It affects all of us. Pls don't ignore it. Read up on Gun violence here.
Monday, December 21, 2015
What is #GunViolence today in 2015?
Has 2015 been the Year of the #MassShooting?
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| (Credit: AP/Reuters/J. Scott Applewhite/Lucy Nicholson/Photo montage by Salon) |
But there are two problems with the number: It doesn’t actually provide a clear estimate of how often the country has seen shooting rampages like the one in San Bernardino. And it obscures the broader reality of gun violence in America.
Counting “mass shootings” is notoriously complicated and contested, since there is no standard definition of what they are. Is it best to count shootings that injure or kill a certain number of people? Or should the definition focus more narrowly on attacks in which the motivation of the shooter “appears to be indiscriminate killing”?
Mother Jones, which has been tracking mass shootings since 2012, has counted just four mass shootings this year, and a total of 73 since 1982, as Mother Jones editor Mark Follman has noted in The New York Times.
In 2014, the FBI released its own count of “active shooter” incidents, focusing on events where law enforcement and citizens may have the chance to intervene and change the outcome of the ongoing shooting. It tallied a total of 160 of these events from 2000 to 2013–including high-profile shootings at Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and Sandy Hook Elementary School– with an average of 11 per year.
The “355 mass shootings this year” that has been rocketing around the Internet comes from a crowdsourced Reddit initiative that gathers media reports of shootings in which four or more people were shot.
The Reddit count includes many incidents that Mother Jones, the FBI, and others leave out: for instance, a home robbery, a drive-by shooting, and a gang fight.
The Reddit project’s organizers suggest this broader approach does a better job of capturing the burden of gun violence–including the suffering and costs of treating people who are shot and survive.
“The most obscene incidents of gun violence usually do not make the mainstream news at all,” the project’s introduction says, citing a nightclub shooting in Tennessee in which 18 people were shot and only one person killed. “We believe the media does a disservice to mass shooting victims by virtually ignoring them unless large numbers are killed.”
Yet bundling together all incidents in which four people or more people are shot doesn’t capture the bigger picture.
As ProPublica detailed last week, gun murder in America is largely a story of race and geography. Half of all gun murder victims are black men. The gun murder rate for black Americans is dramatically higher than it is for white Americans. And the burden of violence tends to be concentrated in certain neighborhoods of certain cities.
Reddit’s Mass Shooting Tracker does not include any breakdown by race. In response to questions about the group’s numbers, one project organizer,GhostofAlyeska, wrote, “Our intent is not to analyze the causes or cures for gun violence, but simply to expose the available data. We’re volunteers working from a reddit community, nothing more.”
The Reddit project cites 462 people killed under its broad definition of mass shootings. The number of gun homicides of black men killed in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: 5,798.
Baltimore alone has seen a total of 316 total homicides so far this year–the vast majority of them shooting deaths of black victims, according to the Baltimore Sun’s homicide map. The city’s homicide rate is now at a record high. The Reddit tracker captures eight of those deaths.
San Bernardino has two entries in this year’s Mass Shooting Tracker: yesterday’s attack, and a nightclub shooting reportedly linked to gang violence. The area has long struggled with poverty, gangs, and homicide. “My son was shot to death with an AK–47. My nephew was murdered and his body was burned and buried,” San Bernardino resident Marisa Hernandez told Vice News on Wednesday. “This type of mass shootings happens everyday here to our kids and nobody stops it, nobody does anything.”
Lawmaker says US Immigration did NOT fully vet the fiancee visa of female #SanBernardino shooter!
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| (Photo: (U.S. Customs and Border Protection via AP |
Goodlatte said he reviewed the application and found there was insufficient evidence to prove Malik and U.S. citizen Syed Rizwan Farook, had met in person — a requirement for a foreign national seeking a K-1 financée visa before being allowed entry into the U.S.
"Visa security is critical to national security, and it's unacceptable that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not fully vet Malik's application and instead sloppily approved her visa," Goodlatte, R-Va., said in a statement.
The application contained a statement by Farook that he and Malik had met in Saudi Arabia and copies of pages from their passports showing both had stamped entry visas into Saudi Arabia in 2013 that were written in Arabic.
The immigration official reviewing Malik's visa application to the U.S. requested translation of the stamps into English to confirm the pair was in Saudi Arabia at the same time, however they were never provided, Goodlatte said.
#SanBernardino home of shooters cleared out by family members.
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| WILL LESTER/THE INLAND VALLEY DAILY BULLETIN/AP |
Landlord Doyle Miller told the Sun he plans to continue renting the Redlands, California, apartment, after extensive repairs.
Relatives of Syed Rizwan Farook – including his mother, brother, brother-in-law, and the family lawyer – gathered to start removing the couple's possessions just after 10 a.m. local time, according to the Sun.
With a U-Haul, the Farook family was helped by movers as they went in and out of the house, according to the Press-Enterprise.
Items removed ranged from furniture and appliances, as well as a baby crib and a stroller – presumably used by the pair's 6-month-old daughter – according to the Press-Enterprise.
Authorities said that Farook, 28, and his wife, 29-year-old Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people and wounded 22 others earlier this month after opening fire at a holiday party at San Bernardino's Inland Regional Center.
Both were killed hours later during a shoot-out with police.
When officials first searched their home following the Dec. 2 attack, they said they found the parts to build 19 pipe bombs and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Earlier this week, Enrique Marquez, Farook and Mailk's neighbor, was chargedwith the unlawful purchase of two assault rifles that were used in the deadly shooting, and with conspiring to commit crimes of terrorism in 2011 and 2012.
Authorities allege that Marquez bought the weapons because Farook did not think he would pass a background check.
The two movers assisting the family on Saturday, Daniel Nunez and Jore Zarate, told the San Bernardino Sun they were shocked when they figured out who the townhouse belonged to.
"It makes you a little nervous to know you are so close to what happened that day," Nunez told the paper.
The Farook family was at the property for under three hours on Saturday as two Redlands Police officers sat across the street to watch, according to the Press-Enterprise.
After the family left, Miller replaced the plywood board that covered the door.
@HQNigerianArmy SHOT and MASSACRED Shiites they claim tried to KILL Chief of Army Staff.
The ‘failed attempt’ on General Buratai’s life
Who do you believe?--#Snitchlady
Sheik Ibraheem Zakzaky, 62, the ever turbaned, tough looking leader of the Shiite Islamic Movement in Nigeria, IMN, is an Islamic scholar and a tempestuous preacher. He speaks straight to the powers-that-be and has survived many jail terms in the hands of military governments in the ‘80s and ‘90s for sedition. Never hiding his hatred for Israel and the United States, he lost three sons and 35 followers after a pro-Palestinian protest with the military on July 25, 2014 in Zaria, Kaduna State turned bloody. And penultimate Saturday night, gunfire and occasional explosions kept residents of Gyelesu area of Zaria nervously awake in their homes.
An estate, which housed Zakzaky – a first class graduate of economics from the Ahmadu Bello University (I979) – had been condoned off by soldiers, and was the theatre of the gun battle.
Even in the gust of the cold, dusty harmattan, residents in high rise buildings around the area claimed that a peep through the window showed battle ready soldiers taking position with their weapons, spitting fire into the large compound where Zakzaky, his household and hundreds of followers were holed up.
It was not clear if the embattled Shiite Muslims were firing back at the troops, since both sides later gave contradicting accounts. But, residents, who spoke to Sunday Vanguard, claimed to have heard piercing screaming of women and children, with men barking out orders from the compound. The battle went on, right through the night and continued after day-break, until Sunday.
Zaria, an old Hausa city, with a blend of ancient homes and modern buildings, located on the south-most fringe of the Sahel in Kaduna State, had experienced a violent encounter between the Nigerian Army and the IMN the previous day (Saturday).
Video clips show a group of people, some of them wielding clubs, machetes and knives, refusing armed soldiers passage on a major road. An unidentified Brigadier General and his men emerge, vehemently pleading with the leaders of the group to leave the road, but to no avail. Objects are thrown at the soldiers as they try to navigate the unruly situation. Suddenly, the crowd, which also has some women, becomes riotous.
The clips then show scenes of burning tyres and cleared barricades on a street but, this time, deserted. The clips are the evidence of a resolvable issue that later became ugly, leading to the siege on the compound of Zakzaky that Sunday night.
That penultimate Saturday evening, the Nigeria Army and the Shiite Muslims had traded blames over the afternoon confrontation between soldiers and the sect.
COAS escaped assassination from Shiites – Army
A statement by Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman, Acting Director, Army Public Relations, issued, in Abuja, read: “The Shiite sect, on the orders of their leader, Ibrahim El-Zak zaky, today afternoon, in Zaria. attacked the convoy of the Chief of the Army Staff, while on his way to pay homage to the Emir of Zazzau and attend the Passing Out Parade of 73 Regular Recruits Intake of Depot Nigerian Army, Zaria.
Sheik Ibraheem Zakzaky, 62, the ever turbaned, tough looking leader of the Shiite Islamic Movement in Nigeria, IMN, is an Islamic scholar and a tempestuous preacher. He speaks straight to the powers-that-be and has survived many jail terms in the hands of military governments in the ‘80s and ‘90s for sedition. Never hiding his hatred for Israel and the United States, he lost three sons and 35 followers after a pro-Palestinian protest with the military on July 25, 2014 in Zaria, Kaduna State turned bloody. And penultimate Saturday night, gunfire and occasional explosions kept residents of Gyelesu area of Zaria nervously awake in their homes.
An estate, which housed Zakzaky – a first class graduate of economics from the Ahmadu Bello University (I979) – had been condoned off by soldiers, and was the theatre of the gun battle.
Even in the gust of the cold, dusty harmattan, residents in high rise buildings around the area claimed that a peep through the window showed battle ready soldiers taking position with their weapons, spitting fire into the large compound where Zakzaky, his household and hundreds of followers were holed up.
It was not clear if the embattled Shiite Muslims were firing back at the troops, since both sides later gave contradicting accounts. But, residents, who spoke to Sunday Vanguard, claimed to have heard piercing screaming of women and children, with men barking out orders from the compound. The battle went on, right through the night and continued after day-break, until Sunday.
Zaria, an old Hausa city, with a blend of ancient homes and modern buildings, located on the south-most fringe of the Sahel in Kaduna State, had experienced a violent encounter between the Nigerian Army and the IMN the previous day (Saturday).
Video clips show a group of people, some of them wielding clubs, machetes and knives, refusing armed soldiers passage on a major road. An unidentified Brigadier General and his men emerge, vehemently pleading with the leaders of the group to leave the road, but to no avail. Objects are thrown at the soldiers as they try to navigate the unruly situation. Suddenly, the crowd, which also has some women, becomes riotous.
The clips then show scenes of burning tyres and cleared barricades on a street but, this time, deserted. The clips are the evidence of a resolvable issue that later became ugly, leading to the siege on the compound of Zakzaky that Sunday night.
That penultimate Saturday evening, the Nigeria Army and the Shiite Muslims had traded blames over the afternoon confrontation between soldiers and the sect.
COAS escaped assassination from Shiites – Army
A statement by Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman, Acting Director, Army Public Relations, issued, in Abuja, read: “The Shiite sect, on the orders of their leader, Ibrahim El-Zak zaky, today afternoon, in Zaria. attacked the convoy of the Chief of the Army Staff, while on his way to pay homage to the Emir of Zazzau and attend the Passing Out Parade of 73 Regular Recruits Intake of Depot Nigerian Army, Zaria.
Why is the Nigerian Army SHOOTING up Biafran people in Eastern Nigeria? The rampage continues!
At least four people are believed to have been killed in Anambra State during celebrations following a high court decision to release controversial director of Radio Biafra.
Thousands of people took to the streets of Onitsha, a town in Anambra, on 17 December after learning that charges against Nnamdi Kanu – arrested by the state security department (DSS) in Lagos in October – had been dropped.
While supporters of Kanu – who is the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob) – were celebrating, the army allegedly used live bullets on the cheering crowd, some alleged. There are contrasting reports on the number of the alleged victims as local media say the death toll could be as high as 10.
Mazi Mmaduabuchi Anyagulu, a member of Ipob, told IBTimes UK: "Yesterday (17 December) four of our people, who were rejoicing for the release of our leader, were murdered by the Nigerian Army at the Onitsha Bridge Head. Thirteen were hospitalized at the Multicare Hospital.
"Last night around 10 pm, members of the Nigerian army invaded the hospital where they were being treated and took away those at the hospital. They were taken back to the military barracks in Onitsha."
Friday, December 18, 2015
Remembering the children and Staff of Sandy Hook Elementary school 3 years later
Go to Pinterest.com/hnnafrica and see the faces we lost under the Snitchlady Foundation board.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting
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