How many times have people tried to sell you on the idea of a ban on so-called assault weapons by saying they’d not just reduce the number of mass shootings, but the severity? Can you even remember?
It’s a common enough narrative, and one that’s been pushed for years.
Some anti-gun voices can’t even remember a mass shooting that didn’t involve an AR-15 or some similar style of rifle. They literally can’t recall any such incident, though they happily scamper out of the discussion quietly but abruptly when you provide examples of such incidents, including Virginia Tech.
But Virginia Tech was far from alone in that dubious distinction.
In fact, one of the worst mass shootings in American history, tied for number 17 with the Aurora theater shooting in Colorado, is a 2009 massacre in Binghamton, New York.
There, a man killed 12 innocent people and wounded four others, as well as the life of the gunman. He carried no AR-15 or other modern sporting rifle, what anti-gunners like to call “assault weapons.” Instead, he had three semi-automatic handguns.
It was during a citizenship class at an immigrant services center.
A gunman walked into an immigration center in Binghamton, N.Y., today and went on a shooting rampage, killing a dozen immigrants in a citizenship class and a receptionist before apparently taking his own life, officials said.
Authorities tentatively identified the gunman as a resident of nearby Johnson City, N.Y., but there was no immediate information on a motive for the shooting.
Before entering the American Civic Association building this morning in the town 135 miles northwest of New York City, the gunman used his car to barricade the back door to prevent people inside from escaping, police said. At one point, at least three dozen people were hiding in the building while awaiting rescue from SWAT teams.
Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski told reporters this afternoon that police found 14 bodies inside the building and that at least four other people were critically wounded. He said a total of 37 people were safely removed from the building.
“We have very good reason to believe that the shooter is among the dead,” Zikuski said. He said one body is that of a man with a satchel around his neck containing ammunition. He declined to identify the suspected shooter, saying only that he had ties to the civic association and had borrowed a vehicle to drive there, “apparently to attend a class.” New York Gov. David A. Paterson (D), appearing at the same news conference, expressed his “profound outrage at a senseless act of violence in which innocent people were killed, injured and probably traumatized.” Citing a series of other recent shootings with multiple victims around the country, he asked, “When are we going to be able to curb the kind of violence that is so . . . rapid that we can’t even keep track of the incidents?”
The killer, an immigrant himself, apparently suffered from some kind of paranoid delusions, based on information he sent to the media shortly before his rampage. Upon entering the classroom, he shot 13 of the 16 people within, including the professor teaching the class.
The killer brought three semi-automatic handguns along with him, but it’s uncertain how many of them he actually fired.
Of course, because he had multiple handguns with him, even a magazine capacity law–New York didn’t have one at that point–would have done little to stop such a rampage. He could simply switch guns as he needed. Especially since it’s unlikely anyone in the building would have been armed themselves. That’s even more true today, thanks to New York state’s draconian concealed carry laws.
A modern sporting rifle isn’t needed by a maniac to kill a lot of people. All that’s needed is a will to slaughter the innocent, a congregation of targets, and no sense of decency.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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