6 shot dead in Santa Monica, CA

http://news.yahoo.com/lightbox/weap...ge-displayed-during-news-photo-004551441.html

This picture is certainly interesting. It appears to be a "featureless" AR 15 replicating the M16A1 style and a Colt SAA?

It includes banned high capacity magazines. I'm curious why a revolver. Was it a crime of passion and what was in the house? Was he unable to buy a firearm and bought a black powder revolver?

While researching the story I found this ["Any time someone puts on a vest, of some sort, comes out with a bag full of loaded magazines, has an extra receiver, has a handgun and has a semi-automatic rifle, carjacks folks, goes to a college, kills more people and has to be neutralized at the hands of the police, I would say that that's premeditated," said Seabrooks.] (Emphasis mine)

What was he doing with an extra receiver? And what happened that he was stopped before he used even a small percentage of those 1,300 rounds?

They also say he had a shotgun. I can only imagine the weight of a rifle, handgun, shotgun, extra receiver, vest, knee pads, and 1,300 rounds of ammo.
 
I went looking for a timeline to help me understand when school shootings started to be a thing. I found this -

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html

Which only goes back to 1996 - but it is interesting.

Separating out one on one shootings - kid hates teacher - from kid suits up and goes in full commando style, I'd like to trace it back to its roots.
 
This picture is certainly interesting. It appears to be a "featureless" AR 15 replicating the M16A1 style and a Colt SAA?
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That revolver looks like a replica Remington 1858 New Army BP pistol with a conversion cylinder in it.
 
We don't know if 'gun free zone' meant anything to this person. We have had rampages in 'you are free' to carry a gun zones.

As far as the commentary about TX - well, schools are gun free zones in TX - so TX is irrelevant. Campus carry has been thwarted consistently in the past legislative sessions.
 
What was he doing with an extra receiver?
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It isn't an extra receiver. It is an extra upper (of which the receiver is but one part of the upper) without the bolt carrier assembly.

What was he going to do with it? Apparently, I would guess, he was worried about overheating the upper currently on the gun and planned on being able to change out between the two.

Separating out one on one shootings - kid hates teacher - from kid suits up and goes in full commando style, I'd like to trace it back to its roots.
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Well, the kids don't usually suit up full commando style, but I have gone through a LOT of the mass shootings and a bunch that involved fewer people. Generally speaking, they occur when the shooter or shooters feel that they have been somehow wronged, often by a large number of people. The below-college shooter(s) are often described by their peers in derogatory terms (geek, outcast, loser, slouch, dumb, stupid, etc.) by multiples of people. When information is available, the shootings are often revenge-based in many aspects where anyone in the school (or nearly) so is a viable target because "school" is the problem, not just individuals.

Most college mass shootings can involve some similar aspects, but also those who feel threatened by their lack of academic performance who take out their stress on those involved with the process and sometimes with those in the vicinity as well.

Workplace mass shootings can still have the interpersonal issues noted above, but also performance issues whereby the employee doing the shooting has been terminated (former employee), passed over for promotion, feels mistreated by mgmt. and/or coworkers, etc.

Of course, this ignores the plethora of mass shootings that occur at home.

However, what all of these tend to have in common is that the shooter has a connection with the location of the shooting. A kid bullied at School A does not go and shoot up School B to get a high body count even if school B has a lot more student. Fired or disciplined employees do not go and shoot up some other workplace than the one where their problem was.

There are some exceptionally rare mass shootings that certainly don't fit the pattern, such as Luby's in Texas, McDonald's in California, IHOP in Nevada, the Amish school (weird hostage situation), and the spree I noted above in Eden, Texas where there appears to be no connection with the shooter and the location or people. These really are the rarest of the rare events.

On a side note, a fifth victim of John Zawahri has passed. However, what I found interesting the following news article shows video of Zawahri entering the library NOT carrying any sort of duffel bag.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/201...-suspect-identified-as-death-toll-climbs?lite

Zawahri had been a student at the college as recently as 2010. He had also been treated (like many of the others) for mental problems.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ng-rampage-killing-angry-parents-divorce.html
 
I can't help but think that the Chief of Police in Santa Monica is politically obligated to make statements that co-incide with the general mindset of her community. Santa Monica is, perhaps, the most liberal city south of San Francisco. Using terms like "extra receivers" mentioning large amounts of ammo, several magazines, body armor etc are pretty much what the voters want to hear, I'd think.

It's hard to say much of anything about an incident where some guy murders several people.


Sgt Lumpy
 
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I'd like to point out that the entire county of Los Angeles is effectively "gun free", with the exceptions of gun-ranges, gun-stores, and places of residence. Saying that this is another "gun free zone" not working, misses the broader point.
 
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What in heck are they doing putting a loaded pistol on display? :eek: I can clearly see flat point bullets in that Remington.

Where can I find those nifty blue AR magazines? Really, I've never seen them before.

I thought that the 1300 rounds being carried by the killer, if accurate, meant that at least one gun was a .22 rimfire. I guess that wasn't true but I am pretty sure he wasn't hauling hundreds of .45 Colt cartridges.

Bart Noir
 
Perhaps not usually, but they're common enough to have their own genre in the psychological literature: the "Pseudocommando" mass murderer. Here's a review of the research on this type.
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Yep and the research cited type does not include any sort of tabulation of the number of times the pseudocommandos are dressed in camouflage or warrior gear or even what they mean by "warrior gear." Is warrior gear some sort of fatigue-like clothing or do they mean things like vests, slings, harnesses, etc.?

I appreciate your source, but it only makes one comment, in passing and citing of another study by Mullens concerning the purported oft used camouflage or warrior gear and Mullens work is a case study of 5 incidents. I don't have his actual study, but his PP presentation doesn't even mention mode of dress. So dressing up isn't what defines the genre and I highly suspect there is a blurred line between what is considered camouflage and what is considered warrior gear.

Some do wear it. I don't know that it makes them a commando any more than the cops arriving on scene are commandos in their warrior gear. There is a definite logic that goes in to such a problem of going into a battle/massacre prepared to accomplish the task. Those who have prepared better often accomplish more than those who have not.

I highly suspect more will wear it in the future just like more robbers wear it to commit robberies.

http://www.fprs.org/Edinburgh/07. Evil And The Mass Killers.pdf

Note that in Part II from what you cited, Knoll discusses 2 shooters who were dressed in "warrior gear" at the time of the shooting. They included Cho and Wong. http://jaapl.org/content/38/2/263.full.pdf+html?sid=7dd1e3cd-537f-48d1-a2f8-308c43382173

Cho was wearing dark clothing and I assume the vest and gloves seen in the video
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2007/04/20/LI2007042001592.html

Wong was wearing,
He was described as wearing a bullet-proof vest,[12] a bright green nylon jacket, and dark-rimmed glasses.[
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binghamton_shootings

So maybe pseudocommando fits because they don't even wear much of the gear that would be considered "commando" but instead just using a couple of items. Certainly, this is not the "full commando" gear noted that I was contradicting. They just wear a couple of pieces.
 
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DNS, you're quite right, and I'm not too comfortable with the way that practitioners of that version of the psychodynamic approach operate -- they can explain anything and everything in terms of their theories, which doesn't make for good science. But as a general category for for folks like Cho and Lanza, it may have some utility.

It would probably be fair to say that not all mass murderers who fit the profile described in the literature go in for dressing up, but that all those who do dress up do fit the profile.
 
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