Teen shoots himself after killing 15

[TWiley]

WINNENDEN, Germany – A 17-year-old gunman dressed in black opened fire inside his former high school in southwestern Germany on Wednesday killing 15 people, 11 of them women and girls, before turning the gun on himself, authorities said.

Police said the attacker's father, a gun club member, owned 16 guns, one of which was missing.

The gunman entered the school in Winnenden at 9:33 a.m. after classes had begun and opened fire, shooting at random, police said. He killed nine students, three teachers and a passer-by outside the building, officials said. Two other people were killed later.

"He went into the school with a weapon and carried out a bloodbath," said regional police chief Erwin Hetger. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."

Triggering a land and air manhunt, the gunman hijacked a car and forced the driver to head south, sitting in the back seat, according to Stuttgart prosecutors, who are leading the investigation.

When the driver swerved off the road to avoid a police checkpoint, he managed to escape and the suspect, identified only as Tim K., ran into an industrial area in the town of Wendlingen with police in pursuit.

There he entered an auto dealership, shooting and killing a salesman and a customer, and then went back outside, prosecutors said.

"In front of the auto dealership the young man then opened fire toward the many police vehicles," prosecutors said. "A gunbattle ensued between the 17-year-old and the many police involved in the pursuit of him. According to our current information, the 17-year-old then shot himself."

Full Story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090311/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germ...

[tangent90]

1. How could this happen? Germany has about the strictest gun laws in the world.

??

[TheWraith]

2. Same way a guy kills seven family members with an axe.

The most dangerous thing in the world is a competant would-be murderer, because they'll find a way.

[TWiley]

3. It is a mystery. His father is a gun club member and owns 16 guns

The child simply should have known better. I assume his father took the time to explain gun safety to him

[gorfle]

4. Somehow...

Somehow this will be America's fault.

[gorfle]

5. This guy has some good insight into this problem.

I know this guy's stance on unions and schools in general are right-wing, but I think his assessment of the causes of this kind of violence are spot-on:

http://www.robertringer.com/bullying.html

He basically says what I have thought for years: People who are bullied in school either internalize their feelings or the externalize them. Those who internalize suffer alone, sometimes for their whole lives. Some are driven to suicide. Those who externalize finally snap and take their aggressions out on those whom they perceive are to blame for their suffering.

It's easy to look at a Cho or the like and just blame madness or guns. But as this guy points out, often it's not madness or the guns - it's abuse.

I bet it turns out this fellow in Germany was bullied or picked on or otherwise a social outcast.

[gorfle]

13. What did I tell you?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/12/germany.school.shooting.women/index.html

"Kretschmer said: "Everyone laughs at me. No one recognizes my potential. I mean this seriously. I have got a weapon here and tomorrow I am going to go to my former school and give them hell."

[gorfle]

17. More insight into these kinds of people:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/12/fox.shootings/index.html

" In decades of research in collaboration with my Northeastern University colleague Jack Levin, certain common characteristics of mass killers emerge time and time again.

First, the perpetrators tend to have experienced a long history of frustration and failure, resulting in a diminished ability to cope with life's disappointments. Second, they typically externalize blame, frequently complaining that others didn't give them a decent chance. Without this, their destructiveness would instead be directed inward.

In addition, these killers generally lack emotional support from friends or family. They are loners as well as losers. Lacking this support system and reality check, they come to perceive some precipitating event as being absolutely catastrophic.

This most often involves some kind of major disappointment: the loss of a job, the breakup of a relationship or financial ruin, surely a major issue in today's economy. Finally, they need access to a weapon powerful and rapid enough to satisfy their intense need for revenge.

Without much hope for a brighter tomorrow, these assailants often decide that life is not worth living; rather than just taking their own life in quiet solitude, they are eager for payback. It becomes their all-consuming mission to avenge, with a death penalty, against those who caused them to suffer -- in reality or perhaps only in their paranoid interpretation of events.

Experiencing disappointment and failure so profound as to extinguish their desire to survive, most mass killers deliberately and methodically execute those closest to them, those they hold responsible for their troubles. There is little surprise, therefore, that mass murder overwhelmingly involves family members or co-workers, not total strangers. Although there certainly are many well-known episodes of random slaughter of complete strangers, these are more the exception than the rule."

[TheWraith]

18. A sound assessment, and not just about bullying in school.

It also applies to people like the guy who went on a rampage across southern Alabama to "take revenge" on his employers. Violence is the final way for some people who feel abused or marginalized to take control of their circumstances.

[slackmaster]

6. A mentally ill teenager stole a firearm, misused it to murder a bunch of people

...in a place where no firearms are allowed, and was eventually stopped by a bunch of sane good people with firearms.

[TWiley]

11. how so? Good people would not have guns.

If guns were not allowed then he was stopped by criminals.

[Indy Lurker]

12. The Police

He was stopped by the police (good people with guns), or at least he was cornered by armed officers, at which point he killed himself.

[virginia mountainman]

14. Clarify this statement please?

"Good people would not have guns"


Their is a damn lot of us here on DU, that have them. Do you not consider us "good people"?

[slackmaster]

15. Yes, if guns were not allowed then he would have been stopped by criminals

But guns ARE allowed, therefore the people who stopped him were not criminals.

[soothsayer]

7. Wicked full moon last night

[bossy22]

8. according to the press

a beretta 9mm was used....

scary...i believe a beretta 9mm was also used in dunblane

[ManiacJoe]

10. Scary?

Are you suggesting that a different brand other than Beretta would have made any difference?

[bossy22]

16. no, it would be silly to suggest that

i find the use of beretta handguns in multiple mass shootings to be an interesting similarity

[rl6214]

9. Little shit

should have used the first bullet on himself.