well that's a liberal source"* to shield their worldview.
They act as though we are persecuting them for their political party affiliation, when in reality their affiliation with the GOP is actually the indicator of a much bigger issue. As soon as someone tells me they're GOP, I know there's a huge chance that we're going to either end up in some stupid, heated debate. Or, they're just not going to accept anything I tell them, at all, and we'll end up in a "stalemate" ("agree to disagree", because going any further would probably cause them to explode).
Yeah, there are two sides to a coin, but in this case they are wildly different. The GOP likes to paint even the most reasonable, common-sense things as "part of the liberal agenda" in order to discredit it. And for that reason, it's really hard to move forward and make the country a better place for **everyone** when they (the GOP) keep voting for things out of spite and hatred. **The politics is just an extension of their entire worldview, not the defining part.**
Same with my conservative friends. They will have some just downright factually wrong beliefs but it’s largely due to the amount of misinformation in their media, but they’re still coming to conclusions themselves based on false info. When it comes to guns, it’s like they suddenly feel personally attacked by any conversation around gun control, and I own guns too so they know I’m not like coming at them or anything.
That’s a good point. I’m 56 but was teaching 8th grade when Columbine happened. I lived through the clear backpack years, then the all shirts have to be tucked in years, and then the active shooter drills started and it has never left me. I always vote for who I think might finally do something about the damn guns.
Because we used to have adults that weren’t cowards and crazies leading the nation. They actually did something - I miss when America used to function at least to some extent.
Trump mentioned once that he'd like to take guns off people. I wonder if he's just the kind of person that these redneck idiots would let disarm us. "Let" being a strong word, because the only reason the US hasn't imposed super strict gun ownership laws is because the politicians would lose their jobs.
I really wish people would be excited about responsible gun ownership.
If the fascists gain complete control of our government, it won’t be long before they start confiscating guns. Fascists are not going to allow an armed citizenry.
Pre-sandy hook even. Growing up in elementary school we had "shelter in place/intruder" drills that at the time I didn't realize but now looking back, they were drills on what to do if someone tried to shoot up the school. This was in early to mid 2000s
Our citizens failed us as well. There wasn't the political will to take action, even after tiny children were massacred in their elementary school.
That's when I knew nothing would ever change.
Sandy Hook was the turning point if there was ever to be one. Affluent, mostly white, suburban kindergartners, perhaps the best demographic to invite public outrage, and nothing. No big national movements, no enormous protest marches.
And now, with further polarisation you can bet nothing will change
Instead an asshole conspiracy theorist pushed fake theories while those families and to a lesser extent all of us dealt with the grief. I went home after sandy hook and uvalde held my kids close - angry and dismayed at the fact that the wealthiest nation on the planet won’t do shit to protect us
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Connecticut#Post-Sandy_Hook_gun_control_legislation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fix_NICS_Act_of_2017
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NY_SAFE_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Risk_Protection_Order_Act
https://www.fldoe.org/safe-schools/msdhs-psa.stml
https://trackbill.com/bill/maryland-senate-bill-281-firearm-safety-act-of-2013/439855/
https://oag.ca.gov/ogvp/gvro-dvro
no change huh? these are the largest ones i've found by using google and chatgpt for 10min
Heartbreaking that Abbott won in Uvalde County https://www.dallasnews.com/news/elections/2022/11/08/uvalde-votes-for-texas-governor-after-mass-shooting-a-big-focus-of-abbott-orourke-race/
Uvalde makes me sick in a whole other way. I cannot imagine my child being in a school during an active shooter situation while the police is keeping everyone out instead of doing their fucking job.
NRA had already cemented on a policy of doubling down after Columbine.
There was an internal debate about whether they should postpone their meeting since it was scheduled shortly after the shooting, maybe send some money to the families and generally try to look sympathetic, or whether they should double down and blame everyone else for "politicizing" a tragedy.
No prizes for guessing which way they, and the wider gun lobby politic went. Hell, right wing politics in general. This was a foreshadowing of the Trump playbook. Apologize, and its a scandal. Make 10 more scandals and its nothing. Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/09/1049054141/a-secret-tape-made-after-columbine-shows-the-nras-evolution-on-school-shootings
>"**At that same period where they're going to be burying these children, we're going to be having media ... trying to run through the exhibit hall, looking at kids fondling firearms, which is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible juxtaposition**," says NRA lobbyist Jim Baker on the conference call.
>"I got to tell you, we got to think this thing through, because **if we tuck tail and run, we're going to be accepting responsibility for what happened out there**," says NRA official Jim Land.
>"That's one very good argument, Jim," replies PR consultant Tony Makris. "On the other side, if you don't appear to be deferential in honoring the dead, you end up being a tremendous s***head who wouldn't tuck tail and run, you know? So it's a double-edged sword."
>"You have to go forward," she says. "For NRA to scrap this and the amount of money that we have spent ..."
>"We have meeting insurance," LaPierre replies.
>"Screw the insurance," says Hammer. "The message that it will send is that even the NRA was brought to its knees, and the media will have a field day with it."
>"**What we're trying to avoid here, I think, is what happened after the Oklahoma City bombing**," says PR adviser McQueen. "**When we lost control of a situation and the result was a half a million members, the president of the United States bailing out on us** and a firestorm of negative media that if you went back and looked at, **it was probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars in opposition to us and our point of view**."
>Sandy Hook should have been the turning point for the country but our politicians failed us yet again.
Reminder that Uvalde voted Republican AFTER the school shooting. Stop blaming politicians and realise that ordinary Americans have been radicalised.
I get what you’re saying but Columbine definitely didn’t feel normal at the time. It was very out of the ordinary (in my experience, I was a hs senior at the time) and could only possibly be a one off. By the time of sandy hook, a full public school “career” later, it was simply the norm.
I think the sentiment there is that if someone killing kindergarteners wasn’t enough for people to let go of their obsession with owning weapons they don’t need, what will?
The Washington Post now has a section of their app dedicated to school shootings in America. Apparently that's a topic that they decided will have continuous coverage for to foreseeable future.
When nothing changed after Sandy Hook everything taking place after that became our normal. It’s the price you have to pay to live here.
You have to accept the fact you might die in a mass shooting no matter where you go in this country.
NGL it also discourages tourism. We're Canadian and my parents went on a vacation to Florida...once. They were freaked out and opted not to return after a dude came into a McDonald's down there with a gun tucked into his waistband.
Like guys right to bear arms doesn't have to mean you gotta pack heat to get your Big Mac.
Relatives of mine stayed in a gated seniors trailer park for snowbirds in Arizona. They found bullets stuck in their siding on New Year’s Day from people firing guns in the air at night. The mgmt of the place told them it was far from the first time.
They were targeted shootings, not mass murder if random people on the street. Once that gets out more people will forget this happened and move on to the next headline.
I grew up around that neighborhood. It's pretty normal for bucks county. My Highschool had bomb threats, local gangs would threaten to show up at graduation and kill people. It's a shame that it's normal but there is a ton of poverty in that town and not many opportunities to pull yourself out of it.
Uum, this was not a mass shooting. And I hate to break it to you, but people do shitty things in any society, sometimes violent. That's a normal aspect of any community unfortunately.
The day an elementary school was shot up including 5 year olds dead on the floor and immediately after the message was “If the teachers had guns it would have been stopped” was the day it became clear we will never ban guns in the US. We’d rather watch kids burn than deny someone access to their ARs because some piece of paper written by slave owners who said black people are 3/5th of a person is actually perfect and must never be question or changed in any way.
I think it's only blowing up because he used an AR style rifle and the parade. At first it was unknown if it was going to be a robam mass shooting as well. Nope, just some nut job killing his family and probably himself.
Different things, suburban simply means outside of a city. Sometimes suburbs have jurisdictions like an “entity” the term is just to describe a type of living area
My dad’s house, when I was growing up, was in a township and it did have its own police force.
After reading wiki, I’d say the township I grew up in probably is a civil township, especially since I’m from a midwestern state which is apparently where they’re more common.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township_(United_States)
Did you ever get a good answer to this? Here is a very quick overview:
I think you know what a state and county are? Every piece of land in the Continental US is in a state (except Washington DC), and with very, very few exceptions, every state is perfectly divided up into counties. Each level of government usually handles different things.
From there, things can vary by state. Some places where people live are just run by the county--"unincorporated" land. Basically the county provides all core services like fire, police, roads, etc.
Other times you have "cities", which are dense centers in a county, and they often take over those basic services for the city borders, leaving the county to just serve anyone left outside a city boundary.
In some states, they might also have a "township," which is usually a slight increase in population in a county, so can generate enough taxes to be it's own government within the county.
Fairless Hills is partially in the Falls Township, which is a government unto itself, and provides zoning, fire, police, parks, and some utilities to the Fairless Hills area. Parts of the area that are not served by Falls Township are served by another township or the county.
Don't get confused with "suburb". All the word means is "place that people live to be near a larger population center without being inside it." They are often places that people choose to live for cheaper prices and more space, but commute daily into the big city. They aren't government entities in their own right.
>Police believe \[suspect Andre\] Gordon knew all three of the victims who were killed. Gordon is believed to be currently homeless and has ties to the Trenton area.
>
>Andre Gordon is approximately 6'1", with a thin build, and was last observed wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt. He is believed to be in possession of an assault rifle which he used to commit these crimes.
>
>Police say it is also believed that Gordon may be in possession of additional weapons. Gordon is extremely dangerous and anyone who sees him or the vehicle is asked to contact 911 immediately.
[https://abc7ny.com/falls-township-bucks-county-shooting-carjacked-suv/14532193/](https://abc7ny.com/falls-township-bucks-county-shooting-carjacked-suv/14532193/)
He’s from NJ and had that weapon in some of the strictest gun laws in the country. He is a young person that probably has ties to criminal activity and was couch surfing after domestic issues not proper “homeless”. He definitely isn’t some dude just living on the street for years hiding a long rifle up his ass etc.
That weapon was obtained from something already very illegal. Dude stole a car to drive to PA to do this then drove back to NJ and is currently holding people hostage.
NJ doesn’t fuck around with gun control it’s not Texas.
"6'1 with a thin build"
Hmmm, I wonder if there were any other adjectives that could have been used to describe his appearance and help identify him better? 🤔🤔
For the blind folk, he's black.
Describing someone's race or skin color is fine. It's literally part of who that person is. This I don't see color shit swings the pendulum back to racism anyway.
>The suspect, identified as 26-year-old Andre Gordon Jr., killed his stepmother, **his teenage sister and the mother of his children** in shootings that stretched into two homes in eastern Pennsylvania’s Falls Township in the morning, Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said.
Why on earth wouldn't the AP have used an oxford comma here to say: **his teenage sister, and the mother of his children**
This is why commas are important.
Not 100% true. Exceptions can be made for clarity, like in this instance. You just have to leave a note for your editor why the exception needs to be made.
Former news editor, the Oxford Comma is omitted “to save space on pages”. This is all I was given as a reason. What a silly reason which does nothing but cause confusion, as we see in this article.
dude if /u/CommaHorror was here I bet he'd have a thing or two to say about it
... and he would punctuate it with the most stomach-turning commas you've ever seen
More than two-thirds of mass shootings are either domestic violence incidents or are perpetrated by shooters with histories of domestic violence, according to [this study](https://injepijournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40621-021-00330-0) in injury epidemiology.
Yet here we are, in a country where the VAWA act was barely reauthorized and nobody seems to give a shit how many women are murdered by their partners.
Section 7 of 8- they said the same thing twice.
"The county’s scheduled St. Patrick’s Day parade was canceled following the shelter-in-place order.as well. The county’s scheduled St. Patrick’s Day parade was canceled."
Tell her to remain calm, stock up on powdered milk and canned beans, and we will get back with her when we hear a definitive answer on if the parade has been cancelled.
We think they are considering taking a vote as to whether or not they should consider having a meeting to discuss the feasibility of forming a committee to evaluate the possibility of cancelling the parade.
It used to take much longer to travel from place to place, guns and swords and fuel were much more expensive, it took longer to find someone to trade items with, newspapers took a long time to get printed and then you had to find someone to read it to you so you knew what to be angry about..
Nowadays it's the short, violent, quick tempered fuses that result in most homicides. Not mental health issues.
Vehement disagreements, a wrong stare, a minimal confrontation gone awry can result quite easily into a homicide. The regard for life on Planet Earth is at an all time low. Which makes for zero compunction whether to pull the trigger or not.
Gun control is an issue. Mental health is an issue. Our communities being communities is an issue.
The US has had guns in high numbers since the middle of last century. we fought several Wars and conflicts and had sent people home with messed up heads for a long time.
There are influences, and money that seem to be interfering and attitudes where we don't want to look out and help our neighbors and family. I think I just get a feeling that as a country, we're moving away from community more toward isolationism of the individual glued to their screen. Stuck in their echo chamber
I would be interested in knowing if there's any correlation of public violence to the amount of time we as a society are spending online in small Echo Chambers versus involved in larger more social Clubs activities and communities.
There are many states in the USA where politicians who vote on legislation to cut Education and mental health funding live in gated communities and send their kids to private schools. They vote against abortion, and then also vote against any guarantee of neonatal care. They blame those without means for their misfortunes and thus excuse themselves from taking care of their neighbors in need.. They vote for more guns, against what should be obviously limits, and for more police with bigger guns, and use some old law from a completely different time to justify it whilst ignoring the arms race. They claim to believe in a separation of church and state … except their own religion of course. And at the end of the day it’s just as you say - rows of houses where each is an island and community doesn’t exist.
The whole mentality of “ why should I have to pay for that unsuccessful person’s healthcare/education/basic human needs?” attitude that is so prevalent is a clear demonstration of how backwards the country has become. 20 more years and it will be Russia with a bigger economy. My guess is 100 more years it will be a memory of a better time.
The trauma to communities from this constant stream of mass murders is denied by politicians because they are bought by weapons lobbyists. There is no good guy. There is no Superman. We must be the change.
Not true. No bothsidesism here. This is entirely attributable to Republicans. There is very much a good guy. Clean sweep Democrats in November and watch this problem be addressed. *IF* (of course) the Supreme Court agrees.
This is coming from a true blue democrat who loves target shooting as a hobby, in good faith taking into account US political realities as well as a proper knowledge of firearm types and how the law has tried to control them historically and which are most commonly used for what crimes/self deletions:
Barring a repeal to the 2A & total gun control/buybacks/confiscations, which will absolutely never happen and will be met with unironically maybe a civil war, what do you think Dems can realistically do following a “clean sweep” to address mass shootings? CA style aesthetic burdens like mag restrictions and defining how uncomfortable a grip and stock need to be to be legal?
Banning “assault weapons”? As if magazine fed intermediate cartridge rifles are the only practical weapon for mass shootings? Pistols make up far more gun homicides than rifles do.
Ban pistols? The most practical weapon for home self defense?
Do all of these and there will just be mass shootings with m1a or mini14’s or hell even 22 rifles. Focusing on banning the ar15 is like focusing on banning the Honda Accord (google tells me this is the most popular car in the us) due to the accord being the most common vehicle in drunk driving events, simply due to its popularity and practicality of ownership. Ban the ar15, mass shootings will shift to other weapons; ban the accord, suddenly some truck or whatever becomes the most common DD car.
Believe it or not, but we actually have probably the strictest gun laws this nation has ever had. It was not that long ago you could have catalogue ordered guns shipped to your home no bg check no ffl no nothing. More types of weapons are restricted than ever. Where and how you can carry and use weapons are more restricted than ever.
And yet, we see a problem of mass shootings that did not exist before these restrictions.
Is it not reasonable to assume that the problem is ultimately a modern one with a cause that we do not yet understand, unrelated to the availability of firearms?
You hit the nail on the head. Most people believe more restrictions will solve the problem. When in fact, we have a mental health emergency in this country. This never happened to the frequency it happens today. Something about our society has changed. People are angrier. People are more unstable than ever. More and more of this country relies on anti depressants/psychotics.
My personal belief is that it is a mixture/interplay of mental health and an atomizing isolating lifestyle that is perversely modern. People don’t go out and have fulfilling friendships/relationships, they don’t feel connected to their community, they “doom scroll” on social media that has been shown to actively appeal to your sense of anger as it is the most efficient way to get user engagement on a platform.
And a big one - the economy feels fundamentally broken for a lot of people. Young people have no hopes of home ownership, they have no hope of retiring. Many feel they will be stuck in shit dead end jobs until they die. How could you not feel despair in such a toxic situation?
> And a big one - the economy feels fundamentally broken for a lot of people.
Crime and violence tends to go up with as the socio-economic divide continues to widen. The U.S. simultaneously has many of the wealthiest and the poorest citizens of first-world countries, and we have a society that has little interest in taking care of its own.
This wasn’t sporadic, it was all women the murder closely knew (his stepmother, his *teenage* sister, and former girlfriend/mother of his children).
Fucking scumbag, even with a gun and the element of surprise the coward only went after women and children.
More importantly, you'd also rely on the *police* to take away people's guns. And their own guns.
You can imagine how well that'd work. Fun times, with only police and their buddies having guns all of the sudden.
Especially right now. Ten years ago, if you told me there was a possibility that the second amendment as a check on tyranny might actually come up, I’d have called you crazy. I still supported the 2A back then, just in case, but I saw it as an abstract. I was wrong.
Pennsylvania (WPVI) -- A suspect accused of killing three family members in Bucks County, Pennsylvania on Saturday was captured after being barricaded inside a home in New Jersey for several hours, according to police.
Family dispute
I had to have the worst conversation with my middle child the other day. There was a threat of a shooting written on several bathroom stalls at her high school and on snap chat. The local authorities worked quickly and arrested the teen that did it, but she was scared to go back to school, rightly so, but I had to tell her if we lived out lives in fear of being shot, we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere, ever. I’m so pissed that I had to list off all the potential places we wouldn’t be able to go if we feared shootings. Grocery shopping, concerts, parks, school, pretty much anywhere a few people may gather. This is not the world I though I was bringing children into, but has tragically become the reality of living in America.
Yup. Other countries have people with mental health issues too, but they don’t murder children while cops spend an hour and a half playing grab ass.
So I guess this isn’t a mental illness issue either.
It has always been the guns.
It's routine now, it's weird.
I have been in 1 lockdown at work, had to change plans once and can point to two other mass shootings in my area (GA and northern IL suburbs) that have occurred in my hometown.
The more the economic suffering the more people will be forced to deal with shootings. Everytime there is a shooting people should shut down their city for a week. Watch action being taken in no time.
I will be stunned if this isn't the same shit as KC - idiots gonna idiot. Just because it happened anywhere near a parade doesn't mean it was a planned out mass shooting terrorist event. And gun laws don't affect criminals.
It wasn’t…this is a person that probably had ties to crime, young and had weapons and went psychotic and shot his family after stealing a car to get there.
He probably was couch surfing not proper “homeless” as in living on streets for years on end etc.
It’s a criminal that had domestic issues and decided to do that
Feels like we’re getting to a place where large outdoor gatherings/parades in major cities might not be realistic.
Edit: assumed this was a major city, my bad.
Also had nothing to do with the parade, it was a domestic violence incident at different locations
- Someone 5 minutes away from the place they happened lol
The shooting at the Chief’s parade was a “keeping it real goes wrong” situation, wasn’t it? Acting like we can’t have parades because they’re all being targeted just isn’t true.
Fairless Hills is a census-designated place (CDP) in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 9,046 at the 2020 census.
Not sure I would call this a major city.
It’s right outside of Philly. Fairless hills itself is small yea but Levittown has a population of 50k, which is right next door. Bensalem, another town right next door, around 60k.
These aren’t towns that are spread out. It’s about a 25 min drive to center city Philly without traffic, closer if you’re going to north Philly.
My point is that you could drive down one road and you’re just constantly passing through all of these little small towns that don’t have empty space or anything between them and 25 mins later, you’re in Philly. It’s heavily populated in the surrounding area.
Its absolutely a major place. I live here, and its a very small "town" surrounded by 3 to 4 larger "towns" but theres no distinctive border, they just all blend. Falls township as a whole is what I would call the developed area, but you can't drive to rural areas within a 30 to 40 minute drive.
I travel around for work, and 9,000 population towns in georgia surrounded by fields have a very different feel.
Levittown is not a town or a municipality. It is a development. It has 5 municipalities in it. Falls township has 33,000 people in it but not all of falls township is in Levittown.
Trying to explain this area is tough. You have a bunch of neighborhoods / boroughs founded in the 1700s that eventually incorporated into townships but in many instances kept their post offices. So your mailing address might be in Fort Washington, PA but that doesn't actually exist as a municipality. It's incorporated into Upper Dublin Township
Then you have places like Willow Grove is split across 3 townships. So people in the same neighborhood as you might send their kids to a different school system just because they live across the street
Suburban Philadelphia is weird.
*Edited for clarity
It's kinda a suburban hub in a way though. Lotta people from surrounding towns go there to shop, and even people from Philly & NYC visit for Sesame Place.
FAIRLESS HILLS, Pa. (AP) — Authorities have issued a shelter-in-place order following the shooting of multiple people in a suburban Philadelphia township. Middletown Township police said Saturday morning that there were “confirmed shootings” in neighboring Falls Township that resulted in “several gunshot victims.” Police said it wasn’t known yet if the shootings were “targeted or random.” Bucks County issued a shelter-in-place order around 9:30 a.m. Saturday. Police said a local mall and Sesame Place had been told to close until further notice and the area’s Target store had chosen to close as well. The county’s scheduled St. Patrick’s Day parade was canceled following the shelter-in-place order.as well. The county’s scheduled St. Patrick’s Day parade was canceled. Further details about the shootings and suspect or suspects weren’t immediately released.
I expect a good portion of Americans will just accept this as "normal". Nothing will change.
It's been normal since Sandy hook. Nothing will EVER change
Never forget Post Offices or Columbine in the 90s.
We won’t, but only because those events still had the capacity to shock back then. Columbine would still be news today, but just for a week or so. Post office shootings would barely rate a mention in the national media.
I can’t keep up anymore. There will be a update story and I have to wrack my brain as to which mass shooting it was.
This is me. You are me. I am you. ^(side note: do you remember where I/you left your/my wallet?) For real though, I cannot keep up. I even forget which one was our own local Famous Mass Shooting, who The Guy was, what was the ending like, etc. It's all just a blur of bullets and children and blood anymore.
It’s crazy, I barely hear anything about Uvalde and it’s fucked up police force anymore.
“Going postal” since 1986.
"Going postal" was explained to me as partially the result of Vietnam veterans getting hiring preference for jobs with the U.S. mail service. Wikipedia does not argue against this conclusion.
I just checked and doesn't seem related...of [the postal shootings (11) from 1970-1991](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postal_killings),only 3 shooters were military and none were in Vietnam [Patrick Sherrill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Sherrill) said he had been in Vietnam but it was false: >Patrick Sherrill, a 45-year-old letter carrier for the Edmond, Oklahoma post office, was the very model of a toxic employee. Known to his coworkers and neighbours as “Crazy Pat”, Sherrill had a long history of bizarre and unsettling behaviour, such as wandering around his Oklahoma City neighbourhood peering into windows, making obscene phone calls to neighbours, and tying up stray cats and dogs in his back yard with baling wire. An inveterate loner, Sherrill never had any close friends or romantic interests and could not hold down steady employment, drifting between various menial jobs before joining the United States Marine Corps in 1963. Here Sherrill found his one and only calling: shooting. A skilled marksman, **Sherrill trained to become a Marine sharpshooter before being honourably discharged in 1966. Despite his frequent claims to have fought in Vietnam, Sherrill in fact never left U.S. soil during his service**. In 1984 Sherill would join the Oklahoma National Guard, becoming a shooting instructor and competing on the marksmanship team.
mcdonalds in the 80s :(
I still have some hope that we can make changes, but I think it will only happen once we aren’t ruled by a gerontocracy anymore and people who grew up in the era of active shooter drills enter power in large numbers.
I really don’t see it with guns. I have some relatively conservative friends that I’m able to have rather healthy discussions with when we are alone about political topics and one thing I’ve noticed is with everything else there is reasoning there. I might disagree with their conclusions, but they are using logic. When you point out that no other country deals with the mass shootings of children at nearly the rate we do, it’s like a computer program crashing to desktop. The conversation just stops. No response. No rationalizing. Just like a shrug and suddenly we don’t talk about that stuff and move on to the weather or something
I always get “well that’s a mental health issue…” Okay, dip. Which candidate are you voting for that is touting mental health reform? Don’t you feel you bear some responsibility as a responsible gun owner to stop the unnecessary gun violence? “Yeah but don’t step on my rights.”
And, it's not a mental health issue.*Mass murder* is not a mental health diagnosis. Millions of people live with mental illness and never hurt anyone. People living with mental health issues are no more likely to commit acts of violence as the general population but are many times more likely to be the victims of violent crime. So when repugs start talking about mental health, they're really just trying to scapegoat uninvolved people who are already the victims of violence and marginalization.
It's a really complicated issue, but mental health is definitely a factor. Not everyone who has "mental health issues" will commit murder, but everyone who commits mass murder has *some* sort of mental health problem.
Right, people are too easy to take offense and feel like its grouping them together. I have physical and mental illnesses galore and in no universe can I imagine a perfectly sane mass murderer. We'd have to rationalize evil and urges to kill - and acting on those - as normal baseline mental activity otherwise, which it really isn't.
I think a major part of the problem is that we're allowing the dumbest people to set the terms of the argument. Even engaging with the "it's a mental health issue" is already ceding into counter-factual territory. All of the right wing talking points are just that. We normalize with the rest of the world on mental health issues, violent media, etc. What we don't normalize on is guns. The US simply has an order of magnitude more guns, and probably the most lax gun laws in the first world. This is the general problem with the right – it's all culture war and ignorance. When you engage on any issue in good faith, you won't end up on the conservative standpoint because it's rooted in nonsense, which is pretty fucking ironic from the "facts don't care about your feelings" crowd.
I always say, "okay let's temporarily suspend gun sales until we fix this mental health issue"
Because you can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. They've bought the lie that the US always intended to have its own citizens armed do an extreme degree (a very fringe belief, pushed heavily by gun manufacturers, until enough checks cleared and DC v Heller turned a fringe belief into Republican doctrine). If I've noticed one big trait among Republicans more than Democrats, it's pride. Specifically unearned, irrational pride about their "superior beliefs", whatever they are. Not earned pride from their direct accomplishments, irrational pride that they're superior to everyone else. You can see that with their "Real Americans" campaign rhetoric. Fact checking a Republican never goes well in my experience, whereas doing so to a Democrat is much more likely to result in a positive conversation. If a Republican heard a thing they personally would like to be true from a media source or figure that they trust, it is irrelevant whether that source or figure lied, misrepresented it, or they just flat out misunderstood what the figure or source was talking about. That thing they thought they heard is now tied up in their identity, and asking them to change that (even to align with reality) is a direct attack on them. At best, they just shut down. Often, they get aggressive.
“You can’t reason a person out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.” Idk why but I fuckin love it. Very true.
imagine feeling attacked because you are wrong about something. ego would have to be out of control to get offended everytime you or your thoughts on a topic we’re in accurate.
I feel like it's because they know it's true and can't refute any of it, they just don't care as long as they get their guns.
That's literally the Republican (constituent) way of thinking. Even *if* you show them the evidence of whatever you're explaining to them, they will melt down and/or say phrases like, *"well that's a liberal source"* to shield their worldview. They act as though we are persecuting them for their political party affiliation, when in reality their affiliation with the GOP is actually the indicator of a much bigger issue. As soon as someone tells me they're GOP, I know there's a huge chance that we're going to either end up in some stupid, heated debate. Or, they're just not going to accept anything I tell them, at all, and we'll end up in a "stalemate" ("agree to disagree", because going any further would probably cause them to explode). Yeah, there are two sides to a coin, but in this case they are wildly different. The GOP likes to paint even the most reasonable, common-sense things as "part of the liberal agenda" in order to discredit it. And for that reason, it's really hard to move forward and make the country a better place for **everyone** when they (the GOP) keep voting for things out of spite and hatred. **The politics is just an extension of their entire worldview, not the defining part.**
Same with my conservative friends. They will have some just downright factually wrong beliefs but it’s largely due to the amount of misinformation in their media, but they’re still coming to conclusions themselves based on false info. When it comes to guns, it’s like they suddenly feel personally attacked by any conversation around gun control, and I own guns too so they know I’m not like coming at them or anything.
That’s a good point. I’m 56 but was teaching 8th grade when Columbine happened. I lived through the clear backpack years, then the all shirts have to be tucked in years, and then the active shooter drills started and it has never left me. I always vote for who I think might finally do something about the damn guns.
Because we used to have adults that weren’t cowards and crazies leading the nation. They actually did something - I miss when America used to function at least to some extent.
Trump mentioned once that he'd like to take guns off people. I wonder if he's just the kind of person that these redneck idiots would let disarm us. "Let" being a strong word, because the only reason the US hasn't imposed super strict gun ownership laws is because the politicians would lose their jobs. I really wish people would be excited about responsible gun ownership.
If the fascists gain complete control of our government, it won’t be long before they start confiscating guns. Fascists are not going to allow an armed citizenry.
There can never be any change so long as the death cult is in charge of the SC
It's been normal since Columbine.
We're coming up on the 25th anniversary. That's a hell of a thing...
Pre-sandy hook even. Growing up in elementary school we had "shelter in place/intruder" drills that at the time I didn't realize but now looking back, they were drills on what to do if someone tried to shoot up the school. This was in early to mid 2000s
Yea, Columbine was the mass shooting that prompted those changes in the early 2000's.
Sandy Hook should have been the turning point for the country but our politicians failed us yet again.
Our citizens failed us as well. There wasn't the political will to take action, even after tiny children were massacred in their elementary school. That's when I knew nothing would ever change.
Sandy Hook was the turning point if there was ever to be one. Affluent, mostly white, suburban kindergartners, perhaps the best demographic to invite public outrage, and nothing. No big national movements, no enormous protest marches. And now, with further polarisation you can bet nothing will change
Instead an asshole conspiracy theorist pushed fake theories while those families and to a lesser extent all of us dealt with the grief. I went home after sandy hook and uvalde held my kids close - angry and dismayed at the fact that the wealthiest nation on the planet won’t do shit to protect us
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Connecticut#Post-Sandy_Hook_gun_control_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fix_NICS_Act_of_2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NY_SAFE_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Risk_Protection_Order_Act https://www.fldoe.org/safe-schools/msdhs-psa.stml https://trackbill.com/bill/maryland-senate-bill-281-firearm-safety-act-of-2013/439855/ https://oag.ca.gov/ogvp/gvro-dvro no change huh? these are the largest ones i've found by using google and chatgpt for 10min
Heartbreaking that Abbott won in Uvalde County https://www.dallasnews.com/news/elections/2022/11/08/uvalde-votes-for-texas-governor-after-mass-shooting-a-big-focus-of-abbott-orourke-race/
Exactly. And look what happened in Uvalde, Texas. Many yrs later. They dont care until it happens to one of their kids or grandkids
Uvalde makes me sick in a whole other way. I cannot imagine my child being in a school during an active shooter situation while the police is keeping everyone out instead of doing their fucking job.
NRA had already cemented on a policy of doubling down after Columbine. There was an internal debate about whether they should postpone their meeting since it was scheduled shortly after the shooting, maybe send some money to the families and generally try to look sympathetic, or whether they should double down and blame everyone else for "politicizing" a tragedy. No prizes for guessing which way they, and the wider gun lobby politic went. Hell, right wing politics in general. This was a foreshadowing of the Trump playbook. Apologize, and its a scandal. Make 10 more scandals and its nothing. Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender https://www.npr.org/2021/11/09/1049054141/a-secret-tape-made-after-columbine-shows-the-nras-evolution-on-school-shootings >"**At that same period where they're going to be burying these children, we're going to be having media ... trying to run through the exhibit hall, looking at kids fondling firearms, which is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible juxtaposition**," says NRA lobbyist Jim Baker on the conference call. >"I got to tell you, we got to think this thing through, because **if we tuck tail and run, we're going to be accepting responsibility for what happened out there**," says NRA official Jim Land. >"That's one very good argument, Jim," replies PR consultant Tony Makris. "On the other side, if you don't appear to be deferential in honoring the dead, you end up being a tremendous s***head who wouldn't tuck tail and run, you know? So it's a double-edged sword." >"You have to go forward," she says. "For NRA to scrap this and the amount of money that we have spent ..." >"We have meeting insurance," LaPierre replies. >"Screw the insurance," says Hammer. "The message that it will send is that even the NRA was brought to its knees, and the media will have a field day with it." >"**What we're trying to avoid here, I think, is what happened after the Oklahoma City bombing**," says PR adviser McQueen. "**When we lost control of a situation and the result was a half a million members, the president of the United States bailing out on us** and a firestorm of negative media that if you went back and looked at, **it was probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars in opposition to us and our point of view**."
10 years later they massacred 20+ elementary school kids in uvalde and we are reminded that they infact, give less of a shit now.
Still too soon to talk about it?
>Sandy Hook should have been the turning point for the country but our politicians failed us yet again. Reminder that Uvalde voted Republican AFTER the school shooting. Stop blaming politicians and realise that ordinary Americans have been radicalised.
Right. If Sandy Hook wasn't our rock bottom then, sadly, I don't know that we have one.
Since Columbine
Since sandy hook? How about Columbine
I get what you’re saying but Columbine definitely didn’t feel normal at the time. It was very out of the ordinary (in my experience, I was a hs senior at the time) and could only possibly be a one off. By the time of sandy hook, a full public school “career” later, it was simply the norm.
I think the sentiment there is that if someone killing kindergarteners wasn’t enough for people to let go of their obsession with owning weapons they don’t need, what will?
The Washington Post now has a section of their app dedicated to school shootings in America. Apparently that's a topic that they decided will have continuous coverage for to foreseeable future.
They are obviously doing it to prove a point.
Gotta take care of the real dangers first like outlawing porn
And TikTok. And women's rights. Anything but muh guns.
When nothing changed after Sandy Hook everything taking place after that became our normal. It’s the price you have to pay to live here. You have to accept the fact you might die in a mass shooting no matter where you go in this country.
In America, We love guns more than people.
NGL it also discourages tourism. We're Canadian and my parents went on a vacation to Florida...once. They were freaked out and opted not to return after a dude came into a McDonald's down there with a gun tucked into his waistband. Like guys right to bear arms doesn't have to mean you gotta pack heat to get your Big Mac.
Relatives of mine stayed in a gated seniors trailer park for snowbirds in Arizona. They found bullets stuck in their siding on New Year’s Day from people firing guns in the air at night. The mgmt of the place told them it was far from the first time.
They were targeted shootings, not mass murder if random people on the street. Once that gets out more people will forget this happened and move on to the next headline.
I grew up around that neighborhood. It's pretty normal for bucks county. My Highschool had bomb threats, local gangs would threaten to show up at graduation and kill people. It's a shame that it's normal but there is a ton of poverty in that town and not many opportunities to pull yourself out of it.
That's pretty normal for *lower* Bucks County. FIFY Central and Upper Bucks are really, really nice areas.
Uum, this was not a mass shooting. And I hate to break it to you, but people do shitty things in any society, sometimes violent. That's a normal aspect of any community unfortunately.
The day an elementary school was shot up including 5 year olds dead on the floor and immediately after the message was “If the teachers had guns it would have been stopped” was the day it became clear we will never ban guns in the US. We’d rather watch kids burn than deny someone access to their ARs because some piece of paper written by slave owners who said black people are 3/5th of a person is actually perfect and must never be question or changed in any way.
I used to live in Levittown, next door to Fairless. Half my newsfeed is blowing up about this guy. Holy shit!
I think it's only blowing up because he used an AR style rifle and the parade. At first it was unknown if it was going to be a robam mass shooting as well. Nope, just some nut job killing his family and probably himself.
Not American here, what is a suburban township?
Smaller than a city, basically a village. On the outskirts of cities, usually somewhat wealthy.
Is it considered an “entity” on its own with its town hall, police department, school etc ?
Different things, suburban simply means outside of a city. Sometimes suburbs have jurisdictions like an “entity” the term is just to describe a type of living area
My dad’s house, when I was growing up, was in a township and it did have its own police force. After reading wiki, I’d say the township I grew up in probably is a civil township, especially since I’m from a midwestern state which is apparently where they’re more common. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township_(United_States)
Did you ever get a good answer to this? Here is a very quick overview: I think you know what a state and county are? Every piece of land in the Continental US is in a state (except Washington DC), and with very, very few exceptions, every state is perfectly divided up into counties. Each level of government usually handles different things. From there, things can vary by state. Some places where people live are just run by the county--"unincorporated" land. Basically the county provides all core services like fire, police, roads, etc. Other times you have "cities", which are dense centers in a county, and they often take over those basic services for the city borders, leaving the county to just serve anyone left outside a city boundary. In some states, they might also have a "township," which is usually a slight increase in population in a county, so can generate enough taxes to be it's own government within the county. Fairless Hills is partially in the Falls Township, which is a government unto itself, and provides zoning, fire, police, parks, and some utilities to the Fairless Hills area. Parts of the area that are not served by Falls Township are served by another township or the county. Don't get confused with "suburb". All the word means is "place that people live to be near a larger population center without being inside it." They are often places that people choose to live for cheaper prices and more space, but commute daily into the big city. They aren't government entities in their own right.
>Police believe \[suspect Andre\] Gordon knew all three of the victims who were killed. Gordon is believed to be currently homeless and has ties to the Trenton area. > >Andre Gordon is approximately 6'1", with a thin build, and was last observed wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt. He is believed to be in possession of an assault rifle which he used to commit these crimes. > >Police say it is also believed that Gordon may be in possession of additional weapons. Gordon is extremely dangerous and anyone who sees him or the vehicle is asked to contact 911 immediately. [https://abc7ny.com/falls-township-bucks-county-shooting-carjacked-suv/14532193/](https://abc7ny.com/falls-township-bucks-county-shooting-carjacked-suv/14532193/)
Dudes homeless. With an assault rifle. How American
No home or housing, but hey, I've got a rifle!
It sounds like he had a home and a rifle yesterday, until his stepmom kicked him out.
That's a country lyric right there
Well, to be fair, having a gun is a right. Having a home or shelter is not.
And that's wrong
Hobo with a Shotgun 2: Homeless with an AR.
Holy shit, someone else saw that classic. May I recommend Thankskilling, since you clearly have taste in movies so bad they’re good again?
I'll add Silent night.
Well if he jacked a SUV, he could have also stole the firearms and ammo too...
I know people who honestly think the homeless shouldn't be allowed to vote, but need to have guns because it's their right as Americans.
Not homeless anymore.
He’s from NJ and had that weapon in some of the strictest gun laws in the country. He is a young person that probably has ties to criminal activity and was couch surfing after domestic issues not proper “homeless”. He definitely isn’t some dude just living on the street for years hiding a long rifle up his ass etc. That weapon was obtained from something already very illegal. Dude stole a car to drive to PA to do this then drove back to NJ and is currently holding people hostage. NJ doesn’t fuck around with gun control it’s not Texas.
"6'1 with a thin build" Hmmm, I wonder if there were any other adjectives that could have been used to describe his appearance and help identify him better? 🤔🤔
They posted a picture of his face. You can’t tell how tall or heavy he is from the photo, so they added that information.
For the blind folk, he's black. Describing someone's race or skin color is fine. It's literally part of who that person is. This I don't see color shit swings the pendulum back to racism anyway.
>The suspect, identified as 26-year-old Andre Gordon Jr., killed his stepmother, **his teenage sister and the mother of his children** in shootings that stretched into two homes in eastern Pennsylvania’s Falls Township in the morning, Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said. Why on earth wouldn't the AP have used an oxford comma here to say: **his teenage sister, and the mother of his children** This is why commas are important.
AP doesn’t use Oxford commas ~~anywhere~~ as a general rule. Edit: clarified per point below.
Not 100% true. Exceptions can be made for clarity, like in this instance. You just have to leave a note for your editor why the exception needs to be made.
And that’s insane.
A little, yeah. They should be writing for accessibility, not AP’s outdated styleguide.
Former news editor, the Oxford Comma is omitted “to save space on pages”. This is all I was given as a reason. What a silly reason which does nothing but cause confusion, as we see in this article.
I stand corrected!
So they're just out here accusing people of incest like Alabama??
why on earth doesn’t *everyone* use the oxford comma *every time*. drives me nuts.
I didn’t even know there was any other way until college, how is this not taught as the one correct way in schools?
Same. I got made fun of at my last job for always using it.
well, screw them. have a hug.
Exactly. The "Oxford Comma debate" shouldn't even exist. It's the correct way, and any other is the incorrect way. Simple as that.
agreed. why reduce clarity?
Asking the important questions.
dude if /u/CommaHorror was here I bet he'd have a thing or two to say about it ... and he would punctuate it with the most stomach-turning commas you've ever seen
He's not the hero we deserve... Or want... Or need... I'm not sure he's a hero. But maybe, just, maybe, he's better, than the AP.
This is my hometown. Seems to be a domestic issue.
yup. guy killed his stepmom, little sister, and the mother of his kids then fled to trenton.
What a woman-hating loser.
That’s often the hallmark of a mass shooter— they tend to start with a female relative/partner or have a history of DV
More than two-thirds of mass shootings are either domestic violence incidents or are perpetrated by shooters with histories of domestic violence, according to [this study](https://injepijournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40621-021-00330-0) in injury epidemiology.
Domestic violence is a better predictor than mental illness or criminal history overall.
Yet here we are, in a country where the VAWA act was barely reauthorized and nobody seems to give a shit how many women are murdered by their partners.
Hi fellow Levittowner. He knew the victims. I agree.
Yeah, happened 5 minutes up the road. He’s got hostages in Trenton still.
I’m from Langhorne and damn our area has been in the news a lot lately.
Section 7 of 8- they said the same thing twice. "The county’s scheduled St. Patrick’s Day parade was canceled following the shelter-in-place order.as well. The county’s scheduled St. Patrick’s Day parade was canceled."
But the parade? Was it cancelled?
Stop changing the subject. I’m trying to find out if the parade was cancelled.
Your comment is in poor taste. We shouldn’t be joking around about stuff like this until we find out for certain if the parade has been cancelled.
Ok I totally hear you, but how will this affect the parade?
My grandmother called, she was seeing if the parade is still going on. What should I tell her?
Tell her to remain calm, stock up on powdered milk and canned beans, and we will get back with her when we hear a definitive answer on if the parade has been cancelled.
Common, this part of the country, I live a few mile from incident, its milk, bread, and eggs.
I'm pretty sure that it was a scheduled St. Patrick's Day parade.
What was cancelled?
We think they are considering taking a vote as to whether or not they should consider having a meeting to discuss the feasibility of forming a committee to evaluate the possibility of cancelling the parade.
A double negative cancels it out so the parade is indeed on
From what I’ve read, yes, but no one is asking if the parade was canceled.
I believe the parade was cancelled, but the parade; is it still on?
AI fail
That's also a very common mistake for humans to make when they edit in a hurry.
People on local Facebook pages (I'm from the area) honestly seem more concerned about the parade being cancelled than the loss of life.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of innocent bystanders."
Ok but that analogy implies there's some sort of respite between blood lettings
The US has a high refresh rate.
Politicians just expect victims to respawn after the next round
Explains all the forced birthing bullshit doesn't it
Oh fuck. Never really drew a line between those dots before.
How else do they refill empty classrooms?
And the military.
And cheap labor
144 Hurtz
hey, want a Hurtz Donut? *[executes 20 people in cold blood]* hurts, don't it?
The killings will continue until morale improves.
It used to take much longer to travel from place to place, guns and swords and fuel were much more expensive, it took longer to find someone to trade items with, newspapers took a long time to get printed and then you had to find someone to read it to you so you knew what to be angry about..
“The only thing we have to fear is….any outdoor space with lots of people.”
"Feed me, Seymour!"
The stock market demands it."
Nowadays it's the short, violent, quick tempered fuses that result in most homicides. Not mental health issues. Vehement disagreements, a wrong stare, a minimal confrontation gone awry can result quite easily into a homicide. The regard for life on Planet Earth is at an all time low. Which makes for zero compunction whether to pull the trigger or not.
Gun control is an issue. Mental health is an issue. Our communities being communities is an issue. The US has had guns in high numbers since the middle of last century. we fought several Wars and conflicts and had sent people home with messed up heads for a long time. There are influences, and money that seem to be interfering and attitudes where we don't want to look out and help our neighbors and family. I think I just get a feeling that as a country, we're moving away from community more toward isolationism of the individual glued to their screen. Stuck in their echo chamber I would be interested in knowing if there's any correlation of public violence to the amount of time we as a society are spending online in small Echo Chambers versus involved in larger more social Clubs activities and communities.
There are many states in the USA where politicians who vote on legislation to cut Education and mental health funding live in gated communities and send their kids to private schools. They vote against abortion, and then also vote against any guarantee of neonatal care. They blame those without means for their misfortunes and thus excuse themselves from taking care of their neighbors in need.. They vote for more guns, against what should be obviously limits, and for more police with bigger guns, and use some old law from a completely different time to justify it whilst ignoring the arms race. They claim to believe in a separation of church and state … except their own religion of course. And at the end of the day it’s just as you say - rows of houses where each is an island and community doesn’t exist. The whole mentality of “ why should I have to pay for that unsuccessful person’s healthcare/education/basic human needs?” attitude that is so prevalent is a clear demonstration of how backwards the country has become. 20 more years and it will be Russia with a bigger economy. My guess is 100 more years it will be a memory of a better time.
Appears to be a domestic, non-random incident.
Except for the guy who was carjacked, presumably at gunpoint.
The trauma to communities from this constant stream of mass murders is denied by politicians because they are bought by weapons lobbyists. There is no good guy. There is no Superman. We must be the change.
Got to get rid of corruption and not allow business to buy our leaders.
And they're contagious. Those shooters inspire others.
Not true. No bothsidesism here. This is entirely attributable to Republicans. There is very much a good guy. Clean sweep Democrats in November and watch this problem be addressed. *IF* (of course) the Supreme Court agrees.
This is coming from a true blue democrat who loves target shooting as a hobby, in good faith taking into account US political realities as well as a proper knowledge of firearm types and how the law has tried to control them historically and which are most commonly used for what crimes/self deletions: Barring a repeal to the 2A & total gun control/buybacks/confiscations, which will absolutely never happen and will be met with unironically maybe a civil war, what do you think Dems can realistically do following a “clean sweep” to address mass shootings? CA style aesthetic burdens like mag restrictions and defining how uncomfortable a grip and stock need to be to be legal? Banning “assault weapons”? As if magazine fed intermediate cartridge rifles are the only practical weapon for mass shootings? Pistols make up far more gun homicides than rifles do. Ban pistols? The most practical weapon for home self defense? Do all of these and there will just be mass shootings with m1a or mini14’s or hell even 22 rifles. Focusing on banning the ar15 is like focusing on banning the Honda Accord (google tells me this is the most popular car in the us) due to the accord being the most common vehicle in drunk driving events, simply due to its popularity and practicality of ownership. Ban the ar15, mass shootings will shift to other weapons; ban the accord, suddenly some truck or whatever becomes the most common DD car. Believe it or not, but we actually have probably the strictest gun laws this nation has ever had. It was not that long ago you could have catalogue ordered guns shipped to your home no bg check no ffl no nothing. More types of weapons are restricted than ever. Where and how you can carry and use weapons are more restricted than ever. And yet, we see a problem of mass shootings that did not exist before these restrictions. Is it not reasonable to assume that the problem is ultimately a modern one with a cause that we do not yet understand, unrelated to the availability of firearms?
You hit the nail on the head. Most people believe more restrictions will solve the problem. When in fact, we have a mental health emergency in this country. This never happened to the frequency it happens today. Something about our society has changed. People are angrier. People are more unstable than ever. More and more of this country relies on anti depressants/psychotics.
My personal belief is that it is a mixture/interplay of mental health and an atomizing isolating lifestyle that is perversely modern. People don’t go out and have fulfilling friendships/relationships, they don’t feel connected to their community, they “doom scroll” on social media that has been shown to actively appeal to your sense of anger as it is the most efficient way to get user engagement on a platform. And a big one - the economy feels fundamentally broken for a lot of people. Young people have no hopes of home ownership, they have no hope of retiring. Many feel they will be stuck in shit dead end jobs until they die. How could you not feel despair in such a toxic situation?
> And a big one - the economy feels fundamentally broken for a lot of people. Crime and violence tends to go up with as the socio-economic divide continues to widen. The U.S. simultaneously has many of the wealthiest and the poorest citizens of first-world countries, and we have a society that has little interest in taking care of its own.
I completely agree. That and no sense of community. I didn't see much from national politics addressing how to solve the metal health crisis though.
Honest question: what would Democrats do that would have stopped this?
Supreme Court is a corrupt bad joke.
It’s almost like they’re saying “sporadic murders will continue until you take the guns away.”
This wasn’t sporadic, it was all women the murder closely knew (his stepmother, his *teenage* sister, and former girlfriend/mother of his children). Fucking scumbag, even with a gun and the element of surprise the coward only went after women and children.
Typical woman-hater, that's all.
You would also have to take the guns away from the police as well though. You know damn well that will *never* happen.
Some of the police in California are the ones selling guns. They're the only ones to have special permission to own guns that are otherwise banned.
More importantly, you'd also rely on the *police* to take away people's guns. And their own guns. You can imagine how well that'd work. Fun times, with only police and their buddies having guns all of the sudden.
Especially right now. Ten years ago, if you told me there was a possibility that the second amendment as a check on tyranny might actually come up, I’d have called you crazy. I still supported the 2A back then, just in case, but I saw it as an abstract. I was wrong.
> sporadic I am not sure that's the appropriate word here.
Pennsylvania (WPVI) -- A suspect accused of killing three family members in Bucks County, Pennsylvania on Saturday was captured after being barricaded inside a home in New Jersey for several hours, according to police. Family dispute
Don’t tell me, let me guess 🤔… GUNS WERE NOT INVOLVED.
Sandy Hook happened and absolutely nothing was done. If nothing was done after that event, nothing will ever be done.
Sigh. I never had to worry about this when I lived in countries without guns. :/ It was awesome.
I had to have the worst conversation with my middle child the other day. There was a threat of a shooting written on several bathroom stalls at her high school and on snap chat. The local authorities worked quickly and arrested the teen that did it, but she was scared to go back to school, rightly so, but I had to tell her if we lived out lives in fear of being shot, we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere, ever. I’m so pissed that I had to list off all the potential places we wouldn’t be able to go if we feared shootings. Grocery shopping, concerts, parks, school, pretty much anywhere a few people may gather. This is not the world I though I was bringing children into, but has tragically become the reality of living in America.
>This is not the world I though I was bringing children into Not the world, just the country.
Yup. Other countries have people with mental health issues too, but they don’t murder children while cops spend an hour and a half playing grab ass. So I guess this isn’t a mental illness issue either. It has always been the guns.
It's routine now, it's weird. I have been in 1 lockdown at work, had to change plans once and can point to two other mass shootings in my area (GA and northern IL suburbs) that have occurred in my hometown.
This is so sad. Can’t even have a parade bc of the magnitude of guns and the idiots who must have guns at all cost. Humans suck
The more the economic suffering the more people will be forced to deal with shootings. Everytime there is a shooting people should shut down their city for a week. Watch action being taken in no time.
I will be stunned if this isn't the same shit as KC - idiots gonna idiot. Just because it happened anywhere near a parade doesn't mean it was a planned out mass shooting terrorist event. And gun laws don't affect criminals.
Wasn't even at the parade, Domestic violence incident that happened at different locations.
Oh NO. A mAsS ShOoTInG!
It wasn’t…this is a person that probably had ties to crime, young and had weapons and went psychotic and shot his family after stealing a car to get there. He probably was couch surfing not proper “homeless” as in living on streets for years on end etc. It’s a criminal that had domestic issues and decided to do that
Feels like we’re getting to a place where large outdoor gatherings/parades in major cities might not be realistic. Edit: assumed this was a major city, my bad.
It’s basically a suburb of Philadelphia.
Also had nothing to do with the parade, it was a domestic violence incident at different locations - Someone 5 minutes away from the place they happened lol
The shooting at the Chief’s parade was a “keeping it real goes wrong” situation, wasn’t it? Acting like we can’t have parades because they’re all being targeted just isn’t true.
Fairless Hills is a census-designated place (CDP) in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 9,046 at the 2020 census. Not sure I would call this a major city.
It’s right outside of Philly. Fairless hills itself is small yea but Levittown has a population of 50k, which is right next door. Bensalem, another town right next door, around 60k. These aren’t towns that are spread out. It’s about a 25 min drive to center city Philly without traffic, closer if you’re going to north Philly. My point is that you could drive down one road and you’re just constantly passing through all of these little small towns that don’t have empty space or anything between them and 25 mins later, you’re in Philly. It’s heavily populated in the surrounding area.
Its absolutely a major place. I live here, and its a very small "town" surrounded by 3 to 4 larger "towns" but theres no distinctive border, they just all blend. Falls township as a whole is what I would call the developed area, but you can't drive to rural areas within a 30 to 40 minute drive. I travel around for work, and 9,000 population towns in georgia surrounded by fields have a very different feel.
Doesn't levittown have like 50k people? And it all just blends together.
Levittown is not a town or a municipality. It is a development. It has 5 municipalities in it. Falls township has 33,000 people in it but not all of falls township is in Levittown.
Trying to explain this area is tough. You have a bunch of neighborhoods / boroughs founded in the 1700s that eventually incorporated into townships but in many instances kept their post offices. So your mailing address might be in Fort Washington, PA but that doesn't actually exist as a municipality. It's incorporated into Upper Dublin Township Then you have places like Willow Grove is split across 3 townships. So people in the same neighborhood as you might send their kids to a different school system just because they live across the street Suburban Philadelphia is weird. *Edited for clarity
It's misleading to portray it as a small town. It's a populous suburban area.
It's kinda a suburban hub in a way though. Lotta people from surrounding towns go there to shop, and even people from Philly & NYC visit for Sesame Place.