<p>I am so proud of the young man who had the pepper spray and the presence of mind to use it and tackle the attacker, preventing a LOT more harm. Hurrah for him! It seems that his pepper spray was something he carried and felt he should. </p>
<p>Yes, I wish the press would focus on the people who helped others and the victims, NOT the mentally ill and perpetrators of violence. I feel that the press frenzy on the violent offenders feeds their delusions of grandeur.</p>
<p>My H said the police wouldnt let the fire dept in for half an hour.
So the wounded could only be helped by those already in the building.
I hate our police force, they need to start over with a new chief & new hires.</p>
<p>They seem to have had the perpetrator in custody almost immediately so it is hard to believe that medical people would not have been allowed in to help?</p>
<p>They were looking for a second gunman for a long time.</p>
<p>Well, then, that seems understandable. I can’t imagine the stress the first responders are under with these kinds of situations.</p>
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<p>the point is that “nobodies” (defined by our society and what we chose to focus on) in society are killed ALL THE TIME and get no national news. none.</p>
<p>Actually, I like when the shooter takes the cowardly way out, this way we dont have to pay for him for the next 30-50 years. Also, it might be more difficult for the families to have to go through all of the court drama.</p>
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<p>Haven’t looked up the specifics here, but it gets to my point made on the santa monica shooter thread that most mentally ill are permitted to purchase guns, contrary to what most of us believe. It seems, according to one summary, that in WA you have to have been involuntarily committed…had he been? </p>
<p>Perhaps its time to lower the bar here. I guess we’ll have to wait for the facts to come out, if they can make it through the journalistic thicket. </p>
<p>Confusing either the SPS or SPD said there were not any schools nearby even though there were schools with kids on the playground at the time of the hunt for the second shooter.</p>
<p>“I hate our police force, they need to start over with a new chief & new hires.”</p>
<p>Completely agree.</p>
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It’s the least I could do. The least any could do when you think about it. :)</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I believe we are becoming increasingly inured to the phenomenon of mass shootings, and are beginning to see it as the new normal, something we can’t do much about. It’s as though we’ve fallen into a collective condition of learned helplessness, such that we don’t even have the will to seriously address the idea that common sense change is possible, or that we need to find alternative ways of dealing with the dangerously mentally ill, and their ability to procure guns. I knew there was no hope for change in the wake of Newtown… If the wholesale slaughter of kindergartners and elementary school children didn’t move us to collective action, nothing in the world would. If anything, there seems to have actually been a sort of inverse reaction to these shootings, a doubling down of sorts, with growing numbers of militants brandishing firearms in public places, daring us to so much as whisper about changing how we address guns and ammunition in this country. You know things are getting way out of hand anytime the NRA says you’re being imprudent. The center cannot hold…</p>
<p>Comment deleted.</p>
<p>I wonder, after the thread about the Isla Vista shooting, how people sort all this out in their minds. Many on that thread blamed the shooter’s parent for coddling him or not making him jump through more hoops like that would have prevented it. This guy lived with his parents, had a job, had been committed and received mental health care, seemed to have been pretty well liked currently by a coworker, a fellow AA attendee and a guy who works at the place where he hung out. Who knows what they find when they search his room, computer and video games. People who knew the guy who were interviewed seemed to have been genuinely surprised that his did this where in ER’s case people didn’t seem that surprised at all.</p>
<p>It makes me sad that somehow between the mental health thing and the gun thing we, as a society, can’t help people more and keep people safe - both potential perpetrators and potential victims. It takes me back to the Cafe Racer shooting.</p>
<p>The bright line, so to speak, in these situations is that the law permits everyone to own a gun unless they have some sort of violation on their record. Communities, through their politicians, are going to make the decision as to whether or not to change the law, about mental disqualification or outright gun ownership.</p>
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<p>I think it is not correct that he had been committed. That would have put his name on the “cannot buy” list.</p>
<p>OK - had been picked up and held - I guess more details will come out on that. I think the news reporters, like us here, often use terms interchangeably when they have very different implications. At any rate . . . he had experienced several mental health interventions of some kind which people were holding up as what needed to happen in the other case but didn’t (along with other things on my list like job and live at home). Part of the track of reasoning was “it’s not that he was mentally unstable and had a gun it’s that his parents were coddling him by supporting him away from home and letting him just float around with no job or responsibilities.”</p>
<p>“In both of the earlier contacts with police, officers committed Ybarra involuntarily to Swedish Hospital in Edmonds for mental evaluations. Brandes said he has a long history of mental health problems for which he had been treated and medicated.”</p>
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<p>"At the time of the 2010 commitment, Ybarra worked at the Kenmore Shooting Range north of Seattle. From 2003 to about three and a half years ago, he worked as a ‘trapper’ keeping score on practice shoots, according to range president John Conderman, who said he did not know Ybarra personally but recognized his picture in news accounts.</p>
<p>“This is so disappointing,” Conderman said. “We spend all of our energy trying to teach young people about responsible gun use.”"</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Seattle-shooting-suspect-reported-a-rage-inside-262235681.html”>http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Seattle-shooting-suspect-reported-a-rage-inside-262235681.html</a></p>
<p>It sounds like he worked at the gun range for around 7 years - starting when he was a minor in 2003. It sounds likely that he had the shotgun since he was old enough to have one (speculation on my part)</p>
<p>That also tells me that there must have been quite a few people who both knew that he had a gun and knew that he was/had been mentally unstable.</p>
<p>In one of the instances the shooter called 911 on himself! I am just at a loss to know where the disconnect happened in the interactions between law enforcement, mental health services, his family and associates and his ability to possess a firearm.</p>
<p>“In 2010, Aaron Ybarra called 911 to report “a rage inside him” and said he wanted to hurt himself and others, according to a police report of the incident.”</p>