First responders were met with “unspeakable” carnage at the scene of the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, with the dead and wounded strewn around a space still decorated for an employee holiday party, police said Thursday night.
Between 75 and 80 people were assembled when two gunmen opened fire on a holiday party for county employees on Wednesday, which 91 people had been invited to attend.
A first responder called the chaotic scene “surreal,” with police forced to move past “obviously deceased” people while pursuing the gunmen, who they believed were still actively shooting.
Police Lt. Mike Madden, one of the very first responders at the Inland Regional Center, said the carnage was “unspeakable,” and officers arriving found all the reports they’d received “immediately accurate.” The dead and wounded were scattered around a conference room space he said was decorated with Christmas trees.
“It was unspeakable, the carnage we were seeing, and the fear and panic on people’s faces,” Madden said in a press conference.
San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said 18 of the 21 people wounded and 12 of the 14 people killed in the massacre have been identified as county employees. The Department of Public Health event on Wednesday was planned as a training session in the morning and a holiday luncheon in the afternoon.
The shooting broke out around the time of the transition between the events, police said.
Police also released photos of the weapons and ammunition recovered at the scene of a shootout with law enforcement:
Photos from the scene of the officer involved shooting. Weapons & ammunition carried by the suspects. #SanBernardino pic.twitter.com/6s2HpyEgqP
— SB County Sheriff (@sbcountysheriff) December 4, 2015
The democratization of weapons is a horrible idea that continually haunts our society.
Jay Dickey, now 75, wishes he never authored the NRA-initiated bill that blocked gun violence research 20 years ago. Now that he’s out of Congress, the NRA has no leverage over what he says. This from today’s NY Daily News:
"Former Arkansas Rep. Jay Dickey, who spearheaded efforts in 1996 to block the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s gun violence research, is calling on Congress to repeal the amendment that carries his name.
“It is my position that somehow or someway we should slowly but methodically fund such research until a solution is reached,” he wrote in a letter released through the office of U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson. “Doing nothing is no longer an acceptable solution.”
After the measure passed, the $2.6 million — the amount the agency had spent each year on gun research — was redirected to the study of brain injuries.
“It is not a public-health threat,” Dickey said at the time about gun violence.
The former GOP congressman, 75, reached at home, said “political purposes” should have never gotten in the way of the issue. He concedes that he “should have done something” to see that the research continued.
“Research will lead us to a solution,” Dickey said. “I have no idea what it’s going to be. I just couldn’t stay quiet any longer. It doesn’t look like anybody else is trying to get a solution.”
Dickey compares gun violence to car accidents. Highway regulation and research aren’t meant to deter car ownership — they’re meant to make roads safer for drivers and pedestrians, he said.
“[Gun violence] is an insidious social problem that we have in America, and it’s getting worse, in my opinion,” he said."
I often wonder if we had to look at pictures of the carnage of gun violence if people wouldn’t show a bit more common sense when it comes to guns. It’s not that I want to see pictures, but the people of Congress should have to look at the pictures of every one of these victims. Maybe that would penetrate their stone cold hearts.
Eh, we’re still animals.
Sorry to say.
Blood on his hands and it sounds like blood in his heart.
Fuck him in the ass for ever acting like an asshole for the promise of money.