Rio Massacre: Staring at the obvious, yet ignoring it. (2)
(Click here for part 1)
Gun Control activists both in Brazil and the US, wasted not one millisecond to clamor for more gun control. Funny thing is that very few news outlets in the US reported that the guns used by Menezes were not Evil Assault Weapons in the Glock 30 Round clip configuration but plain old six shooters with a design over a century old. Yet, if anything, this awful event destroyed several myths sponsored by those Gun Control Groups.
Myths Destroyed:
1) We need tighter gun control. Funny they should mention that. Brazil has very strick gun control laws, yet this massacre happened anyway. Sebastian provided a link to a summary of Brazil’s Gun Laws. Among them:
- Registration of all firearms.
- A Brazilian citizen must not have, at any given time, more than two handguns, two rifled long guns and two shotguns.
- Citizens are not allowed to buy more than one gun per year.
- Waiting periods for registration average 30 days, but in Rio de Janeiro state it could reach 3 months.
The minimum age for gun ownership in Brazil is 25 years. An applicant for a firearm license in Brazil must pass background checks which consider criminal, mental and employment records. An understanding of firearm safety and the law, tested in a theoretical and/or practical training course is required for a firearm license. Gun owners must re-apply and re-qualify for their firearm license every 3 years.
So, Did Menezes bypassed all those regulations? Nope, he simply ignored them and bought his guns from a pair of gun dealing criminals that, imagine that, also ignored the law since they were not allowed to possess guns.
2) Gun Control Reduces Murder. I am not even gonna talk much about this one. Here are the numbers:
Brazil (Brady Approved Gun Control): 23.8 homicides per 100,000 residents
USA (Brady Disapproved Gun Control): 5.4 homicides per 100,000 residents
3) High Capacity Magazines must be banned because they are lethal. Melezes used Safariland Comp III speedloaders with a capacity of 6 rounds. No evil 30 round magazines could be used with revolvers. Authorities still found over sixty spent cases at the crime scene.
4) Semi Automatic guns with Rapid Rate of Fire must be banned because they are lethal.
Menezes used two revolvers, one of them a Rossi which do not have a reputation among some gun owners as reliable (Not me, I own a Rossy snubnose in .357 and love the little sucker.) These revolvers are based in a technology over 100 years old, yet they managed to kill 12 innocents kids and wound 11 more. However rest assured that if the Antis manage to ban semi automatic handguns, they will use the Rio Massacre to point out we need Revolver Control.
5) The Armor Piercing/Cop Killing/Black Talon/Explosive/Hollow Point/Mercury/Teflon all killing bullets must be banned. Again the data is in and shows that plain old lead round nose ammunition was used. It proved quite lethal if it the round was placed in the right part of the anatomy which in the case of the shooter, he was aiming at the heads of the victims. Of course Anti Gunners will like to see those type of rounds banned, but they are not saying that, at least not yet. It makes for splashier headlines to use TEFLON or ARMOR PIERCING than round nose.
6) You do not need guns to protect yourself or anybody. Police will protect you. Two military Police officers were mere two blocks away from the school when the shooting started. They reacted immediately and by the time all the shooting was over and Menezes shot himself, barely 5 minutes had passed. 12 dead and 11 wounded demonstrate very gruesomely the fallacy of that statement. When Seconds Count, Police is Only Minutes Away is not a catchy slogan, it is a sad reality.
7) Gun Free Zones Save Lives. Twelve dead kids are an obvious contradiction to such stupid statement.
Rio Massacre: Staring at the obvious, yet ignoring it. (1)
Wellington Menezes de Oliveira, 24 years of age, deceased by his own hand now belongs to the evil fraternity of Mass Murderers. On April 7, he entered the Tasso da Silveira Municipal School, produced two revolvers and went on a rampage killing 12 kids and wounding another 11. According to what I manage to gather in the On Dia On Line (Rio de Janeiro Newspaper) the shooter apparently used speedloaders and had plenty of time to fire over 60 shots by the number of cases found on the floor of the classroom. He also was deliberately taking head shots at his victims as in trying to make sure they were dead.
Two police officers were a couple of blocks away and took action as soon as they heard the shots. One of them shot Menezes through the stomach with his rifle as he was reloading one more time. Menezes ran away and then killed himself. According to reports, from first shots fired to the suicide, the time elapsed was about 5 minutes.
The newspaper mentions a .32 caliber revolver which I assume is the black one seen in the background. The one in the foreground is a Rossi .38 special and Safariland Comp III speedloaders. Menezes paid about $164 for both weapons from two other criminals with records for drugs and violence.
A suicide note was found:
After the attack, the killer left a letter of fundamentalist content on site. The text contained incomprehensible and disjointed phrases, with references to Islam and even terrorist practices. Then he killed himself with a bullet in the head.
“He was so focused on things related to Islam and had let his beard grow long. It was weird, was on the internet all day reading issues and he was very strange, very secretive, “said the foster sister of the Wellington to Radio Band News .
The Rio Massacre and High Capacity Magazines.
Everybody in the Gun Community (and the Anti Gun community too) knows about the Rio Massacre where a deranged bastard shot and killed 12 kids. We are also well aware of the new push for introducing a ban on “high capacity” magazines which anti-gunners swear will get rid of these awful mass shootings. Of course you can trust them that there will not be any more restrictions on ammunition capacity…yeah right.
They will probably use what happen on Rio as the next logical step. What follows is a translation from Venezuela’s Union Radio website.
The murderer, Wallace Menezes de Oliveira, 23, used two revolvers he had obtained illegally and which he fired 66 times, police said, killing twelve children between 12 and 14 years old and wounding a dozen other students .
Yep, no evil Glocks with double-plus-ungood thirty round magazine, just plain old wheelguns. Soon we will hear that we only need single action Peace maker-type guns which are difficult to reload fast thus guaranteeing that massacres like Rio’s will never happen again.
UPDATE: Confirmed via O Dia On Line (Rio De Janeiro’s Newspaper) and that the attack was stopped by Police:
Distraught, the killer attacked students from two classes of 8th grade (1801 and 1802), a former seventh grade. The scenes of terror only end with the arrival of three policemen. At the moment when the two revolvers were reloaded for the third time , the killer is surprised by a sergeant before reaching the third floor of the school. A rifle shot in the stomach requires the Wellington stop. At the end of the climb, he picks one of his arms and shoots himself in the head.
And nobody ever heard from him again…
Actual ad on Craiglist.
$1 OFFERING PLACE TO LIVE (NW OF LAKE CITY)
Date: 2011-04-08, 10:25PM EDT
Reply to: hous-6cywk-2314103421@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
I am in a position to offering a place to live for someone who is homeless or who is an ex con who is having a tough time due to the unjust laws of society. You must be able to adapt to living in the country/woods. I don’t have a mansion, not even close, but I do have a roof over my head, tv’s, ac and heat and plenty of room to flop. Age and sexual orientation doesn’t matter. I am basically just looking for companionship, and someone to help me out with housework. You must be able to accept living with cats and dogs. Being able to stir something up on the stove or grill would be nice too. You must respond very quickly if interested as I am sure this situation will be filled in a day or two. Send me an email and if you have a phone number send that too. Tell me about yourself. If you don’t have transportation I can pick you up.
You know this is going to be in an episode of America’s Most Wanted or The First 48.
Gun Free Europe Fail…again.
No way… that has to be a mistake. We yankees are the violent bastards of the world. That stuff does not happen in cultural Europe.
“You hear about this sort of thing happening at American schools and you think that’s a long way away,” said Rob Kuipers, 50, a project manager. “Now it’s happened here in the Netherlands.”
I am seriously sick of the European snobbery about violence. This is the region of the world that gave us two frigging world wars, responsible for numerous other little wars, and perfected mass murder of civilians just in the past century, but they have the genital spheres to call us violent.