Mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale Airport
I don’t comment on these types of things at the onset because everything you hear in the first few hours is almost always wrong.
In what could be a mass shooting designed to prove how dumb gun control laws are, one known wolf, as far as I can tell, did the following:
- Boarded a flight with a gun checked in his baggage. Though initial reports said he had the gun on the plane. I doubted that, otherwise it’d have been more deadly to start popping off on the plane.
- Once he landed, he went to the bathroom and loaded up his gun.
- Then proceeded to shoot people in the head.
- And he went there specifically to carry out the act.
Like most mass shootings, it occurred in a gun free zone. Most airports allow carry in the non-secure area but Florida doesn’t.
The gun used appears to be a Walther PPS. The PPS holds between six and eight rounds. The gun is legal in NY, MA, and other states with arbitrary gun laws because it holds less than some number of runds. It is, however, not legal in California because of legal mumbo jumbo. The guy had to reload at least two times, but probably three.
And he was known to the authorities:
In November 2016, he walked into an FBI office in Anchorage claiming that he was being forced to fight for ISIS and was sent to a psychiatric hospital.
FBI spokesman George Piro confirmed he was evaluated by the FBI while living in Alaska.
He did go to our office in Anchorage, but he did not want to commit harm, the agent said. He voluntarily entered our office and was interviewed by agents of the office. He was turned over to local custody and then taken to a local hospital.
So far Santiago-Ruiz has no known connection to terrorism, with the exception of this photo showing him wearing an Arabic keffiyeh and pointing a finger in the air a symbol ISIL militants for their cause.
So, you can commit a mass shooting with guns oppressive states decide are good guns. And our national security apparatus didn’t keep tabs on a guy known to be a bit off his rocker.
But one more gun law or government program will stop this sort of thing, right?
January 7th, 2017 at 2:36 pm
A WaPo story I saw last night said the gun was the only thing checked. It made no mention of luggage or carry-on items. If accurate, you’d think flying across the continent with just a gun would be suspicious.
January 7th, 2017 at 4:34 pm
The whole thing is a Black Swan incident . The worst laws will come out of trying to prevent another one . [except maybe allowing CCW in non-secure areas of airports]
January 7th, 2017 at 4:53 pm
Expect a tsa ban on checked firearms by the end of next week.
January 7th, 2017 at 4:58 pm
What’s with the hard-on for the Ft. Lauderdale baggage claim area? He could have driven up to the Arrivals area in the Anchorage airport and shot up that baggage claim. Would have saved himself a cross continent coach ride.
January 7th, 2017 at 5:42 pm
What we need is another law! (or 2 or 25)
With the dim-bulbs we send to DC, they could legislate us some new, better, different! ones in a few quick years.
I expect that Wiz’s thought about the TSA will be the first thing to run through a proper little bureaucrat’s mind.
January 7th, 2017 at 7:21 pm
Aloha Snackbar
January 7th, 2017 at 11:29 pm
It must also be pointed out that this venue was teeming with armed security, ubiquitous mobile communication and sundry threat response protocols yet the authorities only showed up after the barrel was already cooling off …
January 8th, 2017 at 2:02 am
Thomas DiLorenzo at Lew Rockwell writes: There is an armed TSA bureaucrat sitting at a desk where you exit the terminal area and go into baggage claim. He sits about ten paces from the first baggage carousel, where the shootings occurred. Despite this, the news is reporting that the Fort Lauderdale shooter reloaded twice, and then when he ran out of ammo began walking out of the airport, at which point the cops finally emerged from their “perimeter” and arrested him.
Ref: https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/cops-form-perimeter-mass-murderer-goes-business/
January 9th, 2017 at 12:51 am
Same old song and dance. Shooting happens, it’s proof that existing gun control laws aren’t strict enough, no matter what the actual circumstances of a given case.
Crime rates go down? Well obviously that’s proof that gun control laws work and if we pass more it’d go down further.
January 9th, 2017 at 11:36 am
I read one report that this very typical perp used a current gun control approved weapon which had less than 10 rd “clips”, whoops, excuse me, mags. So apparently “security” wasn’t able(waited) to react until this fellow finished his “senseless gun violence” by running out of ammo.
January 9th, 2017 at 12:09 pm
Steve – with the outlandish baggage fees the airlines now charge, it’s not uncommon for people to not check bags. One of the things I truly hate about flying these days is all the people trying to jam giant bags into overhead compartments. Makes boarding and exiting a pain in the ass.
January 9th, 2017 at 3:16 pm
There is an armed TSA bureaucrat
I’m confused. I have never seen or read of an armed TSA employee. My limited understanding was thatno TSA employees were armed. Could it have been a sheriff or local LEO?
January 9th, 2017 at 3:43 pm
He was in the middle of a large open area, and there is no way he could cover 360 degrees. There were people behind him when he started shooting. Several people could have rushed him from behind. If one had thrown a good football style tackle, unexpectedly, from behind, he certainly would have gone down and almost certainly, the pistol would have gone skidding across the floor.
January 10th, 2017 at 6:05 pm
Richard, because of the “Gun Free Zone”, there were no armed civilians. If there were, I’m sure one would have taken action.