Shooter Chatter

 From the Hamburg shooting earlier in the week....various folks have noted that the shooter (now dead)...came to get his license just in the past four months and apparently had written a manifesto of some type.

Note, I haven't read the manifesto, and I doubt that the police want it in some public reading situation. I would be curious over the topic.  

I will say....people who write manifesto material....typically are at some PhD level mentally, and wanting to correct the world's faults.  I hate using the word unbalanced, but these are people who feel the the world is going in the wrong direction.

So here's the thing....whatever was in this manifesto....was read by someone in the Hamburg area, and they sent a note to the police about the guy, his manifesto, and ownership of a gun.

Cops?  They received this, and simply reviewed it.

There's no law about removing the gun just because you wrote a manifesto. If you were showing nutty behavior?  Thats different.....they would have visited the guy and removed the pistol.

The suggestion in the note that the guy was mentally unbalanced?  Well....yeah, he mentioned that.  But without a doctor to suggest that....the cops won't act.

Oddly, the police did react and conducted an audit of the gun....at the apartment.  All regulations were complied with.....except one single issue.  The gun was pulled from the safe, with one bullet in the chamber.....a no-no in handling a gun or storing it.

They gave a warning and wrapped up the audit.

What'll happen now?  I would guess that some new federal law will occur, and that when anyone suggests nutty behavior with a gun holder....automatic confiscation will occur, until the guy is proven 'sane'.  

A problem?  You could have some guy noted for ten different nutty behavior episodes.....each time having his gun removed, and then proving he was just marginally nutty....getting his back each time.

About a decade ago, I sat in a group of a couple of Americans (all had been in Germany for a decade), and they all vouched on the comment that a majority of Germans have an eccentric way about themselves.  They weren't saying crazy....just that they have compulsions and ways of doing things....which went to the extreme.  

It's like your desire to have a perfect car designed and manufactured....you'd go to a German team to accomplish the task because of their intense desire for perfection.  

Or it's like a restaurant visit where you get a four-star gourmet meal, and the German cook almost weeping if you don't agree it was the best food you've ever eaten.

So, when you hear about the manifesto chatter....that's the basic story.  If you asked the journalists how many Germans a year write some manifesto?  It'd be a bit of silence there, but it wouldn't shock me if there's a thousand German manifestos produced yearly of the 300 to 500 page variety.