Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
1

A high school student went on a shooting rampage on an Indian reservation Monday, killing his grandparents at their home and then seven people at his school, grinning and waving as he fired, authorities and witnesses said. The suspect apparently killed himself after exchanging gunfire with police.

It was the nation’s worst school shooting since the Columbine massacre in 1999 that killed 13 people.

One student said her classmates pleaded with the gunman to stop shooting.

“You could hear a girl saying, 'No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are you doing?” student Sondra Hegstrom told The Pioneer of Bemidji, using the name of the suspected shooter.

Before the shootings at Red Lake High School, the suspect’s grandparents were shot in their home and died later. There was no immediate indication of the gunman’s motive.

Authorities didn’t identify the gunman, but a few media outlets identified him as Jeff Weise, citing students and tribal leaders. Accounts of Weise’s age varied from 15 to 17, as did whether he was a current student at the school.

Relatives told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that Weise was a loner who usually wore black and was teased by other kids. Relatives told the newspaper his father committed suicide four years ago, and that his mother was living in a Minneapolis nursing home because she suffered brain injuries in a car accident.

In addition to the shooter, the death toll at the school included five students, a teacher and a security guard, FBI spokesman Paul McCabe said in Minneapolis. Among the dead was Neva Rogers, 62, a teacher at the school for five or six years, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

Fourteen to 15 other students were injured, McCabe said. Some were being cared for in Bemidji, about 20 miles south of Red Lake. Authorities closed roads to the reservation in far northern Minnesota while they investigated the shootings.

Hegstrom described the shooter grinning and waving at a student his gun was pointed at, then swiveling to shoot someone else. “I looked him in the eye and ran in the room, and that’s when I hid,” she told The Pioneer.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=602580
**
Like they say if you live by the gun you die by the gun, well done charlton heston and the rest of those gun toting rednecks making sure the US nation has plenty of guns and bullets to give to all!**

2

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

A tragic event. I am sure we all feel sorry for the innocent people and kids who lost their lives due to actions of one individual.

Lets not jump to conclusions here. Even though Mr Heston will remind you that “guns don’t kill, its the people who kill”, the facts of this case, do not point towards abudance of guns in US culture. Read on

The FBI believes the student responsible for killing seven people at a northern Minnesota high school used his grandfather’s police-issue pistol to carry out the killings, and that he drove to the school in his grandfather’s police car.

From CNN’s website.

Lets wait for the facts to come out, first, before start to point fingers.

3

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

With all due respect, gun culture is the issue.

The rampant gun culture in the USA necesitates that the police carry guns. In more civilised countries such as the UK, the police are prohibited from carrying guns except for certain limited circumstances that are very tightly controlled.

Officers certainly cannot carry firearms off duty!

No gun culture would mean no need for police to be armed, as in the UK.

The fact that majority of policemen in the UK carry nothing more deadly than a can of pepper spray and a truncheon speaks volumes about the consequences of gun culture.

note to my pals in pak politics and relgion
4

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

faisal bhai

i don't wanna jump on bandwagon here but i think you got it wrong gun culture is what its all about in the US.

I read about this gun lobby there and i am just amazed at the power and influence they have if it was up to them they would be selling guns at Mcdonalds!

5

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

I understand completely about the gun lobby and NRA and all that stuff. But I am fairly dubious if taking all weapons from police officers is the solution in the present situation. And in this particular case, the young man took his grandfather's police pistol. You can put all kinds of checks on gun sale and background checks, but if a grandson steals the police-issued gun of his granddad and kills a few ppl, thats hard to control. What do you think?

6

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

Considering the scale of this event,it hasnt gotten nearly as much press as columbine..maybe because these were poor native indians being robbed by the government which didnt allow them any concessions which it awards to other larger indian tribes.This guy snapped because he saw the misery around him and the deadend.Ofcourse the idiotic US media is going to spin it their way.

7

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

forget checks on gun sales and background checks you need to put an end it it period. These gun shops and conferences promoting the latest machine gun is where the problem is its not gonna change over night but it needs to be stopped i.e illegal to posses a gun this is the only way to reverse this sick trend.

US Government is really peverted schoolkids get their brains blown out and they just sitting there waiting for the news to get off the TV screens!

8

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

Devil you just spun it by ignoring the facts. This kid was a know admirer of Hitler, his father committed suicide and his mother dead. As far as not getting much press American society is sadly growing numb to these things. I agree that the gun lobby has too much power and violence and its celebration is not a healthy aspect of U.S. society.

And Mad Scientist how can you call Britain civilized, they allow gays in their military and accept gays much more so that the U.S. You wanker.

9

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

All of you missed a point here....... especially those in a rush to point fingers.

This happened on tribal land, areas of America that we do not govern. See, it does happen regardless of government, though I know it might be easier to understand for some if it was a suicide bomber in a church maybe, rather than a gun in a school. People are disturbed and destructive everywhere you go - weapon of choice may vary (some like guns, some like bombs, some like posting hate on the internet) but destructive acts are committed everywhere.

Lecture over, carry on............

10

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

i live about 30 min away from that school, spring vacations for me right now.

our president...
11

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

^ Lucky you did'nt get shot then, 222 million guns available in the US of da A!

12

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

Gosh, here we have the pot calling the kettle black? Care to read about the tribal areas of Pakistan?

"Low crime rate

Muhawar Hassan, a town elder, said Darra Adam Khel’s reputation for violence is misleading.

“The crime rate is very, very low,” he said. “It’s nil, actually. The balance of power is equal. I have a Kalashnikov. My brother has a Kalashnikov. My enemy has one.”

The system of government, he said, is simple. They handle it themselves by meeting nightly to discuss what happened on that day. The news in Darra Adam Khel these days is not good.

Darra Adam Khel sprung up as a gun center at the end of the 19th Century and currently supports about 2,600 businesses making copied version of handguns, rifles and other weapons. Seductive-looking rifles cost as little as $30."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0109260246sep26,1,999095.story

So as I understand the thrust of this thread, America is a bad place because some poor deranged child got hold of a gun and killed other kids? Is that it? That this story is somehow an indicator of the corrupt nature of America?

First, I suggest that your fix the same problem in your own back yard, if an overabundance of guns is your gripe of the day! Second, your own countrymen claim that the crime rate is nil when everybody has a gun. Huh? Perhaps the problem in America is that there are too few guns if the Pakistani Frontier areas have no crime.

Or perhaps this is just a sad story about a confused deranged kid…

13

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

2001 bit of an old link you have there ohio scratching the barrel a bit here now signs of desperation maybe but anyways comparing the frontier region to US is bit silly really because they don't have a problem with schoolchildren blowing each others brains out US clearly does!

14

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

How odd that a person with the nick "ak 47", a latent symbol for violent jihad, should be lecturing anyone about guns. Do I detect a weee bit of hypocracy here? Hummm?

I just fine that odd in the extreme.....

Iraq, afghanistan and the Frontier territories are awash in guns, positively tripping over them. A school is attacked and held hostage in Besalan, and wired to explode, and hundreds of school children are killed. And we don't hear a peep from you!

There is a quantitative and qualitative difference between grown men intentionally taking a school hostage and killing children to prove a political point, and one deranged sick teenager. Please solve Islamic political violence first, then you may lecture us on the mental health of Minnesota teens and their access to guns....

15

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

hold on from the frontier province we skip and go to beslan whats next timbuktu you are really scratching the barrell now i said you was desperate but i didnt think you would be pathetic.

Look neocon if you don't want to deal with the gun problem in the US i couldnt care less but i am sure there are sensible people in the states that do care including the parents of victims of these schoolyard killlings!

16

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

ak, so far you jump all over the place trying to prove a whole America is a living entity and all Americans are taught from birth how to take advantage of other countries. Give it a rest and earn some actual respect by throwing out some things here that actually have to do with policy and politics of the American government and how it relates instead of spouting pointless rhetoric and pointing to tradgedies that could happen anywhere.

Some of your posts are actually well thought out and a bit intelligent, but it gets a bit lost in the childish behavior at times.

Going to eat dinner - be back later :)

17

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

Yes, AK47, ahem, AK47, people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. In 1999 there was Columbine, in 2005 there is this incident. How many Muslim kids have died at the hands of some muslim in the mean time? AK47? You are very fast to leap to the conclusion that these two incidents somehow reflect on the moral fabric of the United States. Frankly, you are not a citizen here, you are not threatened. So what is your agenda? Proving somehow that this incident shows the "moral decay" of the US. Is this a hobby? This incident, while horrible is a "scattered instance". It does not happen every day, and is the result of a sick individual. These continual posts, with the underlying presumption that the US is bad, is a silly game, and pretty transparent.

Do you mean to tell me that your own nick is not some agrandizement of guns? That somehow radical islam does not have a culture where the AK47 is a symbol of rebellion? that some sillouetted rebel holding an AK47 does not reflect on a pervasive and violent worldwide sub-culture? People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Particularly by an individual who names himself after a gun.... Sheesh.

18

Re: Minnesota School Shooting Kills 10

listen neocon my nickname is none of your business and you should try and stick to the topic which is the whole point of world affairs its not called nickname origins and since you got nothing to offer except probe a nickname how sad its the initials of my name.

Kids blowing their brains out in your schools and all you can say is oh well you got a lot of guns in northern province of pakistan yeah they may well have plenty of guns in north frontier but they aint got kids shooting at each other have they.

I don't need to lecture on the moral decay of amerikkan society its messed up already, i dont need to comment on it. How you equate an ak47 with islamic culture only your peverted mind knows.

you have 222 million guns available in the US you have metal detectors at the school gates and you saying its one sick individual pull the other one you only fooling yourself!