Law center: Shooting suspect has 'long history' with neo-Nazis

[47of74]

Source: CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An 88-year-old Maryland man with a long history of ties to white supremacist groups is the suspect in Wednesday's shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, two law enforcement officials told CNN.

James von Brunn served six years in prison for trying to make what he called a "legal, non-violent citizens arrest" of Federal Reserve board members in 1981 -- a sentence he blamed on "a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys" and "a Jew judge," he said on his Web site, "Holy Western Empire."

"He is in our files going back way into the 1980s," said Heidi Beirich, a researcher for the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. "He has extremely long history with neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He's written extremely incendiary publications raging about Jews, blacks and the like."

Von Brunn is a native of St. Louis, Missouri, and a 1943 graduate of Washington University there. According to his online biography, he served as a Navy officer in World War II and became an advertising artist and executive after the war.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/10/dc.museum.shooting.suspect/index.html

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Why does this not surprise me?

[Psychic Consortium]

1. How does a man like this buy a gun? nt

[Critters2]

3. But everybody should have guns!!!

That would make the world safe! :puke:

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

9. Thankfully you are the only idiot suggesting that.

[spiritual_gunfighter]

12. Thankfully you are probably the only idiot who didnt realise that was sarcasm n/t

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

14. Obvious sarcasm, meant to imply that someone somewhere actually believes that. Hence my response.

[benEzra]

4. He can't, legally, since 1968, and would have failed the background check from any dealer.

However, he was born in 1920, and a gun will last a thousand years if cared for. Given that the rifle appears to have been a .22 rimfire (quite possibly a squirrel rifle), this is something he could have bought 60 years ago. Also, recent purchase of a squirrel rifle by an elderly man in a private sale via the classifieds or whatever would not have raised many eyebrows.

[Mnpaul]

6. or he could just go to a gun show

and buy anything he wants, no questions asked. He could buy one from any private party seller.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

10. Yes he could have bought a weapon from a private seller anywhere. Gunshow, home, street corner, etc

[NickB79]

40. I have yet to find the tables of private dealers at gun shows

Every table I've stopped at was run by a person with a Federal Firearms License (usually a gun store owner who packed up a van with merchandise from his store for display). And everyone with an FFL at a gun show is required by law to do a background checks. In fact, the annual gun show I go to refuses to rent out table space to anyone selling guns who is not an FFL holder.

I'm sure these mysterious private gun show dealers are out there, but their numbers seem to be wildly inflated, IMO.

[Psychic Consortium]

11. It is very sad, this kind of violence is escalating weekly...

How much has to happen for Americans to learn some lessons about hatred, violence and guns?

[benEzra]

28. The MSM wants you to believe it's escalating, certainly...

because the MSM makes a great deal of its money by selling fear.

The big picture, though, is that violent crime in this country (including gun crime) is still near historic lows, and even two hate-crime incidents in one month in a nation of 300 million people and ~12,000 murders/year do not constitute much of an escalation.

[Psychic Consortium]

30. Any one of these horrific murders is too much and unacceptable. nt

[benEzra]

32. No argument there; I agree, they are. BUT the perception that the USA is becoming more violent

is the result of the MSM capitalizing on and reinforcing people's fears, which lead them to buy papers and watching the news. The violence rate now is approximately half what it was in the 1980's, and the number of law enforcement officers shot last year in the line of duty was the lowest since *1956*, but "we still have work to do but things are getting better" doesn't sell airtime or papers. Fear does, which is why we had the "terrah menace" in the 2000's, the "gun menace" in the 1990's, the "drug menace" in the 1980's, the "hippie menace" in the 1960's, and the "alcohol menace" in the 1920's.

[Psychic Consortium]

36. Maybe in this case the public misperception is good......

if it will help make some needed changes....

[benEzra]

37. Depends greatly on what those changes are, IMO.

If we are talking about increasing tolerance, encouraging civility, and standing up against racism and hate in public discourse, certainly. If we are talking about goading the DLC into another attempt to harass lawful and responsible gun owners with new levels of harassment a la 1994 using hyped-up violence as the excuse (also a la 1994), then it's another matter entirely.

Crisis legislation generally has a rather poor track record, but ESPECIALLY when the "crisis" is purposely exaggerated to generate fear. That's how we got stuck with alcohol prohibition, the War on Non-Approved Herbs, warrantless surveillance, detention without trial, interrogation by torture, and the invasion of Iraq.

[Psychic Consortium]

41. PC hopes that the good things you describe in the first part of your post happen.

And PC does not wish to get into an argument,
but there will be eventually be some sort of gun control
in the US.

After much bloodshed and heartache, there will be some sensible gun laws so that insane people do not have guns.

The gun control will also probably happen via control on the manufacture of guns.

[benEzra]

42. Control on manufacture won't affect possession by the insane (which is already banned, BTW).

That's a "who" question, not a "what" question.

Anyone who has ever been adjudicated mentally incompetent, involuntarily committed, or convicted of a felony (even writing a bad check) is barred for life from so much as touching a gun or a single round of ammunition, under the Gun Control Act of 1968.

[Psychic Consortium]

44. The law is not working very well is it?

There will be control of weapons in America in the 21st century.

We will become a more peaceful civilized people.

[benEzra]

45. How's the prohibition on cannabis possession working out?

The thing is, we ARE becoming a more civilized people. You'd never know it from the MSM, but violent crime in the USA has declined by 50% since the 1980's, and our suicide rate is already lower than that of Canada and the UK. Last year, fewer police officers were shot in the line of duty than any other year since 1956.

A renewed focus on gun bans a la 1994 would result in a backlash against gun bans and those who propose them a la 1994. If you want a more just and peaceful society, throwing Congress away again over restrictions on rifle stock shape and magazine capacity isn't the way to achieve it. Fix the economy and work on education, health care, and tolerance, things which actually make a difference.

BTW, the loser who shot the guard at the Holocaust Museum used a rifle made in the 1920's, BTW, and had probably possessed it for decades; a functional firearm will last a thousand years if properly maintained. Guns considerably harder to control via supply-size bans than drugs and alcohol are, and drug and alcohol prohibition didn't work either.

[Mike Daniels]

31. Two? I would count it as three if you include Tiller.

This one and the soldiers being murdered by the guy whose motive was definitely generated by hatred would be two.

I don't know if Tiller can be called a hate crime as it wasn't committed against someone for the reasons usually falling under hate crime laws. But, for the sake of argument since I don't know if you're eliminating the soldiers' murder let's add Tiller to the count.

[benEzra]

33. I was thinking right-wing motivated murders and forgot about that one. OK, three.

In a nation of three hundred million people and a thousand murders a month (down roughly 50% from the historic highs in the 1980's, BTW), we have four? recent murders that have made national news due to idealogical motivations.

Yes, we still have work to do, but we are not in a violence crisis.





And those numbers have all declined further since 2005. I'm just saying don't let the MSM "crisis du jour" attitude color your thinking. I am not trying to minimize these tragedies in any way, merely attempting to point out that the sky is not, in fact, falling.

[zbdent]

2. and probably a current member of the Young Republicans ...

[LeftyMom]

7. He hadn't been a young anything for a very long time.

[TheCowsCameHome]

19. They'll embrace anybody.

[zbdent]

34. goes back to the Katherine Harris meeting with the "Young Republicans"

where she was the baby of the group ...

[Alcibiades]

5. Not shocking that he's a graduate of Washington University

You know what that place is like. :eyes:

[Peregrine Took]

17. No, I thought it was a very good school. n/t

[Alcibiades]

27. Some say so

But some also say it is a right-wing academic bastion. Pure hearsay, as I've never taught there, but there you have it.

[Milspec]

43. My University

was defiantly a progressive school in the 70's

[FailureToCommunicate]

8. We were just in DC for a memorial, and security would take a key ring knife. A rifle!?!

This guy was able to wander around with a damn rifle?? (Now counting the seconds till DU gun fans pop up to point out to us 'numb skulls' that the problem of course is 'not guns but criminals'...)

[benEzra]

13. He shot the guard AT the checkpoint.

Thankfully, the staff were armed, and the other guard shot him.

[FailureToCommunicate]

24. I was talking about before the checkpoint. Walking the streets, standing in line with a rifle?

[Critters2]

25. People with rifles are notorious for cutting in line. nt

[benEzra]

29. Probably pulled up to the curb, got out of his car, and started shooting,

OR had the rifle hidden in a bag or under a long coat. If media reports are correct, he used a .22 rifle, which would be considerably less bulky than most rifles and possibly the easiest type of rifle to conceal.



That's a Marlin Model 60 squirrel rifle. I don't know if that's what the racist loser used, but it's representative.

Most people bent on mass murder are not particular about obeying rules and social norms like standing in line at security checkpoints.

[Mithreal]

15. Call him a terrorist. nt

[CLANG]

16. Rachel Maddow just outed him as a FREEPER

She showed a post of his from the FR site. I hope the gubmint takes note.

[Abq_Sarah]

20. The jackass who posted it

got it from somewhere else.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5819167&mesg_id=5822800

[CLANG]

38. Yeah, he seemed better read/spoken than your ordinary freeper

[TheCowsCameHome]

18. I wonder what his radio pre-sets were on.........

Any guesses?

[47of74]

23. If I had to guess

His presets are probably set to those stations that broadcast;

Boss Limbaugh
The Mannity
Coultergeist
The Savage Weiner
Harold Hill (aka Glenn Beck)

...and so on.

[pinniped]

21. Looks like he waited until he was 88 years old to go off.

These types have an affinity for the number 88.

[earcandle]

22. Hitler was a designer and advertising artist before he

took his nosedive into his hellish path as well. 

But all designers or artists are not nazis (for the reactives
that don't read critically)

[Critters2]

26. But all neo-nazis are neo-nazis. nt

[TomClash]

35. I can think of no better symbol for the Neo-Nazi "Movement"

A deranged 88 year old man now in critical condition, committing a brazen, violent act to justify the last gasps of a moribund ideology. Let the worms digest this rotting corpse.

[truthisfreedom]

39. These nutjobs need to be electronically tagged like cats and dogs

so they can't enter federal buildings without setting off alarms.