Gewalt Am Arbeitsplatz

The fourth case of deadly German workplace violence carried out by angry right-wing white redneck NRA members of Arabic or Farsi descent – a suicide bombing in Nürnberg claiming 12, which can not possibly be connected to Islamicist terror – occurred over the weekend.

In related news, doctors in Bavaria note that the Munich spree-shooter was raising red flags

…about being a suicide risk.  Fortunately, strict gun control laws that place a crippling burden on the law-abiding German citizen (who might have had a shot at stopping the slaughter in the time it took the Polizei to show up in densely-policed Munich) stopped the…

…oh, wait.  Never mind.

47 thoughts on “Gewalt Am Arbeitsplatz

  1. Well at any rate they hesitantly hedge their bets: “Auf die Frage, ob der Täter im Zusammenhang mit der Terrormiliz „Islamischer Staat“ (IS) stehe, sagte Minister Herrmann: „Es ist dies auf jeden Fall nicht auszuschließen.“ “

  2. For those who don’t speak the language of romance, Kel’s quote is roughly “On the question “is the “Terrorist Militiaman” acting on behalf of IS, we can’t exclude it”.

  3. Perhaps the murderers “represent a broad strata of society”. (for those not familiar with the quote…see Toronto Star. 2006)

  4. “language of romance”
    I was going to challenge this but upon reflection it is the Language of Schiller, Goethe, Heine and Uhland, sadly too it is the home of the unimaginative and pedestrian scrawlings of Brecht(when he isn’t directly plagiarizing from someone else)

  5. My favorite was last week during the machete attack I think the telegraph said ‘we know he screamed Allahu Ackbar during the attack, but at this point a motive isn’t clear…’. I mean are you serious?

  6. I thought it was striking to learn that Germany has five million legally owned firearms, and twenty million illegally owned. Now who knows where the guess comes from, but it suggests that 94 years of fairly strict gun control (I’ve read the original Weimar-era law) have failed to rein in criminals with guns.

    Hoping someone starts putting the dots together to see it’s all a fool’s errand, but not holding my breath.

  7. Yeah, the rise of far right parties is going to continue in Europe. It’s ironic that they are the only hope European countries have of succumbing to political Islam.

  8. Shame on you again Mitch for pushing propaganda that is factually false. Germany does not have onerous gun laws; their gun laws are very successful and broadly supported, because THEY WORK. Lots of gun ownership in Germany, so hardly a problem:
    From German news in English, in June of 2016:
    http://www.thelocal.de/20160616/five-things-to-know-about-guns-in-germany-us-gun-control-laws
    “Germany has one of the highest rates of gun ownership worldwide, yet also one of the lowest rates of gun-related deaths. The Local looks at some other facts that might surprise you.
    …even given Germany’s strict gun policies, the country was still home to the fourth-highest number of legal guns per capita in 2013, falling behind just the United States, Switzerland and Finland.
    Over the past 20 years, “crimes against life” – which include murder as well as negligent manslaughter – that involve guns have dropped from 783 in 1995 to 130 in 2015, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).

    Of those crimes last year, just 57 were intentional murders.

    This of course pales in comparison to the rates in the US, where firearm homicides surpass 11,000 people killed each year or roughly 3.5 deaths per 100,000 people, according to GunPolicy.org.

    In Germany, that rate barely reaches 0.07 deaths per 100,000 people.”

    And YES, it appears that their gun restriction has restricted criminals from having guns too:
    http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Germany/United-States/Crime

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-gun-control-crime-germany-berlin-chicago-shootings-violence-perspec-0827-jm-20150826-story.html
    The bomber in Germany appears to have been seeking Asylum from Syria and was denied. The bombing appears to have been a protest of that, and only killed the bomber, although it did tragically injure others.

    Here’s the STrib factual version of events, which shows that Germany’s gun laws both allow for legal gun ownership and that their gun restrictions have dramatically reduced gun violence. NOT GUN CARRYING, gun restriction is what works. Like Chicago struggling with guns coming in from outside the city borders, guns from Eastern European conflicts are traded illegally, creating a problem of still-to-be-regulated firearms.

    “Germany has a good system of legal gun ownership, but illegal firearms pose a big problem,” said Nils Duquet, a weapons expert in Belgium who works for the Flemish Peace Institute. According to Duquet, there are millions of illegal weapons in Europe, but he said it is impossible to know how many.

    Following two horrifying school shootings in 2002 and 2009, German lawmakers passed stricter gun legislation that made it harder to legally obtain weapons. ­Buyers younger than 25 must now pass a psychological exam before being able to acquire firearms in Germany. Shooting incidents significantly dropped as a consequence.”

    Among several other factors, the borderless Schengen Area within the European Union and Europe’s proximity to current or former war zones have facilitated illegal-weapons transports into the continent.

    An increasing number of terrorist attacks over the past two years were carried out with illegal pistols and semi-automatic rifles from Eastern Europe.
    http://top.adlesse.com/en/i/571007545390873011/germany-s-strict-gun-laws-didn-t-stop-munich-shooter

    Meanwhile, in Florida, the Gun-shine state we see yet another in the continuing epic fail of the right wingnut gun huggers notions that more guns will make us safer. Armed security guards aka GOOD GUYS WITH GUNS did NOTHING to stop or even apparently to slow down this mass shooting. Yet Florida is having a lot of gun violence, while Germany is still having relatively little.

    “Club Blu released a statement this morning, apologizing “deeply” for the incident.

    “We are deeply sorry for all involved. We tried to give the teens WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS A SAFE PLACE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME. Ages 12-17. There was armed security as well as full security,inside and out. As the club was closing and parents were picking their children up…..that’s when all this took place. There was nothing more we could of done az [sic] you see it was not kids at the party that did this despicable act,” the statement reads. “

    http://abcnews.go.com/US/dead-14-injured-club-blu-shooting-fort-myers/story?id=40846132

    For comparison of per capita gun violence, I looked up Germany’s population: 81,197,537; Florida population in 2010 census:18,801,310, estimated population in 2016, 20.2 million.

    So while Germany has had some recent acts of terrorism, it is worth noting that the most recent shooter at the mall in Germany was a great admirer of right wing terrorist Anders Breivik and of mass shootings in general. He was heard shouting “I’m German, I’m German.” during the shootings. Being an Iranian/German person, he is presumably white and so-identifies; being a fan of Anders Breivik he embraces at least an extreme right conservative if not all conservative ideology. It is worth noting his victims were primarily foreigners, who hung out at a location known to be frequented by foreigners.

    Your pro-gun message is a lie. Once again, you failed to honestly report facts, ignoring them when they don’t further your narrative. Narrative being a polite term for right wing propaganda.

  9. DG,

    First: You are on probation. If you return to lengthy metablogging in my comment section without sticking around to comment, we’ll go back to prefacing your comments with that fact.

    Second: I’m in mid work-day; I’ll answer any points that others don’t dismantle later today or this evening.

    I’m very familiar with German gun laws – Ich spreche die Sprache, und kenne auch die Regeln – and while they are better that most of Europe, they are onerous for one reason above all others; they treat self-defense as a privilege to be doled out by one’s betters (as the Germans and other Europeans tend to treat many things we consider rights granted us by our creator). Absent the right to defend oneself, one is not a citizen – merely a subject. It’s nothing we’d tolerate with any other right (well, most of us – looking at you, DG), and it is by definition onerous if freedom is your goal.

    Finally? You keep throwing the words “fact” and “factual” around like they’re some kind of talisman; if you wave them around, your argument becomes bulletproof. It does not.

    I will respond to whatever points others leave for me later.

    And by all means, DG – discuss. Don’t dictate. This is not your property.

  10. Oh, yeah, DG – at first glance, your “facts’ ‘proving’ how awesome the German system is are, mostly, the opinions of various European commentators.

    They are opinion. No better and no worse than any other. Neither a conclusion nor “facts” in and of themselves.

    Anyone who is an apologist for turning rights into privileges is someone to treat with suspicion.

  11. Germany’s gun laws worked when it was a largely homogeneous population that shared a common history. Now that head chopping muzzies have crashed the party, the wheels are falling off.

  12. So, I gather from all the attention you’re getting Mitch, dog has given up the fantasy anyone reads her babbling anywhere else.

    lol

  13. Finally, DG?

    “Shame on you…”

    Shame?

    And you wonder why people mock you, apart from your argumentation skills (which are, if you’ve taken the time to look at how many of your previous “arguments” have been dispatched without significant effort, kinda flimsy for someone who speaks with such assured condescension).

  14. Typically, if I see “Dog Gone” at the top of the comment, I skip right over it. Noticing that the words weren’t grayed out this time I wondered if perhaps she was making a point. I got as far as “Sharme on you…” and that was all I needed to see before skipping on ahead.

  15. Night – She’s been doing some discussing. She’s on probation until we see if it sticks.

  16. DG said: “being a fan of Anders Breivik he embraces at least an extreme right conservative if not all conservative ideology. “

    lets just use what you call logic for a minute;
    I am a fan of Bruce Springsteen – does that mean I’m a progressive liberal?
    I am a user/fan of Paypal and Facebook both creations in no small part due to Peter Theil – does that make me a Gay republican?
    I’m a fan of much of Susan Sarandon’s work – does that make me a Democratic Socialist?

    Do you see how quickly your “logic” falls apart?

  17. What Kel said.

    And as i noted in my response the other day: the actual evidence at hand seems to indicate the Munich shooter would seem to have studied Breivik’s actions – not his ideology.

    If there’s any other evidence, beyond convenient circumstance, we – and DG – aren’t aware of it.

    DG is assuming – which is not “citing a fact”. Just parroting a narrative.

  18. swiftee: “dog has given up the fantasy anyone reads her babbling anywhere else.”

    since 7.18.2016 DG’s site has had a whopping 213 “hits”

  19. DG, one of your links notes that police unions estimate that there are up to 20 million illegally owned guns in Germany, owned by millions of people who don’t give a fig for the nation’s laws. Presumably not all of them are, outside of gun law violations, criminals, and presumably they have reasons for risking prison by doing so.

    Now Germany has a fairly low homicide rate now–0.84/100k or so–but what happens when the events these people are fearing, or planning for, come to pass? By the way, given that German gun control was tightened in 1938–just before Kristallnacht–let’s not forget that there’s a nice little correlation between gun control and some pretty massive increases in homicide, too.

    Just like we see in Chicago, Washington DC, and other cities with super strict gun control in the U.S.

    And yes, citizen ownership of guns is not foolproof; no responsible person ever said it was. But knowing the history of the 20th century, where tens of millions of disarmed people were killed by their own governments, I know what choice I’ll make if I can.

  20. One question, DG: If Germany’s gun-control laws work, what was the shooter doing with them out and about in the Olympia Einkaufszentrum? Wasn’t he violating the law already before he started shooting innocent bystanders?

    Curious that the shooting happens in an area adjacent to the Olympic Village, site of the 1972 Munich massacre. Some things don’t change, apparently…

  21. Now Germany has a fairly low homicide rate now–0.84/100k or so…

    Which is just .16/100K lower than heavily-armed and much-more-diverse Minnesota, if you leave out North Minneapolis (using 2015 homicide figures).

  22. And as i noted in my response the other day: the actual evidence at hand seems to indicate the Munich shooter would seem to have studied Breivik’s actions – not his ideology.

    What, Mitch, do you think she read your response?

    After all, she said the other day she’s willing to participate in the discussion if you e-mail her. You did email her, right? How else is she supposed to know there are refutations of her “arguments”, considering she’s apparently too busy to stop by the posts more than once (but not too busy to write comments of a length Tolstoy would’ve considered excessive)?

  23. If Dog Gone’s numbers are correct, Germany is doing something spectacularly right (57 murders in a nation of 80 million people).

    The United States government’s 2015 report on Germany showed 2,000 cases of murder/manslaughter just two years earlier. https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=17094

    The 2016 report claims a 33% increase over earlier years. https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=19030

    But oddly, Wikipedia shows Germany having 716 murders for a murder rate of 0.9, comparable to other highly homogenous civilized countries.

    My conclusion is the statistics are not sufficiently reliable to draw firm conclusions to justify public policy changes.

  24. But oddly, Wikipedia shows Germany having 716 murders for a murder rate of 0.9, comparable to other highly homogenous civilized countries

    And right in line with Minnesota’s 1.0/100K (with North Minneapolis left out), two million guns, and 250,000 carry permit holders.

  25. Ian,

    All fine questions.

    Everybody: Be advised – I do not expend any offline effort on this comment section.

  26. DG asserts: “Of those crimes last year, just 57 were intentional murders.”

    except for the 150 passengers of Germanwings Flight 9525. Oops he took them down in France.
    France by comparison has a murder rate of 1.31/100k.
    Maybe thats it DG the German crime rate is so low because they go to France when they want to kill someone (old habits die hard)

  27. Wait – you’re saying Germany has the second highest gun ownership rate on the continent, and 2/3 the murder rate of France?

    Surely there must be some mistake.

  28. Good point, Mitch. Even the notoriously Liberal newspaper The Guardian can see that US murders do not correlate to gun ownership or gun laws, but instead are concentrated in a few major cities with heavily Black populations. Now, nobody is going to say Blacks commit murders at enormously higher rates than everybody else (nobody but the FBI), but that could account for the statistics being so unhelpful.

    .https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/23/trump-vision-of-violence-city-homicides-obama

  29. dammit wild tag

    anyway France and Europe in general are reporting serious increases in crime in general in the last few years and given the gun laws France is nonetheless reporting a sharp increase in gun crime
    In fact DG some of the gun crime in France was committed usuing Fast and Furious guns which makes Obama directly responsible.

  30. In fact DG some of the gun crime in France was committed usuing Fast and Furious guns which makes Obama directly responsible.

    Wait – what?

  31. Joe, that 0.07/100k number would be intentional firearm murders in Germany, not murders overall. Clumsy wording by DG, to be sure, but let’s be fair.

  32. Bikebubba – thanks for the correction. I found a link to Dog Gone’s source but it’s actually more helpful to my point than to hers.

    http://www.thelocal.de/20160616/five-things-to-know-about-guns-in-germany-us-gun-control-laws

    Germany has 30 guns for every 100 people. We have 112. They have 57 murders for 80 million people. We have 11,000 for 320 million but almost all of them in large cities with large Black populations run by Democrats.

    It’s not the sheer number of guns that matters, it’s who has them. Law abiding gun owners are law abiding in both countries. Instead of harping on number of guns, we should be harping on number of criminals.
    .

  33. DG,

    Joe says “I found a link to Dog Gone’s source but it’s actually more helpful to my point than to hers.”

    This happens a lot, and suggests that you really don’t know your source material as well as your constant condescension suggests you think you do. With all due respect.

    “Attention required”, as they say.

  34. DG,

    A number of “mitchketeeers” have just jumped in and brought much of your evidence into question, or at least fuller context. This might be seen as making your argument a lot less tenable.

    Now would be an opportune time to jump in with some midcourse correction to reinforce your argument, which – lest you haven’t noticed – isn’t faring well in terms of fact or logic at the moment.

    this is that “discussion” thing I’ve been talking about.

    Go to it.

  35. I can’t help but notice that Penigma’s Chihuahua has answered with a stunning silence.

  36. Related: 15 dead, 45 injured in a knife attack at a facility for the disabled in Japan.

    http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160726_08/

    Half an hour after he broke into the center, the perp turned himself in. What are you going to do, ban all sharp objects? Ban all metal, and the stones that could be used to make it into a blade?

  37. Mitch
    DG’s post here was apparently (since they were nearly identical) an early draft of a post she was writing and subsequently posted to her site.
    Clearly she has no interest in “discussing” it.

  38. kel,

    an early draft of a post she was writing and subsequently posted to her site.

    In other words, she’s gone to her safe space?

  39. JD, one other point on homicides/murders/ etc is that the definition of the various crimes and the base statistics from which many measures are taken are not uniform. Various countries measure what counts as a homicide very differently. For example, some count justified self defense in those statistics, some don’t. And some define murder very differently. For example, in Britain there is no such thing as a murder until someone is convicted of the crime, and the violence statistics there can be very confusing.

    Taking any set of facts from compilations drawn from a country’s own statistics can thus be *very* misleading unless you realize that what they are measuring may be *very* different from we’re measuring in the States. It’s one of the reasons that murder rates are so different between the US and England since the definition of murder is very different.

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