Three dead in New Jersey supermarket shooting

 

A supermarket employee carried out a pre-dawn shooting at the New Jersey supermarket where his colleagues were working, killing two, officials say. The gunman left the Pathmark store in Old Bridge at 03:30 EST and returned half an hour later with with a handgun and an AK-47 assault rifle.

A local prosecutor said the gunman fired at the first people he saw .An 18-year-old woman and 24-year-old man were killed before the gunman ended the rampage by shooting himself. There were at least 12 people in the store in Old Bridge, a suburb about 25 miles (40km) from New York.

 People were stocking shelves before the grocery store  opened, and many of those inside hid as the shooting began. At least 16 rounds were fired, Mr Kaplan said, some breaking the front windows.

The prosecutor said the motive was still under investigation. Old Bridge Mayor Owen Henry told the New Jersey Star-Ledger newspaper that the gunman was a former US marine.
"This is the worst phone call a mayor can receive," he said. "You can prepare for these things but you can't prevent them."

Police evacuated the shop after the shooting and several of the employees were taken across the road to a restaurant. The shooting is the latest in a series of  shooting incidents in the US. Earlier this month a man opened fire at a Sikh temple in the state of Wisconsin, killing six people before police shot him in the abdomen. The gunman then killed himself, the FBI concluded. Weeks earlier, another gunman killed 12 people during a screening of the new Batman film at a theater in Aurora, Colorado.

To those who wonder whether the latest in a string of summer shootings across America will result in stricter controls on guns, the answer is, basically, no.  Opinion polls, by and large, do not suggest that most Americans want to restrict what some regard as their constitutional right. The rights of gun owners still have an extraordinarily effective voice in Washington, in the shape of the National Rifle Association, which has successfully led resistance to stricter controls.
The NRA's president, David Keene, hailed the Republican party's latest position on guns, adopted at its convention in Tampa, as "perhaps the most gun-friendly platform that any party had ever adopted".
The platform opposes any legislation that would limit ammunition capacity.

Is that really the way to discourage mass shootings?