re: 15 years later: October 3, 2002: 5 people killed as the DC sniper attacks begin in DC

I lived about 10 minutes from Ashland (#14 on that map). I remember School was closed for a few days. My mom woke us up one morning telling us to get dressed... he just shot someone in Maryland and we’re going to the grocery store. It was all just bizarre.

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Wonder if in another 15 years we'll have finally done something about it?

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Like make it illegal to shoot someone? I wish they'd outlaw that already.

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You people are the worst you literally think people fall into two categories either conservative or liberal. Everyone who does anything despicable is automatically liberal. You sound ignorant as frick.

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Exactly. Being a moderate is out of style these days.

I lived through that shite, and it was fricking crazy, crazy times.

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Guns have gotta go

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That works so well...

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But at the same time Australia was banning guns and experiencing a decline in gun homicides, America was more than doubling how many firearms it manufactured and seeing a nearly identical drop in gun homicides. That throws a bit of a wrench into the idea that Australia’s gun ban must be the reason for its decline in gun crime.

However, what’s more important is the fact that overall suicides and murder have not “plummeted” in the years after the gun ban. Yes, as with the gun-happy United States, the murder rate is down in Australia. It’s dropped 31 percent from a rate of 1.6 per 100,000 people in 1994 to 1.1 per 100,000 in 2012.But it’s the only serious crime that saw a consistent decline post-ban.

In fact, according to the Australian government’s own statistics, a number of serious crimes peaked in the years after the ban. Manslaughter, sexual assault, kidnapping, armed robbery, and unarmed robbery all saw peaks in the years following the ban, and most remain near or above pre-ban rates. The effects of the 1996 ban on violent crime are, frankly, unimpressive at best.

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Do some research

Holy shite I’m old

As big as this story was then, I can't imagine what it would be like now.

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I remember news stations telling people things like walk in an s pattern as you walk into the store. It must have been nuts to live up there during that.

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This post is probably going to put me on a watch list somewhere, but here we go...

I've always thought a terror group would be far more effective if they made small attacks like the sniper attacks at malls and such. Two guys nearly shut down the DC metro area with a sniper. Imagine a bomb at a mall one weekend, a bomb or two at a mall in the same area the next weekend, etc. If you spread it across the country, you could effectively shut this place down with a group of 15-20 people.

Anyway, its terrifying to ponder.

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Anyway, its terrifying to ponder.

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Given all the wide open areas where people congregate and all the examples that have been given for what to do it is kind of amazing it doesn't happen more often.

330MM people, got to be a lot of time bombs ticking for all sorts of reasons.

Columbine was 18 years ago.