Another Shooting, Close to Home

Right now, I suspect our mayor is making a list of rabble rousers in our town. I can think of 1 in particular who would be at the top of the list (although he has never gone as far as Cookie's previous outbursts), and about 3 who are in the "disgruntled with everybody and everything" category.

If the authorities concentrated on these likely candidates and ignored the rest, we'd all be better off, methinks. Instead, I expect we will have a costly security system imposed on everyone.
 
baron said:
If you don't mind me asking, how is this a good thing? Surely the point being made previously is there should be no necessity to have multiple armed guards present in a public discussion forum.
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Please see Garrette's point number three. I don't pretend the world is perfect, you are free to. In our case, I doubt gunplay was a potential outcome, but fisticuffs probably were. Good planning by the board prevented that. Understanding people is sometimes a handy skill when dealing with them. People are fallible, no matter what you think reality should be like.

See also bouncers at bars, big strong security guys at rock concerts. People shouldn't fly off the handle in public, or go wild, but they do.

DR
 
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Darth Rotor said:
Please see Garrette's point number three. I don't pretend the world is perfect, you are free to. In our case, I doubt gunplay was a potential outcome, but fisticuffs probably were. Good planning by the board prevented that. Understanding people is sometimes a handy skill when dealing with them. People are fallible, no matter what you think reality should be like.

See also bouncers at bars, big strong security guys at rock concerts. People shouldn't fly off the handle in public, or go wild, but they do.
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Of course they do. I'm thinking maybe I misinterpreted your post, because I assumed your were talking about armed guards, but then you cited analogies to bouncers who are not armed, and I can't see the relationship.

I'm not disputing that people get into trouble and fight. What I'm saying is that when they do surely it would be desirable for them not all to be armed with handguns.

Armed guards being wheeled in whenever a few people have a neighbourhood get-together says to me it's time for that community, state or country to start thinking about what the heck is going on.

There's a difference between pootling along believing in a perfect world and burying your head in the sand.
 
Rolfe said:
I'm still boggling about this. Less than 1000 population? We call that a village, here, and not a very big one at that.
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Sorry, but you've got the wrong impression of the 'city' due to the bizarro nature of St. Louis, Rolfe.

The shooting happened in a part of St. Louis called Kirkwood.

St. Louis is an odd city geo-politically, in that it got partitioned up into St. Louis City and St. Louis County, and St. Louis County is composed of dozens of 'cities'. But all in all, everyone here calls our location "St. Louis", no matter what the name of your little section is. It's much easier to tell people out of state that you're from "St. Louis" then explaining where on the map "Ballwin, MO" or "St. John, MO" is.

From the house I grew up in, in the suburbs, Kirkwood is halfway to the Mississippi. I and my family used to eat at a cafeteria on Kirkwood Rd. every Friday night for a few years back in the 80's. Can't remember the name, but there was a nice musical instruments store nearby, as well as a neat hobby shop.
 
Sherman Bay said:
Right now, I suspect our mayor is making a list of rabble rousers in our town. I can think of 1 in particular who would be at the top of the list (although he has never gone as far as Cookie's previous outbursts), and about 3 who are in the "disgruntled with everybody and everything" category.

If the authorities concentrated on these likely candidates and ignored the rest, we'd all be better off, methinks. Instead, I expect we will have a costly security system imposed on everyone.
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A question: Would anyone give a damn about these people if they didn't have access to guns?
 
baron said:
A question: Would anyone give a damn about these people if they didn't have access to guns?
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EVERYBODY has access to guns, regardless of laws. The only variables are how badly you want them and how much you are willing to pay.

bignickel said:
From the house I grew up in, in the suburbs, Kirkwood is halfway to the Mississippi. I and my family used to eat at a cafeteria on Kirkwood Rd. every Friday night for a few years back in the 80's. Can't remember the name, but there was a nice musical instruments store nearby, as well as a neat hobby shop.
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Would that be Mel Bay's Guitar store on W. Jefferson, and a hobby store close by?
 
Sherman Bay said:
EVERYBODY has access to guns, regardless of laws. The only variables are how badly you want them and how much you are willing to pay.
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And don't you think that's a situation that needs urgent and immediate remedy?

I know in the UK gun crime is increasing but the fact of the matter is if average Joe wanted to get hold of a hand gun he'd have virtually no chance. I'm not starting a UK vs US discussion but this is where I'm coming from.
 
Cainkane1 said:
Perhaps if the victims had had guns they could have protected themselves. I own guns myself and this wouldn't have happened to the crowd I hang with.
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Uh, you did notice that 2 of the victims were police officers. There is a 99.99999999999999999999999999999 percent probability that at least two of the victims had guns (I'm not aware of any situation in any police department in the USA in which police officers acting in an official capacity don't carry guns [other than when visiting prisoners in a jail]). It didn't do much to protect them, did it?
 
baron said:
And don't you think that's a situation[easy access to guns] that needs urgent and immediate remedy?
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In a perfect world, yes. In the real world, won't happen. Fantasy vs. reality, my friend. We dream in one but live in the other. Don't confuse the two.
 
bignickel said:
Sorry, but you've got the wrong impression of the 'city' due to the bizarro nature of St. Louis, Rolfe. ....
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Actually, it wasn't St. Louis I was talking about, but the "town" quixotecoyote mentioned.

quixotecoyote said:
I had to go take care of a traffic ticket in a rural Missouri town, population <1000 and there were 3 armed officers there.
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I don't think we have three policemen on duty at one time in the whole of our village, population about 1,400, and covering a district of quite a few square miles with a lot of small villages and hamlets, total population about 4,000. And those we have would not be carrying guns, and I think it unlikely that they even have access to guns.

And the idea that I'd see them guarding any civic gathering place is simply off the radar. Traffic control duty is about all you'd see them appear for, if that was necessary. (I was always used to seeing the cops out for our Armistice Day service in the village where I was born, but that's because the war memorial fronted a main trunk road they had to keep closed for 15 minutes. Last year, with the memorial here beside the village green, no cops were needed.)

The village where I lived in England grew to 10,000 people, and it still only had an intermittently-manned police office, locked most of the time, with opening hours posted outside and an emergency telephone by the door.

I find the idea of three armed police routinely on duty at any civic facility in a village of less than a thousand inhabitants quite bizarre.

Nearly as bizarre as having to name my 1,400-strong village as my "city" when buying my NWO Kitty sweatshirt from the US!

Rolfe.
 
It bothers me when those from the U.K. point to their own weapon laws as something the rest of the world should follow. Swords are banned in the U.K. and I've read of knives being banned as well. I dislike the idea of living in a country where my only defensive recourse is my bare hands.

My sympathies to the victims.
 
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TellyKNeasuss said:
Uh, you did notice that 2 of the victims were police officers. There is a 99.99999999999999999999999999999 percent probability that at least two of the victims had guns (I'm not aware of any situation in any police department in the USA in which police officers acting in an official capacity don't carry guns [other than when visiting prisoners in a jail]). It didn't do much to protect them, did it?
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A rather large number of police actually pull their guns when they clean them and when they have the (usually annual) required firearms check (fire at a target, hit it a few times, you're fine). Very few (unless a lot of people are lying) have fast draw and fire training). If my gun is in my hand and yours is in your holster and you and your partner are no more than 60 degrees apart neither of you will have time to draw.

(I'm back) Unless the second person has had such training. In the real world the average officer may be in a situation like that once in his career - if that.
 
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Dunno the name of the Kirkwood cafeteria. That's a recent development, relatively speaking.

I went to school with Mel Bay's trumpet-playing son, Bill, but never played in his band. Mel was a sonovabitch, always assuming the only reason kids came in his store was to steal from him, but he cleaned up on the method books he wrote and sold nationwide.

The landlord for both his store, the hobby shop and a few others in the row was a good friend of my family and my residential neighbor. Jefferson and Kirkwood Blvds. were the shopping center in those days, before the malls began to be built at the outskirts of town. Good times.
 
Here in Flagstaff we got tons of federal money from the anti terrorism bills, so security at the courthouses is actually pretty good. This being a hotbed of potential terrorist activity it makes perfect sense.

The Flagstaff city council solved our problem of the occasional lunatic showing up at meetings by signing them up for committees and planning groups.

Honestly, my condolences. So much of how our government works, works because it is open and people are not afraid to come and speak up. I think we always need to balance the needs for openness, accessibility, and safety.

I'm not sure that there is much to be done except maybe better mental health care. A motivated insane person is a formidable foe.
 
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This is indeed a horrible tragedy and a rather unfortunate - not to mention unavoidable - occurrence.
 
Sherman Bay said:
Dunno the name of the Kirkwood cafeteria. That's a recent development, relatively speaking.
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Actually, it's OLD. It never made it to the 90's. It got replaced by the Something Coal and Ice Company, or some other 90ish cute moniker.

(Pope's Cafeteria was my choice early 80's family restaurant. Wonderful roast beef and cheesecake. They had a location in West County Mall next to 7 Kitchens. Oh, wait a minute. They had a 7-victim multiple robbery/homicide at that location, didn't they. Yipes. Guess not all the memories are good)
 
Sherman Bay said:
In a perfect world, yes. In the real world, won't happen. Fantasy vs. reality, my friend. We dream in one but live in the other. Don't confuse the two.
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What's this "world" business? I don't see many gun murders round these parts.
 
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