Cumbria Shootings.

[Brett]

A number of people have been killed and others injured after a gunman opened fire in several areas of west Cumbria.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/10214661.stm

Shooting suspect found dead

Police apprehending a man suspected of shooting a number of people across West Cumbria this morning have located a body believed to be that of Derrick Bird in a wooded area near Boot.

Police have seized a gun from the scene and are now working to formally confirm the identity of the deceased and the number of people injured or dead.

A police helpline number 0800 0960095 has been set up for concerned relatives of those involved in this incident.

Our focus is now on the movements of Mr Bird this morning - we believe there are a number of fatalities and injuries. Our thoughts are with the families in these tragic times. We are asking for any witnesses to come forward and help us with our investigation into the events of this morning.

Police are asking those who were sheltering to now go about their normal day to day activities and would like to thank them for their patience in incredibly difficult circumstances. Please be aware there are a number of crime scenes across the county and we would ask for people's patince whilst we conduct our investigations.

[Cympil]

I`ve just this minute heard about this on the news, i`m shocked!! Twelve dead

A 12 month old baby is one of those dead to

[Monsta®]

Speechless!

[Blank]

How broken does a man's mind have to be before he can do such a thing?

RIP to all who lost their lives.

[pennylane909]

So shocking! You can never trust the human mind

Very sad news

[threegee]

It's going to happen again and again! No amount of new law or gun control is going to make any difference.

It appears to be that he was driven to it by the UK tax man. Now there's no possible excuse for what happened, BUT I think there's a social failing in that there's no one to go to for genuine help in such desperate circumstances. Lawyers are constantly on the take themselves, and CAB is wholly inadequate.

There's a whole lot of crap being talked by Labour about GP's needing to do follow-up mental health checks on people with gun licences. GP's are neither qualified to do this, nor need any extra burdens. Firearms will always be easy to obtain illegally if you are determined, and I think most of the gun control in recent years has been counterproductive. Gun clubs were the best way of monitoring firearms activity, and they've been legislated out of existence.

And, what's this nonsense about "investigating if his licences covered the weapons being held". The whole point of a licence is that it's an up front and fully transparent declaration that you are doing something legally. Any licence that "needs investigating" is completely self defeating. Once again bureaucracy totally loses sight of what it was put in place for!

[Malcolm Robinson]

This sort of madness happens EVERY summer as far as I can see, from mad dogs to kids being abducted.

BTW, GGG, wasn't the Hungerford nutter in a gun club?

[threegee]

...BTW, GGG, wasn't the Hungerford nutter in a gun club?

Only shortly before apparently. It was nevertheless the only available chance for detecting his state of mind. That's considering that the abnormally large number of powerful firearms transactions reported to the police in a very short period didn't raise any interest from people who are paid to be "interested".

On 18 August Ryan paid a final visit to the Tunnel Club. Andrew White explains: 'He phoned in the morning and said could he come and shoot at two in the afternoon. He shot for one hour, paid his range fee of £1.70 and used two targets. There were no problems whatsoever and he just left the range saying cheerfully, "See you about, cheerio." But I did notice a bit of a change in his personality on that Tuesday. He was rubbing two pound coins together in his hand, fidgeting with them between his fingers. There was none of the usual chatting or joking about.'

If Andrew White thought that on 18 August Ryan appeared a little edgy, Colonel George Styles was also on edge. This nervousness was entirely attributable to his meeting with Ryan the day before. Colonel Styles, also a member of the Devizes club, was formerly the army's chief firearms expert in Northern Ireland. He also found Ryan to be a well-presented young man in full possession of his faculties. And yet the former soldier came away from his meeting with Ryan with alarm bells ringing in his ears,: 'When I met Ryan on that Monday he was speaking to Andrew White, one of the directors of the club, and holding his AK47 rifle. I started, to think that this fellow must be a very, very important person to have got permission for a Kalashnikov. Perhaps he was a member of the Special Forces, or the police. Or in the England shooting team. I wasn't really sure. But he wouldn't have got permission for it if he was just an ordinary young man. We talked about the cleaning, stripping and maintaining of the Kalashnikov for about ten minutes, during which I whipped the top cover off the gun. But when I gave him the cover he couldn't even get that back on. I thought, how on earth was he allowed to buy this gun when he doesn't even know how to use it and he can't even get the cover back on?'

Colonel Styles might well have been one of the country's leading firearms experts, but his assumptions about Ryan's shooting credentials were wildly inaccurate. Ryan was not a member of the Special Forces. Or if he was, it was only in his fantasies. He was not a member of the police, though he would no doubt have found their Tactical Firearms Team of particular interest. And he was certainly not in the England shooting team.

Seems to me that with loners like Ryan you need a lot longer than a 12 week probationary membership period!

[Brett]

I laugh at the government instantly finding a scapegoat, something must be done.

Is it not a rational explanation that, just possibly, one of the 58,789,194 people that live in the UK over 13 years could just lose it and go a little bit mental?

After all Dunblane was the last event close to this.

They have to govern something or blame someone!!

There is no possible way that legislating something into an unworkable state can be good for anything. If they pulled there heads out of their arses and thought the initial legislation through, discounting the fact that you can't tell if someone is going to have a mental stint so many years down the line, then there is no need to change anything.

I personally wouldn't say there was a huge problem with gun crime, in the lakes especially.

The only difference betweek the shootings in the lakes and a shooting in the south londong boroughs is the media coverage. People don't care if gangs are wiping each other out but when Joe Bloggs gets it something has to be done.