The sexually frustrated killer who gunned down three women in a Pennsylvania health club, then committed suicide, blogged his preparations, with the final chilling entry announcing the “big day.”
George Sodini burst into the LA Fitness Gym in Bridgeville, near Pittsburgh, late on Tuesday and sprayed 36 bullets into a Latin dance class, hitting 12 people. On the eve of the killings, he wrote: “Took off today, Monday, and tomorrow to practice my routine and make sure it is well polished…. Tomorrow is the big day.”
[…]
The blog, which Supt. Moffatt said was being treated as genuine and was quickly pulled off the Internet, reveals the sinister, often banal mind of a man crippled by sexual frustration, anger at women, and depression.It listed his date of death, Aug. 4, 2009, and his status of “never married” and ended with the words “Death Lives.”
A picture of Mr. Sodini, 48, attached to the blog shows a lean, white male with slightly greying hair and wearing a smart blue shirt.
The police chief said the blog clearly showed “the hatred in him” and computer sleuths were looking into whether anyone saw the blog and if so, why they failed to report it.
You can read some of Sodini’s diary entries. You have to wonder, given our culture, how many more like him are out there, future killers or not.
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#92, That is the same attitude you display now. The government has to be run YOUR way and to hell with anyone else
Nope, I want it run as the US Constitution says it should be run. Not like a bunch of pantie-waists think it should be.
and their idea of what a democracy may be. You don’t want to be a part of society, you want to dominate society.
You are mistaken.
I help out social services all the time. It’s my choice. I average just over 10 hours a week. I give blood. I donate $10,000’s each year to charities. I ask nothing in return because I WANT to do it. I get a selfish feeling of well-being whenever I see someone I’ve helped, help themselves.
I also employ a dozen people and contribute that way.
How many homeless people have you put on your couch this month?
#93, If you hate it here so much, if you’re so afraid to walk down the street for fear someone may pull out a gun and shoot you, why not move there? Try it, you might like it!
#94 FAIL, as my teen daughter says. You didn’t answer his question. You say armed people make for less crime, but the facts clearly show that countries with stricter gun laws have less crime.
Try explaining that, or just admit you have an irrational love for guns and don’t really care about facts.
Crazy: Guns make you free.
Sane: Look at the murder rate and balance the benefits/harm of it with the benefits/harm of gun ownership.
Then we VOTE.
Demonstrating: What wrong with representative democracy in a two party system where the nominating process is dominated by the fringe groups.
Gun Issue: Very Similar to HealthCare Issue. “Somehow” we have the very same people that would benefit from the proposed legislation rioting at public meetings to prevent its passage.
Its not “representative.” Its not “democracy.” Its not sane.
Its our system.
Change will only come when we VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE.
Hard to do when emotions rule an uninformed intellect, and bread and circus makes up 90% of political commentary.
#95, Were you talking to me or the original poster?
#97 I was talking to you. You say armed people make for less crime, but the facts clearly show that countries with stricter gun laws have less crime.
#98, I didn’t say that. However, comparing countries to each other is like comparing apples and oranges.
We are Americans. They are not.
Our history is founded on doing things our own way. Those that liked that idea came here. Those that didn’t left or stayed over there.
Now, if you want to compare areas in the US, then, yes, where lawful gun ownership is prevalent, there is less crime. This has been demonstrated time and again.
#99 We are Americans. They are not.
WTF? We’re all people. Are you saying Americans are intrinsically more violent than other nationalities? How else can you explain the discrepancy in crime?
“Doing things our own way.” That sounds like a polite euphemism for “Shooting people who disagree with us.”
… or “taking things we want even if they don’t belong to us.”
… or “having sex with women we want to have sex with even if they don’t want to.”
#100, Are you saying Americans are intrinsically more violent than other nationalities?
That’s a distinct possibility. At the very least, we are intrinsically more hard-headed.
Re: Sounding like . . .
Nice strawmen.
#103 Hey, no strawmen there — if we’re more violent than other nationalities, it would follow that we’d be more inclined to take what we want and hang the consequences.
I *have* read interesting things about the Scots/Irish who settled much of the southeast U.S. during the 17th and 18th centuries. They seemed to have a predilection to violence which might still remain. And how about that, it’s the only area of the country where the Republican party is still popular…
Historically gun control laws are used by the establishment to maintain suppressive control.
NO GUNS FOR NEGROS a film by “Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership” exposes the racist history of American gun control laws.
Watch NO GUNS FOR NEGROS
#104, Hmm . . . I have a strong Scottish history in my family 🙂
My ancestors were “relocated” during the Clearances.
“Our ancestors were kicked out of every decent country in the world!”
#105 Yep, I read about the Clearances too… tough times, ethnic cleansing… nasty stuff. 🙁
#107, Yeah, just so a bunch of lords could play Brokeback Mountain Sheep Ranchers.
#102, Confederate Traitor,
Hey great report. Very accurate, precise, and all that stuff. Much better than the World Health Organization taking actual reported crimes.
Oopps, what did your survey just say? … there is a fairly wide sampling error on the ICVS estimates. The surveys cannot, then, give precise estimates of crime in different countries
Oh NO!!! Another bullshit piece from the Liebertarians.
*
OK, so now we go to your second link. The one above your claim about fewer muder in the US than Europe over the past 70 years. Asshole!!! They just had a war where tens of millions were murdered.
But your second link.
Australia. 1.8
Austria, 1.0
Belgium, 1.7
Canada,, 1.7
Czech Re. 2.1*
Denmark, 4.9
Finland, 2.9
France 1.1
Germany, 1.1
Greece 1.3
Hungary,, 3.5*
Iceland 0.4
Italy 1.4
Japan 0.6
Lux. 0.7
Netherlands 1.2
New Zealand 2.0
Norway, 0.8
Poland 2.8*
Portugal 1.7
Romania, 4.1*
Slovenia 2.4*
Sweden, 1.0
U. K. 0.9
US 9.4
* = former Soviet Bloc country.
Damn!!! That wasn’t supposed to post yet !!! Damn formatting.
To continue #109,
Removing the former, Soviet bloc countries does not influence the point. Those countries were not stabilized. I am sure that using figures from today would provide us with much lower numbers.
So anywhere, where does the USA stand in that survey? Oh, right, the worse of all the stabilized nations.
#109, But they are a unique source of information and give good comparative information.
You didn’t finish the copy/paste.
And if you would consider the link at the bottom of that page, “Statistical significance,” you would see the “wide” gap you pick on is 5% rather than the typical 3% seen in other polls.
That being said, the percentages are a fairly good measure.
Did you stop reading when the words fit your world view?
They just had a war where tens of millions were murdered.
Where was the war mentioned in that article? I didn’t see it.
But I did like this one:
The changes in the U.S. homicide rate over time are interesting. In 1900 there were few gun laws. New York had no handgun law and California no waiting period. Guns of all types could be ordered by mail or bought anonymously. And the homicide rate was 1.2, about one-sixth of what it is today. The homicide rate peaked in 1933, during the Depression, and then fell. It was low during and after World War II, but began to rise in the 1960s and 1970s, and reached its high for this century, 10.7, in 1980. It then fell to 8.3 in 1985, a fall of 22 percent. This welcome news was virtually ignored by the media, which emphasize rises in violence but downplay decreases. Homicide rose again in the late 1980s, but not to its 1980 high. The homicide rate continued to rise following the Gun Control Act of 1968, while the fall in the early 1980s occurred when anti-crime laws but no new anti-gun laws were passed.
#114, Loser,
Ahhh, YOU missed it too. The study wasn’t about violent crime, but about property crimes. It didn’t include rape, assaults, and murders. Nor did it include propertyless crimes such as speeding and prostitution.
But then using a ten year old study using even older information the authors admit is not statistically reliable, …
Where was the war mentioned in that article? I didn’t see it.
Then you didn’t read the post I was responding to.
#104,
The Liebertarians have to start coming up with better material than this.
Poor Mr. Communist Whore, he doesn’t like it when he encounters studies which conflict with his Statist Religon.
The Failed Experiment: Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales
Authored by Gary Mauser, professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, this study examines crime trends in Commonwealth countries that have recently introduced firearm regulations: i.e., Great Britain, Australia, and Canada. The widely ignored key to evaluating firearm regulations is to examine trends in total violent crime, not just firearms crime. The United States provides a valuable point of comparison for assessing crime rates because its criminal justice system differs so drastically from those in Europe and the Commonwealth. Perhaps the most striking difference is that qualified citizens in the United States can carry concealed handguns for self-defense. The upshot is that violent crime rates, and homicide rates in particular, have been falling in the United States. The drop in the American crime rate is even more impressive when compared with the rest of the world.
International Crime Victim Surveys
From, of all places, the United Nations, comes this look at crime rates and victim attitudes for 17 major industrialized countries. What is of interest to gun owners is the not-so-surprising revelation that England now has the worst crime rate of all major countries. Following a near-total ban on civilian ownership of firearms, crime in England began to skyrocket. In the UN study, researchers found that nearly 55 crimes are committed per 100 people in England and Wales compared with an average of 35 per 100 in other industrialized countries. England and Wales also have the worst record for “very serious” offenses, recording 18 such crimes for every 100 inhabitants, followed by Australia with 16 (yet another country that has all but banned legitimate self-defense, thus creating a lucrative hunting ground for criminals). In typical UN layered-bureaucracy fashion, the ICVS is funded out of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, but the link is to the Dutch WODC (Research and Documentation Centre).
Even More Studies –
Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse
From the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention within the U.S. Department of Justice comes this study focusing on crime, gang activity, and drug use among youths in cities. Of particular interest is page 18. The study showed that those youths who owned illegal guns are involved in street crime at a whopping 71% rate. By contrast, the government researchers admit that youths owning legal guns have a crime rate lower than those who own no guns at all! The link between the socialization of the family and instruction by fathers to legal gun ownership and low crime rates is mentioned. The thugs, of course, are getting their socialization “on the street.” This is an Acrobat pdf file.
Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms
A federal grant from the Clinton Justice Department went to two anti-gun scholars to fund this research project. Result: findings which support the work on defensive uses of firearms done by Dr. Gary Kleck of FSU. Kleck’s research has been unfairly vilified in the media, but now even anti-gun researchers are admitting to more than a million defensive uses per year.
Another Study –
Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse
From the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention within the U.S. Department of Justice comes this study focusing on crime, gang activity, and drug use among youths in cities. Of particular interest is page 18. The study showed that those youths who owned illegal guns are involved in street crime at a whopping 71% rate. By contrast, the government researchers admit that youths owning legal guns have a crime rate lower than those who own no guns at all! The link between the socialization of the family and instruction by fathers to legal gun ownership and low crime rates is mentioned. The thugs, of course, are getting their socialization “on the street.” This is an Acrobat pdf file.
And Another –
Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms
A federal grant from the Clinton Justice Department went to two anti-gun scholars to fund this research project. Result: findings which support the work on defensive uses of firearms done by Dr. Gary Kleck of FSU. Kleck’s research has been unfairly vilified in the media, but now even anti-gun researchers are admitting to more than a million defensive uses per year.
Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms
A federal grant from the Clinton Justice Department went to two anti-gun scholars to fund this research project. Result: findings which support the work on defensive uses of firearms done by Dr. Gary Kleck of FSU. Kleck’s research has been unfairly vilified in the media, but now even anti-gun researchers are admitting to more than a million defensive uses per year.
And Another –
Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms
A federal grant from the Clinton Justice Department went to two anti-gun scholars to fund this research project. Result: findings which support the work on defensive uses of firearms done by Dr. Gary Kleck of FSU. Kleck’s research has been unfairly vilified in the media, but now even anti-gun researchers are admitting to more than a million defensive uses per year.
And Yet More –
Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns
This is the famous 1996 Lott and Mustard multi-year study which proves the link between concealed carry and the lowering of the crime rate. Several download options available.
Crime and Justice in the United States and England and Wales
This Clinton Department of Justice study looks at crime in the U.S. vs. the U.K. from 1981-1996. Gun control in England is nearly total, with yet another major ban passing in 1997. England’s attempts to control its society-wide crime problem with ever-more restrictive gun control have proven to be a dismal failure.
Mr. Communist Whore is a Statist whom wants only the individuals featured on sites like http://copwatch.org to carry guns.
He and his kind want individuals to be at the mercy of the GOVERNMENT.
Confederate Traitor,
I looked at two of your “links”. It is obvious you copied and pasted the material from another source and haven’t read any of the material. I suspect you didn’t expect me to read ANY of it.
If you have a comment, make it. If you wish to quote part of a study, go for it. Just don’t be expecting me to read a whole study just to discover it is bullshit.
#116, This study has been largely refuted in Canada as overly biased. The only sites linking to it are self serving Liebertarians and gun nuts. They all like to quote the opening part of the study instead of some of the details.
In contrast to handgun-dense United States, where the homicide rate has been falling for over 20 years, the homicide rate in handgun-banning England and Wales has been growing. In the 1990s alone, the homicide rate jumped 50%, going from 10 per million in 1990 to 15 per million in 2000
The author made the error of comparing apples and oranges. He points out that England and Wales saw an increase in murder of 50%. He didn’t mention the already very high rate found in the US. So the British rate climbed to 0.9 per 100,000 compared to the American rate of 9.4.
Note, those numbers come from another one of your links. Nor did he mention the favorable impact of the Clinton Administration putting 100,000 more police on the streets. The study also ignored the violent crime that came with the crack cocaine epidemic that peaked in the 1980s.
RE #119, This does NOT validate Kleck and in fact refutes his study. But there were some interesting points.
Those who had been arrested for nontraffic offenses were more likely to own firearms (37 percent compared to 25 percent in the general population).
…
About 211,000 handguns and 382,000 long guns were stolen in noncommercial thefts that year, for a total of 593,000 stolen firearms. Those estimates are subject to considerable sampling error but are consistent with earlier estimates of about half a million guns stolen annually.[10]
…
Of 1,356 accidental deaths by gunshot in 1994, 185 involved children 14 years old and younger.[11] For each such fatality, there are several accidental shootings that cause serious injury.
…
Although training programs usually include suggestions on how to store guns safely, it does not appear that trainees are paying attention. More than half (56 percent) of owners had received some form of “formal” training from the military, law enforcement, National Rifle Association, National Safety Council, or other source. As a group, owners who received such training were no less likely than others to keep guns loaded and unlocked. This surprising result is consistent with other recent studies.[12]
…
Males who carried guns in 1994 were about two and a half times as likely to have been arrested for a nontraffic offense as other men (15 percent versus 6 percent). And a disproportionate share of gun carriers resided in the South, where the prevalence of carrying guns was almost double that of the rest of the Nation.
…
On the basis of data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, one would conclude that defensive uses are rare indeed, about 108,000 per year.
…
In conclusion
The NSPOF-based estimate of millions of DGUs [Defensive Gun Uses] each year greatly exaggerates the true number, as do other estimates based on similar surveys. Much debated is whether the widespread ownership of firearms deters crime or makes it more deadly–or perhaps both–but the DGU estimates are not informative in this regard.
#115, I did miss that one. It still doesn’t support your position, though, from what I could see in it. There are way too many studies out there to support the notion that legally carrying a weapon is a deterrent to crime.
However, I do have a new slogan for you, used over 200 years ago:
Everything I do is good. Therefore, all who disagree with me are traitors.
George III
Your problem is you don’t consider anything other than the Democrat party line to be worth listening to. Everything else is shit and worthy of your scorn. I am not sure how you walk through life with one eye closed like that. Can you not see that the dems are just as bad as the repubs? There is no difference between them.
#123, Loser,
Can you not see that the dems are just as bad as the repubs? There is no difference between them.
I guess that makes both of them better than Liebertarians.
I haven’t had the time to view the Confederate Traitor’s links, but it appears that Ralph has and experience has shown them to be a waste of time.
Guns kill.
#127, Can you not see that the dems are just as bad as the repubs? There is no difference between them.
I guess that makes both of them better than Liebertarians.
Now, you’re being spiteful by putting your hands over your ears and screaming, “LALALALA.”
Guns kill.
Damned right they do. They would be useless if they didn’t.