History > 2005 > USA > Gun culture, Gun violence

Kevin Siers

cartoon

North Carolina, The Charlotte Observer

Cagle       23.3.2005

http://cagle.slate.msn.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/siers.asp
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/columnists/kevin_siers/

Residents turn guns

into holiday gifts in Compton

Posted 12/25/2005
12:57 AM
USA Today

COMPTON, Calif. (AP) — "Big Daddy" Willis came to Compton to turn an illegal homemade pistol into Christmas dinner.
Charlene Watt planned to turn three shotguns into a plasma TV.

The two were among dozens of gun-toting residents who converged on a shopping center parking lot Saturday to anonymously swap firearms for gift certificates as part of a program aimed at reducing violence in this crime-plagued city.

Each was rewarded with a $100 gift card for Circuit City or the Ralphs supermarket chain, the program's co-sponsors.

In a line that snaked across a parking lot, participants from across Los Angeles County carried guns in cardboard boxes, plastic grocery bags and fancy leather cases.

"Hopefully and prayerfully this will cut down on the shootings," said Compton resident Ruther Daniels, 44, who turned in a .22-caliber handgun.

Authorities created the program after a sharp spike in Compton's crime rate this year. Sixty-eight homicides have been recorded so far in 2005, up from 39 in 2004, according to sheriff's Capt. Eric Hamilton.

Over three consecutive Saturdays, sheriff's deputies amassed more than 250 firearms, including 185 handguns, 48 high-powered rifles, 15 sawed-off shotguns and a Tec-9 semiautomatic machine gun pistol.

"The only reason you'd have these guns is to shoot at people," said sheriff's Deputy A.J. Rotella, who came up with the Gifts for Guns concept.

All will undergo ballistics checks to determine if they were used in crimes before being melted down at the sheriff's annual "gun dump."

Authorities said the gun exchange might become an annual program. It was funded by the city of Compton, Circuit City, Ralphs and the Sheriff's Department through its sale of assets seized in drug cases.

    Residents turn guns into holiday gifts in Compton, UT, 25.12.2005, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-12-25-giftsforguns_x.htm

Teens arrested in alleged massacre plot

Posted 12/18/2005 12:44 AM
USA Today

LANCASTER, Calif. (AP) — Two teenagers were in custody for allegedly plotting to carry out a Columbine-like massacre at their former high school next Valentine's Day, authorities said.

The former Quartz Hill High students, whose names were not released, were arrested Thursday after searches of their homes turned up knives, ammunition, a gas mask and bomb-making instructions downloaded from the Internet, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

They were being held at the Sylmar Juvenile Detention Center for investigation of making terrorist threats, Brown said.

"I've been working with schools for eight years, and we have hoaxes all the time, but this is the first time that I thought, 'Oops, this one could really happen,'" sheriff's Sgt. Darrel Brown said Friday. "You could see they were preparing meticulously, taking things step by step."

The boys, ages 17 and 15, had been transferred from Quartz Hill to other schools for disciplinary reasons, authorities said.

Brown said an investigation began Wednesday when a student contacted the school's vice principal and said the former classmates were planning a "Columbine-style assault" on the campus. The student said she had learned about it second-hand.

The boys told investigators that they planned to kill Quartz Hill students who had made fun of them, using guns and homemade explosives, then commit suicide, Brown said.

On Friday, deputies at the sheriff's station in Lancaster displayed a page from the 15-year-old's notebook with the scrawled message: "When I'm God, everyone dies."

The notebook was accompanied by a three-ring binder with pictures of Columbine High School killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and murderer Charles Manson.

Deputies said they found a black trench coat at one boy's home, possibly to be used in imitation of the similarly-dressed Columbine killers, and the 15-year-old boy had carved the word "hate" into his forearm, authorities alleged.

    Teens arrested in alleged massacre plot, NYT, 18.12.2005, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-12-18-alleged-hs-plot_x.htm


 

Alan Cameron was taken into custody near the shooting scene in Flatbush.

Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press        November 28, 2005

Officer Is Killed After Pulling Up Next to Gunman        NYT        29.11.2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/nyregion/29cop.html 

Officer Is Killed After Pulling Up Next to Gunman

November 29, 2005
The New York Times
By AL BAKER

A New York City police officer pursuing a driver in Brooklyn was fatally shot through the heart early yesterday when he pulled up next to the car and the driver fired five bullets into the officer's patrol car, officials said. In spite of his wound, the officer kept driving for blocks in pursuit of the gunman.

The officer, Dillon Stewart, 35, was then taken in his own bullet-riddled unmarked car to a hospital by his fellow officers, but died hours later, becoming the first officer to die in the line of duty this year.

The episode unfolded about 2:50 a.m. as Officer Stewart and his partner, Paul Lipka, began pursuing a man who had sped past them and had driven through a red light in East Flatbush. After a circuitous chase, the two cars ended up next to each other. The man fired and one of the bullets hit Officer Stewart, of Elmont on Long Island, under his left armpit just above the panels of his bullet-resistant vest, the authorities said, and pierced his left ventricle.

Despite being wounded, Officer Stewart continued following the gunman's maroon 1990 Infiniti Q-45 sedan as it zigzagged for a block and a half before disappearing into a parking garage under an apartment building at 100 East 21st Street, the police said. Then, as other officers arrived, Officer Stewart got out of his car, began to stagger and said he had been shot.

Two fellow officers from the 70th Precinct raced their wounded colleague in his patrol car to Kings County Hospital Center, with one officer driving and another tending to Officer Stewart, who remained conscious, officials said.

At the hospital, a team of more than a dozen doctors spent about five hours in the operating room and in the intensive care unit trying to control the bleeding around the officer's heart, which made it hard for the muscle to pump. His heart stopped once in the operating room, and doctors revived him, but Officer Stewart went into cardiac arrest in intensive care and was pronounced dead with his wife by his side at 8:40 a.m.

Around the same time, a suspect in the shooting was arrested in an apartment near the scene of the shooting and was being questioned through yesterday evening.

As puzzling as the shooting was to detectives, to prosecutors and to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, it was Officer Stewart's valiant pursuit of the gunman even after being shot that drew wide praise yesterday. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly noted his professionalism.

"Officer Stewart showed remarkable tenacity and courage in pursuing his assailant," Mr. Kelly said during a news conference at the hospital. "Despite his horrific wounds he continued to drive his police car, keeping the shooter in sight."

A five-year veteran of the force, Officer Stewart was the eighth officer shot in the line of duty this year. At least seven other city officers have been killed on duty since Sept. 11, 2001. The most recent was Officer William Rivera, who fell off a slick rooftop in October 2004 while searching for a burglar in Brooklyn and later died after having a seizure.

Several hours after the shooting yesterday, a suspect, Allan Cameron, 27, was taken into custody at his girlfriend's apartment on Ocean Avenue, the police said, and was questioned through the day.

Mr. Cameron has been arrested several times for motor vehicle infractions, including a violent episode in 2003 in which he tried to speed away from officers who had stopped him, hitting one with his mirror. He is also on probation for motor vehicle violations in January 2003.

An inspector in the Philadelphia Police Department said that Mr. Cameron - who he said had used the names Alan, Allen and Tallman - has been wanted there since 2003 on a warrant for first-degree aggravated assault.

Yesterday, as police combed through the scene of the shooting, a portrait of the officer emerged, revealing a decorated professional and a devoted family man with two young daughters. He was recognized four times for excellence on duty. His wife, mother and sister were at his side at the hospital.

The violence he experienced on what would be his last overnight shift happened suddenly, the police said.

Officers Stewart and Lipka were assigned to a "conditions car," deployed to check certain areas, like nightclubs, because of the potential for trouble. Though riding in an unmarked dark green Chevrolet Impala, the officers were both in uniform.

With Officer Stewart driving, they stopped outside Temptations, a club at 2210 Church Avenue, just east of Flatbush Avenue, when they saw the Infiniti speed west on Church Avenue, pass them, and run the red light at Flatbush Avenue. Officer Stewart made a U-turn and gave chase.

A check of the Infiniti's license plate, a New Jersey dealer plate, showed that it should have been turned in to the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles. With the officers in pursuit, the Infiniti followed a roundabout route around the neighborhood, and wound up back at Flatbush and Church Avenues.

The police car came to a stop nearly parallel and to the right of the Infiniti, which had also stopped. How the cars came to be almost next to each other is unclear, the police said.

With both cars in the intersection, the man in the Infiniti aimed through the open passenger side window, firing five shots and hitting the police car in the front and rear doors. The gunman turned left on Church Avenue, went a block, turned north onto East 21st Street and pulled into the basement garage at 100 East 21st Street through an open metal door.

As the gunman's car went into the garage, the metal door closed. Officers Stewart and Lipka jumped out of their car. Officer Lipka and another officer, responding to a call of shots fired, fired three bullets at the gunman. A man who lives in the building above the garage said the sound of squealing tires drew him to his window. Looking down, he saw Officer Stewart put his hand to his chest and say he was shot.

"He kind of fainted - he staggered, he touched his vest, he said, 'I'm shot, I'm shot,' " said the man, who was granted anonymity because he said he feared retribution. "And the guy coming out of the door said, 'Get him to a hospital.' "

Emergency Service Unit officers cordoned off the garage and nearby rooftops. The Infiniti was found in the building's garage, and its vehicle identification number led them to a man in the neighborhood who said he had recently sold the car to Mr. Cameron and knew where he lived.

With that information, detectives located the address of Mr. Cameron's girlfriend, Maritza Onwuka, who lives in a sixth-floor apartment at 475 Ocean Avenue, about two blocks from the scene of the shooting. Police officers, including hostage negotiators, went to the building later in the morning and determined that Mr. Cameron was inside.

The police made contact with Mr. Cameron, and at one point, he threw out a 9-millimeter magazine of bullets, the same caliber used in the shooting. A 9-millimeter pistol was found behind 485 Ocean Avenue, the police said, and the police were doing ballistics tests to determine whether it was a match with the slug recovered from Officer Stewart's body.

After about 15 minutes Mr. Cameron surrendered without resistance and was taken into custody about 8:35 a.m., but had not been officially charged as of last evening.

Ms. Onwuka said she was sleeping when Mr. Cameron let himself into her apartment, where she lives with her mother. "We were just dating," she said last night in the lobby of the building. "I don't know anything. I didn't call the cops."

Mr. Cameron had a long record of driving violations and had been on probation since Dec. 8, 2003, for aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, a misdemeanor, said Jack Ryan, a spokesman for the city's Department of Probation.

Officer Stewart's killing raised questions about the effectiveness of the bullet-resistant vest he wore.

Michael White, an assistant professor in the department of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said officers could have vests that provided more protection, but they would be more restrictive. "There is a balance that has to be struck," said Mr. White, who is also a former police officer.

Others said the design needed an update. "We've improved fibers and weight and flexibility," said Ronald McBride, a former officer who works with a national association of officers who survived attacks or accidents because of their vests. "But it's time to come out with a new style vest that increases the coverage area."

Kareem Fahim, Janon Fisher and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article.

    Officer Is Killed After Pulling Up Next to Gunman, NYT, 29.11.2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/nyregion/29cop.html

Gun dealers database

missing names of mentally ill

Posted 11/26/2005 5:26 PM
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — In Alabama, a man with a history of mental illness killed two police officers with a rifle he bought on Christmas Eve.

In suburban New York, a schizophrenic walked into a church during Mass and shot to death a priest and a parishioner.

In Texas, a woman taking anti-psychotic medication used a shotgun to kill herself.

Not one of their names was in a database that licensed gun dealers must check before making sales — even though federal law prohibits the mentally ill from purchasing guns.

Most states have privacy laws barring such information from being shared with law enforcement. Legislation pending in Congress that has bipartisan support seeks to get more of the disqualifying records in the database.

In addition to mandating the sharing of mental health records, the legislation would require that states improve their computerized record-keeping for felony records and domestic violence restraining orders and convictions, which also are supposed to bar people from purchasing guns.

Similar measures, opposed by some advocates for the mentally ill and gun-rights groups, did not pass Congress in 2002 and 2004.

The FBI, which maintains the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, has not taken a position on the bill, but the bureau is blunt about what adding names to its database would do.

"The availability of this information will save lives," the FBI said in a recent report.

More than 53 million background checks for gun sales have been conducted since 1998, when the NICS replaced a five-day waiting period. More than 850,000 sales have been denied, the FBI reported; in most of those cases, the applicant had a criminal record.

Legislation sponsored by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., says millions of records are either missing or incomplete. "The computer is only as good as the information you put in it," McCarthy said.

In the Alabama case, police say Farron Barksdale ambushed the officers as they arrived at the home of his mother in Athens, Ala., on Jan. 2, 2004. Barksdale had been committed involuntarily to mental hospitals on at least two occasions, authorities said.

Facing the death penalty, he has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease and defect.

The shootings led Alabama lawmakers to share with the FBI the names of people who have been committed involuntarily to mental institutions. But just 20 other states provide NICS at least some names of people with serious mental illness, a disqualifier for gun purchases under federal law since 1968.

Shayla Stewart had been hospitalized five times in Texas, twice by court order. Yet Stewart was able to buy a shotgun at a Wal-Mart in 2003 because Texas considers mental health records confidential.

The same is true in New York, where Peter Troy was twice admitted to mental hospitals but bought a .22-caliber rifle that he used in the shootings inside a Long Island church in March 2002. Troy is serving consecutive life terms for the killings.

As a result of the church shootings, McCarthy and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced legislation that year to close the gaps in the background check system. The bill would have required the states to give the FBI their records and provided $250 million in grants to cover their costs.

The bill passed the House without opposition but stalled in the Senate. In 2004, the measure again had the support of lawmakers who support gun rights, but it did not pass Congress.

McCarthy, whose husband was among six people shot to death on a Long Island Rail Road train in 1993, has introduced it again this year, but it has not yet been taken up by a House Judiciary subcommittee.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, a National Rifle Association board member, was a sponsor of the bill in the last Congress and continues to support it, spokesman Dan Whiting said. The NRA supports the concept, but it has not taken a position on McCarthy's legislation, spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said.

Michael Faenza, president and chief executive of the National Mental Health Association, said forcing states to share information on the mentally ill would violate patient privacy and contribute to the stigma they face.

"It's just not fair. On the one hand, we want there to be very limited access to guns," Faenza said. "But here you're singling out people because of a medical condition and denying them rights held by everyone else."

Several states have determined that they can flag residents who should not be allowed to buy a gun without compromising the privacy of mental health patients, said Matt Bennett, a spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety, which supports the bill.

Larry Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America, said adding records to the database is the wrong idea. "Our idea of improving NICS is to abolish it," Pratt said. "There is this continuing assumption that a gun buyer is guilty until proven innocent."

The states that provide some or all mental health records are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.

    Gun dealers database missing names of mentally ill, UT, 26.11.2005, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-11-26-gundealerdatabase_x.htm

Fired man shoots supervisors, himself

Posted 11/23/2005 5:41 PM Updated 11/24/2005 6:46 AM
USA Today

GLEN BURNIE, Md. (AP) — A fired employee shot two supervisors at a food distribution business Wednesday, then shot himself in the head just outside the front door, authorities and the business' owner said.

Both victims were in stable condition at the University of Maryland R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, said Lt. David Waltemeyer, a police spokesman. He said the shooter was in critical condition.

George Wagner, the owner of the business, told WJZ-TV in Baltimore that the shooter walked into H&M Wagner and Sons through the front door. He said the victims were both supervisors, and that one was shot in the leg and the other was shot in the stomach.

"All he had to do was take about 12 steps, and (he) started firing," Wagner said.

The company had fired the man several weeks earlier, Waltemeyer said. According to Wagner, he had been a truck driver for the company for about four years.

Investigators were trying to determine his motive for the shootings and pin down exactly why he was fired, Waltemeyer said. The victims were shot around 2 p.m. at the company's large headquarters and warehouse in Glen Burnie, about 10 miles south of Baltimore.

Police said investigators were still trying to determine a motive.

H&M Wagner is an independent food distributor with customers in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, according to its website.

    Fired man shoots supervisors, himself, UT, 24.11.2005, http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-23-job-shooting_x.htm

Andrew Massimilian, left,

the owner of Manhattan Shooting Excursions,

with Anthony Belluzzi, an institutional sales trader.

Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Now, Accounting Can Get Its Gun        NYT        24.11.2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/24/nyregion/24shoot.html

Man in Gray Flannel Suit Likes to Shoot

November 24, 2005
The New York Times
By VINCENT M. MALLOZZI

HIGHLAND LAKES, N.J. - This past summer, members of a Manhattan law firm went on a field trip to Danbury, Conn., where they spent an entire day at a range without swinging bats or golf clubs. The members of Kobre & Kim LLP were there not to hit and hack, but to lock and load, and to experience the thrill of firing pistols, rifles and even submachine guns.

"We do very aggressive litigation and trial work," said Michael Kim, a partner in the firm. "So we prefer an activity that dovetails nicely with that aggressive culture, and hitting a little white ball on the greens doesn't do much for us."

In the last few years, a growing number of professionals like Mr. Kim are abandoning traditional company outings like softball, golf or fishing, choosing instead to escape the pressures of their busy workdays by blowing off steam - and rounds of ammunition - at shooting ranges that give corporate retreats some of the atmosphere of military attacks.

"We offer a thrilling experience denied a lot of New Yorkers who have never fired a gun," said Andrew Massimilian, 42. He owns Manhattan Shooting Excursions, which takes individuals and corporate groups on shooting parties at seven ranges scattered around New York State, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Jersey. The excursions are held outside New York City because almost all of the firearms in Mr. Massimilian's vast arsenal are illegal to possess in the five boroughs.

Chip Brian, the president of Comtex News Network Inc., a distributor of financial news in Manhattan, has found that firing a few friendly rounds is an effective approach to bonding and networking. "At the end of the day, it's all about getting to know your clients better," he said, "and a shooting trip is one of the most unique ways to do that."

"There's a huge difference in taking clients out to dinner, with nice music playing in the background, as opposed to taking them to a sporting event, which is much more exciting," Mr. Brian said. "A shooting trip takes that to the next level - it really makes a lasting impression."

Russ Savage, a Manhattan lawyer who took a shooting holiday earlier this year, said that some of the men and women who have pulled the trigger on the increasingly popular excursion, especially those in the world of high finance, may have done so to gain "a feeling of empowerment."

"For major corporate executives whose job it is to lead, this is a much more powerful way for them to maintain a sense of aura than by simply taking their people on a company picnic," Mr. Savage said. "It's an exhibition of strength and power."

On a recent Saturday afternoon, Mr. Massimilian staged one of those exhibitions in a thickly wooded area at Highland Lakes in Sussex County, N.J., where a small army that included doctors, lawyers and Wall Street types, all wearing padded earmuffs and protective glasses, waited on his command to fire their guns into paper targets set 50 yards away in front of a mountainside.

When the signal was given, 17 men and women began blasting away at the targets, filling the cool air with the scent of gunpowder and the kind of echoing booms that can keep a deer up all night.

"Everyone goes golfing or to a Yankees game, but this is a much more exciting way to bring people together," said Anthony Belluzzi, a 31-year-old institutional sales trader for Knight Capital Markets in Jersey City. "It's great for people like me who sit in offices all day, under fluorescent lights, staring at computer screens."

Are field trips that involve packing heat instead of sandwiches detrimental to society?

"They might not be the best thing for a society that is already way too aggressive," Dr. Kenneth Porter, a Manhattan psychiatrist, said. "When you look at what is in the media, and what kids growing up are exposed to, something like this could have a negative effect on the overall mental health of the population.

"However," Dr. Porter continued, "shooting can be viewed as a legitimate sport and can be seen as a constructive outlet to express aggression, so it cuts both ways."

Seconds later, Dr. Porter, sitting at a picnic table at the Highland Lakes site with his fiancée and her son, picked up a long-range rifle and began firing at a wooden bull's-eye, shell casings flying behind him as he squeezed off round after round, his body recoiling slightly after every blast.

"Before today, I thought something like this was unequivocally harmful," he said. "But now I've learned otherwise."

Mr. Massimilian, whose grandfather once owned a firearms manufacturing company in Germany, holds an M.B.A. from Columbia. He worked for 20 years in the corporate world, with PricewaterhouseCoopers and Vornado Realty Trust, before establishing his shooting excursion business two years ago.

He said the fees for his excursions range from $150 to $600 a participant, depending on the firearms used and the level of personal instruction offered. His most expensive guns include the Springfield Armory M1-A Super Match long-range rifle; the Armalite AR50, a bolt-action, 50-caliber, long-range target rifle; the Benelli M4 Tactical Shotgun; and the Heckler & Koch Elite, a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol.

Some customers, like Mr. Belluzzi, the trader, chose guns with special nostalgic or sentimental value, such as the M1 Garand, a G.I. infantry rifle used during World War II, which he had fired most of the afternoon.

"Both of my grandfathers served in the war and used the exact same weapon," he said. "I thought it would be cool to see what it felt like."

Mr. Massimilian blames Hollywood for the negative images attached to shooting, which is an Olympic sport.

"Hollywood marginalizes us by showing three types of shooters: criminals, policemen and soldiers," he said. "They never show the doctor, the banker or the father-and-son teams who just want to go out for a friendly shoot."

Or the aggressive lawyer, like Mr. Kim, who is targeting a return date.

"We're going back to shoot again," he said. "And we'll probably make it an annual event."

    Man in Gray Flannel Suit Likes to Shoot, NYT, 24.11.2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/24/nyregion/24shoot.html

    Cet article a été republié, le même jour, sous le titre Now, Accounting Can Get Its Gun, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/24/nyregion/24shoot.html

Mall gunman wounds six

Sun Nov 20, 2005 8:09 PM ET
Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A gunman opened fire on Sunday at a shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington, wounding at least six people and taking three people hostage before being captured by police, according to media reports.

The unidentified gunman began randomly shooting an assault rifle inside the Tacoma Mall at about 12:15 p.m. PST. The suspect then took refuge inside a Sam Goody music store, where he held three hostages, according to reports.

The suspect was taken into custody several hours later without any shots fired and the hostages released unharmed, according to reports.

The mall is located four miles southwest of downtown Tacoma and houses more than 140 stores.

    Mall gunman wounds six, R, 20.11.2005, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-11-21T010912Z_01_ARM084561_RTRUKOC_0_US-CRIME-SHOOTING-MALL.xml&archived=False

Assistant Principal

Is Fatally Shot in Tennessee;

Student Is Held

November 9, 2005
The New York Times
By BRENDA GOODMAN

A 15-year-old student shot and killed an assistant vice principal and critically wounded two other administrators yesterday at a high school in Jacksboro, Tenn., the authorities said.

As shots rang out in the high school's administrative offices around 2 p.m., students dived for cover inside the adjacent cafeteria at Campbell County High School in Jacksboro, a town of about 1,900 in northeast Tennessee, about 30 miles northwest of Knoxville, said a spokesman for the county, Larry Skeen.

Mr. Skeen said the principal, Gary Seale, and two assistant principals, Ken Bruce and Jim Pierce, immediately closed in to try to get the gun from the student, whom Mr. Skeen identified as Kenneth Bartley Jr. A scuffle ensued and Mr. Bruce was fatally shot. Mr. Seale and Mr. Pierce were flown to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville for treatment. Mr. Seale was in serious condition, and Mr. Pierce was critically wounded, said a hospital spokeswoman, Lisa McNeal.

As word of the shooting spread, parents rushed to pick up their children from the high school, which has 1,400 students.

Mr. Bartley, whom Mr. Skeen said was a freshman, was taken into custody and treated for a hand injury at St. Mary's Hospital in neighboring La Follette. He was in custody last night although no charges had been filed. A woman who answered the phone at Mr. Bartley's residence confirmed that he had been arrested, but she had no other comment.

A student, Amanda Gulley, 15, said she was in her fourth-period class when school officials "came over the intercom and said there was a lockdown." She was finally allowed to leave her classroom around 3:30, and when she walked out, she said, ambulances and police officers were everywhere.

Speaking barely above a whisper, Ms. Gulley said that at that moment she knew she wanted just one thing: "To go home and be safe."

Michelle Malicoat, 30, was at home when she heard about the shooting and rushed to get her children at the nearby elementary school. "Everybody's wanting to know what happened, what could have brought this on," Ms. Malicoat said.

This is the second fatal shooting of a school employee in Tennessee this year. In March, Joyce Gregory, 47, a school bus driver, was shot and killed as she stopped to pick up a student on her route. Jason Clinard, 15, has been charged as an adult with murder.

    Assistant Principal Is Fatally Shot in Tennessee; Student Is Held, NYT, November 9, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/national/09shooting.html

San Francisco Gun Vote: Tough Law or Thin Gesture?

November 5, 2005
The New York Times
By MATT RICHTEL

SAN FRANCISCO - With warring gangs igniting a surge in homicides here in the last year, voters on Tuesday will consider a sweeping proposal to curb the violence: the nation's strictest municipal gun control ordinances, a measure that would ban possession, sale and manufacture of handguns and ammunition within city limits.

Polling data taken over the summer suggested that the measure, Proposition H, enjoyed overwhelming support of likely voters. But it has since come under attack from a coalition of critics - including the National Rifle Association and a smattering of community groups - and legal experts say that should it pass, it is likely to face a stiff challenge in state courts.

Should it succeed in banning handguns, it would join big cities like Washington, which banned handgun ownership in 1976, and Chicago, which in 1982 banned manufacture, sale and possession of handguns, but grandfathered in guns owned when the ordinance went into effect. Chicago has since banned the sale of ammunition.

Whatever the measure's fate in San Francisco, it has sparked some conflict. The San Francisco police union has lambasted the local elected official who authored the ordinance, which it said would do little except take guns out of the hands of law-abiding residents. The police have also said the law, which would require residents to surrender weapons by March 1 of next year could present an enforcement headache.

The measure provides for the city's board of supervisors, in consultation with the law enforcement community, to determine after the election what will be the penalty for violators.

"This is putting a Band-Aid on heart surgery," said Gary P. Delagnes, president of the San Francisco Police Officer's Association. He called it another "silly idea" from elected officials whose progressive ideas are not grounded in the realities of fighting crime.

The ordinance's author and chief sponsor, San Francisco City and County Supervisor Chris Daly, said he doesn't expect the law, if passed, to curtail crime by itself. But he said that it could reduce the number of guns in circulation, and thus limit the number obtained by would-be criminals.

"If a criminal wants to get a gun outside of the county, clearly he can," Mr. Daly said. But "if we're able to limit the number of handguns in circulation in San Francisco, we can take a handgun out of some of these situations where there are homicides."

Mr. Daly, a self-described far-left progressive, quipped of his critics: "I know I'm crazy, but they're crazier than I am."

Many San Francisco voters will be considering a measure intended to impact a part of the city with which they rarely interact. As the city has gentrified, and housing costs skyrocketed, poorer residents have been pushed into a handful of neighborhoods on the outskirts, like Bayview-Hunters Point. There, crime has had a resurgence, helping lead to 88 gun deaths overall in San Francisco in 2004, up from 69 the year before, and the highest since 1995, according to the California Attorney General's office.

Mr. Delagnes attributed the surge to drug- and gang-related violence in pockets of San Francisco. Overall, he said police have confiscated some 1,400 guns this year. And he said that if the city were serious about fighting gun violence, it would better enforce existing laws, such as urging judges to give jail time to people caught with unlicensed firearms.

Mr. Delagnes said the city also should follow the lead of Oakland, across the bay, which has seen its crime rate fall recently after giving more resources to police and working with federal law enforcement.

A poll taken in July of 600 likely San Francisco voters found 74 percent support for Proposition H, with 21 percent of voters against the ordinance and 5 percent undecided, according to the Democratic pollster David Binder. Mr. Binder said he thought that the heavy lobbying by various opposition groups, including the NRA, had cut into the margin, but that it would still pass.

In 1982, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a measure banning gun ownership that was signed into law by Dianne Feinstein, who was then mayor. The city had been shaken in 1978 when Dan White walked into city hall and shot and killed Ms. Feinstein's predecessor, George Moscone, and supervisor Harvey Milk.

But several months later, a California appeals court said the law violated a statute that gave the state the authority to license and regulate guns. Mr. Daly, the supervisor, said the new proposition was carefully worded in a way to avoid the basis on which the last ordinance was rejected. "We've got a decent chance in court," he said.

Others are less generous, saying the ordinance is doomed to be overturned in court.

"This is a triumph of symbolic politics," said Franklin E. Zimring, at professor at the University of California at Berkeley Boalt School of Law, deeming the ordinance a "sure loser" in state court. Both daily newspapers in the city, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Examiner, cited the likelihood of a successful legal challenge as one key reason they recommend voters reject the measure.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, citing the likelihood of a successful court challenge, said he hasn't bothered to take a position on the measure. "It's a symbolic gesture," Mayor Newsom said. "It's a public opinion poll."

    San Francisco Gun Vote: Tough Law or Thin Gesture?, 5.11.2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/05/national/05gun.html

John Sherffius        St Louis, MO        Cagle        20.10.2005

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/special/sherffius.nsf/front?openview&count=2000

House passes gun lawsuit shield legislation

Thu Oct 20, 2005 12:19 PM ET
The New York Times
By Joanne Kenen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed and sent to President George W. Bush for his signature legislation giving the U.S. gun industry sweeping protection from civil lawsuits, a victory for the powerful gun lobby.

The "Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms" bill passed with a bipartisan 283-144 vote, with a several dozen Democrats from gun-friendly southern or rural areas joining the Republican majority. The Senate has already passed the legislation, and the White House strongly backs it.

The bill would provide broad immunity from civil lawsuits filed by dozens of cities and municipalities against gun makers, dealers and distributors. Critics say the lawsuits are frivolous, are politically motivated and are designed to undermine U.S. citizens' rights to own guns.

"The intended consequence of these frivolous lawsuits could not be more clear -- the financial ruin of the firearms industry," said House Judiciary chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican.

The legislation is another huge victory for the National Rifle Association, which with its many allies in Congress has been able to outvote and outflank the dwindling number of vocal gun control advocates in Congress. Last year the NRA successfully blocked renewal of the 10-year-old ban on assault weapons.

"I think the air is out of the gun control balloon, and I think what popped the balloon is politics and elections," NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said, noting that many Democrats see gun control as a losing issue after more than a decade of Republican political gains.

    House passes gun lawsuit shield legislation, R, 20.10.2005, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-10-20T161941Z_01_MOR021735_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-GUNS.xml
 

A gun dealer displays several United States-made assault-style rifles

inside his Dallas, September 13, 2004.

The House of Representatives on Thursday plans to approve

legislation giving the U.S. gun industry sweeping protection

from civil lawsuits.

REUTERS/Jeff Mitchell

House passes gun lawsuit shield legislation        R        20.10.2005

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=
2005-10-20T161941Z_01_MOR021735_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-GUNS.xml 

House Passes Bill to Protect Gun Industry From Lawsuits

By DAVID STOUT
October 20, 2005
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - The House of Representatives delivered the gun lobby a cherished victory today, overwhelmingly approving a bill to protect gun manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits by crime victims.

The House passed the bill, 283 to 144, with the total reflecting considerable support from Democrats as well as the Republican majority. The Senate passed the bill, 65 to 31, in July, so the measure now goes to President Bush to be signed into law.

Supporters and opponents of the bill have described it in starkly different terms, with backers viewing it as a way to protect the industry from suits that could bankrupt honest businessmen, and opponents seeing it as a cave-in to the lobbying power of the National Rifle Association.

The House bill, identical to one passed by the Senate on July 29, would prohibit lawsuits against gun makers and distributors for misuse of their products during the commission of a crime.

The rifle association has waged a vigorous campaign for the legislation and has sought to capitalize on violence in New Orleans after the recent hurricane and flooding.

"What we've seen in Louisiana - the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of disaster - is exactly the kind of situation where the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves," Wayne LaPierre, the association's executive vice president, said in a recent statement on the organization's Web site.

The Second Amendment has been much debated over the decades. It declares, "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Some Americans have read the amendment as an unambiguous endorsement of the right of private citizens to have firearms, while advocates of gun control have argued that this "right" is much less clear-cut and subject to regulation.

In any event, today's vote is a triumph for gun manufacturers. "Lawsuits seeking to hold the firearms industry responsible for the criminal and unlawful use of its products are brazen attempts to accomplish through litigation what has not been achieved by legislation and the democratic process," said Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

    House Passes Bill to Protect Gun Industry From Lawsuits, NYT, 20.10.2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/politics/19cnd-gun.html?hp&ex=1129867200&en=94c11d764ddf0d08&ei=5094&partner=homepage

11-Year-Old Girl Is Shot in Face by Boy, 10

August 7, 2005
The New York Times
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ and COLIN MOYNIHAN

An 11-year-old girl in Brooklyn was shot in the face yesterday evening by a 10-year-old boy, apparently playing with a gun, the police and neighbors said.

The girl was shot in the temple above her left eye, a neighbor who had called 911 said. She was rushed from her apartment building at 2020 Pacific Street in Weeksville, Brooklyn, to Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, where she was listed in critical condition last night.

The girl was identified as Brenda Fields by her mother, Wykeema Fields, who was at the hospital.

The neighbor, Brenda McCrae, 43, said a boy from an apartment on her floor had pounded on her door and said another boy had just shot Brenda. The boy added, "I told them to stop playing with the gun," Ms. McCrae said.

When Ms. McCrae burst into the fourth-floor apartment, she found the child sitting on the floor, slumped against a wall.

The little girl said softly, "I can't move," Ms. McCrae said. Shocked and disoriented, she ran back to her apartment and called 911. The emergency operator told her to apply pressure to the wound with a towel.

By the time Ms. McCrae returned to the little girl, she had climbed onto a bed, moaning and bleeding.

Ms. McCrae said she held her and comforted her, saying over and over, "Be still, be still."

Neighbors said the boy who apparently shot the gun had fled the apartment but that an adult detained him until the police came.

The name of the boy was not immediately released by the police because he is under age. They said that he was in custody and that the case remained under investigation.

It was not immediately clear whether the shooting was accidental. An uncle of the victim who had gone to the hospital to see her, and who declined to give his name, said the gun had been left unsecured.

"Who would leave a loaded gun in an unlocked closet?" he asked angrily.

Late last night, Ms. Fields, the girl's mother, said she had spoken to some of the children who had been in the apartment when the shooting took place. During a game of hide-and-seek, the boy apparently found a gun in a closet and brandished it at Brenda, Ms. Fields said.

"She hit his hand, like, get that gun out of my face," Ms. Fields said, "and they say he pointed the gun back at her and shot her in the face."

Matthew Sweeney contributed reporting for this article.

    11-Year-Old Girl Is Shot in Face by Boy, 10, NYT, 7, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/nyregion/07shot.html?

In Hartford,

Police Shooting Adds to a Tense Climate

May 21, 2005
The New York Times
By STACEY STOWE

HARTFORD, May 20 - Shootings are so common in this city's hardscrabble North End, children point out bullet holes in the facades of their homes as children elsewhere might show off the gap left by a lost tooth.

"That's what you hear, guns, every night and daytime too," said Alberto Nunez, 11, on the porch of a Nelson Street house that was stippled with bullet holes.

Last month the city began a new policing program aimed at getting illegal guns off the streets and putting more officers in neighborhoods. But in many parts of Hartford, the police are regarded with suspicion and even animosity. That hostility deepened after a white officer shot two young black men, one fatally, on May 7.

"You can't be sitting there chilling or they come after you," said Tyrone Smith, 36, who grew up here. "Everybody on the block isn't a drug dealer."

Indeed, drug arrests are down almost 40 percent this year. It is gun violence that is soaring in Hartford, Connecticut's capital and one of the nation's poorest cities. Sixty-four people have been shot here since the beginning of the year, compared with 42 shootings in the same period last year.

"People are resorting to settling their differences with gun violence, whether it be two guys arguing over parking spaces or sunglasses or drugs," said Daryl K. Roberts, the deputy police chief. "They shoot each other in the legs; they figure that's not as life-threatening. They've lost grasp of reality, and kids play a lot of video games with guns and they become desensitized."

In February, a new neighborhood policing plan carved up this city of about 124,000 people, mostly Latino and black, into eight zones, each overseen by a senior officer. That was followed by the creation in April of a special task force, made up of city detectives and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, with the goal of removing illegal guns from the streets. Robert Lawlor, 41, the police officer who fired the shots on May 7 that killed Jashon Bryant, 18, and wounded Brandon Henry, 21, is a member of that group.

That night, Officer Lawlor was working with Dan Prather, a federal agent assigned to the task force. What happened about 7:30, in a parking lot on Main Street near Nelson Street, in an area that the police say is among the most dangerous in Hartford, is in dispute.

According to an account by Officer Lawlor's lawyer, Michael Georgetti, Officer Lawlor approached a car where Mr. Bryant and Mr. Henry were sitting after he had seen Mr. Bryant climb in with a handgun. Officer Lawlor displayed his badge and told the men to place their hands, palms up, on the windshield. Mr. Bryant reached under the seat and Mr. Henry started to drive toward Agent Prather. Officer Lawlor fired his .45 automatic at the car four or five times, striking Mr. Bryant in the back of the head and Mr. Henry in the chest. No gun was found in the car.

A report filed by the two detectives who investigated the shooting said that the officers approached the car because they "observed suspicious activity within the vehicle between two black males that they believed was drug related." While talking to Mr. Bryant and Mr. Henry, the detectives said, Officer Lawlor saw what "appeared to be a pistol pulled out by one of the occupants of the vehicle." The report, which was obtained by The New York Times, said Officer Lawlor ordered them to drop the weapon. When they didn't, he fired several shots at the car.

On Tuesday, at a shrine for Mr. Bryant set on the greasy pavement near a market, his aunt, Toinette Gaines, offered her own account.

"He was looking for $5 he lost in the parking lot, and he got killed for it," she said, as she sprinkled rose petals on the unlit candles.

The shooting is being investigated by the Hartford Police and by the state's attorney in Hartford. Mr. Bryant's family has hired a lawyer, Jefferson D. Jelly, who filed a request for a federal investigation on Friday. Officer Lawlor, a 17-year veteran of the force, was reassigned to the intelligence unit of the department during the investigation, his lawyer said.

The Police Department is working hard to burnish its image, which has been tarnished by past scandals. In the late 1990's, several officers were convicted on federal charges of sexual misconduct with prostitutes. The fatal shooting in 1999 of a 14-year-old black boy by a white police officer has left a residue of skepticism.

A 2004 investigation into racial profiling did not support allegations that a police lieutenant had instructed officers to target people for arrest based on race. But Kenneth H. Kennedy Jr., a city councilman who is black, said that he continues to hear from his constituents that minorities are targeted.

"It's not happening to poor white kids on city streets," said Mr. Kennedy. "They're black kids."

Eddie Perez, Hartford's first Latino mayor, said minority officers were being aggressively recruited. Of Hartford's 392 police officers, 44 percent are nonwhite.

Deputy Chief Roberts, who is black and was raised in a Hartford public housing project, acknowledged the shooting had frayed already strained relations but vowed to persevere with community policing.

"A lot of people don't want to be seen talking to us until they've been the victim of a crime," he said. "We've got to get people to participate in their own success."

In Hartford, Police Shooting Adds to a Tense Climate, NYT, May 21, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/21/nyregion/21hartford.html

Tionette Gaines at a memorial to her nephew, Jashon Bryant, 18, who was fatally shot on May 7
by a police officer at Main and Nelson Streets in Hartford - raising tensions in an already tense town.

George Rhue for the New York Times

In Hartford, Police Shooting Adds to a Tense Climate, NYT, May 21, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/21/nyregion/21hartford.html

Justices Limit Gun Law That Bars Possession by Felons

April 27, 2005
The New York Times
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, April 26 - The Supreme Court on Tuesday curbed the reach of a federal law that prohibits convicted felons from possessing guns, ruling 5 to 3 that the law does not apply to those who were convicted by courts in foreign countries.

The majority arrived at that conclusion by interpreting the statute's reference to a conviction in "any court" to mean "any court in the United States." Justice Stephen G. Breyer's majority opinion said that in the absence of any indication that Congress even considered the issue when it enacted the law in 1968, the court should apply a legal presumption that "Congress ordinarily intends its statutes to have domestic, not extraterritorial, application."

Justice Breyer said the gun law would create anomalies if applied to foreign convictions, because foreign legal systems have made different choices of what conduct to regard as criminal. Citing the Russian criminal code as an example, he said that someone might be regarded as a felon "for engaging in economic conduct that our society might encourage." A foreign conviction does not necessarily indicate that a person is dangerous, Justice Breyer said.

The law, often referred to as the felon-in-possession statute, makes it illegal for someone "who has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year" to possess a firearm. Because it imposes mandatory sentences on the basis of a record of previous convictions, prosecutors commonly add a felon-in-possession charge when seeking an indictment for other offenses.

In this case, Small v. United States, No. 03-750, the gun possession itself was the offense. Gary Small, who had been convicted in Japan of smuggling guns into that country and served three years in a Japanese prison, bought a gun within a week of returning to the United States.

Mr. Small pleaded guilty to a gun possession charge, while reserving the right to appeal on the ground that the felon-in-possession statute did not apply to his Japanese conviction. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, rejected his argument in a 2003 decision that the Supreme Court overturned on Tuesday.

Dissenting, Justice Clarence Thomas said the majority had stretched to create an exception that the law itself did not provide. "In concluding that 'any' means not what it says, but rather 'a subset of any,' the court distorts the plain meaning of the statute," Justice Thomas said.

He also objected to the majority's assumption that application of the law to Mr. Small would give it an "extraterritorial" dimension.

"The statute criminalizes gun possession in this country, not abroad," he said. "In prosecuting Small, the government is enforcing a domestic criminal statute to punish domestic criminal conduct."

Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy joined the dissenting opinion. Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined the majority. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who had just begun treatment for thyroid cancer when the case was argued on Nov. 3, did not participate.

The case was the court's latest of several efforts to interpret federal gun laws in which simple language masks layers of legal complexity. In 1995, for example, the court examined a federal law that makes it a crime to "use" a gun in connection with a narcotics offense, and decided that "use" meant "active employment" of the gun rather than keeping it locked in a car trunk.

In the new case, the majority said that to discern the meaning of "any" in the statute, "we must look beyond that word itself" to the way the word would ordinarily be used. In announcing the decision from the bench, Justice Breyer gave an example. If he offered to see a particular movie at "any theater," he said, "I'm not talking about theaters in Japan."

A second case on Tuesday involved "any" in a different statute, the federal wire fraud law, which makes it a crime to use interstate wires to carry out "any" scheme to defraud.

The question was whether the law applied to a smuggling operation intended to evade Canada's high liquor taxes by hiding liquor in trucks and driving them across the border from New York. The operation involved telephoning orders from New York to discount liquor stores in Maryland. The government's theory was that the scheme defrauded Canada of its rightful tax revenue.

The three defendants, David and Carl Pasquantino and Arthur Hilts, argued both before trial and after their convictions that a legal doctrine known as the revenue rule meant that the wire fraud law could not apply to their case. Under this rule, one government cannot use the courts of another to collect taxes.

But the rule does not apply in this case, Justice Thomas wrote in a majority opinion affirming a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., which had upheld the men's convictions. "This is a criminal prosecution brought by the United States in its sovereign capacity to punish domestic criminal conduct," he said.

The vote in this case, Pasquantino v. United States, No. 03-725, was 5 to 4, with Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Scalia and Souter dissenting. "The court has ascribed an exorbitant scope to the wire fraud statute" in giving it "an extraordinary extraterritorial effect," Justice Ginsburg said in her dissenting opinion.

Justice Thomas replied in his majority opinion that neither the government's use of the statute nor the court's interpretation of it gave it an extraterritorial effect. The defendants' "offense was complete the moment they executed the scheme inside the United States," he said.

At the end of his opinion, Justice Thomas observed that "it may seem an odd use of the federal government's resources to prosecute a U.S. citizen for smuggling cheap liquor into Canada." But the "broad language of the statute" permitted the prosecution, he said.

    Justices Limit Gun Law That Bars Possession by Felons, NYT, April 27, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/27/politics/27scotus.html

Gun Victims Speak Out on Scars of Violence

Mon Apr 11, 2005 11:15 AM ET
Reuters
By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) - In America's epidemic of gun violence, the worst of any industrialized nation, the dead make news but the wounded are soon forgotten.

With firearms mayhem in the headlines almost daily, from a Minnesota Indian reservation to an Atlanta courtroom and recent random shooting sprees in Texas and on the East Coast, it is the wounded who go on living -- a half million of them in recent years by one estimate.

Some of them are speaking out, in raw black and white essays and photos on display at Chicago's Peace Museum (http://www.peacemuseum.org).

"I touched my face and saw the blood on my hand," says Ciara Padilla, who was 4 when shots from a drive-by gunman tore into her Dallas home.

The bullet "went in the top of my head, under the skin, so it didn't go into my brain. I just waited to be with my mom and dad so I wouldn't be alone," she adds. The camera caught her on a bench in front of a paint-peeled piano topped by a scarf and family photos, in the same home where she was shot in 1997.

There are about 50 stories like her's, captured in photos by Robert Drea and in the victim's own words by writer Stephanie Arena, each reduced to a display about the size of small window, each relentless in its honesty, pain and simplicity.

"I opened the door," recalls Tierra Varnado of New Orleans. "I don't remember the bullet hitting me. I remember going to the hospital." She was 12 in 2002 when a man invaded her home in a dispute with a member of her family. He carried an AK-47, killed two in her family and shot her in the head and face.

"I don't know if I did raise my hand or not but my grandma and mama told me I did. I was in the hospital for two months. My hand's all right ... right now I can't do much with it, but I be practicing," she says, her big eyes soft and haunting.

Joel Irizarry sits in a wheelchair in a Chicago neighborhood where an attack by a rival gang sent a bullet into his spine in 1998 at age 17.

"Once in a while you get to thinking, what if? What would my life be? That stings," he says. "Every once in a while you'll daydream. If it hadn't happened, where would I be now?"

From Edina, Minnesota, policeman Mike Blood, recalls a bank robbery suspect who turned his gun on him in November 2000: "I was thinking I have to stay alive. I was shot four times in my hip, my leg and two more times in my back. I had only 29 days left on the force before I retired."

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

Grief spills from the words of Glenda Meraz of Huntington, California, whose estranged husband killed their 1-year-old daughter out of revenge in 1998 and them himself. She was then attacked by the man's brother who gunned her down on a city street.

Near death, she says, she saw a wooden door and heard a tapping. "I heard a softly low voice that said Ma? I knew it was her," she said of her lost daughter. But sirens wailed and her near-death experience faded.

"When my doctors see me they always tell me how lucky I am to be alive," she says, he sad eyes telling a different story.

In Portland, Oregon, artist Lonnie Feather recalls the day she confronted her boyfriend about a $30,000 debt he had run up on her credit cards. He returned with a gun.

"He aimed the gun at my head. I remember two shots but my brain was still working ... he put a pillow over my head and fired into the pillow. Three bullets hit my head, one hit the wall." She suffered no permanent disabilities.

Arena and Drea, a Chicago-based husband and wife team, cite U.S. government figures for 2000 which show that 28,663 people were killed by gunfire of all kinds, including accidents, and nearly twice that many, 57,509, were wounded.

The exhibit moves to Sacramento, Calif., later this year and to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., next year, among other venues. Arena and Drea have been working on the expanding exhibit since 2001.

While about 500 people have visited the exhibit since it was mounted in Chicago a month ago, the museum's location -- a field house at a public park in the middle of Chicago's crime-scarred West Side -- is ironically remote for many.

This is the fullest showing of the exhibit, which has been mounted in a few academic and medical settings in the past few years. They have funding to add stories from victims from Memphis and hope to add those of people in Washington, D.C., Florida, and other states.

    Gun Victims Speak Out on Scars of Violence, R, Mon Apr 11, 2005 11:15 AM ET, http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=3A3T4GMJTVUHACRBAEZSFEY?type=domesticNews&storyID=8144472

Recent Shootings Inside Schools or Universities

Tue Mar 22, 2005 09:08 AM ET

Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - A high school student shot dead nine people and then killed himself Monday in Minnesota.

Here is a short chronology of some of the major shootings inside schools and universities in the last ten years:

March 1996 - BRITAIN - A gunman burst into a primary school in Dunblane in Scotland and shot dead 16 children and their teacher before killing himself.

March 1997 - YEMEN - A man with an assault rifle attacked hundreds of pupils at two schools in Sanaa, killing six children and two others. He was sentenced to death the next day.

October 1997 - USA - At Pearl High School in Mississippi, a 16-year-old boy killed his mother at home, then at school shot dead two students, including his former girlfriend.

December 1997 - USA - At Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, a 14-year-old boy killed three students attending a prayer meeting.

March 1998 - USA - At Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, two boys aged 13 and 11 set off the fire alarm and killed four students and a teacher as they left the school.

May 1998 - USA - In Springfield, Oregon, a student opened fire in Thurston High School, killing two students and injuring 22. The boy's parents were later found slain in their home.

April 1999 - USA - Two student gunmen killed 12 other students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves.

November 1999 - GERMANY - In Meissen, eastern Germany, a 15-year-old student stabbed his teacher to death after taking bets of $500 from classmates he would dare commit the crime.

March 2000 - GERMANY - In Branneburg in Bavaria, a 16-year-old pupil at a private boarding school killed a 57-year-old teacher and then shot himself.

March 2001 - USA - In Santee, California, a 15-year-old freshman killed two students at Santana High School.

March 2001 - USA - A student opened fire at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, California, wounding five. The teen-ager killed himself while in jail five months later.

June 2001 - JAPAN - Mamoru Takuma, armed with a kitchen knife, entered the Ikeda Elementary School near Osaka and killed eight children. Takuma was executed in September 2004.

January 2002 - USA - A student who had been dismissed from the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, killed the dean, a professor and a student, and wounded three others.

February 2002 - GERMANY - In Freising, in Bavaria, a former student thrown out of trade school shot three people before killing himself. Another teacher was injured. April 26, 2002 - GERMANY - In Erfurt, eastern Germany, a gunman opened fire after he said he was not going to take a math test . A total of 18 people died, including the assailant.

Sept 24, 2003 - USA - A student at Rocori High School in central Minnesota gunned down two classmates.

Sept 1, 2004 - RUSSIA - At least 326 hostages - half of them children - died in a chaotic storming of School No.1 in Beslan, after it was seized by rebels demanding Chechen independence.

March 21, 2005 - USA - A high school student shot dead nine and then killed himself at Minnesota's Red Lake Indian Reservation.

    Recent Shootings Inside Schools or Universities, R, Tue Mar 22, 2005 09:08 AM ET, http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7972336

Mike Lester        Cagle / Rome News-Tribune, Rome, GA        24.3.2005

http://www.cagle.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/lester.asp
http://www.mikelester.com/contact.html

Bush Decries School Rampage ;

Critics Question Delay

Sat Mar 26, 2005 08:18 PM ET

Reuters

By Adam Entous

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush broke his public silence on Saturday about the deadliest U.S. school shooting in six years, touting the government's response "at this tragic time" after some American Indian leaders complained he paid little attention to the rampage.

Bush's delayed public reaction to the shooting stood in contrast to his swift and high-profile intervention earlier this week to try to prolong the life of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman in Florida whose feeding tube was removed.

Bush's job-approval rating has sunk to the lowest level of his presidency in the latest national survey, with some pollsters citing a public backlash against his intervention in the Schiavo case.

In his first public comments on Monday's school shooting, Bush decried the "tragedy" in which a 16-year-old boy killed nine people and then himself on a Minnesota Indian reservation.

Bush, on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, credited school security guard Derrick Brun for saving the lives of students by confronting the young gunman, before being killed.

"Derrick's bravery cost him his life," Bush said in his weekly radio address as the first funerals began for victims on the Red Lake Indian reservation.

The White House said Bureau of Indian Affairs Director Patrick Ragsdale and Ruben Barrales, assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs, attended the services Saturday.

The rampage by Jeff Weise was the worst U.S. school shooting since 15 people died in the 1999 Columbine massacre.

"We are doing everything we can to meet the needs of the community at this tragic time," Bush said one day after calling Floyd Jourdain, chairman of the Red Lake Chippewa tribe, to offer his condolences.

While White House spokesman Scott McClellan spoke briefly about the shooting on Tuesday, Bush did not respond publicly while he focused on Schiavo's fate, critics say.

Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement in Red Lake, said Bush's response came too late. "He should have been the first one to reach out to the Red Lake Indian community," he said.

INTERRUPT VACATION

Bellecourt cited Bush's decision to break off his Texas vacation to sign emergency legislation on Monday that permitted federal courts to consider appeals by Schiavo's parents to force the reconnection of the feeding tube.

"He does not have any problems flying in to restore the feeding tube to Terri Schiavo. I'm sure if this happened in some school in Texas and a bunch of white kids were shot down, he would have been there too," Bellecourt said.

Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said the president received "regular and full briefings on the tragedy."

"The president's immediate focus was on making sure the federal government was responding to the needs of the community. They were and they continue to do so," she said.

In his radio address, Bush said the FBI and the Justice Department are "working to coordinate relief" efforts with state, local and tribal authorities.

He made no direct mention of Schiavo, but said: "To keep our children safe and protected, we must continue to foster a culture that affirms life and provides love, and helps our young people build character."

Bush was criticized for his initial reaction to the Dec. 26 tsunami in Asia when he pledged $15 million in U.S. government assistance. The U.S. government's pledge rose substantially after the enormity of the disaster became clear.

    Bush Decries School Rampage ; Critics Question Delay, R, Sat Mar 26, 2005 08:18 PM ET, http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=EAA3S3KWLDBTMCRBAEOCFEY?type=topNews&storyID=8006924

Bush Breaks Silence on School Shooting

Fri Mar 25, 2005 04:44 PM ET

By Adam Entous

Reuters

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush offered federal help and personal prayers on Friday to the Red Lake Indian reservation in northern Minnesota after being criticized for remaining silent for days about the deadliest U.S. school shooting in six years.

Bush, on vacation at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, spoke for five minutes to Floyd Jourdain, chairman of the Red Lake Chippewa tribe, about Monday's rampage in which a 16-year-old killed nine people and himself.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush sent his condolences to the "entire Red Lake community," and "pledged continued help from the federal government."

"The president ended the call by saying he is praying for the victims and the families," Perino said, adding that Bush would discuss the shooting publicly in his weekly radio address on Saturday.

While White House spokesman Scott McClellan spoke briefly about the shooting on Tuesday, Bush steered clear of the incident in public remarks, focusing instead on the fate of brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo.

Bush's silence drew fire from some American Indians, including Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement in Red Lake.

"It's kind of late," Bellecourt said of Bush's call to Jourdain. "He should have been the first one to reach out to the Red Lake Indian community."

Bellecourt cited Bush's decision to rush back to the White House from his Texas ranch last weekend to sign unprecedented emergency legislation allowing Schiavo's case to be reviewed in federal courts.

"He does not have any problems flying in to restore the feeding tube to Terri Schiavo. I'm sure if this happened in some school in Texas and a bunch of white kids were shot down, he would have been there too," Bellecourt said.

Perino said the president had tried calling Jourdain on Thursday, but got voice mail instead.

The White House said the FBI has jurisdiction in the case and has responded by sending 10 victim specialists to Red Lake.

Perino said FBI specialists were now in Minnesota doing a "needs assessment." The FBI could provide funds to help victims with grief counseling and funeral arrangements.

Monday's rampage by Jeff Weise was the worst U.S. school shooting since the Columbine massacre in 1999 killed 15.

Weise identified himself as an "angel of death" and a "NativeNazi" in online material.

    Bush Breaks Silence on School Shooting, R, Fri Mar 25, 2005 04:44 PM ET, http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=8005090

Brian Fairrington        Cagle        29.3.2005

http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/fairrington.asp

Signs of Danger Were Missed

in a Troubled Teenager's Life

March 24, 2005

The New York Times

By MONICA DAVEY and JODI WILGOREN

BEMIDJI, Minn., March 23 - Looking back at all the pieces, some who knew Jeff Weise say they wonder why someone did not see his eruption coming months, or even years, ago.

There was the threat Mr. Weise, 16, once made on his own life, sending him away from his home on the Red Lake Indian Reservation for psychiatric treatment. There were the pictures of bloodied bodies and guns he drew and shared freely with classmates. There was the story he apparently wrote about a shooting spree at a school in a small town.

"The clues were all there," said Kim DesJarlait, Mr. Weise's stepaunt, who lives in Minneapolis. "Everything was laid out, right there, for the school or the authorities in Red Lake to see it coming. I don't want to blame Red Lake, but did they not put two and two together? This kid was crying out, and those guys chose to ignore it. They need to start focusing on their kids."

Others, including the principal of the high school where, on Monday, Mr. Weise killed five students, a security guard, a teacher and then himself, defended their handling of the teenager, saying that the authorities had seen all there was - at the time - to see, and had actually been struggling madly to help a boy through his difficult youth.

"We may need people to be more aware," the principal of Red Lake High School, Chris Dunshee, acknowledged on Wednesday, after teachers and school board officials met privately for the first time for counseling. "But I think most of us felt like this was a troubled young man, and someone whose problems we felt like we were addressing."

Beyond the outward signs of stress, however, there was another indication, far darker and more explicit, that people on the reservation said they had never seen or heard of: Mr. Weise's vast Internet life.

Though many here said Mr. Weise spent a lot of time on his computer, many said they themselves did not have access to a computer, and all said they had never seen the alarming postings submitted under Mr. Weise's name.

A loner in real life, Mr. Weise, who also killed his grandfather and his grandfather's companion and wounded seven people on Monday, found a community of sorts in cyberspace, confiding his problems with depression, loneliness and abuse to people who cheered his macabre short stories and drawings and sympathized with his racial ideologies.

On Wednesday, some of his Internet pen pals lamented that there had been warning signs they missed, including a gory zombie tale Mr. Weise apparently wrote about a school shooting that mentioned Columbine, an animated film he posted in which a killer committed suicide, and an eerie message that, in retrospect, seems to foreshadow his fate.

Things are "kind of rocky right now so I might disappear unexpectedly," Mr. Weise wrote Feb. 6 on a Web forum where members collaborate to write fiction.

Last October, he posted an animated film on newgrounds.com. In it, a man shoots people with a rifle, unleashing flashes of red blood across a simple black and white drawing, then tosses a hand grenade into a police car, puts a pistol in his mouth and commits suicide.

When another member of the site wrote, "Was that like a warning message? Hmm dude you need help badly," Mr. Weise, posting under the name Regret, responded: "You obviously can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality," adding, "Don't try judging my mental health based upon a simple animation, capisce?"

In a Yahoo profile last updated in June 2004, Mr. Weise used the moniker verlassen4_20, combining Hitler's birthday (April 20) with a German word meaning "forsaken" or "abandoned," said his nickname was Totenkopf, German for "death's head" or "skull," and included a doctored picture of himself with a monster's teeth and empty eyes. Under "latest news" he said he was on antidepressants, seeing a therapist and had "a brand new pair of cuts on my wrists;" his favorite quote, which he attributed to Hitler, was "The law of existence requires uninterrupted killing ... So that the better may live."

On one Web site, Mr. Weise said last year that he had been accused of threatening to "shoot up" the school last April 20, the fifth anniversary of the Columbine shootings, but that he had been cleared. On Wednesday, Mr. Dunshee declined to say whether Mr. Weise was suspected of such a threat. "That will come out in the investigation," he said.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to verify Mr. Weise's authorship of these Internet postings without reviewing his computer; the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it would investigate them. The postings are linked to a profile on www.nazi.org in which he introduced himself by name and said he was a high school student on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. Several people who communicated with him on the sites confirmed that the posts were made long before Monday's massacre.

A spokeswoman for Yahoo said the company's privacy policy prevented her from discussing the account; operators of the other sites either refused to authenticate the postings or did not respond to inquiries.

The administrator of one forum, who asked that it not be named for fear the site would be crashed by overwhelming traffic, shared several private messages Mr. Weise sent in which he said his mother drank excessively and abused him before the car accident that rendered her brain-damaged and confined to a nursing home.

"I have friends, but I'm basically a loner inside a group of loners," Mr. Weise wrote, according to the administrator. "I'm excluded from anything and everything they do. I'm never invited. I don't even know why they consider me a friend or I them."

In another message, Mr. Weise wrote that his mother "would hit me with anything she could get her hands on," and "would tell me I was a mistake, and she would say so many things that its hard to deal with them or think of them without crying."

Most troubling, perhaps, was the story of a shooting spree he posted on a site called Writer's Coven in December 2003. In it, he wrote of a character dressed all in black, a teacher with a Hitleresque moustache, and complaints about how the shooting at Columbine High had led to increased security on campus.

As in Monday's rampage, one of the victims at his fictional school was the security guard - "or what was left of him," the story said, his throat having "been ripped out, replaced by a bloody mass of torn tissue."

It went on: "In the distance, somewhere else in the school, the sound of a blood curdling scream echoed through the hallways."

But in Mr. Weise's real school, Red Lake High, and among those who knew his family, the only true danger people said they had sensed was for Mr. Weise's future and his happiness. The high school students, who will not be allowed to return to the bullet-ridden school for at least a few more days, were expected to gather for counseling on Thursday for the first time since Monday's deaths.

"There were a lot of signs of real trouble," said T'Anna Hanson, 21, who knew Mr. Weise and was the cousin of one victim. "He was confined to a computer all the time, and he had said last year that he was going to kill himself. But somehow I was never scared of him. I don't know why not. He never really showed that it could be directed this way."

Some students said Mr. Weise had shown them elaborate, disturbing drawings he made in his notebook, some of them depicting people with bullet holes in their heads, of half-living people with blank stares, of skeletons. None of the students interviewed said they reported the drawings to school officials. They said they had viewed them as the odd but harmless doodlings of a strange boy.

"He was different, you could say, out of place around here," said Patrick Tahahwah, 23, who knew Mr. Weise.

Katherine S. Newman, a professor at Princeton University, who edited the book "Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings" in 2004, said Mr. Weise showed indications nearly identical to earlier gunmen: his comments, his drawings, his social life. "They were classic signs of a pathway leading to a shooting - the kid was literally giving off warnings," Professor Newman said.

But she cautioned against blaming school officials or others for not recognizing that, saying, "It is exceedingly difficult to see these kids coming, to put it together and see the pattern."

Mr. Weise, who wore eye makeup and a black trench coat that fell to the ground over his 6-foot, 250-pound frame, had been told recently not to study at school, but to study privately with a teacher at home. The reason, the principal said, was to offer Mr. Weise the extra help he needed, given what the principal described only as his "issues."

Mr. Weise, who had been held back in school, was teased because he was larger than most of the other sophomores, because he dressed in "Goth" style and wandered around by himself, and, Mr. Tahahwah said, because of his parents' fates. Everyone at Red Lake knew about that.

In July 1997, Mr. Weise's father, Daryl Lussier Jr., killed himself in a standoff with the police on the Red Lake reservation, the tribe's home in far northern Minnesota, about 30 miles from Bemidji, the nearest city.

In March 1999, his mother, Joanne, suffered a brain injury when the car she was riding in struck a tractor-trailer on a highway in Minneapolis, Ms. DesJarlait said. The driver, a cousin of his mother, had been drinking and was killed.

After the accident, Ms. DesJarlait said, Mr. Weise, who had lived most of his life in Minneapolis with his mother, was sent back to Red Lake to live with his grandparents. He did not want to go, family members said.

Though she knew Mr. Weise had had a difficult adolescence, Ms. DesJarlait said she still finds it hard to reconcile Monday's shootings with the step-nephew she remembered from his younger years. While he was growing up in Minneapolis, she said, Mr. Weise was a sweet boy who liked to go to movies, play outside, go to restaurants, and have friends over for sleepovers.

Now, Ms. DesJarlait said, the family is left to explain what happened - something she said she has no answers to - to Mr. Weise's half brother, 7, and half sister, 8.

"They know that he killed himself, but they don't understand about the others - about the size of it," she said. "I guess I don't either. I don't how know it came to this."

But in a blog Mr. Weise apparently kept on livejournal.com, he seemed to explain his swirl downward.

"Right about now I feel as low as I ever have," the January posting said. "I'm starting to regret sticking around. I should've taken the razor blade express last time around. Well, whatever, man. Maybe they've got another shuttle comin' around sometime soon."

Monica Davey reported from Bemidji, and Jodi Wilgoren from Chicago. Gretchen Ruethling contributed reporting from Chicago.

    Signs of Danger Were Missed in a Troubled Teenager's Life, R, March 24, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/national/24shoot.html?ei=5094&en=959788f001167ace&hp=&ex=1111726800&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1111640765-SgT8sTb9cdjTH3ymJg7M8g

Steve Benson        Cagle /    United Media        24.3.2005
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/benson/

Eerie Parallels Are Seen to Shootings at Columbine

March 23, 2005

By JODI WILGOREN

The New York Times

He is said to have worn a trench coat and listened to Marilyn Manson, the Goth icon. He expressed his admiration for Hitler on a neo-Nazi Web site. And in the midst of a murderous rampage at his high school, Jeff Weise asked a classmate if he believed in God, then shot him, one student recounted in a local newspaper.

As details begin to emerge about Mr. Weise's shooting spree on an Indian reservation in northern Minnesota, there are eerie echoes of the nation's most infamous school tragedy, six years ago at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo.

At Columbine, the killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, belonged to the "Trench Coat Mafia" and loved all things Goth. They sometimes did a Nazi salute while bowling and planned their attack for Hitler's birthday. Before killing one student, witnesses said, one of them held a gun to her temple and asked if she believed in God.

"My heart just sank, like 'Oh, my God,' I thought of that day," Tom Mauser, whose son, Daniel, was among the 15 people killed at Columbine, recalled of his reaction upon first learning of the Minnesota massacre. "We just kind of knew there was a good chance it was going to happen again."

Describing Mr. Weise's black, spiky hair and black Goth clothes, Ashley Morrison, a fellow student at Red Lake High School, told The Associated Press, "He looks like one of those guys at the Littleton school."

Beyond these particular similarities, experts on school shootings said Mr. Weise appears to fit squarely into a pattern of disaffected youth who struggle to fit in at homogenous schools in rural or suburban areas, then erupt in violence to seek attention, enact revenge and gain power over people who have taunted them. They interpret his Internet postings as an outcast's quest to belong to something larger, another common thread in school shootings. Reports of Mr. Weise drawing gory pictures in class were classic warning signs of what was to come, they say.

"It typically happens in small, remote towns because the protagonist is a boy who is socially incapable in many ways," said Katherine Newman, a sociologist at Princeton University and the editor of "Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings," published last year. "This is someone who is a failed joiner, who is repeatedly trying to gain access to peer groups that reject him."

While the Columbine killers came from stable families in a well-off suburb, Mr. Weise, who the authorities said was 16, lived on a reservation where 40 percent of the people are poor, and without his parents. His race belies any pattern: 27 of the 28 school gunmen from 1992 to 2002 were white, said Michael Kimmel, a sociologist at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, who studied them.

In 34 postings to www.nazi.org, a forum operated by the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, that the authorities said Tuesday they were investigating for hints to motive, someone identifying himself as Jeff Weise, a high school student on the Red Lake Indian Reservation, expressed frustration at the lack of racial purity and pride among his people. Calling himself "NativeNazi" or "Todesengel," German for "angel of death," Mr. Weise said he had found few sympathizers for his racial views and had sometimes been persecuted for them. "I already had a fist fight with a communist not too long ago over me being what I am (I also won), but it was worth it," he wrote on May 26 at 2:27 a.m.

In another post, Mr. Weise complained that "less than 1 percent of all the people on the reservation can speak their own language," and said that his peers eschewed their culture to emulate rappers. He said his parents were American Indians, but that he had German, Irish and French-Canadian ancestry as well, and that when he had spoken of the need for his tribe to have "more pure bloods" he was called a racist.

Mr. Weise also frequently contributed to stories about zombies on an Internet forum called "Rise of the Dead," according to The Associated Press. Parston Graves Jr., a Red Lake student, told The A.P. that Mr. Weise had displayed a sketch of a guitar-strumming skeleton captioned, "March to the death song 'til your boots fill with blood," in class, and had shown off his drawings of people shooting each other.

Paul Viollis, author of the 2001 book "Avoiding Violence in Our Schools," said "the Nazi issue is a collateral issue," a way for someone not on the football team or in the popular clique to find an identity. "This individual found some type of solace," he said.

People who monitor neo-Nazi groups said the Libertarian forum frequented by Mr. Weise is a little-known Internet-only organization with no known links to violence, whose niche is to welcome people of all races who oppose race-mixing.

As for the unlikely prospect of an American Indian Nazi, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said African-Americans, Jews and gays have all been members of racial hate groups. "Kids like this feel extremely powerless, and they want to associate with the oppressor, not the oppressed," he said. "That's where you get this bizarre phenomenon of people joining movements that aim to exterminate them, or people like them."

In an article posted Tuesday on www.nazi.org, the group "refused to wring hands" over the shootings, instead saying that "such events are to be expected when thinking people are crammed into an unthinking, irrational, modern society."

    Eerie Parallels Are Seen to Shootings at Columbine, NYT, March 23, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/national/23rampage.html?

Minnesota School Shooter Wore Bullet-Proof Vest

Tue Mar 22, 2005 06:05 PM ET

Reuters


BEMIDJI, Minn. (Reuters) - A 16-year-old boy who killed nine people and then himself on a Minnesota Indian reservation was wearing a bullet-proof vest when he chased a teacher and fellow students into a classroom and gunned them down, the FBI said on Tuesday.

Monday's rampage by Jeff Weise -- the worst U.S. school shooting since the 15-death Columbine massacre in 1999 -- appeared to have been planned, investigators said. The spree left seven wounded, five of whom were still being treated in hospitals.

FBI agent Michael Tabman refused to speculate on a motive. He said he had no information on a report the high school student had revealed neo-Nazi sentiments in Internet postings.

Weise, who earlier reports mistakenly said was 17, identified himself as an "angel of death" and a "NativeNazi" in the online material, according to the Texas-based Libertarian National Socialist Green Party Web site.

That group put a statement Tuesday on its site -- http://www.nazi.org -- in which it said Weise posted 34 comments, adding that he was "highly intelligent and contemplative" and his thoughts "reflected a frustration with the populist politics and materialistic arrogance of modern society."

One of Weise's postings, it added, talked about the cultural dilution of native Americans and concluded "It's hard though being a native American National Socialist - people are so misinformed, ignorant and closed-minded it makes your life a living hell."

Other reports described Weise as someone who was often teased at school.

Tabman said there "could be some clues" in Internet postings or on the boy's computer which was seized but that and other matters were still under investigation.

Officials sealed off the remote town of Red Lake, 60 miles south of the Canadian border, while they investigated the bloodbath.

'COMMUNITY DEVASTATED'

"Our community is devastated by this event," said Floyd Jourdain Jr., chairman of the Red Lake Chippewa Indian council. He called the tragedy "the darkest day in the history of our tribe."

Tabman said Weise first went to the home of his grandfather Daryl Lussier, a sergeant with the Red Lake police department, where he shot him and a woman who was his companion.

He then stole his grandfather's bullet-proof vest and drove to Red Lake High School where he overpowered, shot and killed an unarmed security guard, 28-year-old Derrick Brun, at an entrance equipped with a metal detector, Tabman added.

Walking down a hallway, Weise "saw a teacher and some students," fired at them and chased them into a room where he killed the 52-year-old teacher, Neva Rogers, and five students, and wounded the others, Tabman said.

At that point four policemen entered the school and exchanged fire with him. He then returned to the classroom and shot himself in the head, Tabman said.

"The nature of the activity would indicate there was some planning," he said, adding it appeared Weise acted alone and there was no sign he had a "hit list" of intended victims.

Witnesses said he was armed with a shotgun or rifle and at least one handgun.

President Bush was briefed on the shooting, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, adding: "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who were killed; this is a terrible tragedy."

It was the latest multiple shooting in a month of deadly gun violence in the United States, including the deaths of seven congregants at a church service near Milwaukee and four people in an Atlanta courtroom escape.

    Minnesota School Shooter Wore Bullet-Proof Vest, R, Tue Mar 22, 2005 06:05 PM ET, http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=IOAKRV0IBUNVWCRBAE0CFEY?type=topNews&storyID=7977312

Minnesota School Shooter on Neo-Nazi Web Sites

Tue Mar 22, 2005 10:45 AM ET

Reuters

BEMIDJI, Minn. (Reuters) - A 17-year-old who killed nine people and himself on a Minnesota Indian reservation identified himself as an "angel of death" and a "NativeNazi" on Internet postings, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Officials sealed off the remote town of Red Lake, 60 miles south of the Canadian border, while they investigated Monday's bloodbath, the worst U.S. school shooting since the 1999 Columbine massacre.

Floyd Jourdain Jr., chairman of the Red Lake Indian council, called the tragedy "the darkest day in the history of our tribe."

The shooter was Red Lake High School sophomore Jeff Weise, according to witnesses and school officials.

Weise identified himself in Internet site postings as "Todesengel," German for "angel of death" and "NativeNazi," the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported.

He also claimed to have been questioned by police in 2004 about an alleged plot to shoot up the school on the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday, but said he had nothing to do with that, the report said.

"I guess I've always carried a natural admiration for Hitler and his ideals, and his courage to take on larger nations," the newspaper quoted Weise as saying in one forum used by neo-Nazis.

Other reports described Weise as someone who was often teased at the school.

Weise's rampage began when he shot dead his grandfather, identified as veteran tribal police officer Daryl "Dash" Lussier, and Lussier's girlfriend at their home.

The gunman then drove his grandfather's police car to the school, where he killed a male security guard, a teacher and five students before taking his own, the FBI said.

"We believe the shooter was acting alone," said FBI agent Paul McCabe, adding the dead at the school were all in one room.

The gunman fired at doors of classrooms barricaded by terrified students and teachers, witnesses said.

"He came into the school and the first person he shot was the security officer at the door," said Molly Miron, editor of the Bemidji Pioneer newspaper. "One of the students told me he pointed his gun at a boy and then changed his mind, smiled, waved at him, and shot somebody else."

Police, alerted to the massacre when students used cell phones to call for help, said they exchanged gunfire with the gunman, who ducked into a classroom and shot himself.

Witnesses said he was armed with a shotgun or rifle and at least one handgun.

It was the deadliest U.S. school shooting since the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School massacre in Colorado in which 14 students -- including the two killers -- and a teacher died.

The Minnesota reservation is controlled by the Ojibwa tribe, commonly known as the Chippewa, which says it has roughly 10,000 members, about half of whom live on the reservation.

The tribe runs its own affairs and operates casinos in the state and a small casino in Red Lake, 35 miles north of Bemidji on the shores of Lower Red Lake. But the casinos are not as successful as others in more populous areas and unemployment on the reservation is high.

It was the latest multiple shooting in a month of deadly gun violence in the United States, including the deaths of seven congregants at a church service near Milwaukee and four people in an Atlanta courtroom escape.

    Minnesota School Shooter on Neo-Nazi Web Sites, R, Tue Mar 22, 2005 10:45 AM ET, http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=ULU4FY3FFLZAOCRBAEKSFEY?type=topNews&storyID=7973410

Craig Lassig/European Pressphoto Agency
Natasha Fineday, left, and her mother, Dawn, at a vigil on Tuesday for the victims of Monday's shootings.
Behind the Why of a Rampage, Loner With a Taste for Nazism
By MONICA DAVEY        NYT        Published: March 23, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/national/23shoot.html?hp&ex=1111640400&en=a0fefe745d609e8e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Ten Dead in Minnesota School Shooting

Mon Mar 21, 2005 11:57 PM ET

Reuters

BEMIDJI, Minn. (Reuters) - A high school student shot dead nine people and then killed himself on Monday at Minnesota's Red Lake Indian Reservation in the worst school shooting since the 1999 Columbine massacre, authorities said.

Among the dead at Red Lake High School were a male security guard, a female teacher, and at least six students including the gunman, the FBI said. At least a dozen others were wounded in the carnage.

Before arriving at the school, the gunman shot dead his grandfather, identified as veteran tribal police officer Daryl "Dash" Lussier, and Lussier's girlfriend at their home in Red Lake village.

"We believe the shooter was acting alone," FBI agent Paul McCabe said, adding the dead at the school were all in one room.

One victim was identified by a friend as teacher Neva Rogers, 62, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune newspaper reported.

The gunman fired at doors of classrooms barricaded by terrified students and teachers, witnesses said.

"He came into the school and the first person he shot was the security officer at the door," said Molly Miron, editor of the Bemidji Pioneer newspaper. "One of the students told me he pointed his gun at a boy and then changed his mind, smiled, waved at him, and shot somebody else."

The authorities did not release the gunman's name. The FBI described him as a juvenile, but did not specify his age.

Police, alerted to the massacre when students used cell phones to call for help, said they exchanged gunfire with the gunman who ducked into a classroom and shot himself.

Witnesses said he was armed with a shotgun or rifle and at least one handgun.

The gunman's motive was not immediately known, the FBI said, though a classmate told a local television station that he had spoken a year ago of wanting to "shoot up the school."

It was the deadliest U.S. school shooting since the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School massacre in Colorado in which 14 students -- including the two killers -- and a teacher died.

OJIBWA TRIBE

In 2002 a gunman in Erfurt, Germany, killed 13 teachers, two students and a policeman at the Gutenberg secondary school before killing himself.

The Minnesota reservation 60 miles South of the Canadian border is controlled by the Ojibwa tribe, commonly known as the Chippewa, which says it has roughly 10,000 members, about half of whom live on the reservation.

The tribe runs its own affairs and operates casinos in the state and a small casino in Red Lake, 35 miles North of Bemidji on the shores of Lower Red Lake. But the casinos are not as successful as others in more populous areas, unemployment on the reservation is high, and many residents are poor with few jobs other than some small industries, raising wild rice and fishing.

Before being settled by the Chippewa in the late 18th Century, Red Lake was the site of a major village of the Dakota tribe. It later became a fur trading outpost run by the British North West Co.

After the shooting, the school was evacuated and the reservation closed to outsiders.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty offered condolences to the families of the victims of "this senseless tragedy."

The shooting follows the March 12 shooting deaths of seven congregants at a church service near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which ended when the gunman killed himself.

In 2003, a student at Rocori High School in central Minnesota gunned down two classmates. He is awaiting trial.

Ten Dead in Minnesota School Shooting, R, Mon Mar 21, 2005 11:57 PM ET, http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7966200