On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 05:02:59 GMT, (Dave Mundt) wrote:

Greetings and Salutations....
(feeling that I am walking into a flame war where
rational thought is a waste of breath) I wanted to touch
base on this on this as it seems to be one of those "Aliens
abducted my sister" stories.

On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 21:28:51 -0600, e wrote:

On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 01:53:41 GMT, (The Watcher)
wrote:


You reveal your ignorance here. This guy obviously did NOT go "spraying rounds
trying to make up for an lack of skill". He appeared to have some degree of
skill with the weapon and seems to have employed it fairly skillfully.

You're saying mass murder was his objective and you will defend to the
death his right to have the proper weapons to do it?

Thought so.

At this point in time, I have googled a number of stories on
the incident, and, I have found a foggy battleground. As far as I
can tell, though, these facts seem to be mentioned in enough places
that they are likely near the "truth".
So...Here are some of MY observations.

1) The shooter, Chai Soua Vang, was on private property, in
a tree stand put in place by some other hunter.
2) He was "asked to leave" by the group of hunters that DID
have permission to hunt on the property, when they returned to the
area.
3) Shots were fired, Ending up with five people dead, some
with a couple of bullets in them.
4) It appears that Chai had come down out of the stand, and
was on the ground when the shootings happened, and, from the fact
that the bodies were scattered over a 75 or more yard area, there
was, perhaps, some "hide & seek" going on.
5) In at least one place Vang is reported as saying that
he did not fire first...
6) ONE story mentions that the gun could hold 20 rounds, and
several of them mention that the gun was empty when apprehended by
the cops. Since at most, they won't recover more than 12 or 14
bullets from bodies...that would mean that about 25% of them stuck
in trees out in the woods someplace...or...he did not have a 20
round clip in the rifle.

The report I read said he was out of ammo. One other possibility: he
started with less than 20 rounds in a 20 round clip/magazine.

7) Vang is listed as being 36 years old. That would have
made him a young man, in Cambodia, at about the time that the USA
was pulling out. He is also Hmong, which means that he and his
folks were the ones WORKING with the US...I suspect he saw some
pretty nasty stuff go down at a very formative time in his life.

If he wasn't old enough to become familiar with weapons, he at least
later had influence from elders whose weapon of choice was similar to
the SKS. How many of our first firearms were just like the one Dad
had?

He did not go into the woods intending to kill a human. He would not
have bothered to have a hunting license.

8) There are some notes that recently there has been
an influx of Hmong to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, where Vang is
from, and, that there has been enough friction between the Hmong and
other (white) residents that the police had assigned a Hmong officer
to work with the situation.

So...I could easily see a sitaution where Vang in alone
in the woods, and, is confronted by a group of testosterone (and
perhaps beer) loaded hunters with weapons. I suspect they might
not have used politically correct or tactful language in requesting
that he leave the property. I could also see this easily escalating
into a full-scale fire-fight because everyone started pushing.
Now...that does not excuse the deaths, but, it would certainly
explain what happened.
I have a couple of questions myself that I have not seen any
answers for, and I would like to hear more about:

1) The stories imply that Vang was the only one
shooting. What is the likelihood of that, and, how many
of US think that these hunters would simply scatter without
returning fire? I would like to know how many rounds THEY
got off.
2) It would be interesting to know what was said and
done in that hazy period between the time that Vang was discovered
in the tree stand, and, when he ran out of ammo.
3) Why is it that the reports were that the folks
killed were shot in the back? I could find no detailed information
about the bullet paths for most of them, but, the ones that I did
find indicate that they were shot from the front.
4) Was Vang's rifle a semi-automatic, or had it been
illegally modified to be a full automatic?

In any case, this is a terrible tragedy for the folks
in Wisconsin, for Vang's family, and for the Hmong community
in Mn. It smells more to me of a guy being tired and scared and
pushed to the point of snapping, than (as has been portrayed
here in this thread and a few other agenda loaded places) a
madman with a terrible weapon out to hunt the ultimate prey - man.

I suppose we can never know the truth there, but
hopefully, eventually, we will get some more truth about what
happened. This is an aberation, though, and hardly a reason
to enact more unenforced gun laws and to remove yet MORE
freedoms from the American citizen...yet a lot of folks will
and have jumped on the bandwagon calling for JUST that result
Things to ponder on
Regards
Dave Mundt

What ARE we to do with this logical thinking? Thanks.