Norway Shooter Anders Behring Breivik: Deadlier and Weirder

The case of alleged Oslo bomber and Utoya island shooter Anders Behring Breivik gets stranger. The only constant seems to be that whatever I say about him in this post is likely to be proven wrong by the time I put up the next:

  • This does not seem to be an act of Islamic terrorism (despite the claim of responsibility by Ansar al-Islam).
  • The death toll is now being reported as 92, despite my earlier incredulity. That would make Breivik the deadliest spree shooter/active shooter in the history of the world.
  • How did he manage to kill so many? Evidently Breivik was dressed as a policeman and had an hour and a half to carry out his spree, since the real police couldn’t even reach the island for 40 minutes. (Remember, when seconds count, the police are minutes away.)

    Why didn’t anyone shoot back? Because in Norway, though they have much laxer gun control laws than the rest of Europe, self defense “is practically never accepted as a reason for gun ownership.” And weapons cannot be carried loaded.

    Why did he do it? A lot of reports say he’s a “right-wing extremist” and/or an “anti-immigration/anti-Muslim” extremist.

    There are translations of some of his writings/Internet posts up. A quick skim does show an anti-multiculturalism/anti-Muslim immigration bias. How killing Norwegian children furthers that cause is unclear. If anything, his killing spree would probably damage the cause of opposing the Islamization of Europe.

    Is he crazy? Well, you have to be crazy and/or evil to open fire on a group of children, but even in translation his writings don’t have the rambling, impenetrable quality that Jared Lee Loughner’s screeds have. To me it seems like that Breivik will be found sane and face the maximum penalty.

    Which, in Norway, is 21 years in jail. Or less than 3 months a murder.

    Here are the top twelve search terms for people reaching my blog today:

    anders behring breivik black metal
    anders behring breivik metal
    anders behring breivik jew
    anders breivik black metal
    anders behring breivik freemason
    anders behring breivik opus dei
    anders behring breivik jewish
    anders behring breivik “black metal”
    anders behring black metal
    anders behring breivik convert
    anders behring breivik muslim convert

    Uh folks, most of those terms were included in my post as a joke

    There’s the problem with conspiracy theories: Evidently a conspiracy can be behind any evil action, even those that don’t appreciably advance the interests of said conspiracy. I cannot for the life of me see how shooting Norwegian schoolchildren would further the cause of either the Pope or the Elders of Zion in taking over the world. [Just to be clear: Pope=Real guy, no particular plan for world domination beyond proselytizing, Elders of Zion=fake Jewish conspiracy group created by the Czar’s secret police and regurgitated by every brain-dead anti-semite since. I wouldn’t think you would need to explain these things, but those search stats above and some recent comments suggest otherwise…]

    The black metal reference was a half-joke, since the early Norway black metal scene did result in a rash of church burnings back in the 1990s, and a government building bombing wouldn’t be a giant leap. (The lads seemed to have calmed down a bit since, though Varg Vikernes, the black metal musician convicted not only of arson, but also of murdering a band-mate, was released from prison in 2009. Remember that 21 year limit? Vikernes served 16 years.)

    Tags: , , , , , , , ,

    7 Responses to “Norway Shooter Anders Behring Breivik: Deadlier and Weirder”

    1. meta says:

      ok what gun did the Norway shooter have?
      The Norwegian media has the following picture up:

      http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=no&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vg.no%2F&act=url

      That’s prolly the gun he used. With all that junk bolted on it’s hard to see the gun itself/
      Any experts out there can ID it?

    2. nate says:

      It looks to be a Ruger mini 14 caliber 223. which is similar to the NATO 5.56mm, a very high velocity bullet that causes a lot of damage to human tissue. it may of been the weapon used. the mini 14 is a very accurate assault rifle which in the photo has a 30 round magazine and would account for the high loss of life if he had several full mags

    3. Robert says:

      Not a giant leap? Seriously?!?

    4. Zak says:

      It’s a Ruger Mini-14. It is chambered for .223 Rem. It is not an assault rifle, it has none of the “evil” features a real “assault rifle” has. Just goes to show how well the 1994 AWB worked.

    5. meh says:

      Re: search terms, I was actually wondering what a Norwegian like Vikernes might think of this crime. Specifically, I was looking for his reaction. He and Breivik seem to have similar views, and a similar sort of psychopathic temperament about dealing with problematic others. Would Vikernes see a kindred spirit in Breivik, I wonder, or is his self concept similarly distorted to the point where the resemblance would be invisible to him.

      Nothing to do with black metal in general.

    6. […] have not released any details on what weapons were involved in his killing spree, in line with some comments here, Breivik appeared to own a Ruger Mini-14 and a Glock 17. The Ruger Mini-14 may be the gun shown […]

    7. RRD says:

      Could be a Mini-30. Hard to tell.

    Leave a Reply