WMDs

It’s been a good weekend for the mass murderer set.

You’ll have heard about the man who invaded an immigrant services center in Binghamton, NY, armed with two automatic weapons, extra ammunition & a bullet-proof vest. Before Jiverly A. Wong, 41, finally shot himself, he’d killed 13 & wounded four others.

Before he went on his rampage at the American Civic Association, the Vietnamese immigrant had availed himself of the organization’s services, particularly ESL.

Evidently he had a history of buying weapons at a gun shop in a nearby town, although shop staff could see that the guy was easily rendered hopping mad when they had trouble understanding his English.

Wong did manage to pick up that uniquely-American activity of going postal & taking out as many of your fellow Americans as possible before you either eat your gun or have the back of your skull removed by a SWAT sniper. He certainly absorbed how easy it was to collect weapons & deploy them in a way guaranteed to get yourself noticed.

In fact, were it not for Richard Poplawski, 22, of Pittsburgh, Wong might have stayed in banner heads above the fold all weekend. But when a squabble between Poplawski & his mother brought police to their home Saturday, he greeted the two responding officers with a rifle, which he used to shoot them both in the head. When a third, off-duty, cop arrived at the scene, he shot that one, too, & then held the rest of the force at bay while the three bled out.

Like Wong, Poplawski had taken the precaution of wearing body armor. After several hours, he surrendered & has been charged with three counts of criminal homicide & nine of attempted homicide.

According to neighbors, Poplawski believed that the economic collapse portended the inability of law enforcement to “protect society”, so he (like Wong) had been stockpiling guns & ammo. Lately he was distraught at the thought that the Obama administration was coming to confiscate his collection, which included an AK-47 assault rifle & several handguns.

Finally, it didn’t make the national news that I can tell, but right here in Graham, Washington, a man followed up a fight with his wife in a trailer park by shooting his five children, ages 7 to 16, then driving to the Muckleshoot Casino & eating his high-powered rifle in his car nearby.

That’s 23 dead in three incidents that I know of.

I just wonder how the NRA’s going to spin this.