Shooting at Jewish communty center & Jewish skilled nursing facility in Kansas -- three people dead

So...he shouted 'Heil Hitler' from the back of a squad car...but they aren't sure this was motivated by hate? (Hate crime is an ignorant term.)
Just save us all some time, pull over, shoot him and throw him in a landfill. Save us time and money.

benluby said:

So...he shouted 'Heil Hitler' from the back of a squad car...but they aren't sure this was motivated by hate? (Hate crime is an ignorant term.)

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It also may be possible that the man is suffering from a mental illness or other medical issue, which would not make this a standard premeditated act of hatred.

Brightdreamer said:

It also may be possible that the man is suffering from a mental illness or other medical issue, which would not make this a standard premeditated act of hatred.

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Does a hate crime have to be premeditated? Say someone without any planning walks into a serivce at a temple or mosque and starts shooting people, is that not still a hate crime? The person saw the place, decided they didn't like the people in it because theyre muslim or jewish, and took action.

Not every trans or gay person whose killed is premeditated by the attacker, just for another example. Sometimes the attacker sees a gay person, or finds out someone is trangender and decides to kill them. Not to say the people doing this are mentally stable, they aren't. Neither is this guy truthfully. But if he decided to shoot up someplace because there were jewish people there that's a hate crime to me.

Ps. Not attacking you, just trying to understand you better. And I don't think your saying it's not a hate crime.

I have a close friend who is in a theater production of "To Kill a Mockingbird" at the community center. He, and the other cast members, are shocked and saddened by today's events. Things were going so well and absolutely no one would have predicted something like this happening.

Brightdreamer said:

It also may be possible that the man is suffering from a mental illness or other medical issue, which would not make this a standard premeditated act of hatred.

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Well, yeah, it might make it "a standard premeditated act of hatred." Does anybody think Adolf Hitler wasn't "suffering from a mental illness"?

Legally, you don't get absolved from the crime just because you have mental illness, with the extremely rare exception of the "not guilty by reason of insanity" defense, in which case you wind up in a mental treatment facility instead of a prison.

Mental illness might be a mitigating factor in a sentencing phase, after a conviction, but it doesn't absolve the deed.

caw

Lillith1991 said:

Does a hate crime have to be premeditated? Say someone without any planning walks into a serivce at a temple or mosque and starts shooting people, is that not still a hate crime? The person saw the place, decided they didn't like the people in it because theyre muslim or jewish, and took action.

Not every trans or gay person whose killed is premeditated by the attacker, just for another example. Sometimes the attacker sees a gay person, or finds out someone is trangender and decides to kill them. Not to say the people doing this are mentally stable, they aren't. Neither is this guy truthfully. But if he decided to shoot up someplace because there were jewish people there that's a hate crime to me.

Ps. Not attacking you, just trying to understand you better. And I don't think your saying it's not a hate crime.

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Not all hate crimes are premeditated, but a shooting like this, if commited by a sane man, would almost have to be. He had a gun. He went to a specific location where the objects of his hatred gathered, near the time of a holiday "they" celebrated and were therefore likely to congregate. Generally speaking, shootings where a site and multiple victims are targeted seem to be premeditated, a somewhat different animal then the spontaneous, opportunistic beating (which requires no forethought and no more equipment then one's fists.)

I was suggesting that it was possible that the man was insane, or medically compromised, and not simply acting because of racial or ethnic hatred. Which would make the motivation his illness, not his sincere views. (Though not common, the 70s aren't too young for dementia or other conditions that can radically alter brain functions. Is it still a hate crime if the brain that conceived it was organically malfunctioning?)

If he -- for example -- delusional and thought he was killing Jews at the personal direction of the ghost of Hitler that would be considered mental illness as a cause.

Or if he really wanted to kill someone for a personal reason but was concealing it, or all sorts of other things.

It pays not to make too many assumption because people are endlessly variable and weird in their motivations.

veinglory said:

If he -- for example -- delusional and thought he was killing Jews at the personal direction of the ghost of Hitler that would be considered mental illness as a cause.

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Yeah, but he'd still be culpable for, y'know, actually listening to the ghost of Hitler.

Unless Hitler's ghost was blackmailing him or had a ghost gun to his head or something.

blacbird said:

Well, yeah, it might make it "a standard premeditated act of hatred." Does anybody think Adolf Hitler wasn't "suffering from a mental illness"?

Legally, you don't get absolved from the crime just because you have mental illness, with the extremely rare exception of the "not guilty by reason of insanity" defense, in which case you wind up in a mental treatment facility instead of a prison.

Mental illness might be a mitigating factor in a sentencing phase, after a conviction, but it doesn't absolve the deed.

caw

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I wasn't suggesting absolving him.

As for Hitler, I'm not sure if he was actually mentally compromised or sincerely and sanely hateful on a monumental level. Either way, it's on a whole 'nother scale than one 70-odd-year-old man with a gun who may have been driven by hate, illness, personal issues, or who knows what.

Brightdreamer said:

I wasn't suggesting absolving him.

As for Hitler, I'm not sure if he was actually mentally compromised or sincerely and sanely hateful on a monumental level. Either way, it's on a whole 'nother scale than one 70-odd-year-old man with a gun who may have been driven by hate, illness, personal issues, or who knows what.

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It's not uncommon for people with problems in life, both personal and financial to blame it all on the Jews.

In fact, it's a long tradition stretching back for millennia. And it never turns out well for the Jews.

There was just a five part TV series broadcast on the History of the Jews. Quite good.

One of the quotes from someone about the Jewish experience and ethos was: "Paranoia, confirmed by history."

Brightdreamer said:

I wasn't suggesting absolving him.

As for Hitler, I'm not sure if he was actually mentally compromised or sincerely and sanely hateful on a monumental level. Either way, it's on a whole 'nother scale than one 70-odd-year-old man with a gun who may have been driven by hate, illness, personal issues, or who knows what.

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Oh, it's hate, all right. Pure, unadulterated, acidic, corrupting, soul-devouring HATE.

The person of interest in custody for the killing of three people at two Jewish centers in Kansas is a Missouri man and former Ku Klux Klan leader with a history of antisemitism and racism, law enforcement officials said.

Frazier Glenn Cross, Jr., 73, is suspected of fatally shooting a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather in the parking lot at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City campus in Overland Park then gunning down a woman at Village Shalom, a retirement community that is several blocks away from the center, law enforcement officials said.

A civil rights organization that tracks hate groups said it has long known about Cross.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says Cross is known to them using aliases — Glenn Miller or Frazier Glenn Miller — and is the former Grand Dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The center sued Cross in the 1980's for intimidating African Americans, and he has had several run-ins with the law since then, including being accused of violating the terms of a court order that settled the lawsuit.

A profile assembled by the Southern Poverty Law Center includes several anti-semitic statements attributed to Cross.

Police only described the suspect as an elderly man with a beard in a Sunday afternoon news conference.

According to the SPLC, Cross quit high school as a senior to join the Army. In a 20-year Army career he had two tours in Vietnam and 13 years as a member of the elite Green Berets before he was forced to retire because of his Klan affiliation in 1979.

Later he went on to be active in a neo-Nazi group called “The Order” that advocated violence against Blacks and Jews among others, the SPLC said.

He even unsuccessfully ran in the Democratic primary for North Carolina governor in 1984 and as a Republican for a state Senate seat in 1987, the SPLC said.

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Can't get through to the SPLC website at the moment, but I've heard of Glenn Miller/Cross due to his Klan affiliations. He's a real piece of...work.

Just another bloody, violent day of death and terror in the Land of the Free, Home of the Slave. None of which has anything to do with racism or guns.

nighttimer said:

Just another bloody, violent day of death and terror in the Land of the Free, Home of the Slave. None of which has anything to do with racism or guns.

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This is what I've called the Price of Freedom to own Guns. And until we decide that that freedom isn't worth the price, then we're going to keep paying it in shootings, suicides and accidents.

ANd to pretend that we're all clean handed, that we as a culture and as a people don't have a hand in letting these things happen is short sighted and privileged.

Just because you, the so called responsible gun owner, do not kill people does not change the fact that your freedom is being paid for in the blood of minorities, poor, mentally unwell, and the innocent. Every. Single. Day.

And I'm sick of paying it.

Later he went on to be active in a neo-Nazi group called “The Order” that advocated violence against Blacks and Jews among others, the SPLC said.

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If you are not aware of this group that called themselves "The Order", you might need to be. This outfit was one of the most violent and scary neo-Nazi outfits imaginable. I don't know if they still exist under that name, but if you want to find a really creepy guy, google "Robert Matthews". He was involved in several violent armed robberies, including at least one of an armored car that resulted in the murder of the driver. Ultimately he was cornered in a rural house in the state of Washington, as I recall, engaged in a shootout with authorities, and the house was set afire, not clear exactly how. Matthews died in the inferno, and he is now regarded by the white supremacist far right as a saint and a martyr.

caw

Horrible and sickening. Three more lives taken.

Interesting that this guy's been a hater all his life, and at the age of 74, finally flips out and kills someone. It's the reverse of the usual pattern, since younger people are usually more prone to acts of impulsive violence. Maybe he's been planning it for a long time, but wanted to wait until he was so old he didn't care if he spent the rest of his life in prison.

Unless he's done stuff like this before and not been caught.

I wouldn't be surprised if he has recently been diagnosed with some sort of life-ending or -threatening illness … so now he finally has his chance to do what he's always wanted to do.

Zoombie said:

This is what I've called the Price of Freedom to own Guns. And until we decide that that freedom isn't worth the price, then we're going to keep paying it in shootings, suicides and accidents.

ANd to pretend that we're all clean handed, that we as a culture and as a people don't have a hand in letting these things happen is short sighted and privileged.

Just because you, the so called responsible gun owner, do not kill people does not change the fact that your freedom is being paid for in the blood of minorities, poor, mentally unwell, and the innocent. Every. Single. Day.

And I'm sick of paying it.

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After every terrorism attack, we're properly reminded that it's a fallacy to judge all Muslims based on the actions of a few individuals, and doing so is nothing but naked bigotry.

How about we extend the same consideration to the 100 million gun owners in America?

According to the AP this morning, the two identified victims (the grandfather/grandson at the community center) were Christians.

Don said:

How about we extend the same consideration to the 100 million gun owners in America?

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Gun owners are not being discriminated against. There was nothing in what Zoombie said to imply anything of the sort.

It's not the act of owning a gun that makes someone inherently dangerous. But the act of acquiring a gun can allow someone with murderous intent to become a murderer in less than a second and a single bad decision.

Being a gun owner does not imply anything about the moral standing of the person in question. It tells us no more than if you were a toaster owner, or that of a stereo. But a madman with access to a gun can become a murderer, and the freedom to give you good people guns also lets the bad people at them.

Nobody's accusing you, Don.

Don said:

After every terrorism attack, we're properly reminded that it's a fallacy to judge all Muslims based on the actions of a few individuals, and doing so is nothing but naked bigotry.

How about we extend the same consideration to the 100 million gun owners in America?

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Uh-huh.

Because only Muslims are terrorists.

And, moreover, this ignores the point I'm trying to make here: We are responsible for our actions. There are arguments (rather easy ones) that point out that terrorism is always a response to something, and that American meddling during the Cold War basically created our current issues in the Middle East.

I blame terrorists for stooping to murder and violence to enact social and political change, but I also blame the government for screwing their countries like a screw-driver on screw day. And I blame us for not making the government do better, and for being so easily manipulated with distortions and propaganda.

I blame school shooters for shooting up schools, but I also blame a culture that thinks the best way to stop violence is to add more guns to the situation. I blame the fact that it is easier to get a gun than a car. I blame the fact that our weapons technology advanced so far, and our cultural assumptions about guns have changed not a whit - our constitution was written when guns could still be beaten by curved wood with strings attached for leathality, accuracy and rate of fire and it seems like MOST people in the United States thinks that's a perfectly logical state of affairs.

And, you know, it is not just gun owners who are culpable here.

Because I'm free to buy a gun too.

And that freedom is killing people.

And I refuse to let it happen anymore, which is why I'm going to keep agitating for a constitutional amendment to nix the 2nd amendment.

Devil Ledbetter said:

According to the AP this morning, the two identified victims (the grandfather/grandson at the community center) were Christians.

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I don't think this matters if the man went somewhere jewish people congregate intending to shoot some jewish people. Or just saw the place and thought, oh, hey, jews, I think I want to shoot them.

Lillith1991 said:

I don't think this matters if the man went somewhere jewish people congregate intending to shoot some jewish people. Or just saw the place and thought, oh, hey, jews, I think I want to shoot them.

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No, it doesn't matter. I am sure if, as reported, the killer was shouting "Heil Hitler" as he fired his gun he must have assumed his targets were Jewish. I just think it's interesting that so many people are talking about this without realizing the victims were Christians.

ETA: So it turns out the third victim was a 53-year-old Catholic woman visiting her mother at the retirement complex near the community center.

Devil Ledbetter said:

No, it doesn't matter. I am sure if, as reported, the killer was shouting "Heil Hitler" as he fired his gun he must have assumed his targets were Jewish. I just think it's interesting that so many people are talking about this without realizing the victims were Christians.

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Yea, a deadly case of mistaken idenity, that's what this was for two of the three victims. Which deffinitly makes me think hate crime, because he reportedly may not of shot them if he'd known they weren't Jewish. Now, he may of anyway for "betraying their people," but he did it without the knowledge that two of his victims were Christian.