ABC TV in Australia reported that police evacuated shoppers at Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction.

A man stabbed six people to death at a busy Sydney shopping center Saturday before he was fatally shot, police said, with hundreds fleeing the chaotic scene, many weeping as they carried their children. Eight people, including a 9-month-old, were injured.

New South Wales police said they believed a 40-year-old man was responsible for the Saturday afternoon attack at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, in the city’s eastern suburbs and not far from the world-famous Bondi Beach. They said they were not able to name him until a formal identification had taken place but that they weren’t treating the attack as terrorism-related.

The man was shot dead by a police inspector after he turned and raised a knife, New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters.

  • papertowels@lemmy.oneEnglish
    11·
    8 months ago

    I definitely haven’t, lol. My assumption is this guy wouldn’t need to aim to hit folks in a shopping center, but that’s just a guess. Given that automatics are illegal where I’m from they’re kind of a mythical concept haha.

    I personally think I’m grateful this guy didn’t have a firearm of any sort. There’s a picture of a guy armed with a bollard having a standoff with him to protect his family. This would be a very different article if the slasher was armed even with a pistol.

    • SupraMario@lemmy.worldEnglish
      123·
      8 months ago

      You most definitely need to be aiming to hit moving targets with a firearm, automatics are wildly inaccurate because the rate of fire creates a ton of recoil which has the rounds go everywhere. On top of that a 30 round standard size magazine, lasts about 2 seconds.

      The reason semi-automatic hand guns are heavily used in 95% of murders in the USA is because they’re easier to aim at close range, concealable and easy to toss once they’ve been used.

      • papertowels@lemmy.oneEnglish
        12·
        8 months ago

        What I’m saying is that depending on the shopping center, you could very easily “shoot everywhere” and still hit many people, for example, the bump stock fueled 2017 Vegas shooting.

        • SupraMario@lemmy.worldEnglish
          115·
          8 months ago

          Yep but your odds of actually killing someone are lower than if you actually aimed and fired with a semi automatic.

          Like I said in one of my other posts. There is a reason the military went to 3rnd burst and semi auto for their infantry rifles and SAWs used as suppression. Vietnam they found out that most soldiers would mag dump and not hit anything. So they went over to 3rnd burst and single shooting teaching the soldiers to fire deliberately when aiming to kill.

          • papertowels@lemmy.oneEnglish
            6·
            8 months ago

            I’d say the reason the military did that is probably because they’re not shooting into crowds of inattentive, unsuspecting bystanders, and you can’t really compare military tactics to a dude shooting up a mall where folks are unarmed, but this is getting pretty far into the theoretical weeds.

            • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              1·
              7 months ago

              Actually the main reason they did it was because they were dealing with a problem of psychology that they were trying to solve with technology.

              Basically you’ve got a bunch of terrified conscripts who you’ve dragged off the streets and flown out into the middle of a jungle to fight a pointless war that they in no way care about or believe in.

              The lack of accuracy was a combination of piss poor training and blind screaming terror.

              The US military looked at this and said “Clearly the guns are the problem.”