Yellowstone National Park officials say a gunman killed by park rangers as he fired a semiautomatic rifle at the entrance of a dining facility with 200 people inside had told a woman he planned to carry out a mass shooting

The warning from a woman in Yellowstone National Park came in just after midnight on July Fourth: She’d just been held at gunpoint by a man who said he planned to carry out a mass shooting — a random attack common in the U.S. these days but not in the Yellowstone region, let alone the park itself.

Rangers spent the next several hours trying to find the gunman before he showed up outside a dining area with 200 people inside. He shot a barrage of bullets with a semi-automatic rifle at a service entrance.

The rangers — including one who was wounded — shot back. Their rounds hit the attacker, Samson Lucas Bariah Fussner, 28, of Milton, Florida, who died at the scene in the busy Canyon Village tourist lodge area near the scenic Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

  • Flying Squid
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    9527 days ago

    She’d just been held at gunpoint by a man who said he planned to carry out a mass shooting — a random attack common in the U.S. these days

    I don’t have anything to add beyond repasting that. It speaks for itself.

    • @Fredselfish
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      1727 days ago

      Yeah that worries me a lot. I am heading to that same campground today my third year in the park. I had worried about bears, Bison, or falling or getting injured in a hike. This first year I worry about getting shot just trying to enjoy a vacation. Sick of the gun violence in this country. That no one in the GOP will acknowledge.

  • @foggy
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    6127 days ago

    I’m not much for 2A bullshit but homie…

    You went to YELLOWSTONE to attempt a mass shooting.

    Do you honestly think there is a soul that resides nearby that doesn’t have wet dreams about taking someone like you down every night?

    Good riddance.

    • @[email protected]
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      4627 days ago

      There’s a fair chance he knew that and wanted to die while killing as many as possible.

      As you said, good riddance.

      • @[email protected]
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        1427 days ago

        I believe this to be the motives behind most mass shootings. They know they are going to die.

        It’s about getting their name printed on newspapers, shown in the news, talked about for a few days before the cycle repeats.

        We would be better served if the news simply referred to the shooter as “an assailant” and never say their names.

        • @[email protected]
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          727 days ago

          Absolutely. If they’re killed during their crime they should be completely anonymous. No names, no ‘manifestos’, no reference to the sorts of communities they were part of online, no last words, just, ‘they were a vile stain on humanity’ and then forgotten. Obviously, if they live more will come out as they’re prosecuted, but that should be minimized and once they’re jailed they can be forgotten by all but those tasked with keeping them alive to serve their sentence.

      • @foggy
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        27 days ago

        That’s what I mean though…

        You don’t go to what is essentially the actual ‘wild wild west’ for that shit and not expect to get Dirty Harry’d before you succeed.

        • @otterpop
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          27 days ago

          While I agree that the surrounding area would be well armed, I believe firearms in the park itself are actually banned for civilians. (Wrong, see below) This is a rare case of a police force stopping an active shooter quickly.

            • @otterpop
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              127 days ago

              Oh dang really? Thanks for the correction I need to update my knowledge here.

              • @otterpop
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                527 days ago

                "In areas administered by the National Park Service, an individual can possess a firearm if that individual is not otherwise prohibited by law from possessing the firearm and if the possession of the firearm complies with the laws of the state where the park area is located. 54 U.S.C. 104906. "

            • @foggy
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              027 days ago

              Thanks Obama 😒

  • stinerman [Ohio]
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    5327 days ago

    he planned to carry out a mass shooting — a random attack common in the U.S. these days

    Well they’re not wrong, but it’s kind of surreal to see it plainly said like that.

    • @samus12345
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      27 days ago

      We seem to have a hard time grasping the idea that if you make it easy for people to obtain weapons that kill with the simple pull of a trigger, there are people who will kill a bunch of people with them.

      • @[email protected]
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        827 days ago

        This is the part where someone replies with how they’re a super responsible gun owner that supports common sense gun control (but never describes what that means to them) and that a majority of gun owners are like that. Then everyone thinks “huh that really makes sense if you compare the number of gun owners to the number of mass shooters” and then we have the same conversation next week.

        • @samus12345
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          727 days ago

          I’m okay with responsible gun owners…but it should be difficult to prove that you are. The power of life and death shouldn’t be handed out like candy to anyone who wants it.

          • Liz
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            426 days ago

            Baseball bat, knife, sword, a small amount of rope, axe, hatchet, machete, chainsaw, fireworks, gasoline…

            Here’s the thing:

            1. You already have to pass a background check.

            2. So what more do you want? After that the criteria start to become subjective and will be applied be racists to disarm minorities and poor people.

            Now, I’m actually for some more generalized gun laws, like requiring that the gun or ammo be behind a lock when you’re not in control of it, but that’s not really relevant to stopping mass shootings. Ending mass shootings (a very small fraction of gun deaths) is way more about ending the desire to do such a thing.

            We’ve had easy access to guns for a long time, but mass shootings only started in the 90s, when angry white men felt they were getting left behind and had no way to feel valuable in the new society we’ve been working to build. I would suggest this episode of Some More News to get a quick understanding of angry men, and the book Angry White Men by Michael Kimmel to get a much deeper look at who these people are and why they act and feel the way that they do.

            • @samus12345
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              126 days ago

              False equivalence. When’s the last time you heard about a mass killing using any of those things?

              “No way to prevent this,” says only nation where this regularly happens.

              • Liz
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                125 days ago

                So, taking away the guns is a solution, I just don’t think we should do that. The reasons get into conflicting principles in society and would derail the point in trying to make which is this:

                We used to have a society with lots of easily accessible guns whose build were conducive to doing a mass shooting, and yet we didn’t have mass shootings. That’s really my fundamental point. We can get rid of the mass shootings without getting rid of the guns. It basically involves a bunch of left-wing policy, ignoring anything they have to say about guns. Strengthen unions, M4A, fixing town planning, strengthen EPA, break up the monopolies, go after wage theft, go after business that hire under the table, uncap social security, send social workers to 911 calls that don’t actually need a cop. Etc. Etc.

              • Liz
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                25 days ago

                So, taking away the guns is a solution to mass shootings I just don’t think we should do that. (You could argue they’d switch to cars.) The reasons get into conflicting principles in society and would derail the point in trying to make which is this:

                We used to have a society with lots of easily accessible guns whose build were conducive to doing a mass shooting, and yet we didn’t have mass shootings. That’s really my fundamental point. Mass shootings are a social phenomenon. We can get rid of the mass shootings without getting rid of the guns. It basically involves a bunch of left-wing policy, ignoring anything they have to say about guns. Strengthen unions, M4A, fixing town planning, strengthen EPA, break up the monopolies, go after wage theft, go after business that hire under the table, uncap social security, send social workers to 911 calls that don’t actually need a cop. Etc. Etc.

    • Joelk111
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      1127 days ago

      Yeah, that’s a strange use of words. I was like “oh, he just had a gun where he wasn’t supposed to,” but no, he was in the act of performing terrorism.

  • @[email protected]
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    4627 days ago

    “Stand On Zanzibar” by John Brunner won the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of 1969.

    The story is set in the early 21st century; one of the problems caused by the rapid changes of the times is ‘muckers.’ A mucker is someone who has ‘run amok’ and is out to kill as many people as possible. In the book the preferred weapons were knives and swords.

    Brunner based his novel on the works of sociologist Alvin Toffler, who coined the phrase ‘future shock’

    • @ChicoSuave
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      4427 days ago

      The only shock from the future is how hard someone has to work to survive. Not thrive, not live, but just get by. The shock is learning that this hardship is caused by 4700 people on the planet who have more money than they can spend in their lifetime and want to ensure the system that grants them privilege at our expense. The shock is learning that the entire societal system is rigged against anyone and almost everyone.

      The shock isn’t the future itself. It’s the state of the present.

      • @[email protected]
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        2627 days ago

        It’s often useful to know what a term means.

        In this case, ‘future shock’ meant that there would be people who couldn’t/wouldn’t adapt to the shift from the Industrial Age to the Digital Era. People who were fine with Tom Hanks wearing drag in his TV show lose their minds over drag forty years later. People who grew up getting vaccines in school suddenly decide that all vaccines are poison.

      • Flying Squid
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        1227 days ago

        That was basically Orwell’s 1984 though. The Proles worked hard all their lives just to scrape by and the Inner Party lived like kings and the Proles weren’t able to stop them even if they wanted to, which they didn’t because they were brainwashed into maintaining the status quo through control of the media.

        Sounds quite familiar, doesn’t it?

        • @Num10ck
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          527 days ago

          sounds like pretty much all of human history, no?

      • @Hikermick
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        527 days ago

        I think life was a lot harder in the past

      • @Delusional
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        427 days ago

        Yup humans are shit, I know that, but it doesn’t make me wanna kill a bunch of random strangers. That’s just insane.

      • @WhyFlip
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        227 days ago

        Sounds like you’ve given up.

    • Match!!
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      527 days ago

      “Amok”, incidentally, is a Malay word referring to a seemingly random killing spree that would take young men sometimes. Americans occupying the Philippines would sometimes be attacked by Muslim swordsmen insurgents in a berserker state, which led to the concept of “stopping power” and the development of the Colt 45

      • @[email protected]
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        227 days ago

        In the book they specifically say that a ‘mucker’ isn’t a ‘mugger.’ A mugger only wants your money; a mucker wants to kill you.

    • @Bricriu
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      527 days ago

      I’ve been thinking about muckers ever since I read the book back in the early 2000s. Wish more people knew about it.

      • @[email protected]
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        227 days ago

        If you really want to depress yourself, read 'The Sheep Look Up." His take on environmental collapse.

        • @Bricriu
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          27 days ago

          Right now I’m reading The Little Dummer Girl by LeCarré, and it’s plenty depressing already. But I’ll put this on the queue.

    • @[email protected]
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      3827 days ago

      Agreed, but bro was already shooting.

      By that point, a bullet seems appropriate. He was no longer fit for society.

      • @samus12345
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        2027 days ago

        Pretty sure they meant he needed a doctor well before it got to that point.

      • @[email protected]
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        727 days ago

        Meh. people who have committed murder can be and are rehabilitated (sometimes) and released back into society as “productive” members (I’ve known a few). But yeah, lethal force is acceptable to stop an active shooter.

      • @MSids
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        327 days ago

        “We are returning fire with guns that shoot pills, but the doc says it could take 2-3 weeks for it to build up in his system”

        • Liz
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          226 days ago

          “If we don’t see results by 6 weeks, we’re going to try a different class of drugs.”

    • @EnderWiggin
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      027 days ago

      Whose to say he didn’t have one already? You’re not wrong about healthcare in general, but I’m not sure this is really the right forum for that point to be made.

        • @EnderWiggin
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          127 days ago

          No doubt about the mental health issues, and I agree it’s a huge problem in the US. In terms of how the police responded to this though, it’s really tough to judge. It seems they prevented something worse from taking place.

          • Liz
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            026 days ago

            Their comment was not “we need to send doctors to respond to shooters.”

            Their comment was “we need universal healthcare so that people don’t feel the need to do these kinds of things.”

        • @EnderWiggin
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          27 days ago

          I’m confused. I’m going to assume this reply was meant for someone else? I only started here like a week ago.

  • Jo Miran
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    3727 days ago

    Wyoming resident and frequent Yellowstone patron here. Everything about this screams suicide. The man did everything possible to announce his intentions, then chose to shoot at a service entrance. He knew that there is a 100% chance that someone, patron or ranger, in the parking lot would have a high caliber weapon handy.

    • @BeMoreCareful
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      27 days ago

      You can’t carry a gun in a national park.

      Edit: I’ll be darned, you can carry in national parks.

      • @[email protected]
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        1027 days ago

        Per the National Park Service Website. You are allowed to carry a gun in national parks; but notably you’re not allowed to take it into government facilities: “government offices, visitor centers, ranger stations, fee collection buildings, and maintenance”. Additionally, it is not allowed to discharge the weapon unless you have specific hunting licenses.

        I don’t know what bearing this has on this tragedy, if any, but to facilitate civil discussion it’s best to have a shared understanding of the law.

      • @MostRegularPeople
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        27 days ago

        You can indeed carry a gun in a national park. The law was changed in 2013.

        Edit: I am wrong. It was 2010.

  • @UnderpantsWeevil
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    1127 days ago

    Samson Lucas Bariah Fussner, 28, of Milton, Florida

    Alarm bells blaring on that name/location alone.

      • @kurwa
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        727 days ago

        Well, Florida has all the nutters.

          • @hibsen
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            527 days ago

            Fair amount of biblical references in it; I’d guess the poster is drawing a parallel between that and the rather unhinged nature of Christian fundamentalism. I haven’t seen anything yet to indicate motives, so we’ll all see I guess.

  • @LesserAbe
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    527 days ago

    I know it’s just personal experience, but I’m surprised I didn’t hear about this sooner than today.