FLL Shooting

Wifey B: The world is insane. All of it. Every freaking inch. It shakes you up when you realize there's a shooting in the airport you use all the time. You breathe safely that it wasn't you. Then you realize it was someone, just as important as you, just as meaningful to their family. More senseless loss of lives. Please no politics. Leave that for another time. Just feel the tragedy.

BandB said:

Please no politics. Leave that for another time. Just feel the tragedy.

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Yeah because raw emotion will bring about civil discourse.

It appears the shooter flew in from Alaska, had checked his luggage with a gun inside. Went to the bathroom, retrieved his gun, started shooting. This all happened in baggage claim which doesn't have any higher level of security. Gun may have been legally checked as that is allowed.

Good grief! I'm flying OUT of FLL on Monday. At least I'm supposed to. The world is indeed insane and this is supposed to be the CIVILISED world.

It is very strange, a guy flies all the way to Florida, from Alaska, to shoot random passengers in the baggage claim area???
Maybe he had problems on the flight ?

Steve said:

It is very strange, a guy flies all the way to Florida, from Alaska, to shoot random passengers in the baggage claim area???
Maybe he had problems on the flight ?

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That has been raised as a possibility, that he had some time of altercation on the plane. However, it's not confirmed. Also, that he previously sought mental health assistance. There's more to learn. Whatever the reasons, another tragedy. No more significant than all the murders in Chicago or the random murders daily throughout the country. It's hit differently because it was in a public venue, an airport, and it resulted in multiple deaths.

I am sure it is related to temperature difference. Coming from Alaska, Florida's sun made his brain boiling and well cooked so he lost his mind.
Ok I admit it is dark humour but hey when nothing more is left...

Perhaps all personal firearms should be banned from being able to be shipped in your luggage on airlines, Period. Have your firearms shipped to your ultimate destination separately. Start up business anyone? There are companies that do it for golf clubs.

Greetings,
It's still all over the news here. Some comments by the news media: "He was known by the FBI"..."He may have had physiological problems"...Ya think? There have been attempts by the media to link the shooter with ISIS...So what else is new?

This has been going on for about 6 hours and the authorities are just now starting to interview EVERYONE who was in the same terminal as the incident. Some of these people have been literally sitting out on the tarmac without food water or toilet facilities until recently and NOW they're going to have to go through who knows how many hours of debriefing. Kids and seniors among the crowd. I'm guessing from the TV footage there must be at least 500-1000 people.

dwhatty said:

Perhaps all personal firearms should be banned from being able to be shipped in your luggage on airlines, Period. Have your firearms shipped to your ultimate destination separately. Start up business anyone? There are companies that do it for golf clubs.

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Well, the reality is flying wasn't necessary for this to occur. He could have just walked in to baggage claim from the street and done the same thing. I did hear it suggested that perhaps you shouldn't be allowed to carry ammunition.

Most of us just can't understand what thoughts and mind processes lead someone to want to kill others. I think we'll find out soon what some of his thoughts were, but still have a difficult time really understanding them. Perhaps we will on an intellectual level, but not in terms of the emotions or what he felt.

Shortly after 9.11, I took my daughter to BWI (Baltimore) airport. National Guard with AR15s were everywhere. Shook my head and left. Didn't fly after 9.11 for 4 years. Still don't fly much now. I'm risk averse. Don't like being in places where I don't control my own safety. Feel safer (more in control) cruising solo than going into an airport, stadium, or other large gathering area.

Ted

Sadly a lot of people with problems come to Alaska to get away from them, but all they leave behind is their history, and they start a new one with the same problems once they get here...

No answers, but it makes me very sad.

dwhatty said:

Perhaps all personal firearms should be banned from being able to be shipped in your luggage on airlines, Period.

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Well that certainly sounds like a bit of a knee jerk reaction. Let's punish the millions of passengers who legally take firearms in their checked baggage because one lunatic decides to start shooting.

That kind of reminds me of the way we now all have to take our shoes off because another lunatic, Richard Reed, hid some explosives in his shoe in August, 1973. So here we are 44 years later still walking through the TSA areas in our stocking feet because way back then some idiot TSA supervisor thought it was a good idea. What it was/is is a classic example of a law that accomplishes nothing but foolishly making us feel safe. But then, that's what TSA's job is, right?????.

FYI, I flew from WA to AZ on 1/5 with a 9mm handgun and a box of ammo in my suitcase. I did it legally (as today's lunatic did) but when I got to AZ I didn't pull the gun out and start blasting away. Like millions of others who prefer to take a handgun with them when they fly, I left the gun in the bag until I was well clear of the airport property.

I don't understand the need to always have a handgun at one's side. I've never found myself in a situation where I thought I could have used a handgun in public. My father-in-law always has a handgun with him-- he thinks someone will try to "get him" at some point and he wants to be ready. Why arm oneself for the minute possibly someone will try to "get you"?

Im from Texas and have plenty of guns, but I don't drive around or fly with a gun.

AKDoug said:

Sadly a lot of people with problems come to Alaska to get away from them, but all they leave behind is their history, and they start a new one with the same problems once they get here...

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Too true. The problem is not geographical.
Dreadful events like this can happen anywhere. A number of TF members use the airport; stay safe, take care, the security response probably makes it very safe for now.
But elsewhere in this troubled world, who can say? Melbourne narrowly thwarted serious simultaneous attacks planned for Christmas Day, at a rail station, a Cathedral, and a popular city square.

It does seem that once he contacted mental health professionals, about the FBI making him listen to ISIS propaganda, he should have been put on a no fly list or at the very least been disarmed.

I suppose that makes too much sense though, and would require inter agency communications.

After flying with Air Canada, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

cardude01 said:

I don't understand the need to always have a handgun at one's side. I've never found myself in a situation where I thought I could have used a handgun in public. My father-in-law always has a handgun with him-- he thinks someone will try to "get him" at some point and he wants to be ready. Why arm oneself for the minute possibly someone will try to "get you"?

Im from Texas and have plenty of guns, but I don't drive around or fly with a gun.

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While I don't usually carry a handgun, I like the right to be able to when I deem it necessary. People die every day in the USA at the hands of bad people. The objective is to avoid putting yourself in those situations; sometimes in spite of your best intentions, you find yourself self in the wrong place. People use handguns most every day to defend themselves, many times without discharging the gun. That doesn't make the news cause it doesn't fit the media's narrative.

Ted

Alaska? My agency is reporting Canada.

BandB said:

Wifey B: The world is insane. All of it. Every freaking inch. It shakes you up when you realize there's a shooting in the airport you use all the time. You breathe safely that it wasn't you. Then you realize it was someone, just as important as you, just as meaningful to their family. More senseless loss of lives. Please no politics. Leave that for another time. Just feel the tragedy.

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I worked with The man from Virginia beach va that was killed. So Sad

O C Diver said:

While I don't usually carry a handgun, I like the right to be able to when I deem it necessary. People die every day in the USA at the hands of bad people. The objective is to avoid putting yourself in those situations; sometimes in spite of your best intentions, you find yourself self in the wrong place. People use handguns most every day to defend themselves, many times without discharging the gun. That doesn't make the news cause it doesn't fit the media's narrative.



Ted

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http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/10/21/nra-commentary-admits-the-odds-of-needing-a-gun/206313

I don't mind the right to carry a handgun, I just don't think it's necessary.

cardude01 said:

NRA Commentary Admits The Odds Of Needing A Gun To Defend Yourself Are Infinitesimal

I don't mind the right to carry a handgun, I just don't think it's necessary.

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I'm OK with you not feeling it's necessary. To me, it's like my multi million dollar liability umbrella policy, will almost absolutely never need to use either.....but I'm glad I have both.

Ted

Well said, Ted. Cardude, you absolutely have the right not to have a handgun around. I certainly respect that and would not try to change your mind. I am a retired cop and, while I don't carry a gun with me 99% of the time, when I travel by car I like to have one in the car with me. The odds of me having to use it to protect myself or someone else are infinitesimally small. That being said, if there ever did come a time when I needed one and didn't have one, I'd probably regret it. It's a personal choice. You can feel free to choose as you wish, and I ask the same right to make a choice as I wish.

Donna said:

Alaska? My agency is reporting Canada.

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Wifey B: Flew from Alaska to Minnesota to FLL. There was confusion on the airline as Air Canada was mentioned, then it switched to Delta. Maybe have been a sharing route.

More information flowing which gives much more for all to consider. I think each time a mass murder occurs we all feel a little less safe. The reality is compared to the violent crime rate in FLL, this event is minor. We have a lot of violent crime, but most of us feel rather immune and isolated from it. When it's mass murders as in an airport baggage claim or a theater or a school, we realize that it can happen at any time to any of us. There are many people with serious mental health issues, many willing to sacrifice their lives for a "cause". This one just hit close to me personally and reminded me how vulnerable we all are. Safety is a matter of degree. We're all somewhat safe and somewhat in danger. I feel for those who lost family or friends yesterday, but I don't feel any more for them than I do for all those who lose family and friends to violent crime every day. I just felt more personally scared yesterday as much crime happens places or in circumstances I'm not in while Terminal 2 is somewhere I've been many times and friends and family go all the time. I look at the young man who did this as well and within my anger at what he did, I shed tears for him and what led him there. Things within his life, within him, went horribly wrong along the way.

There's really nothing new or different about what took place. Just like anything when it's close to home it hits us harder. Maybe that's what we need to think about. I see the crime statistics of Chicago and I don't shiver from the horror because I don't live there. I see the attack in Germany and it doesn't hit me as hard. I read about the Manson murders and that's a time and place I can't relate to. This i did, this I could. A young man opened fire in a place I've been many times and where we all are vulnerable. We all suffer another loss of innocence each time something like this occurs.

I hesitate to wander any deeper into this thread beyond post #2 but I deal in facts, not feelings. The fact is you and your loved ones are far more likely to get injured or die in a motor vehicle accident than to ever be within 10 kilometers of an active shooter incident.

Some of us have had situational awareness pounded into our everyday lives for decades. Situational awareness boils down to common sense. In our haste to "make flying safe again" post 9/11, besides the myriad of other unintended consequences, we created hundreds of thousands choke points at our airports and other venues. Our security theatre has created these locations where ostensibly unarmed folks are being screened to enter or exiting what are billed as "gun free zones". You don't have to be a war college graduate to understand choke points are natural targets. You don't need to be a mental health professional to understand the attraction of attacking a target filled with "government inspected and verified" unarmed people.

Security theater has created this problem and it seems the people of France at least have figured it out. A friend spent the holidays visiting his in laws in France and said this year was starkly different. The church they attend midnight mass lacked the normal overflow crowd and was "protected" by men with semi-automatic weapons. The shopping mall crowds where down too and similarly protected by men armed with semi-automatic weapons. The problem is the small group of people most responsible for these behaviors have discovered the work around to armed security is to park the bomb next to the security guards or drive the truck through them and the crowds. Thus, crowds are not forming in France (and I assume Germany) as they once did.

I've heard of no active shooter incidents in unoccupied corn fields. They are also rare at gun shops, firing ranges and police departments. Removal of guns, trucks, box cutters, shoes, liquid filled bottles etc is not effective but I'm willing to bet removing the choke points and unarmed victim supply and this fear should calm down.

Any of you old enough to remember how common hijacking and bombings used to be? 30+ years ago

I blame Hollywood and TV media for much of this violence. We are bombarded from post toddler age to maturity with screen violence often with plots making a mass killer a hero. And now that a segment of our population has been brain washed with the beauty of horrific violence the media goes out of its way to spread the incident to all corners with big time coverage. And what does that do it encourages copy cats or in the case of true terrorism reinforces it because the perpetrators get what they want attention and propaganda. We don't deserve this or do we? We allowed and encouraged the media have we not. This is an area where I would accept strict censorship.

Wifey B: This thread wasn't designed to be about facts, it is all about feelings. All my posts in it have been about my feelings. I know all the facts, all the logic, all that but sometimes things are simply about the emotions you're feeling at a given time. I didn't post for solutions, for facts, to figure out why this happened, but to express what I was feeling at the time. Rational or irrational, I can tell you that it shook our family and friends and I even acknowledged that it did so perhaps more than it merited. Life isn't all about facts. We don't live facts. We live feelings which may or may not be based on facts. Love is an emotion as is hate, Fear is an emotion as is comfort. Sadness is an emotion as is happiness. Empathy is an emotion as is anger. I'm a person and I feel and sometimes my feelings are supported by facts and other times they aren't. I was not around a single person yesterday, however, who didn't feel before considering facts and for whom the feelings weren't stronger than the facts might justify. Next time I go to the terminal, I'll feel too. My mind will know the facts say the odds of anything happening are extremely slim, but when I walk through that baggage area I'll relive this day a little, I'll see the bodies, I'll think of him walking out of the restroom. I will feel sadness, fear, and anger I imagine. I am, therefore I feel.

People are feeling concerned because it was seen on tv. It is like a selling tv show or reality tv. People are stuck in front of their screen watching it and living it like for real and that is exactly why you have direct tv during 4 hours showing you injured people and cell phone video showing what happened. It is at the limit of voyeurism and most of people like it as disgusting it can be. Would anybody feel anything going on a road where 10 people died in a car accident, no. But put that on tv make it a show and everybody will feel in need to go there just to see the place where THE event happened.
I am french and not too old but enough to remember that during the last 40 years, there was never 1 year without a "terrorist" attack of any kind, whatever the group was, extremist from one side or the other. The only difference, 30 years ago it was mentionned in the news and that's it. No direct show or any kind of things like that. Nowadays it is like having one minute of glory for any brainless person in need to become the tv star of the day.
Just look at how long this thread is talking about that... It is just giving to much rewarding to a moron who was just looking for it.

Lou makes a good point. Having these incidents broadcast ad nauseum can encourage those on the "edge" of sanity to make a go of it to get notoriety.

A few points of my own:

I used to take a break from research or study in the library by pulling old newspapers and reading through them. Take a paper from some US town in the midwest from say the 1880's and often there was a story of someone going nuts in a cabin or a town and killing a few people. Got a three by three article on page two.

Now when someone goes nuts, there are many places where there are literally hundreds of people in close quarters. Not so 140yrs ago.

And lets say one in ten million people goes nuts and does something like this per year. With population many times that of 140yrs ago, that occurrence will be that much more frequent. Even though per capita, it is not.

And people are becoming more concentrated. The rural areas and small towns are being drained as people concentrate in the cities. More concentration, the less likely the person going nuts ends up doing so in a cabin with three people in it.

And there is a tension between individual liberty and existence of mental issues. Hard to protect one's liberty and also protect others when they start showing signs of mental problems.

And then the instant news cycle embellishing such acts.

Must keep perspective here. In Fla, there were probably more killed in road accidents the day of that shooting.

To add 2 cents, I understand that people have feelings hurt about all this kind of crap. But usually we just look at the event. Something that hurts me is to see young people (like the ones who were responsible for the last events) who have as the only horizon the wish to explose themselves or kill as much people as they can... What can happen in the head of a 20 years old adult to see this as his/her future... Our society must be very sick. When I was 20 years old I was thinking to do great things, to explore the world, to meet girls and to enjoy life (ok 20 years later I am an old fat bloke posting silly things on a forum but things not always go as planned lol ). What could be the series of events that could lead a young to act like this. Looks like nobody think about that. I feel sorry for the victims, but I feel also sorry to see young waste his life that way...