Posted on 01/19/2011 3:52:49 PM PST by neverdem
The gunman accused of shooting Rep. Gabrielle Gifford of Arizona and 19 others was trying to reload his semi-automatic weapon, but the efforts of bystanders and a new magazine that failed prevented what Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said could have been "a huge greater catastrophe."
Speaking at a Sunday press conference in Tucson, Dupnik said that the suspect, Jared Lee Loughner, was attempting to change magazines after his initial volley of shots when "a woman went up and grabbed the magazine and tore it away from him while he was trying to put another magazine in."
Loughner then succeeded in loading another magazine but that "fortunately the spring and the magazine failed" and two other civilians were able to get the weapon away from him and subdue him until the police came, Dupnik said.
Each magazine contained 31 bullets, Dupnik said, and had Loughner been able to reload and fire again, "there would have been a huge greater catastrophe."
Patricia Maisch, the 61-year-old woman who tried to get the magazine away from the gunman, was herself wounded during the shootings.
Roger Sulzgeber and Joseph Zimudie were the other bystanders who tried to stop Loughner, according to The Associated Press.
Loughner was armed with a 9-millimeter Glock semi-automatic which FBI Director Robert Mueller said he had obtained last November. Mueller did not say where Loughner got the gun. CNN reported it was purchased at a store in Tucson.
Federal prosecutors filed charges against Loughner Sunday afternoon, including one count of attempting to assassinate a member of Congress, two counts of killing an employee of the federal government and two counts of attempting to kill a federal employee. Mueller indicated that additional charges may be filed based on the continuing investigation.
The criminal complaint said that investigators found a letter from Giffords in a safe at Loughner's house thanking him for attending one of her "Congress on Your Corner" meetings in 2007. The complaint added: "Also recovered in the safe was an enveloped with handwriting on the envelope stating 'I planned ahead,' and 'My assassination' and the name 'Giffords' along with what appears to be Loughner's signature." (See a copy of the complaint here).
Dupnik also disclosed that the second "person of interest" that authorities said they were seeking as a possible accomplice may not have been involved in Saturday's shootings.
While Dupnik said authorities still need to locate the man, whose photo was distributed by law enforcement officials, "we are more satisfied in our minds that this person may not have been involved in this incident at all."
Dupnik, who has received wide attention for his remarks Saturday attacking the amount of "vitriol" in political rhetoric that he said may contribute to violence, repeated that view with obvious emotion on Sunday and also lashed out at laws that let "everybody" carry guns.
"I think that when the rhetoric about hated, about mistrust of government, about paranoia about how government operates and to try to inflame the public on a daily basis, 24 amours a day, seven days a week, has impact on people especially who are unbalanced personalities to begin with."
Asked how he felt about Arizona's gun laws, Dupnik said of the state, "I think we're the Tombstone of the United States of America."
"I have never been a proponent of letting everybody in this state carry weapons under any circumstances that they want and that's almost where we are," he said. "The legislature at this time is proposing that students and teachers be allowed to have weapons in schools and in college ... that's the ridiculous state to where we have become."
Dupnik was referring to a bill proposed by state Sen. Karen Johnson that would allow people 21 and older who have a concealed weapons permit to carry a firearm at public colleges and universities, where they are generally not allowed. She said that if a student or teacher was armed, they could act if a gunman tried to open fire on campus as had happened at Northern Illinois University in 2008.
The 74-year-old Dupnik is a Democrat who, according to the Washington Post, "is known for his colorful and often bluntly partisan commentary." He has called Arizona's new law cracking down on illegal immigration "racist" and "stupid" and has refused to enforce it. He has also described the tea party as "bigots."
Dupnik's Saturday remarks drew a rebuke from Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a Republican, who said on CBS' Face the Nation, "I didn't really think that that had any part in a law enforcement briefing last night. It was speculation. And I don't think we should rush to speculate. I thought that the report that we just saw from Tucson seems to have it about right. We really don't know what motivated this young person except to know he was very mentally unstable"
And my Gawd, if had had a 155 mm Howitzer, the death toll might have been much worse. And just think if he had a fleet of B-2 bombers with 1000-lb JDAM bombs programmed to take out everyone who happened to be eating a taco at the time they exploded.
Sheriff Dupnik failed to protect the community.
He knew that Jared Loughner was obsessed with Giffords and did not place one single deputy at the meet and greet.
Nor did Dupnik use the broad AZ hold for evaluation laws that could have saved the victims and even Loughner.
A 31 shot magazine for a Glock 9mm pistol? Wow! It may be that it failed because it was some cheap after-market device that was pushing the “maximum load” limit anyway and is not very reliable.
And the last story I heard had the woman picking up the magazine, not wresting it away from the guy. This is a constantly evolving story, it’s be nice to know what actually happened.
Dipsh*t is an ass. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, the political hack. Loughner simply got stopped in time. But if he wanted to shoot every one dead, no one could have stopped him - certainly not his infamous Pima County sheriffs who would have arrived at the scene of the crime after it was all over.
Recall Sheriff Dipstick for calling Arizona the Tombstone of the United States of America.”
>>...lashed out at laws that let “everybody” carry guns. <<
Maybe if “everybody” carried guns, he would not have thought he could open fire with impunity.
I’ve had several spring failures in crappy AK mags. Nothing worse than being at the range thinking that you had a hang fire and finding out that the mag spring slipped and messed up the feed.
Keep in mind too, this idiot, Loughner, was a leftist with no practical firearm experience. He followed the path of other leftist assassins who bought a gun thinking it means power and realized after they were caught that they’re tools requiring knowledge.
Had Loughner not bought white box Remington FMJ rounds (unconfirmed) and used JHPs, the carnage would’ve been astronomical. In-and-out wounds are exactly that: wounds. I don’t know a single hunter who uses FMJs due to the in-and-out vs. expansion with JHPs.
Or, if you're not the reloading type, you can just bring a few guns.
Trying to inconvenience a lunatic bent on killing isn't going to work, unless you inconvenience him to the point of physical incapacitation.
And if the killer had fertilizer bomb in the trunk of his car, it could have been even worse. This Politico story is just ginning up outlawing large clips. Old story to boot.
There was a man who was armed that was shopping in the store. He came out ready to shoot when he heard the shooting. He didn’t need to use his sidearm because they were able to subdue him regardless of Loughner reloading.
Exactly!
Gee, no fooling? It would have been catastrophic if he had been able to bring 5 other shooters with RPG's also....or if he were able to use a dirty nuke....or 1,000,000 other hypotheticals
No, if Dupnik had done his job, Loughner would have been arrested for drug use or committed for psychiatric care after he threatened to kill numerous people—who complained to the law and were told to get lost because his mother was a County official.
I didn’t know he is 74. I don’t understand why leftists spew and go crazy whenever one of ours is 65 or over. They say they’re “senile,” have “Alzheimer’s,” and make all sorts of other horrid and untrue claims. Yet, here is one of theirs, clearly unfit to serve (age or not), and not one comment... only praise.
“a huge greater catastrophe”...kinda describes Dupnik himself.
I’m a little confused. If you’ve got a loaded magazine, the first round is sitting there right at the top. You stick it in, pull the slide, and presto, its in the chamber. Did he get this one shot off, and then have problems with the next one chambering? Or did he even get the first round chambered at all? Its a minor silly point...but sometimes I think Dupnik is just making shi’ite up as he goes along.
The Bath School disaster is the name given to three bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, USA, on May 18, 1927, which killed 38 primary school children and 7 adults, and injured at least 58 people. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7–12 years of age) attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history. The perpetrator was school board member Andrew Kehoe, who was upset by a property tax that had been levied to fund the construction of the school building. He blamed the additional tax for financial hardships which led to foreclosure proceedings against his farm. These events apparently provoked Kehoe to plan his attack.Two days later Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, on the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.On the morning of May 18, Kehoe first killed his wife, then set his farm buildings afire. As fire fighters arrived at the farm, an explosion devastated the north wing of the school building, killing many of the people inside. Kehoe used a detonator to ignite dynamite and hundreds of pounds of pyrotol which he had secretly planted inside the school over the course of many months. As rescuers started gathering at the school, Kehoe drove up, stopped, and detonated a bomb inside his shrapnel-filled vehicle, killing himself and the school superintendent, and killing and injuring several others. During rescue efforts searchers discovered an additional 500 pounds (230 kg) of unexploded dynamite and pyrotol planted throughout the basement of the school's south wing.
If is meaningless.
Does anybody know if the EU Times has any credibility at all?
I received an email from a friend with an article from the EU Times titled “Top US Federal Judge Assassinated After Threat To Obama Agenda”.
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