Another Senseless Tragedy Involving Guns

This time at a Sikh Temple in suburbs near Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

At least seven people, including a gunman shot by a police officer, were killed Sunday in an attack on worshippers at a Sikh temple in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek, police said.

The officer was wounded but "returned fire, and that shooter was put down," said Bradley Wentlandt, the police chief in nearby Greenfield, who briefed reporters. Investigators who picked through the building afterward found four bodies inside the temple and two other victims outside, plus the gunman, Wentlandt said.

At an afternoon news conference, Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards said that authorities are treating the shooting as a "domestic terrorist-type incident," adding that the FBI will head the investigation.

Two semi-automatic handguns believed used by the shooter were recovered from the scene, a law enforcement source directly involved in the investigation told CNN.

At least three wounded, including the officer, were being treated at Milwaukee's Froedtert Hospital, spokeswoman Carolyn Bellin told CNN. All three were in critical condition.

The suspect, described as a "heavyset, bald white man with a 9/11 tattoo" apparently opened fire on the temple gathering Sunday morning and took hostages, including children, before police were able to bring him down.  Reports are still conflicting as to exactly what happened, but this definitely looks like domestic terrorism against a specific group.  The FBI agrees.

Tattoos on the body of the slain Sikh temple gunman and certain biographical details led the FBI to treat the attack at a Milwaukee-area temple as an act of domestic terrorism, officials said Sunday.

The shooter is dead, so we may never know exactly what motivated this terror attack, but once again America has yet to come to grips with the very real issue of near endless gun violence in this country, and it's only getting worse.  CNN claims more details about the shooter:

The gunman who shot six people to death and wounded three others during a rampage at a Sikh temple in a Milwaukee suburb was an Army veteran who may have been a white supremacist, according to a law enforcement source involved in the investigation.

More on this as details become clear.  I've been saying all along that this was going to happen eventually, that the skinhead assholes on the far right were going to make their move before the election, and at least one of them have.

Domestic terrorism at its most racist, crude, and deadly.

By the way, Oak Creek, south of Milwaukee, is in Rep. Paul Ryan's district.  I wonder if he'll be calling for a closer look at America's little domestic terror problem now that his own constituents lie dead as a result.

I doubt it, however.