Fatal shootings in Cumbria

[artisan]

My bold.

 

To anyone on the outside of Derek Birds mind they may seem unnecessary and disproportionate to the anxieties he had but to him it was a different story. Everyone reacts individually to external and internal stresses and the mind is very much like an elastic band, stretch it too much or at the wrong time and it will snap.

This man clearly had had enough and it makes me sad to think of what a mess he would have been in that morning.

I have seen people on the edge of sanity and i have seen people so mixed up inside that they just cannot function correctly and its sad that it sometimes results in tragedy.

 

I could, up to a point, follow your reasoning, if the only ones he killed were those he held a grudge against.

But the murder of the strangers, people he was jealous of on sight, makes no sense.

 

It is thankful that he topped himself, as if not, they would have him back on the streets in about 5 years on a voluntary rehabilitation scheme.

 

Because unlike other mass murderers he would claim temporary insanity, and some would fall for it.

[artisan]

true it happens far too often, but it does not happen every day, and it always makes the news big time. I am truly sorry to hear about this terrible event. What happened to the very strict gun laws you had?

 

Laws and Locks only stop good men.

 

Mass murder outrages seem to relatively rare in the USA, as they are everywhere.

The Human is a social animal and needs its fellow man to share the collective burden.

[Fareast]

Buck 's last question prompts an interesting thought. There were probably loads of handguns floating around the U.K. after 1945, as out of the millions of de-mobbed military, quite a few brought ' souvenirs ' back with them. However, gun crime in the U.K. was quite rare, for at least the next 25 or 30 years. Shootings commanded huge headlines and gunmen [ or the odd gunwoman ] were severely dealt with.

 

Christopher Craig 's accomplice was hanged [ even though he only accompanied Craig ], Ruth Ellis was hanged too. Two men in our very own Sheffield, in the 1960 's were convicted of carrying a gun during robberies and pistol-whipping someone [ not shooting them ] and originally received 21 and 19 years respectively. Guns were not all that difficult to get hold of, if you really wanted one. Craig had about a dozen at his house and even used to take some to school to swap !

 

It seems that criminals then were very reluctant to carry guns and use them. I don 't know if the law about possessing guns has changed a lot but criminals these days seem to use them at the drop of a hat. What 's changed ? The psychological and physical make-up of the U.K population since the 1970 's as people have settled here with a different cultural attitude to guns ? The disappearance of the death penalty ? The light sentences compared with years gone by ? The increased comfort in our prisons ? The drug scene effect ?

 

All of the above maybe ? Or none of them ? The last tragic episode in Cumbria should give everyone food for thought, but I doubt if anything really drastic will be done in the near future------or perhaps our ' little green & pleasant land ' [ ! ] has now changed beyond the point of turning back to more law-abiding times ?

[poppins]

true it happens far too often, but it does not happen every day, and it always makes the news big time. I am truly sorry to hear about this terrible event. What happened to the very strict gun laws you had?

 

Buck GordonBennet has no idea the size of the USA or has to how many people live there, theres no comparison at all between the two countries , there's less crime in Rhode Island than there is in California too.

[medusa]

My bold.

 

To anyone on the outside of Derek Birds mind they may seem unnecessary and disproportionate to the anxieties he had but to him it was a different story. Everyone reacts individually to external and internal stresses and the mind is very much like an elastic band, stretch it too much or at the wrong time and it will snap.

This man clearly had had enough and it makes me sad to think of what a mess he would have been in that morning.

I have seen people on the edge of sanity and i have seen people so mixed up inside that they just cannot function correctly and its sad that it sometimes results in tragedy.

 

If you speak to any counsellor or Samaritan then they will confirm that the source of stress, the apparent size of the stress to the outside world and lots of other things that show proportion are all irrelevant when it comes to each individual dealing with that stress.

 

For some people losing their job is just another day to day problem, for others it's the end of the world. The same applies to everything from relationship break ups, to health problems, to losing a family member or financial problems.

 

There's no right or wrong way to deal with this stress and when someone is overwhelmed then they're overwhelmed- the source of the stress is not really that relevant once it gets to the point of helping someone deal with being overwhelmed because it takes on a life and a stress of its own once it's stopping someone functioning.

 

By the time someone is at the point of their psyche snapping just sorting out the original problem that made the stress explode would have no effect unfortunately and at present there has been no comment about whether Mr Bird did attempt to access any mental health support, counselling or similar or whether anybody who could potentially have been in the position of involving a mental health crisis team did speak up when it could have made a difference.

 

Of course, if someone is too secretive or the normal support network is absent then it's not that easy for anyone else to have enough knowledge to be aware of when intervention is relevant or needed.

 

If anything at all can be salvaged from this then I don't think it will come in the changing of gun licensing. We already have one of the most strict set of gun controls in the world and tightening gun controls won't change much for many people and Mr Bird could have done approaching the same order of damage with a crossbow, or a decent sharp sword, or a plain old knife block full of decent kitchen knives, so I think that the 'lessons for the future' part of the investigation would be better spent looking at mental health care rather than the weapons themselves.

[Clearway]

I think we cam empathise with someone who finds themselves in a position that they see no escape from, but the consequences of Bird's actions, which were totally unnecessary and disproportionate to any anxiety he was suffering from, mean the 'sorrow' should be entirely directed at his victims and their families, I'd include his mother in that category, who lost both her sons that day.

How can you measure what is didproportionate to a troubled mind, if the man was in a reasonable frame of mind he woukldn't have killed anyone.

[norks]

I could, up to a point, follow your reasoning, if the only ones he killed were those he held a grudge against.

But the murder of the strangers, people he was jealous of on sight, makes no sense.

 

It is thankful that he topped himself, as if not, they would have him back on the streets in about 5 years on a voluntary rehabilitation scheme.

 

Because unlike other mass murderers he would claim temporary insanity, and some would fall for it.

 

 

 

Maybe it was temporary insanity we will never know but i do not think for one moment he was a cold calculated murderer who set out with a predetermined motive for killing as many people as possible.

I think he was stretched too far and snapped.

[cressida]

Buck 's last question prompts an interesting thought. There were probably loads of handguns floating around the U.K. after 1945, as out of the millions of de-mobbed military, quite a few brought ' souvenirs ' back with them. However, gun crime in the U.K. was quite rare, for at least the next 25 or 30 years. Shootings commanded huge headlines and gunmen [ or the odd gunwoman ] were severely dealt with.

 

Christopher Craig 's accomplice was hanged [ even though he only accompanied Craig ], Ruth Ellis was hanged too. Two men in our very own Sheffield, in the 1960 's were convicted of carrying a gun during robberies and pistol-whipping someone [ not shooting them ] and originally received 21 and 19 years respectively. Guns were not all that difficult to get hold of, if you really wanted one. Craig had about a dozen at his house and even used to take some to school to swap !

 

It seems that criminals then were very reluctant to carry guns and use them. I don 't know if the law about possessing guns has changed a lot but criminals these days seem to use them at the drop of a hat. What 's changed ? The psychological and physical make-up of the U.K population since the 1970 's as people have settled here with a different cultural attitude to guns ? The disappearance of the death penalty ? The light sentences compared with years gone by ? The increased comfort in our prisons ? The drug scene effect ?

 

All of the above maybe ? Or none of them ? The last tragic episode in Cumbria should give everyone food for thought, but I doubt if anything really drastic will be done in the near future------or perhaps our ' little green & pleasant land ' [ ! ] has now changed beyond the point of turning back to more law-abiding times ?

 

Good points F.E. though what I find chilling is that he told someone the day before that there was going to be a rampage, so it was pre-meditated, and a build-up of something in his life that he couldn't control that he thought it was the only way out

[Genuflect]

I note that the first person he shot was a solicitor that he was dealing with. This would have made a plea of temporary insanity much less acceptable should this case have ever got to court.

[artisan]

Medusa, and others have said he could have done this with a carving knife or some-such.

I don't think he could.

A knife means getting close up and actually trusting the knife into the other persons body.

Imagine the force that takes, and how many times you need, if you not an experienced trained killer to do it.

His first murder, that of his twin brother was a shotgun blast to the face.

Imagine trying to obliterate someone's face using a carving knife.

He could never have got past the first murder, with the emotional effort that would have taken.

 

It was the availability of the guns that partly caused this, and also, obviously, his own mental breakdown.

But surely warning signs were given previously.

His behaviour in Thailand must have made his mates think something was not right.

He was a 52 year old man, not a besotted adolescent.