12-30-2009 Tampa Tribune and WFLA Newschannel 8

I read another story in the newspaper about the gang shooting in Brandon. This is the same story from yesterday with new information about the victims but little about the nuts with the guns. The shooting happened right across the street from a church, so much for loving your neighbor.

While reading about this story I then heard on the morning news about a shooting in Lakeland. This happened at about 4 in the morning while Jonas Ward stood at his front door.

12-29-2009 TV News

I got up this morning and scanned the newspaper while having coffee. I did not see any stories of shootings. I thought that the nuts were taking another day off. but I had the TV on in the background and heard of a story from Brandon about shots being heard around midnight and three bodies being found. After looking up the story online I see that the ages of the victims are 22, 22, 21. Close to the ages of my kids. I can't imagine loosing my children like that.
The story suggests that it was gang related. So the nuts were probably the same age. How could they have guns?
Doesn't anyone check ID or would this infringe on their rights to kill?

12-27-2009 Tampa Tribune

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Another nut with a gun manages to get himself shot dead by police.
It began with an argument that John "Smokey" Johnson decided to end with a gun. After shooting his friend Smokey was confronted by police to discuss the situation. Smokey told the police that we was not going beck to prison. I guess the great system we have was not able to keep a gun out of the hands of this felon.

12-26-2009 Tampa Tribune

The paper today has two stories of nuts with guns. Both are follow-up stories of past events.
The first is about the nut Maj. Nidal Hasan the soldier from Fort Hood Texas who crazy and killed 13 people. This was someone who was trained to work around guns and still he used them in the wrong way. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia article about this nut.
"According to National Public Radio (NPR), officials at Walter Reed Medical Center repeatedly expressed concern about Hasan's behavior during the entire six years he was there; Hasan's supervisors gave him poor evaluations and warned him that he was doing substandard work. In the spring of 2008 (and on later occasions) several key officials met to discuss what to do about Hasan. Attendees of these meetings reportedly included the Walter Reed chief of psychiatry, the chairman of the USUHS Psychiatry Department, two assistant chairs of the USUHS Psychiatry Department (one of whom was the director of Hasan's psychiatry fellowship), another psychiatrist, and the director of the Walter Reed psychiatric residency program. According to NPR, fellow students and faculty were strongly troubled by Hasan's behavior, which they described as "disconnected," "aloof," "paranoid," "belligerent," and "schizoid."[49]"
Humm, kinda makes you think.
The second article is about the gunman nut that was shot by police the day before Christmas. The nut with the gun was Richard Darnel Longstreet and he had been arrested 8 times since 1996 and yet still had a handgun at the time police stopped and shot him.

12-25-2009 Tampa Tribune

Well I see this morning that the Christmas truce is over. In the newspaper this morning there were 3 stories of nuts with guns. One got himself killed and the other two were arrested.
In one story from Clearwater 3 nuts used guns to break into someones home and rob them. The police have arrested one.
in the last story I found in todays news paper a nut took three people hostage because his truck was going to be repossessed. This nut also had a criminal history.
I'm not sure how any of these guns promoted safety and freedom for anyone involved in the stories.

12-24-2009

There were no stories of people shooting each other in the newspaper today, and I haven't heard any stories on the TV or radio. I'm hoping that the spirit of the season carries on through out the year, but I'm not holding my breath.