“It is deeply disturbing that one of America’s most powerful symbols of the memory of the Holocaust was selected as the site of the attack just days after President Obama accompanied Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to the Buchenwald death camp,” they said.
...which, of course, is why he picked both the where and the when.
Shooting at Holocaust Museum Kills a Guard
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON — An 88-year-old white supremacist with a rifle walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, one of the capital’s most visited sites, on Wednesday afternoon and began shooting, fatally wounding a security guard and sending tourists scrambling before he himself was shot, the authorities said.
The gunman was identified by law enforcement officials as James W. von Brunn, who embraces various conspiracy theories involving Jews, blacks and other minority groups and at one point waged a personal war with the federal government....
Officials and others who track conspiracy theorists have long been familiar with Mr. von Brunn, whose latest address is believed to be in Eastern Maryland, in part because he maintains a Web site. (Wednesday night, only an archived version of the site was available.) He has claimed variously to be a member of Mensa, the high-I.Q. society; to have played varsity football at a Midwestern college, where he earned a degree in journalism; to have been a PT boat commander in World War II; and to be a painter and an author.
Mr. von Brunn has also claimed to have been victimized by a court system run by Jews and blacks.
Before Wednesday, he was best known to law enforcement officials for having walked into the Washington headquarters of the Federal Reserve System on Dec. 7, 1981, with a bag slung over the shoulder of his trench coat. A guard chased him to the second floor, where the Fed’s board was meeting, and found a revolver, a hunting knife and a sawed-off shotgun in the bag.
Mr. von Brunn, who lived in Lebanon, N.H., at the time, told the police he wanted to take board members hostage to focus news media attention on their responsibility for high interest rates and the nation’s economic difficulties. He was convicted in 1983 and served several years in prison on attempted kidnapping, burglary, assault and weapons charges.
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Mr. von Brunn has also
LMBAO!
He must have done his time in Israel and Zimbabwe.
von Brunn
Folks like this give racism a bad name...
Another Death Contributed to An Extremist
I'm all for tougher gun laws. Lets make them as tough as they can be without wrecking the 2nd Amendment. Lets put high taxes & ID prints on ammo, limit the amount and type of guns and ammo one person (or house hold) can have. Fuck it, lets just put an outright nation wide gun ban on assault weapons and hand guns (save for law enforcement and the military) - and modified shotguns to boot. But when you have extreme assholes like James W. von Brunn, Scott Roeder, gang members, drug dealers, and just about every jackass intent on getting a gun who really shouldn't have one, no gun law or ban will be enough to stop them. No gun law or ban will ever stop the determination of criminals and extreme individuals.
I'm all for tougher gun
What exactly do you mean here? Laws against child abuse don't prevent people from abusing children so should we not have laws against child abuse? We can't prevent every whacko or criminal from obtaining an assault weapon but we should do more to minimize their windows of opportunity.
You know pt, you're right.
You know pt, you're right. We can't prevent every "whacko" from getting assault weapons, but we should do all that we can to stop jackasses from getting them. Though I refuse to categorize them as whackos. Somehow that excuses them. But I get the feeling that many think that guns, themselves, are the problem. And that if we just got rid of the guns, or if we made it harder for people with lower motives to obtain guns, then we all be safe, or at least a little safer. But I think that is naive!! Other than abolishing the 2nd Amendment, how do you propose that we "minimize their windows of opportunity"? Don't get me wrong, I think we should tax ammo, limit households and individuals to a number of guns, maybe even look into banning assault save for weapons to military only (I just don't trust law enforcement having assault weapons). But even if the nation had such laws I still don't see how we limit dangerous individuals with an illegal or radical/extreme agenda from reaching their goal(s). Ultimately, this is a legal matter. And legally speaking, I just don't see how we get to what I think many want - to be completely safe from all guns - without approaching the 2nd Amendment.
Gun Crazy
Not in my book. If you can't or won't control your behavior we have the right to separate you from the general population.
Well, we certainly shouldn't, for example, expand the rights of folks to carry guns in national parks or to carry concealed weapons in public places.
Yes, I agree with you. I'm not comfortable at all with the desire of our local gendarmes to make themselves over into military units via the SWAT Road.