7 dead, 7 wounded in Santa Barbara shooting rampage

Washington Post:

The parents of Blaec Lammers knew their 20-year-old son struggled with mental-health problems. He was on antipsychotic medications, when he wasn’t refusing to take them. Several times his parents had rushed him to the hospital for an involuntary, 96-hour psychiatric detention. It felt like a cycle without answer or end.

“Every conversation was, ‘What do we do about Blaec?’ ” his father, Bill Lammers, said from the family’s home in Bolivar, Mo.

Then, in November 2012, Blaec Lammers’s mother found a receipt for an AR-15 rifle in his blue jeans. Alarmed, she called police. Officers took him in for questioning. Blaec Lammers admitted to having homicidal thoughts and to buying two rifles with plans to shoot up a local movie theater and Wal-Mart, according to a probable-cause statement.

...

Bill Lammers, 53, owns guns. He keeps them locked in a safe. He never let his son near them. He knew that Blaec should not be around firearms. So he was shocked when he learned that Blaec had bought two rifles from the local Wal-Mart.

He bought them legally. There was nothing in the standard background check to stop him. But, as Bill Lammers pointed out, this was the same Wal-Mart where his son filled prescriptions for his antipsychotic and antidepressant pills. It was also the same store where, in 2009, Blaec Lammers was found wandering the aisles carrying a butcher knife and wearing a Halloween clown mask. Deputies escorted him out of the store that time.

...

Even after police arrested Blaec Lammers, which was followed by a burst of national attention over a foiled mass-murder plot, his father never expected him to face serious prison time. Blaec Lammers, his father said, “was for the most part a peaceful, easy-going person.” In March 2014, after a bench trial, a judge sentenced Blaec Lammers to 15 years for first-degree assault and armed criminal action.

Bill Lammers said his wife has struggled with their decision to notify authorities in 2012. She expected her son to get a wellness check. He ended up giving a confession. She feels that she ruined her son’s life, Bill Lammers said. He struggles with their decision, too. “But isn’t that better than him killing 20 or 30 people?”

wapo.st/1plltBQ

 

Yeah, a lot of people here would prefer to not hear the truth. Your hero has been running over people between him and a microphone for five days now to yell at everyone but the perpetrator. He has forfeited the sympathy vote with his grandstanding.

 

Tony, you clearly don't realize it, but this is a new low for you. And you've proven yourself to be an insufferable piece of shit in the past, so it's not easy.

Crawl back in your hole and ride this one out. God knows you've done it before.

 

Beating smallpotatoes to the punch...

Well known conservative:

 

Ouch. I'm a big X fan. Exene's always been kind of nuts, but that's disheartening.

 

These fuckers ruin conspiracy theories, which until the past 10 years or so were almost universally entertaining and contained at least a whiff of plausibility.

 

I pray that you are never in his position so we can discover how you'd react.

 

Damn you .

 

JC wasn't brave enough to do it in public so he cowardly went to the PM route to be a complete asshole and say how tough he'd be if he ever ran into me.

But to repeat (and I don't care how unpopular of an opinion it is) Mr. Martinez is not grieving, he's grandstanding.

 

Wow. old_tony has moved into Mark2010 territory.

There were people here, respected people, who swore he was a good guy.

 

Yep, it was 9/11 and the Loose Change crowd that first sent it teetering off the tracks. That created a new conspiracy freak industry that now must find plots in seemingly EVERY tragedy in order to sustain itself. Logic and evidence have largely been erased from the equation.

No fun for rational people to join the debate these days. What rational person would want to be associated with those dickheads?

 

Not what I said you coward. Brave? It's takes real bravery to rundown a Father who just lost a kid.