Gun Safety Election Winners, Thousand Oaks Shooting, 307 Mass Shootings so far this year, 3,013 Teens & Kids killed or injured with guns & bullets so far this year, 253 Cops Killed so far this year, and overall, there are now 12,542 Gun & Bullet related deaths so far this year!
Gun violence and crime incidents are collected/validated from 2,500 sources daily – incidents and their source data are found at the gunviolencearchive.org website.
1: Actual number of deaths and injuries
2: Number of INCIDENTS reported and verified
22,000 Annual Suicides not included on Daily Summary Ledger
2: Number of INCIDENTS reported and verified
22,000 Annual Suicides not included on Daily Summary Ledger
Numbers on this table reflect a subset of all information
collected and will not add to 100% of incidents.
collected and will not add to 100% of incidents.
Data Validated: November 10, 2018
Thousand Oaks shooting leaves 13 people dead, including gunman, and 18 injured
Mass shooting at Borderline Bar and Grill
Eleven people were killed, in addition to a sheriff’s sergeant responding to the scene who was gunned down by the assailant minutes later.
The Borderline Bar and Grill was hosting line-dancing lessons for college students as young as 18 on Wednesday night. Crowds of young people, including parties for two women celebrating their 21st birthdays, were drinking and dancing when the crack of gunfire echoed through the cavernous room about 11:20 p.m.
Terrified patrons scrambled for cover as bullets flew. Some crouched behind pool tables and in bathroom stalls, fumbling with phones as they tried to call and text their loved ones. Others used barstools to break second-story windows in an attempt to jump to safety.
Nellie Wong’s friends at Cal State Channel Islands in Camarillo had surprised her Wednesday night and taken her out to celebrate her 21st birthday. As the shooting started, she dived to the floor and hid behind a group of tables and barstools, squeezing her nose closed with her hand to avoid choking on the smoke.
“I immediately stopped moving, stopped breathing,” said Wong, who still wore a bright pink cowboy hat and a “Happy Birthday” sash. “Thank goodness, he didn’t see me at all.”
The shooting left 12 people dead and 18 others injured, some who were hurt trying to escape. The severity of their injuries was not immediately known, fire officials said.
The suspected gunman, Ian David Long, was found dead of a gunshot wound in a back room at the bar. The amount of blood inside the bar made it difficult to tell whether he shot himself or was killed by law enforcement, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said.
Long, 28, lived in Newbury Park, five miles from the dance hall. He drove his mother’s red Toyota pickup to the Borderline and did not say anything before opening fire, a law enforcement official said.
Long was a machine gunner in the U.S. Marine Corps, reaching the rank of corporal. He served a seven-month tour in Afghanistan during his nearly five years in the service, according to the Department of Defense.
Neighbors on his manicured, leafy street said they suspected he had emotional issues. Deputies who were called to Long’s home in April for a complaint of disturbing the peace said he was irate and was acting irrationally, Dean said. Mental health workers decided he did not meet the standard for an emergency psychiatric hold.
Around 1:30 a.m. Thursday, dozens of people lined the sidewalk on Moorpark Road near the bar, their faces illuminated by flashing blue and red police lights. Employees and bar patrons huddled together, crying, hugging and asking each other whether there had been word on loved ones who were still inside.
Thousand Oaks residents said the attack had shattered their view of the suburban area as safe. Several teenagers said their parents were comfortable sending them to Borderline, next to a golf course and the 101 Freeway, because it was familiar and safe.
“This is not something that happens in Thousand Oaks,” said Capt. Garo Kuredjian of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. “Thousand Oaks is one of the safest communities in the United States. For something like that to hit us on our doorstep is devastating.”
This is the second time this year Thousand Oaks has seen violence in a crowded area. In March, a man shot and killed his wife before attempting to shoot himself at the Thousand Oaks Mall.
“It doesn’t matter how low your crime rate is … there’s no way to process,” Dean said. “There’s no way to make sense out of the senseless.”
The bar’s patrons also frequent the Stagecoach country music festival in Indio, and some were also survivors of the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas that left 58 dead last year.
Ventura Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Helus had been talking to his wife on the phone, as he often did during a shift, when he received a radio call about the shooting, Dean said. Before he rushed to the scene, he told her: “Hon, I got to go, I love you. I gotta go on a call.”
Helus and a California Highway Patrol officer were the first people to run into the bar, about four minutes after the first 911 call, Dean said. Helus was shot multiple times, almost immediately, and the CHP officer dragged him out of the building and away from the line of fire.
Helus died early Thursday morning at a hospital, leaving behind his wife and a son. He was a 29-year veteran of the department who planned to retire in a year or two, Dean said.
About 15 to 20 minutes passed before a second group of officers burst into the bar and began firing. Long was found dead in a back room.
The shooter was armed with a Glock 21 .45-caliber handgun, Dean said. A source who was not authorized to speak publicly said Long legally purchased the weapon in Simi Valley.
The shooter’s weapon had an extended magazine, Dean said; he added he did not know how many bullets were in the weapon or how many the magazine could actually hold.
Evidence suggests Long worked alone and did not plan other attacks, said Paul Delacourt, the assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office. Naming a motivation for the shooting would be “premature,” he said.
“I don’t want to get out in front of what the evidence in the investigation will show,” Delacourt said.
In addition to examining evidence from the scene, the FBI will interview witnesses, examine Long’s digital footprint and review video footage from inside the bar, he said.
Matthew Wennerstrom, a Borderline regular, said he had been inside for an hour when he heard gunfire. He pulled as many people as he could to the floor and under a pool table, tried to quiet those around him and count the shots.
When the gunman stopped shooting, possibly to reload, Wennerstrom enlisted others to help smash some of the bar’s windows with chairs, hoping to escape before the next volley of gunfire.
“All I could think about was how helpless I was,” Wennerstrom said.
A video taken inside the Borderline during the shooting and shared on Instagram showed red, purple and green spotlights flickering through the smoky air onto the empty dance floor as the sound of gunshots and screams rang out in the background.
During a break in the gunfire, the man filming sprinted toward the exit, the video punctuated by his heavy breathing. He shouted, “He’s coming out this door!” before making his escape.
In the Instagram post, the man wrote that the gunman was “shooting the wounded on the ground.”
Large crowds formed outside the Borderline early Thursday morning as friends and family arrived seeking news about their loved ones. Some made desperate phone calls, seeking information about people still inside. Others read out the names of their friends on live television interviews.
Carl Edgar, 24, of Tarzana said he had about 20 friends inside the bar, where he is a regular. He tried to reach them early Thursday, but couldn’t contact everyone. Edgar reasoned that they may have turned off their phones “to be safe,” he said.
“A lot of my friends survived Route 91,” Edgar said. “If they survived that, they will survive this.”
A hotline has been established for those seeking information about loved ones at (805) 465-6650. A family reunification center also was established at the Thousand Oaks Teen Center, where Mayor Pro Tem Rob McCoy was seen around 3:30 a.m.
McCoy embraced one couple as they walked up. Inside, he said, the mood was somber as loved ones waited for news.
Four hours after the shooting, when victims had been evacuated, Alaina’s Apple Watch and iPhone still showed that she was at the Borderline.
“My gut is saying she’s inside the bar, dead,” Housley said. “I’m hoping I’m wrong.”
Housley said he knew the grim reality of being a journalist on the scene after a mass shooting, saying: “You just don’t think that — same stupid quote — you just don’t think it’s going to happen to you.”
He learned hours later that Alaina had been killed. In a statement, Housley said she was “an incredible young woman with so much life ahead of her.”
Tim Dominguez, who has been going to Borderline for 16 years, said he wouldn’t normally go on a Wednesday because it’s college night. But his 26-year-old son wanted to go and shoot pool.
Dominguez said they were preparing to leave when he heard shots and saw the bouncer collapse. Then the gunman turned and “kept on shooting,” firing rapidly toward a crowd of about 40 people on the dance floor, he said.
“He was good at it,” Dominguez said, “like he knew what he was doing.”
Dominguez said that as he and his son ran from the bar, they yelled for people to get down. Though both of them are safe, Dominguez is wrestling with what he could have done differently.
“I feel guilty that I left,” he said. “That guilt that I could have done something more.”
A man who survived a mass shooting in Las Vegas last year was among those killed in Wednesday's attack in California, his family says.
Telemachus Orfanos, 27, died alongside 11 others when a man opened fire at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, north-west of Los Angeles.
He escaped death last year when a gunman killed 58 people in Las Vegas.
A number of survivors of that shooting, the worst in modern US history, have said they were at the bar on Wednesday.
"My son was in Las Vegas with a lot of his friends and he came home. He didn't come home last night," his mother told ABC News.
"I don't want prayers, I don't want thoughts, I want gun control", she said.
"It's particularly ironic that after surviving the worst mass shooting in modern history, he went on to be killed in his hometown," his father told the Ventura County Star.
Police have named the suspect in Wednesday's attack as 28-year-old Ian David Long, a US Marine Corps veteran with suspected PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).
He served in Afghanistan from November 2010 to June 2011, officials say, and was found dead at the scene.
Who are the victims?
The Borderline Bar is popular with students and was hosting a line-dancing night when the attack happened.
It is close to a number of universities, one of which confirmed that a recent graduate had been killed.
Justin Meek, 23, was a keen musician. California Lutheran University president Chris Kimball said that he had "heroically saved lives".
Ventura Sheriff's Sergeant Ron Helus, who was due to retire next year, died in hospital after being shot several times.
Police say the suspect was dressed in black, and forced his way into the bar after shooting the bouncer.
He threw a smoke grenade before opening fire, witnesses say. Police say he used a legally owned .45 calibre Glock semi-automatic handgun.
But the weapon had an extended magazine, meaning it can carry more ammunition, which is illegal in California.
"It was a huge panic. Everyone got up. I was trampled," one witness told Fox News.
At least 10 people are known to have been wounded.
What else do we know?
Survivors of the Las Vegas shooting say they have used the bar as a place to meet up in recent months.
One survivor, Nicholas Champion, said a group of them were at the venue on Wednesday.
"It's the second time in about a year and a month that this has happened," he said in a local television interview. "It's a big thing for us. We're all a big family and unfortunately this family got hit twice."
"Borderline was our safe space," Brendan Kelly, who survived both attacks, told ABC News. "It was our our home for the probably 30 or 45 of us who are all from the greater Ventura County area who were in Vegas."
That number does not include an annual estimate of 22,000 suicides via firearms.
In the last two weeks alone, two people were shot dead by a man at a yoga studio in Florida, and another gunman opened fire on a synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11.
With the victories of Jason Crow in Colorado, Sharice Davids in Kansas, and Jennifer Wexton in Virginia, we flipped some critical seats to the side of gun violence prevention in the House of Representatives, opening a new world of possibilities for life-saving gun laws.
Next, Governors-elect Laura Kelly in Kansas, Tim Walz in Minnesota, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, and Jared Polis in Colorado ran on a gun safety platform and will stand with us in the fight to end gun violence.
These victories prove that the American people support a future that's free from gun violence. And in the wake of far too many tragic mass shootings in recent years, and the gun violence that kills 96 Americans every day, voters are letting lawmakers know that advocating for gun safety is both the right thing to do and good politics.
Let's celebrate these victories and the new Gun Sense Majority that will fight to pass common sense legislation. Stay tuned for updates on what these victories mean for our movement. Please be a part of this movement towards true gun safety in America!
