When Richard Speck killed 8 student nurses in 1966 in Chicago

[Alice Kramden]

I remember wall-to-wall coverage of that atrocity, for MONTHS. It was a terrible mass murder. However, nowadays most of the country is inured to these mass shootings. The time for gun control was a long time ago: after Sandy Hook, after Las Vegas, after (I was trying to remember the club in Florida where so many got killed, and I googled "mass shooting," thinking it would spring right up, but was dumbfounded when the result appeared: "7th mass shooting in 7 days" (CNN defines mass shooting as 4 or more)

[link:https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/23/us/7-mass-shootings-7-days-trnd/index.html|]

(The name I was looking for was the club in Florida called Pulse, in Orlando.)

Holy crap, we have to have massive gun regulation, mandatory waiting periods, and background checks. Congress, Mr. President, we implore you!

[Mme. Defarge]

1. I'm old enough to remember that.

Almost fell to my knees in absolute horror that something so utterly inconceivable could have happened.

Btw, greetings to Ralph!

[Alice Kramden]

10. True, me too

[dameatball]

2. Yup, I was a teen. Also Whitman in the tower in Texas. (I think it was Whitman).

[PCIntern]

12. Same summer wasn't it?

The Whitman incident was also beyond our comprehension in those days.

[Mme. Defarge]

15. Yes!

I had forgotten. 😰

[BobTheSubgenius]

16. Did you know that Charles Whitman had a brain tumour?

Apparently, he left behind a letter saying he didn't know why he felt compelled to kill his gf and her mother (I think), because he didn't want to.

[dameatball]

19. No I did not. I was thinking maybe some form of disorder. Interesting.

[BobTheSubgenius]

20. Makes it even more tragic, at least to me.

It was a horrible story, right from the first shot, but it got worse, in a way.

[BlueTsunami2018]

3. What I remember about him were the jail parties.

Cocaine, sex, just having a great old time when he should have been dead long decades before.

[BobTheSubgenius]

17. I remember that!

He said that, if people knew how much fun they were having in prison...

[Moostache]

4. I have voiced this opinion in other threads....

We need 100% responsibility and accountability for GUN OWNERS...they want the guns? They want them legal and easily accessible? Fine...but you are going to be responsible for it all. You are voluntarily joining a group that has at its core deadly devices.

Insurance - anything happens with YOUR gun, its YOUR fault - including accessory to murder if used in a homicide; don't like that, don't think its fair? FUCK YOUR FEELINGS...go to the morgue and complain to the dead...or if you have such passion and NEED for deadly arms, go to the families of the dead and explain it to them.

Licensing - with levels and increased INITIAL limitations that can only be lifted with TIME not money...bullets and everything needed to kill people are off-limits for 90 days, then they cost an extreme amount anywhere outside of licensed areas - shooting clubs, target ranges, gun safety schools, and yes, hunters. You EARN the right to buy bullets, you can have the fucking gun, but society gets to determine if you are acceptable risk to own the bullets needed to kill people so quickly.

Will that stop ALL killings? Of course not...we do not ban cars because of drunk drivers...but we DO BAN the drivers and make it further criminal activity to use a car under certain convictions.

I don't want to take people's guns, I want to make it harder and harder for disturbed people to obtain the guns AND the bullets or shells necessary to kill indiscriminately and with alarming ease and speed too.

Crimes of passion or mentally disturbed individuals acting on impulses are a lot more difficult if the time between the impulse or urge or delusion is separated from the ability to take lives with military-style weapons.

Please. Stop the insanity. Stop the lying - restrictions on ammunition is NOT the same as taking away the guns entirely. It is a sane response to an insane world. Make it harder for the killers to kill. Make it more of a responsibility to own guns. Make society the arbiter of who gets a gun and not the fleshy receptacle of who gets shot next.

[Alice Kramden]

11. totally agree

everything else requires insurance, etc. - to exempt guns is just nuts

[LeftInTX]

5. He was the boogie man

I think my parents may have asked if they should lock their doors...

He raped, strangled and stabbed then one at a time, while one nurse hid under the bed. I think the nurse hiding under the bed was one of the main things that stood out in this case.

[former9thward]

6. Why would you bring up the Speck case with reference to guns?

[Alice Kramden]

8. because of the mass murder

It used to be intolerable, and now sadly it has become common. I know he didn't use guns

[pidge]

7. Speck didn't shoot anyone....dreadful,but not gun violence.

[Raine]

9. Speck didn't shoot anyone he strangled and

stabbed them.

[Alice Kramden]

13. Understood

I was commenting on how mass murder has become normalized

[kentuck]

14. I was in a Chicago bus station when they were looking for Speck...

A friend and I were hitchhiking back from Wisconsin, where we were doing migrant labor, and decided the bus station was the best place to hang out before hitting the road again the next morning. We had heard the news. I recall somebody sleeping on one of the benches and wondering if it was the person they were looking for?

And we have come to this....

[PlanetBev]

18. Yeah, I remember that

I was 15 years old when the massacres happened in Chicago and Austin. The Chicago police chief called the murder of the eight student nurses “The Crime of the Century.” Little did we know then what was coming down the pike.