Brace yourself; We’re about to point some serious fingers.
If you are unfamiliar with the events that took place, please freshen up first.
Are you up to date? Good. This may be drawn out, so let’s just get right into this head first.
Shooter kills multiple people in multiple ways
It wasn’t all gunshots. His first three victims were stabbed to death. Later on while driving his BMW, he ran over two bicyclists which rendered his car the weapon (neither killed).
The other fatalities were of course due to his handgun(s). But if we look at this statistically, we come up with this:
Knife attacks: 100% murder rate
Vehicle attacks: 0% murder rate
Handgun attacks: 27% murder rate
50% of the people killed were done so with a knife.
See this picture below from a press conference? All they show as the weapons used are firearms. We don’t see a knife anywhere in those photos, do you?
What we have here is an individual that was set on destruction, regardless of how he was going to create it. A man with a mind such as the one we see in the video is not a stable person by any stretch of the imagination. Guns or not, he was going to cause chaos and end the lives of strangers to satisfy his own sick agenda.
Missed Opportunities
We know that we weren’t there, and hindsight is always 20-20. However according to his manifesto, there were many signs and opportunities missed that could have prevented this tragedy from occurring.
(CNN) His mother came across his YouTube videos in April after she hadn’t heard from Rodger in a few days, Astaire said. She called one of his therapists, who then called a Santa Barbara mental health hotline. A woman on the hotline called police to check on him, Astaire said.
Six policemen showed up at his house in Isla Vista on April 30, but they found nothing alarming, so they told Rodger to call his mother and they reassured her that he was OK, according to Astaire. Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown told reporters Saturday that at the time, deputies “determined he did not meet the criteria for an involuntary hold.”
Looking back, Rodger’s parents now feel that the well-being check in April by police was a “pivotal moment,” and his parents are frustrated, Astaire said. He described it as a “missed opportunity” to really find out what was going on with Rodger, but his parents admit that hindsight is always easy, Astaire said.
We won’t speculate any further on this because there is a very fine line that is walked while treating a person with mental health issues. We will however, bring up the following because it is an important part of the puzzle that needs to be addressed.
Shooter legally purchased firearms used in shooting
According to the LA Times, the three handguns recovered from the scene were all legally registered in the shooters name. This means that, under California law, he would have been required to pass a background check for each firearm purchase made. Furthermore, he would have needed to wait 30 days between purchases. Sources indicated that there would have been nothing to disqualify him from legally purchasing the firearms. Nothing short of an outright handgun ban would have stopped him from obtaining the handguns. Let’s be honest and reasonable.
