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Politics : To be a Liberal,you have to believe that..... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: truedog who wrote (2798)	9/16/1999 10:29:00 PM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 6418

To be a liberal you have to believe that.... The poisonous atmosphere in our culture toward christians had nothing to do with this horrible shooting incident. Article.... Troubled Loner Kills Seven And Self In Texas Church FORT WORTH, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas man who gunned down hymn-singing teen-age worshipers at a Baptist youth service Wednesday, killing seven people before taking his own life, was a troubled loner who apparently picked the church at random, police said Thursday. Police named the gunman, who killed himself inside the church as police stormed in, as Larry Ashbrook, 47, who lived in squalor amid boxes of ammunition and hacked up photographs in a house in a Fort Worth suburb not far from the church. Ashbrook opened fired on a youth rally attended by about 150 people Wednesday evening in Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, shouting anti-religious curses and telling his victims to 'stay still.' 'We were just in the middle of singing when he started firing,' said survivor Laura Watson, a college student. 'My friend next to me was hit, he was lying there on the ground gurgling and moaning.' The massacre was the latest in a series of recent shooting rampages in the United States that have shocked the American public and put the spotlight on the issue of gun control. President Clinton said he hoped the shock of the church shootings would spur the nation to act so that such tragedies do not happen as often as they have in recent months. 'We know there is nothing we can do to ensure this will never happen,' Clinton said. 'But there is a lot more we can do to ensure it will happen more rarely.' Texas Governor and Republican presidential frontrunner George W Bush cut short a campaign trip in Michigan to fly to Fort Worth and visit relatives of the shooting victims. Ashbrook emptied three magazines of bullets from a nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun into the church hall and had six full magazines left when he put the gun to his own head, police said. 'At this point in time we would have to say it was random, he picked the church at random,' Acting Police Chief Ralph Mendoza told reporters. Three teen-agers and three adults were killed in the church and a teen-age girl died later in the hospital of a wound to the head. Seven people ranging in age from 12 to 41 were injured in the shooting but their conditions improved overnight, although a high school football player was paralyzed by a back wound. 'This has the appearance of being a very troubled man who for whatever reason in is own mind sought to quiet whatever demons were bothering him,' FBI agent Bob Garrity told reporters Thursday after agents searched Ashbrook's house. Police said Ashbrook was an unemployed loner who inherited the one-story house when his father died in July. When FBI agents entered, the house was a shambles with old journals and writings scattered among boxes of ammunition, upside down furniture and hacked up photographs. Previous gun rampages have involved some weapons bought illegally, but Fort Worth police said there appeared to be no legal problems with the two handguns in Ashbrook possession. Although the investigation was just starting, police said the nine-millimeter gun used in the shooting appeared to have been bought at a flea market in Grand Prairie, between Fort Worth and Dallas. The other gun, a .380 caliber model that the gunman brought to the church but apparently did not fire, was bought by Ashbrook in 1992 at an area gun shop that has since closed. 'At this point in time it is my belief that we will find out that both weapons were purchased legally,' Police Chief Mendoza said. Officials were at a loss to explain the rampage: Ashbrook had no record of mental health treatment in county records and no criminal record anywhere nationally except a 1971 charge of marijuana possession filed by Fort Worth police, police said. There were no notes with the gunman's body or in his car or home and no written material indicating he was planning the bloodshed. 'It is very early and we don't have any significant information in regard to why he committed this crime,' Mendoza said. The massacre began just before 7 p.m. (8 p.m. EDT/0000 GMT) when Ashbrook walked into the entry area of the brick church, which has a lobby connecting separate wings of the three-story building in a quiet middle-class neighborhood. Mendoza said Ashbrook shot three people in rapid succession as he moved from the lobby toward the main auditorium or sanctuary, including a janitor who approached him and a woman sitting on a lobby couch. 'He walked in through those double doors into the sanctuary, as we refer to it, and was standing back kind of pacing and firing randomly at the people inside the sanctuary,' he said. Witnesses said Ashbrook, who was wearing a black jacket, black shirt and blue jeans, shouted as he fired 'What you believe is all bullshit' as well as 'stay still.' Police said Ashbrook rolled a pipe bomb down one of the aisles. It exploded but apparently without much force. As police entered the building, the gunman sat down in a rear pew and killed himself.