Now where did I put that submachine gun?

 I usually stay out of arguments about gun control, because they seem to be more about parroting cliches than actually stopping gun deaths.

The dirt little secrest is that most homicide deaths from guns are drug and gang related and affect black males the most, which is why it is taboo to discuss. These homicides are done by small guns, not the rifles they want to ban. However, the majority of gun deaths are actually suicide deaths by guns tend to be white males, related to depression and/or substance abuse, and this is rarely discussed either.

My grandfather was a cop, and he had a friend whose child accidentally killed himself playing with a service revolver, so my grandfather would no have guns in his house, and my father never learned to shoot a gun, and we had no guns in our house.

I had to learn to shoot when I joined the National Guard: But only rifles; when I was told I could as an officer carry a handgun, I took a waiver not to do this, knowing that there was no way I would ever shoot anyone, even in a war.

In other words, I am ambivalent about guns: I am pro gun control but until the discussion in the US is more nuanced and honest one doubts either side will be willing to make a compromise.

Fast forward to retiring to the Philippines.

My husband always had a handgun for protection, especially as drugs started infiltrating our placid rural area: doctors were a target because narcotics and money, and as a veteran he knew how to use a gun.

But here in the Philippines, they are stricter about guns.

The first president Marcos confiscated all the guns, which is why there are so many security guards at stores and malls.

but for protection in the home, a lot of folks just hid them, including my husband who kept his handgun in a safe, just in case.

But what astonished me was when he opened the safe and pulled out a World War II submachine gun to clean and check it. He was a WWII vet, at least during the end of the war, when he essentially was doing patrols in this rural area against Japanese stragglers who would kill for food or revenge.

However, when he had his second stroke, he gave away his guns, meaning that now we only have dogs and a machete for protection.

George, the killer labrador is waiting to bite you

At least four neighbors were killed by home invasion robberies since I moved here, so the threat was real.

Thanks to Duterte's war on drugs, we now feel a bit safer, which is why he was so popular. And one does hope that the new president Marcos will continue the fight so we are not taken over by drug cartels or the Chinese mafia.

So I won't need a gun... unless China decides that hey, Luzon used to be owned by China so why don't we take it over after we conquer Taiwan? 

In that case, a small submachine gun would come in handy.

Sorry.. I am being paranoid again (or am I?)

Headlines below the fold

Is the Pope Catholic?

Not according to what he said in the latest interview.

who do you believe: the Vatican or your lying ears?

and don't even get me started on the German Amazon conference with it's Mother Gaia worship.

There are quite a few AmerIndians in the US and Canada who are Catholic, yet they don't seem to be part of the discussion.

unlike a certain faux Indian running for president, Archbishop Chaput is a member of the Pottawatomie tribe, and was always active with the Tekakwitha conferences, working with the various tribal evangelists.. But apparently he's too Catholic to be part of the discussion. 

----------------------------

Some Florida schools are arming teachers.

Yes, I know: The gun lovers think it's a good idea, but without training an ordinary person will freeze in an emergency situation: That is why we docs practice CPR: so that in an emergency we automatically start treatment.

Indeed, the dirty little secret (known by the military) is that even in combat situations, quite a few trained soldiers didn't shoot  their guns, and that number was highest in soldiers who were facing combat situations for the first time (although that percentage might be a bit higher now, thanks to video games).

--------------------------------

Austin Bay says keep an eye on the riots in Algeria and it's tech-savvy protests.

Arab Spring 2.0?
--------------------------------

NBA censors those who criticize China.

Charles Barkley Rips ‘Idiots’ For Criticizing NBA Over China Situation … ‘Jackasses!’  “NBA players and execs have shied away from backing [Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey] — and Barkley says he certainly gets why. ‘They have billions of dollars at stake,’ Barkley says. ‘It’s a business decision. I understand the NBA. The players and the owners both got billions of dollars at stake.’”

--------------------------------------
StrategyPage discusses China and censorship.

facial recognition and social ratings are being imposed on the population, and it is extensively used against the Uighur population, and then there is the reeducation camps, with 1 million being trained to think correctly.

the Uighur are a Turkish minority, so one can understand the problem is partly cultural, but GetReligion reports that the Hui Muslims are also being persecuted. More about them at NPR.
I guess they remember the Panthay rebellion and are worried.

the idea is to make religions Chinese and get rid of foreign influences. This is not a new idea: Back in 845 AD they persecuted the Buddhists for this reason.

And while the Germans are using 100 thousand Amazonians as an excuse to destroy Catholicism (see above), the Vatican is letting China destroy the  Catholic church in China there thanks to pervert McCarrick's deal?
--------------------

and SP has a lot in their essay about the Hong Kong and the trade war and of course, about the takeover of the West Philippine sea.

Alas, the Chinese are watching CNN and one big reason they aren't negotiating is that they figure Trumpieboy will be impeached, so they will wait it out.
----------------------------
just one other note: If you change planes in China, they not only will take your fingerprints but do a facial scan.

So now China not only has my hacked Federal OPM file, but they now have my facial scan and fingerprints...

-----------------------------

SP has a long essay on Russia that includes a discussion of the Ukraine/Crimea and how it might be solved by compromise.

they note one backstory in all of this was that China was busy buying Russian technology from the Ukraine (to steal the designs).

Many Ukrainians and Americans realized how China operated in deals like this. If China obtained a major, or majority, stake in Motor Sich they could, and probably would, steal all the technology and manufacturing secrets and move Motor Sich production to China. Initially they would hire some Ukrainian tech experts to help the Chinese manufacturing operation to get up to speed, but then Motor Sich in Ukraine would become a branch of the main operation in China. Eventually, the Ukrainian branch of the renamed Chinese “Motor Sich” would disappear. Zelensky wants to keep Motor Sich Ukrainian and not plundered of all its tech by the Chinese.

yup.

---------------------------

one result of the US "human rights" who are trying to undermine Duterte for his "war on drugs" is that Duterte just went to Russia  for investments, and for help in drilling for oil in the West Philippine sea. Rappler (anti Duterte site) reports:

Duterte invited Russian oil giant Rosneft to conduct oil and gas exploration in various parts of the Philippines, including the West Philippine Sea, which Beijing continues to claim through its 9-dash line – a claim invalidated by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016.

Why does this matter? Russian involvement in the West Philippine Sea is seen as a possible game-changer, given the northern country's good ties with China which is claiming the area as its own. Russian companies, including Rosneft, are already helping Vietnam explore for oil and gas in waters within its exclusive economic zone but also being claimed by China.

Beijing has issued warnings against such operations as a way to assert its claim to the area. Despite these warnings, however, Russian firms have not abandoned the projects.

Russia may have "good ties" right now with China, but they are well aware that China traditionally claims most of Siberia and is moving a lot of immigrants into that area, not to mention their move into the former Soviet states in Central Asia under the guise of the new silk road project.

------------------------------------------

there is a lot of propaganda out about Turkey vs ISIS and the Syrian Turks. I have no opinion on what is good or bad here, since the war is complicated.

However, I find it amusing that the anti war types have flip flopped, and now are wanting to push the US into increasing the military numbers here, to "defend the Kurds", but actually because they hate Trumpieboy.

But one reason is Turkey wants to move refugees into the area: they have a couple million Sunni refugees, and want to settle them in the border zone an alternative to letting them move to Europe. 

And the Turkish fight against the Kurds goes way back: because the Kurdish minority in Turkey is fighting for it's rights, including terrorism against the government ... but by 2040, they might be the majority of the population there, thanks to the Turkish population's low birth rate.

---------------------------
Freakonomics has a podcast on the history of Brexit.

Again, not my area of expertise, but it seems that the Irish are now going along with Boris.

Guns and gals

StrategyPage has a long essay on women in combat, with an emphasis on discussing Israel's experience.

summary: They do well if they don't need muscles.

One of my Israeli friends relates hiding in a foxhole with a rifle waiting for the Arabs to invade their village in one of the many wars there. You don't always have a choice.

But combat training is different: You learn combat skills to do things automatically.

Which is why the gun loving guys in the US don't realize that just having a gun doesn't work: You have to practice all the time so you don't freeze in times of stress. Similar to docs practicing CPR so you know what to do without trying to remember what to do next.

the problem, of course, is that you need an aggressive mindset, so are more likely to shoot an innocent intruder. But without the training you are more likely to have the bad guy grab your gun and shoot you.

when we were in Africa, and under threat, only two people at our hospital knew how to shoot: Old Sister Ambuya, who used a shotgun at her farm during WWI to keep out thieves, and my mom, who had brothers and joined the rifle club at her high school.

Nevertheless, if someone came to the door and broke in, we didn't have the rifles right there to grab and shoot.

In another African country, we had a man outside our home with a shotgun to protect us. One night he was absent since his wife was dying, and sure enough the dog woke me that someone was outside. I went to the window with the dog and said loudly: Get ready, dog and you get one while I shoot the other... no, I didn't have a gun, but heck, they didn't know this... and so the thieves broke into the house next door instead and stole his stereo and TV. Since they cut the phone lines, I couldn't call to wake him up, so he slept through the whole thing.

In contrast, my husband had his gun in the bedside table, and another in his glove compartment, because he was a doctor and often had drugs in the home for making house calls.

myself? I had a waiver when in the NatGuard not to carry a weapon.

although my mother was comfortable with guns, my father was not: his own father was a policeman, and never allowed guns in their homes, for fear the kids would accidentally shoot themselves with his gun.

As for gun control: seems to me the problem is that the gun laws are not being enforced. The recent mentally ill people behind recent shootings should never have been given access to guns, or if they had them, there should have been a way to confiscate the weapons.

and of course then there is the problem to try to get angry, mentally ill people hospitalized against their will at the request of their families. PJMedia article about the problem of mental health "experts" and I have had this experience with trying to hospitalize mentally ill (i.e. paranoid and/or hallucinating) patients.

Guns in Space

no, not to kill E.T.s but to protect themselves against bears when they landed in Siberia.

The Medieval Roots of the Second Amendment

it was indeed to have a "militia". LINK

Having and knowing how to use weapons was a man’s role in the medieval period. 

All levels of society owned weapons throughout the medieval period. It distinguished laymen from clerics (who, nonetheless, also possessed and used weapons), the free from the unfree, and law-abiding citizens from criminals. It also signaled the ability to defend one’s honor with violence.

Bearing and using weapons was associated with enfranchisement—literally, being a Frank (“free”).

Anyone who has a passing interest in the Middle Ages knows that the “feudal” social system set up by the Franks required nobles to exchange mounted, armored military service for land.

What fewer people pay attention to, however, is that common soldiers were also required to do military service and to own swords, shields, bows, and arrows. This was in direct continuity from the era of migrations, when the duty of the free men of the Germanic tribes was to fight alongside their chiefs.

more at the link, about weapons and the relationship between gun ownership and weapons in Europe.

An armed society, in other words, was seen as a positive good. On both sides of the Atlantic, weapons ownership equaled liberty. Disarmament on the Continent only came with strong centralized government: Tlusty makes a strong case that building a stable state and ending the near-anarchy of premodern Germany necessitated ending the population’s right to bear arms. Of course, in modern Switzerland, firearms ownership is still ubiquitous, but gun-owners are trained from a young age in the responsible use of weapons.

when I bought hunting rifles for my son, to get a license they needed to pass a gun safety course. In the past, many ordinary people obtained this training in the military.

The bad news: The author goes beyond her level of expertise and suggests that if you encourage credit card companies from enabling gun purchases, you would solve the gun problem in the USA.

Two problems with this:

One: uh, cash? (which is an argument they will use for a future cashless society)

and two: What about the weapons already in the hands of folks?

here in the Philippines, even though gun ownership is restricted and illegal guns are commonly confiscated,  most middle class folks have a gun or two hidden away for personal safety. (Lolo used to have his WWII submachine gun in our closet when we first moved here...no we don't own any guns now, only machetes and vicious dogs for protection).

The problem with guns is that you have to know how to use it and be prepared to do so. And that takes both training (to do it automatically) and a mindset (to watch for threats, even in benign situations).

that is why I never learned to fire a handgun, and even had a waiver not to carry one in the National Guard.

For the average civilian, when confronted by a professional (killer or cop) you hesitate long enough for him to shoot you or maybe take the gun away and shoot you with your own gun.

the irony about the fight against the NRA is that the straw man NRA person is a white guy bigot, but the real story of gun homicide is that it is not a white problem per se.

and remember the next time you read about the "high murder rate" from guns in the USA: that this has a racial bias, 

this is a public health emergency, and it has been going on as long as I have been a physician (which dates back to 1970).

IF this was happening in the upper middle class white community, stopping gun crime would be seen as a priority (I remember when yuppies started to be threatened, Giuliani got rid of guns by frisking down suspicious people, and the death rate went way down).

but one of the evil things done by President Obama was to polarize the country against the law abiding citizens of all races, by protecting the civil rights of thugs not to be frisked on sight or to be thrown out of school for misdemeanors (which is how the Florida shooter could legally own a gun: They ignored his high school criminal activity).

the "BLM" types have it wrong: it's drugs and gang related violence that kills.

CDC list of risk factors for school violence.

read the whole thing (too long to post).

Alas too many young men feel they have to carry a gun or to join a gang to be safe. What's wrong with this picture?

----------------

as for those who as "what would Jesus do"? or "Jesus would not carry a weapon". I agree.

He didn't carry a weapon: But Peter did, and knew how to use it.

Gun Control: We haz that

Dilbert discusses gun control.

the only school shooting where I knew people was done by a mentally disturbed boy who stole his grandfather's rifles and pistols to do it. His grandfather was a cop, and took the boy in because of a terrible family situation. So gun control would not have stopped that shooting.

my take: unless you know guns and regularly shoot so you know how to shoot, and unless you mentally practice what to do in a bad situation, the gun is not going to help because you will probably freeze.

(NON PC observation: shooting in video games gives you this type of expertise...not my opinion but that of the military)

Sort of like CPR: We docs practice all the time and go into automatic action when we do it.

Here in the Philippines, we have security guards with guns and shotguns all over the place guarding banks and shops: and you are frisked when you go into the mall.

But few ordinary folks own guns.. or maybe I should say legally own guns, because Marcos confiscated all guns in the Philippines years ago

Yes, some people have legal guns, the dirty little secret in the Philippines is that most middle class folks have an illegal gun hidden in the closet.

Why have a gun? Well, in the last few years, we have had several old people killed in break-ins by thieves, one a US Navy vet with a gun who didn't get it out in time.

The present mayor has had at least two hits against his family by the previous mayors' family. The first hit killed five people including our nephew in the crossfire. The second was on the way home from one of our cousin's funerals, and killed four in the crossfire. There have been at least two "pay back" murders against those behind the hits.

However, one of our cousins killed his brother with a shotgun he owned for protection at the farm. His brother was drunk and angry (maybe on shabu too) and attacked him while he was sleeping... the sleeping brother work up and shot him in self defense, aiming low so as not to kill him, but one of the pellets hit him in a leg artery so he bled to death. Without that gun, that tragedy might not have happened...

My grandfather was a cop, and knew of cases where kids got their father's service gun and accidentally shot a sibling. So we never had guns in our house.

But my husband, a WWII vet, and a doctor who carried narcotics in the car for house calls, always had a pistol with him. Indeed, when we first married and visited the Philippines, he took out his WWII submachine gun from the closet where he had it hidden and cleaned it... he gave that and his pistol away after he had a stroke, alas, so when crime went up in our neighborhood, we did worry about being robbed or worse.

But now things are safer, thanks to the gangs being decimated by EJK or by fighting among themselves.

Yes, I know: The Catholic church last weekend had a couple thousand demonstrating against EJK.

But one wonders where they are when the bishops get photo ops with crooked politicians who take bribes from drug smugglers etc. (and steal government money sent to help the poor).

The mayor behind our nephew's murder was finally indicted after many years of giving gifts to someone to delay the indictment, but when Aquino became president and started cleaning things up, the ex mayo was indicted but escaped punishment because he "disappeared"... he died a few months after they discovered he was living in Manila, on dialysis. Duh.

And he was buried in a fancy maseoleum, after a Catholic funeral complete with Knights of Columbus body guard.

He donated to the local church, of course.

Short story: At the fiesta mass with the bishop presiding a year after our cousin was killed, that guy sat in the front of church in a place for VIPs with his body guards, and when our cousin Chona went up to give her donation during the mass, she saw him and waved her fist in his face saying : You... YOU...

it caused a bit of a stir, and of course, the bishop saw her, and got the message, because during the next election cycle, the bishop held a mass and had all the local politicians take an oath they would not use violence.

It worked: There was no shooting until after the election...

Boy that girl does travel around...

One note on the LasVegas shooter's girlfriend. The poor FBI is going to have to check all the places she has been to in recent years and check all of her connections, to make sure she doesn't have terror links.

Sounds like she was ambitious. Her travels seem to mistily the US press, but her travels are not unusual.

One photo saw her in Dubai. ISIS? Nah, just visiting a relative. A million Filipinos work in the area. And even Joy has visited there, trying to get a contract to sell our organic rice to the Filipino population. And our relatives have worked for a time in Kuwait and Saudi as nurses.

The jobs pay well but you can't get citizenship, which is a draw back.

Hong Kong? Maybe just visiting casinos, but again lots of Filipinas there (we have relatives as nurses in Macao).

Australia? Ditto. The USA is where everyone wants to go, but it is hard. So Canada, Australia, and the UK are high on the list of countries to emigrate to. And like the USA, you can get citizenship, you can get your family to join you.

We have relatives in all three countries.

And I am not talking about the rich from Manila: most of the diaspora are working class people: maids, nurses, doctors, construction workers, English teachers, truck drivers etc. An of course, as "hostesses" or "entertainers" (a term that is often used as euphemism for sex workers).

Here in the Philippines, you don't get paid well, and it is almost impossible to break into business unless you have connections,  but if you work overseas you can support your extended family left behind (and, as noted, often sponsor your relatives to get jobs or even citizenship).

Ten percent of the Philippine population work overseas.

And a lot of Philippine ladies marry people from other countries.

Not only the LA shooter, but the friend of the Oklahoma city bomber had Filipina girlfriends.

Terror connection? No. Because no American girl would marry such nerds, but a Filipina might do so, for money, because the alternative is dire poverty.

Finally, what I have not seen mentioned: Where is her home town? Is she Catholic, a born again Christian, or a Muslim?

That would give you a clue if there was a terror connection...

Illegal guns? in the Philippines, we have them..

Despite the strict "gun laws" in the Philippines, nearly every middle class person has a gun or two hidden in in hs house for protection.

Let me explain why.

there re a lot of guns around, period.

linkpdf

Security forces and licensed security agencies combined possess only 1.8 million guns compared with the 3.59 million guns (legal and illegal) in civilian hands.

some of these are in the hands of "militants" or druggie types, but some are in the private armies of politicians. But a lot are simply for self protection.

My point? This was, of course, after Marcos made gun possession difficult, and confiscated all private guns in the 1980's.

Uh, that didn't seem to work very well. (and those delusional to think Gun confiscation would work in the USA, well, think again).

the connection rarely mentioned: Crime.
Ordinary folks have guns for protection, because they know that the gangsters and criminals have guns.

And a lot of the gangster types are running the place. follow the money.

So in our area, we have lots of political murders. It's about power and money (including who can skim city and development money, and take bribes, especially bribes related to the drug trade).

I live in Luzon. Now we are not in a war zone, although the local communist NPA were active here until a few years ago. But murders? Well, our family lost a nephew as a bystander during a political hit years back. And there were other incidents...

 A 2010 GMA article relates killings going back  to 1980, and includes this snippet about the church trying to get these guys to stop killing each other:

Bishop Sofronio Bancud was, however, disappointed with the non-participation of several mayoral candidates, especially those involved in 2007 cases of electoral violence.

yup. And it mentions our town:

The Gapan City local government unit has declared its city hall a “no-firearms zone," after a brother of the outgoing city mayor barged into the local Comelec office and bodily harmed a Comelec official over a voters’ registration issue last October.

more stuff here on election violence:

2015 article in Business Mirror

From May 2013 to October this year, 21 politically motivated executions have been carried out by guns-for-hire, or the now popular “riding-in-tandem killers,” causing the death of 14 individuals and serious wounding of seven others.
The victims are all local politicians ranging from city and town councilors to barangay officials and plain local government employees.

2015 article in the Sun reports that some blame the governor for at least 15 shootings.


here is a recent example where the cops nailed a local "gun for hire" gang.

here is a 2016 raid in our area that found a lot of illegal weapons.

political murders make the headlines, but what has actually started to worry me is that random crime has increased. Several local people, especially the elderly, have been killed in home invasion robberies:

here are two. LINK LINK2 but I can thing of others.

and no, I don't travel outside alone: We had a "kidnap gang" here, and still have snatch and grab robberies on the street.

have these increased? I have no idea: but the level of violence in robberies has.

so excuse me when I read about Duterte's drug wars murders, as if every murder in the Philippines is now his fault.

Are murders worse under Duterte, or did the murder streak start before his election in May 2016, and his election was because folks were tired of what was going on?

world atlas data notes the increase in murder rate has increased from 2003 to 2014.

and Rappler has an article on the crime problem, written in 2016 before the election of Duterte.

It has statistics on both the increase in crime, and also the drop in convictions percentages.

Crime solution efficiency, or the percentage of solved crimes out of reported crimes, was only 37% and 28% in 2012 and 2013, respectively, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.

what is not noted: Since you won't get justice anyway, a lot of crimes go unreported. Why bother to report a crime when you know you won't get justice, and even if you do, you might be shot by the perpetrator or one of his friends?

One wonders how many of the murders  by rogue cops or ex NPA members, who become "Dirty Harry" and dispense justice to known criminals, either on their own or for families who don't trust the court system.

We never did get justice for our nephew: we could have gotten private justice for a few hundred USDollars, but we declined the offer. (Note: the mayor behind the hit died in his bed ten years later and had a huge Catholic funeral).

The MSM of the world seems upset about the "drug war"murders, but hey, they didn't start with Duterte: it only started getting in the news when the NWO got upset that an outsider won, and a lot of local politician are pretending to be worried about all those poor people killed by Duterte, when in reality the local politicians are worried they will be "outed" for corruption. example LINK

Are shooting more common now than in the past?

Probably.

but to put crime into perspective, check out this 2011 article in the local webnews site.

• 
  
• ex vice mayor held for illegal gun possession: Check.
• 
  
• Ex city councilor arrested for pushing illegal drugs. Check.
• 
  
• people who were arrested for pushing counterfeit money arrested and found to have a gun and drugs. Check.
• 
  
• Pregnant woman killed when someone sprayed her house with bullets. One of those living with her was a known drug dealer. Check.
• 
  
• Businessman shoots home appliances in his girlfriend's house after she breaks up with him. Check.

In other words, lots of gun crime here. And a lot of it related to the drug trade. And a lot of it was going on before Duterte, but didn't seem to upset the SJW of the world.

as for the drug trade: We were in danger of becoming another "Failed state" run by drug cartels, similar to Mexico, where 23000 were reported murdered in 2016 (not counting, of course, the bodies that haven't been found yet).

 again, the Rappler article notes:

Back in 2012, The United Nations World Drug Report said the Philippines has the highest rate of shabu use in East Asia.
It’s mostly ethnic Chinese syndicates that organize and finance the trafficking of shabu in the Philippines, according to the US State department report on international drugs in 2012.
Because of its geographic location, the Philippines has become a major hub for the drug in Southeast Asia. This has contributed to more incidents of Filipinos getting arrested in other countries for transporting or selling shabu.
Shabu is usually brought into the country from Japan, China, and Korea but it is also grown domestically in “meth labs.”
The drug problem was recognized even by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines when it released a pastoral letter last July 2015 focusing on drug addiction in the country.

Entitled “Addiction, freedom, and disciples,” the letter pointed out how shabu or the “poor man’s cocaine” has become “daringly ubiquitous, oftentimes peddled openly in parks, bars, and street corners.”

This was what was going on when Duterte took over.

So the bishops are upset about his aggressive stance against criminal, and say pray about it...

but as for me, I'm thinking that maybe I should get a gun and learn to use it....

Going postal, and the AMOK problem

There was a Filipina "person of interest" in the Las Vegas murders.

She seems to be doing a lot of traveling (Gateway pundit gets excited over her trips).

There was also some early conspiracy theories because her facebook page included photos of her visit to Dubai.

Attention: Two things you have to keep in mind.

One, Filipinas have extended families. And so travel to many areas that an average Yank would not. Visiting relatives. I suspect her family are OFWs. (e.g. Dubai and Hong Kong). One doubts she was an ISIS spy.

Two: This sounds more and more like what we call here an "AMOK" murder.

 "an episode of sudden mass assault against people or objects usually by a single individual following a period of brooding that has traditionally been regarded as occurring especially in Malay culture but is now increasingly viewed as psychopathological behavior".

A normal guy who snapped.

Usually someone who is "nice" and keeps the anger inside, and then explodes.

In the US, there was a sort of joke expression: "Going Postal", after several ordinary postal workers shot up their workplace.

Here in the Philippines, we have these reported now and then in the news.

But the most famous one was when a cop who was upset at losing his pension (fired because of accusations of corruption) and then murdered a bunch of Chinese tourists. Why Chinese? Chinese are often disliked here, and hey, they were a target of opportunity. And a lot of people criticized the local mayor for negotiating instead of taking him out with a sniper.

we also had a casino attack: the guy entered into a casino with guns and gasoline, and a lot of people died from a fire related to his crime. He needed money, and was probably simply intending to rob the place, but the fire got out of control.

The real danger is that the press will hype this up to inspire copycat crimes, as happened with school shootings that inspired other angry teenagers.

so far, there is no motive: maybe he was descending into paranoid schizophrenia, since mental illness runs in his family. Maybe he was paranoid from early Alzheimer's or a stroke.

Homicide hunter had a poignant episode about a loving man who got paranoid and delusional after a stroke, and ended up killing his family. LINK.

Sigh.

----------------
I should write a comment about gun control.

My grandfather was a cop, and knew about kids who accidentally shot by playing with their dad's gun. So we never had a gun in our house.

But my mom, who grew up with brothers, had no gun but belonged to the gun club at school and cherished her "sharpshooter" medal.

My sons had hunting rifles: we lived in one of those areas where people "cling to guns and religion", and the first day of deer hunting season is a school holiday.

But when my older son started acting out, I made sure the firing pin from his rifle was "lost", just in case. (long story).

Here in the Philippines, Marcos confiscated all the guns back in the 1980s. However, most middle class folks have one or two stashed away just in case.

When I visited here 20 years ago, I was not surprised when Lolo took out his Glock and cleaned it. However, I was a bit startled when he also brought out his World War II sub machine gun and cleaned that one.

His son is Christian, so made him give the guns away after he had a stroke, so no I don't know which relative has them now.

So now, if a druggie decides to rob us, we only have George our killer Labrador, for protection.

Sigh. I probably would be too slow to do anything in an emergency anyway. Unless one is trained, one does tend to "Freeze".

But soldiers and cops are trained to react under fire: Which is why one is reading of so many heros in Las Vegas, of men who shielded their loved ones, of men showing people the closest area to evacuate, of men who stole trucks etc to take people to the nearest hospital. And of men and women giving first aid to those wounded.