The 'Americans Getting Shot' Thread

[S Landreth]

• Gay club shooting suspect evaded Colorado’s red flag gun law

A year and a half before he was arrested in the Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooting that left five people dead, Anderson Lee Aldrich allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb, forcing neighbors in surrounding homes to evacuate while the bomb squad and crisis negotiators talked him into surrendering.

Yet despite that scare, there’s no record prosecutors ever moved forward with felony kidnapping and menacing charges against Aldrich, or that police or relatives tried to trigger Colorado’s “red flag” law that would have allowed authorities to seize the weapons and ammo the man’s mother says he had with him.

Gun control advocates say Aldrich’s June 2021 threat is an example of a red flag law ignored, with potentially deadly consequences. While it’s not clear the law could have prevented Saturday night’s attack — such gun seizures can be in effect for as little as 14 days and be extended by a judge in six-month increments — they say it could have at least slowed Aldrich and raised his profile with law enforcement.

“We need heroes beforehand — parents, co-workers, friends who are seeing someone go down this path,” said Colorado state Rep. Tom Sullivan, whose son was killed in the Aurora theater shooting and sponsored the state’s red flag law passed in 2019. “This should have alerted them, put him on their radar.”

But the law that allows guns to be removed from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others has seldom been used in the state, particularly in El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs, where the 22-year-old Aldrich allegedly went into Club Q with a long gun at just before midnight and opened fire before he was subdued by patrons.

An Associated Press analysis found Colorado has one of the lowest rates of red flag usage despite widespread gun ownership and several high-profile mass shootings.

Courts issued 151 gun surrender orders from when the law took effect in April 2019 through 2021, three surrender orders for every 100,000 adults in the state. That’s a third of the ratio of orders issued for the 19 states and District of Columbia with surrender laws on their books.

El Paso County appears especially hostile to the law. It joined nearly 2,000 counties nationwide in declaring themselves “Second Amendment Sanctuaries” that protect the constitutional right to bear arms, passing a 2019 resolution that says the red flag law “infringes upon the inalienable rights of law-abiding citizens” by ordering police to “forcibly enter premises and seize a citizen’s property with no evidence of a crime.”

County Sheriff Bill Elder has said his office would wait for family members to ask a court for surrender orders and not petition for them on its own accord, unless there were “exigent circumstances” and “probable cause” of a crime.

El Paso County, with a population of 730,000, had 13 temporary firearm removals through the end of last year, four of which turned into longer ones of at least six months.

The county sheriff’s office declined to answer what happened after Aldrich’s arrest last year, including whether anyone asked to have his weapons removed. The press release issued by the sheriff’s office at the time said no explosives were found but did not mention anything about whether any weapons were recovered.

Spokesperson Lt. Deborah Mynatt referred further questions about the case to the district attorney’s office.

An online court records search did not turn up any formal charges filed against Aldrich in last year’s case. And in an update on a story on the bomb threat, The Gazette newspaper of Colorado Springs reported that prosecutors did not pursue any charges in the case and that records were sealed.

The Gazette also reported Sunday that it got a call from Aldrich in August asking that it remove a story about the incident.

“There is absolutely nothing there, the case was dropped, and I’m asking you either remove or update the story,” Aldrich said in a voice message to an editor. “The entire case was dismissed.”

A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, Howard Black, declined to comment on whether any charges were pursued. He said the shooting investigation will also include a study of the bomb threat.

“There will be no additional information released at this time,” Black said. “These are still investigative questions.”

AP’s study of 19 states and the District of Columbia with red flag laws on their books found they have been used about 15,000 times since 2020, less than 10 times for every 100,000 adults in each state. Experts called that woefully low and hardly enough to make a dent in gun killings.

Just this year, authorities in Highland Park, Illinois, were criticized for not trying to take guns away from the 21-year-old accused of a Fourth of July parade shooting that left seven dead. Police had been alerted about him in 2019 after he threatened to “kill everyone” in his home.

Duke University sociologist Jeffrey Swanson, an expert in red flag laws, said the Colorado Springs case could be yet another missed warning sign.

“This seems like a no brainer, if the mom knew he had guns,” he said. “If you removed firearms from the situation, you could have had a different ending to the story.”

[bsnub]

COLORADO SPRINGS — Richard M. Fierro was at a table in Club Q with his wife, daughter and friends on Saturday, watching a drag show, when the sudden flash of gunfire ripped across the nightclub and instincts forged during four combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan instantly kicked in. Fight back, he told himself, protect your people.

In an interview at his house on Monday, where his wife and daughter were still recovering from injuries, Mr. Fierro, 45, who spent 15 years as an Army officer and left as a major in 2013, according to military records, described charging through the chaos at the club, tackling the gunman and beating him bloody with the gunman’s own gun.

“I don’t know exactly what I did, I just went into combat mode,” Mr. Fierro said, shaking his head as he stood in his driveway, an American flag hanging limp in the freezing air. “I just know I have to kill this guy before he kills us.”

The authorities are holding Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, on charges of killing five people, and say that 18 more people were injured in a rampage at the club that lasted only a few minutes. The death toll could have been much higher, officials said on Sunday, if patrons of the bar had not stopped the gunman.

“He saved a lot of lives,” Mayor John Suthers said of Mr. Fierro. The mayor said he had spoken to Mr. Fierro and was struck by his humility. “I have never encountered a person who engaged in such heroic actions and was so humble about it.”

It was supposed to be a chill family night out — the combat veteran and his wife, Jess, joined their daughter, Kassandra, her longtime boyfriend Raymond Green Vance, and two family friends to watch one of his daughter’s friends perform a drag act.

It was Mr. Fierro’s first time at a drag show, and he was digging it. He had spent 15 years in the Army, and now relished his role as a civilian and a father, watching one of his daughter’s old high-school friends perform.

“These kids want to live that way, want to have a good time, have at it,” he said as he described the night. “I’m happy about it because that is what I fought for, so they can do whatever they hell they want.”

Mr. Fierro was trying to get better at going out. In Iraq and Afghanistan he’d been shot at, seen roadside bombs shred trucks in his platoon, and lost friends. He was twice awarded the Bronze Star.

The wars were both past and still present. There were things he would never forget. For a long time after coming home, crowds put him on edge. He couldn’t help to be vigilant. In restaurants he sat against the wall, facing the door. No matter how much he tried to relax, part of him was always ready for an attack, like an itch that could not be scratched.

He was too often distrustful, quick to anger. It had been hell on his wife and daughter. He was working on it. There was medication and sessions with a psychologist. He got rid of all the guns in the house. He grew his hair out long and grew a long, white goatee to distance himself from his days in uniform.

He and his wife ran a successful local brewery called Atrevida Beer Co. and he had a warm relationship with his daughter and her longtime boyfriend. But he also accepted that war would always be with him.

But that night at Club Q, he was not thinking of war at all. The women were dancing. He was joking with his friends. Then the shooting started.

It was a staccato of flashes by the front door, the familiar sound of small-arms fire. Mr. Fierro knew it too well. Without thinking, he hit the floor, pulling his friend down with him. Bullets sprayed across the bar, smashing bottles and glasses. People screamed. Mr. Fierro looked up and saw a figure as big as a bear, easily more than 300 pounds, wearing body armor and carrying a rifle a lot like the one he had carried in Iraq. The shooter was moving through the bar toward a door leading to a patio where dozens of people had fled.

The long-suppressed instincts of a platoon leader surged back to life. He raced across the room, grabbed the gunman by a handle on the back of his body armor, pulled him to the floor and jumped on top of him.

“Was he shooting at the time? Was he about to shoot? I don’t know,” Mr. Fierro said. “I just knew I had to take him down.

The two crashed to the floor. The gunman’s military-style rifle clattered just out of reach. Mr. Fierro started to go for it, but then saw the gunman come up with a pistol in his other hand.
“I grabbed the gun out of his hand and just started hitting him in the head, over and over,” Mr. Fierro said.

As he held the man down and slammed the pistol down on his skull, Mr. Fierro started barking orders. He yelled for another club patron, using a string of expletives, to grab the rifle then told the patron to start kicking the gunman in the face. A drag dancer was passing by, and Mr. Fierro said he ordered her to stomp the attacker with her high heels. The whole time, Mr. Fierro said, he kept pummeling the shooter with the pistol while screaming obscenities.

What allowed him to throw aside all fear and act? He said he has no idea. Probably those old instincts of war, that had burdened him for so long at home, suddenly had a place now that something like war had come to his hometown.

“In combat, most of the time nothing happens, but it’s that mad minute, that mad minute, and you are tested in that minute. It becomes habit,” he said. “I don’t know how I got the weapon away from that guy, no idea. I’m just a dude, I’m a fat old vet, but I knew I had to do something.”

When police arrived a few minutes later, the gunman was no longer struggling, Mr. Fierro said. Mr. Fierro said he feared that he had killed him.

Mr. Fierro was covered in blood. He got up and frantically lurched around in the dark, looking for his family. He spotted his friends on the floor. One had been shot several times in the chest and arm. Another had been shot in the leg.

As more police filed in, Mr. Fiero said he started yelling like he was back in combat. Casualties. Casualties. I need a medic here now. He yelled to the police that the scene was clear, the shooter was down, but people needed help. He said he took tourniquets from a young police officer and put them on his bleeding friends. He said he tried to speak calmly to them as he worked, telling them they would be OK.

He spied his wife and daughter on the edge of the room, and was about to go to them when he was tackled.

Officers rushing into the chaotic scene had spotted a blood-spattered man with a handgun, not knowing if he was a threat. They put him in handcuffs and locked him in the back of a police car for what seemed like more than an hour. He said he screamed and pleaded to be let go so that he could see his family.

Eventually, he was freed. He went to the hospital with his wife and daughter, who had only minor injuries. His friends were there, and are still there, in much more serious condition. They were all alive. But his daughter’s boyfriend was nowhere to be found. In the chaos they had lost him. They drove back to the club, searching for him, they circled familiar streets, hoping they would find him walking home. But there was nothing.

The family got a call late Sunday from his mother. He had died in the shooting.

When Mr. Fierro heard, he said, he held his daughter and cried.

In part he cried because he knew what lay ahead. The families of the dead, the people who were shot, had now been in war, like he had. They would struggle like he and so many of his combat buddies had. They would ache with misplaced vigilance, they would lash out in anger, never be able to scratch the itch of fear, be torn by the longing to forget and the urge to always remember.

“My little girl, she screamed and I was crying with her,” he said. “Driving home from the hospital I told them, ‘Look, I’ve gone through this before, and down range, when this happens, you just get out on the next patrol. You need to get it out of your mind.’ That is how you cured it. You cured it by doing more. Eventually you get home safe. But here I worry there is no next patrol. It is harder to cure. You are already home.”

nytimes.com

[Norton]

Simply bizarre

Applicable term as is self-conflict. Politicians who on the one hand fiercly protect the right to own guns giving these nutters the means to terminate a life and on the other hand insist on the right to life of an unborn fetus.

Reckon to them the right to life ends at birth.

[harrybarracuda]

charging through the chaos at the club, tackling the gunman and beating him bloody with the gunman’s own gun.

Good effort.

[bsnub]

Good effort.

He saved countless lives, no doubt.

Mr. Fierro looked up and saw a figure as big as a bear, easily more than 300 pounds, wearing body armor and carrying a rifle a lot like the one he had carried in Iraq. The shooter was moving through the bar toward a door leading to a patio where dozens of people had fled.

The shooter was planning on staying around for a while.

[prawnograph]

People of Walmart

Multiple People Are Fatally Shot at a Walmart in Virginia

Nov. 23, 2022
Updated 1:43 a.m. ET

Multiple people were shot and killed inside a Walmart in Chesapeake, Va., on Tuesday night, the authorities said, the second high-profile mass shooting in the country in three days.

The shooter, whose name the authorities did not release, was found dead at the store, Leo Kosinski, a spokesman with the Chesapeake Police Department, said in a brief news conference.
Mr. Kosinski did not say exactly how many people had been fatally shot, but he said he believed it was “less than 10.”

The Police Department responded to a report of a shooting inside the Walmart at about 10:12 p.m., Mr. Kosinski said, about 45 minutes before the store was scheduled to close.

He added that when officers entered the store, they found “multiple fatalities and multiple injured” individuals.

Mr. Kosinski said investigators did not know if the shooter was an employee or whether he had died by suicide. He added that he did not believe any shots had been fired by police officers.

[harrybarracuda]

Reports are that the shooter was a manager who opened fire on his fellow employees and then killed himself.

Following the incident, footage appeared online which appeared to show an eyewitness - wearing Walmart uniform - describing what happened.

He said he had left a staff room, which a manager then entered and opened fire.

USA! USA! USA! etc.


Sorry, I meant

"Thoughts and prayers".

[Norton]

"I'll give you my gun when you pry (or take) it from my cold, dead hands"

Ok, if you insist.

[Stumpy]

"I'll give you my gun when you pry (or take) it from my cold, dead hands"

Ok, if you insist.

And that happens.....a lot nowadays. Of course it used to have a different meaning as you know Norts.

[prawnograph]

People of Walmart


Andre Bing

A Walmart manager in the US pulled out a handgun before a routine employee meeting and began firing wildly around the break room of a Virginia store, killing six people in the nation’s second high-profile mass shooting in four days, police and witnesses have said.

“He was just shooting all throughout the room. It didn’t matter who he hit. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t look at anybody in any specific type of way,” said Briana Tyler, a Walmart employee.

The gunman was identified as Andre Bing, 31, an overnight team leader who had been a Walmart employee since 2010. Police said he had one handgun and several magazines of ammunition.

The gunman was dead when officers arrived late on Tuesday (local time) at the store in Chesapeake, Virginia's second-largest city.

Authorities said he apparently shot himself.
.
A database run by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University that tracks every mass killing in America going back to 2006 shows this year has been especially violent.

The US has now had 40 mass killings so far in 2022, compared with 45 for all of 2019. The database defines a mass killing as at least four people killed, not including the killer.

[harrybarracuda]

“He was just shooting all throughout the room. It didn’t matter who he hit. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t look at anybody in any specific type of way,” said Briana Tyler, a Walmart employee.

That sounds like a psychotic episode.

[panama hat]

A black mass-killer . . . makes a change from the usual white mass-murderer

[Norton]

A black mass-killer . . . makes a change from the usual white mass-murderer

Between 1982 and November 2022, 73 out of the 136 mass shootings in the United States were carried out by white shooters. By comparison, the perpetrator was African American in 21 mass shootings, and Latino in 11. When calculated as percentages, this amounts to 53 percent, 16 percent, and eight percent respectively.

As of 2020, White Americans are the racial and ethnic majority, with non-Hispanic whites representing 57.8% of the population. Hispanic and Latino Americans are the largest ethnic minority, comprising 18.7% of the population, while Black or African Americans are the largest racial minority, making up 12.1%.

Can't be bothered to do the math but looks, on a per capita basis, blacks are the leaders when comes to mass shootings.

[panama hat]

Can't be bothered to do the math but looks, on a per capita basis, blacks are the leaders when comes to mass shootings.

That surprises me . . . how often do we see/read about black mass murderers?

[Norton]

That surprises me . . . how often do we see/read about black mass murderers?

Surprized me too mate but your post influenced me to have a look. Just another TD learning experience.

[pickel]

^ +^^
It's because Black's are mostly killing other Black's.

[panama hat]

influenced

worth oh so many greens!!!!

[Seekingasylum]

And most blacks and ‘spics are shooting each other in gang related conflicts.

Whitey is the main man if you want slaughter of innocents in schools, shops or from a vantage point in a high floor hotel room taking out over 60 victims in Las Vegas.

Mass murder of innocents is a white American thing. Nice try Norton but your manipulation of the stats is facile if not crass.

[aging one]

^ What shall I bitch and whine about today? Like a freaking broken record. Do you really have someone that lives with you?

[Norton]

Mass murder of innocents is a white American thing. Nice try Norton but your manipulation of the stats is facile if not crass.

No intent nor motive to manipulate the stats. Stats are stats. Whites killing blacks, blacks killing blacks, et al results in same. Way too many dead folks.

[Troy]

A black mass-killer . . . makes a change from the usual white mass-murderer

They're all Americans and they all have access to guns. I think there's a common denominator here that some smartass seppo might eventually work out....



...or perhaps not.

[harrybarracuda]

Between 1982 and November 2022, 73 out of the 136 mass shootings in the United States were carried out by white shooters.

I'm not sure where you got your figures. Using the generally accepted metric (at least four people shot, excluding the shooter), there have been >600 mass shootings this year alone.


But if you got it from Statista you should read the small print.

Race of mass shooters reflects the U.S. population

Broadly speaking, the racial distribution of mass shootings mirrors the racial distribution of the U.S. population as a whole. While a superficial comparison of the statistics seems to suggest African American shooters are over-represented and Latino shooters underrepresented, the fact that the shooter’s race is unclear in around 10 percent of cases, along with the different time frames over which these statistics are calculated, means no such conclusions should be drawn.

[Norton]

But if you got it from Statista you should read the small print.

That's where I got them. However, post whatever you deem more correct.
Frankly I really could care less. Bottom line is, too many guns + too many nutters = an unending repeat of "thoughts and prayers".

[prawnograph]

Army Veteran Went Into Combat Mode to Disarm the Club Q Gunman

In an interview at his house on Monday, where his wife and daughter were still recovering from injuries, Mr. Fierro, 45, who spent 15 years as an Army officer and left as a major in 2013, according to military records, described charging through the chaos at the club, tackling the gunman and beating him bloody with the gunman’s own gun.

Anderson Lee Aldrich





Battered Colorado Springs shooting suspect appears in wheelchair at hearing

DENVER, Nov 23 (Reuters) - The suspect in a mass shooting that killed five people and wounded 17 at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub appeared in a court hearing on Wednesday with obvious facial injuries, mumbling their name while slumped to the side in a wheelchair.

[harrybarracuda]

That's where I got them. However, post whatever you deem more correct.
Frankly I really could care less.

Well you cared enough to invent the fiction that:

Originally Posted by Norton (The 'Americans Getting Shot' Thread)
Can't be bothered to do the math but looks, on a per capita basis, blacks are the leaders when comes to mass shootings.

When the page you actually used as a reference said:

Broadly speaking, the racial distribution of mass shootings mirrors the racial distribution of the U.S. population as a whole.

Details are important.