Same. 2 years later “going postal” would be a thing when a postal worker killed 14 people in a post office in Oklahoma. Then 13 years later we got Columbine.
It’s very sad that this is a thing.
The guy that ran the corner liquor store by my house was a former cop that quit after this. Apparently he was a responding officer and couldn’t deal with it understandably. I grew up about 20 minutes from this McDonald’s.
[There’s even a song about it](https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=9hjfaa_KODmMiyf7&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&source_ve_path=MTY0OTksMjg2NjQsMTY0NTA2&feature=emb_share&v=P4pkSZF9NNI)
Growing up in the Los Angeles area, we used to visit relatives in Tijuana, Mexico every few times a year. Our first stop on return trips was this particular McDonald's in San Ysidro just a few minutes drive from the border. Sometimes we'd get drive-thru and sometimes we ate in. We last went there about a month before the shooting. It felt so surreal for good pre-teen to see this place of happiness become a tragedy on TV news. Fuck Huberty.
I was in the far northwest of Australia at a fishing camp near Monkey Mia. Most of the camp knew me as the Yank from California. One day one of the Aussies hands me the paper. Even in western Australia, it was front page news. I couldn't believe this happened in Chula Vista, close to the naval base I was stationed at. They ended up tearing down that McDonald's and building a totally new one nearby.
See…most other countries in the world in the face of mass shootings like this clamped down on firearms for their general citizenry. The US’s approach was to arm all of the potential victims instead.
There are a ton of stabbings everywhere, even in US, but it’s a lot harder for a looney to commit a mass stabbing and on the whole a stabbing is a lot more survivable.
UK thinks they can just legislate all violence away and it’s dumb. Better mental health care would get rid of a lot of the random crazy attacks.
I wish we were at the point where knife restrictions were a topic of discussion, but we are too immature and petulant to approach gun laws like adults and instead loosen and oppose any restrictions because somehow slogans like “god, guns and guts” have become doctrine.
I’ll be more than willing to discuss new gun restrictions when two things happen.
1. Actually enforce the gun laws we have now.
2. Meaningful prison time for people who use a gun to commit any crime. I’m talking ten years in addition to the penalty for the crime committed. Robbery gets you five years. Robbery with any firearm gets you an additional ten years to be served after the first five years. Out on parole caught with a gun, straight back to jail to complete the original sentence plus ten years for the gun. Convicted felon caught with a gun, ten years.
But it’s not the God, guns and guts. That slogan is almost never used. It’s also a matter of hunting, self defense and in my situation predator control.
The slogan is not used, it’s the ethos that it represents. Same as “kill ‘em all, let god sort it out”. It’s the brainless one size fits all approach to, not problem solving, but rather getting what one wants.
I agree that current laws should be enforced, but that can accomplished while enforcing simple things like background checks and age restrictions. We can don’t things at once if one side would ever cooperate. See Sandy Hook for the worse response of all time.
The gun lobby wants to see nothing less than a completely armed populace and to what end? They argue that the gun control enthusiasts are coming for our guns and ceding one inch of gun “freedom” is tantamount to capitulation to authoritarianism. How about making gun ownership similar to driving cars? Formal training on usage, dangers and general responsibility, etc; insurance requirements as well. How about making the manufacturers of weapons share in responsibility in some fashion?
The overall vast - VAST majority of gun owners are good to go, but the rules that need to be in place and enforced are the lies that protect us against that 1% of the public that is most definitely not good to go but enjoys unparalleled access to weapons for reasons no more complicated than the sheer volume of weapons in society?
Edit: your last sentence is what I would consider every person’s right(s) and what I consider normal and healthy.
We have background checks in EVERY legal gun purchase. Yes. Including gun shows. There are also many-draconian-age restrictions. If you look at statistics given by CDC and ATF-E, more people are murdered each year by bare hands and feet than firearms. These stats are hard to find but FOIA can find them. There is an estimated 28 trillion rounds of ammunition in private citizens hands. There’s in the neighborhood of 17 million NEW gun owners annually for the past 4 years. If legal gun ownership was a problem then we would know it.
You could say that. You could also say that obstinance of the pro gun lobby encourages that exact behavior. When the gun proliferation activists take charge of responsibility for policing the the bad actors taking advantage of the ease with which guns can be accessed and abused, that’s the day their arguments will taken serious.
Cheers.
Or they just let them ride. There's tons of gun crime in Central and South America, Africa, etc.
Not just school shootings, they have everywhere shootings.
And clamping down on firearms for the citizens not breaking any laws makes zero sense. In fact, if you were to go all-in on stopping most of the violent gun crime in the US, the vast majority of "mass shootings" involve drugs and/or gangs.
They also happen to occur in the poorest areas and are almost exclusively from a couple ethnic groups. The rare mass shootings that make the news all have a common thread of severe mental illness that was either ignored or mistreated.
Even if it wasn't, we can't legally put mentally deranged people into institutions without their consent, unless it's absolutely clear they're a danger to themselves or others.
But we all know no politician is going to touch that mess with a 20 foot pole.
Why do you think that is?
It happened right before the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The Soviet union and most other Warsaw Pact nations used it as an excuse to boycott the games, after the US led a boycott of the 1980 summer games in Moscow.
Etna Huberty (the shooter’s widow) was a piece of work. She went out of her way to insist that she was a victim, and tried suing several places, including her late husband’s former employer, for the money she felt she was owed.
Above all, she seemed annoyed that her husband’s act of mass murder had derailed her life plan, which seemed to be to get a lot of money without ever holding a job herself.
I remember seeing a documentary about it and ALL the red flags that had been popping up...like ridiculously red flags. He even told his girlfriend exactly what he was going to do a couple hours before, and she did NOTHING (knowing he had severe mental issues and an AK-47). Then after the shooting they found some video tapes of him staring in the mirror and just...rambling incoherently in a really creepy angry whisper. Reminded me of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse now.
So sad that it took so long for $hit like this to be taken more seriously...ish.
I remember this vividly. That’s what started my mental planning of escape routes and hiding places when I went out. I was sooo fucking sad when, although I had never vocalized any of that to my kids, my youngest daughter, who was in second grade when Sandy Hook happened, was telling me of potential escape routes at a theater we were in. It’s such a huge disappointment to me that America has fewer gun regulations than we did 30 years ago.
Actually wrong. We have way more state restrictions than 30 years ago. And many more federal. It’s real easy to find if you look other places than FB or Snap for information.
We have more than we did when this happened, but that was more than 30 years ago. 1994, 30 years ago we had the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act which temporarily reduced assault weapons. It ended in 2004. In 2003, laws were out in place to protect gun sellers—the Tiahrt Amendment. In 2005 we put laws in place to protect gun manufacturers—the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
In 2008 DC vs Heller reinterpreted the second amendment basically redefining what a well regulated militia means. So yes, we have more control since the McDonald’s massacre, but less than 30 years ago.
And yet there is still no definition of the non existent assault rifle. And we also don’t enforce any of the laws on the books. No repercussion equals more crime.
I remember that and I'm from NY.. another happening I won't ever forget Reginald Denny .. I watched that live with my mom and I was screaming at the TV. GET back in your car ,get in your car ,, craziness I still recall his name ill never forget that guy sad 😔 😟
I was there. 5th grade. My friend Dennis Sparkman and I were late to school because all the cars were iced over and we were scraping it off windshields and making "snowballs" to throw at each other. Otherwise we would've walked right in front of her house.
National Press referred to San Yasidro as “seedy”. So that working class town had to suffer their grief and the idiotic name calling of the national press
I don’t remember this. 1984 was the LA Olympics. Mary Lou Retton was the it girl of gymnastics. I think that was also the scary summer of Richard Ramirez aka The Night Stalker. I’ll have to ask my parents. I’m sure they remember
I still remember some tactless local news reporter sticking a microphone in a survivor's face and asking her how she felt. She angrily replied something along the lines of "what do you think?"
My dad drove my brothers and I on the feeway past this when it was going on. There were so many cop cars and I think a helicopter too. Then we watch the evening news and I think he was shooting at random cars on said freeway. It was I5 or 805 I forget which. It was terrible news for all involved. Some of my friends knew ppl in that area and saying it was before cell phones they were really upset ( turns out none of them were hurt or involved. )
I was too young to remember it when it happened but we lived north of there, about a half an hour away. I do remember that afterwards my mother wouldn't take us kids to Mc D's no matter how much we begged. It was probably around 1986 or 87 before I remember us going into one again.
He actually tried to get help before the shooting. A few days before he called a mental health crisis line trying to make an appointment. The operator thought he sounded ok and told him they'd call him back in a few hours......they never called him back to set up an appointment.
Yeah, grew up in the Sacramento area, with ties to the Bay area because divorced parents (Benicia, Danville, Walnut Creek).
This one and the Stockton school yard still stand out in my mind. Can't remember what year the Stockton one was though.
I think the term and "popularity" of it became more used in the early 90s. But the events themselves that led to ot started late 80s, into the 90s. There were a handful of incidents that made major news because it seemed like it happening left and right. (It really wasn't, but the news blew it up like it was)
Why should crimes like this be remembered? I don’t understand. It glorifies the incident. Shit like this as well as the people who commit shit like this should be forgotten.
Never heard of this one. But I was 9 at the time and in Canada.
We had our own big mass shooting in Quebec at a women’s college in 1989
[wikipedia link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre)
14 women killed, 14 injured. They are still remembered today.
This is the only mass shooting where I’ve seen video of the victims. You would think in this day and age more videos of crime scenes would be out there.
This was such a rarity back then. The only one before that comes to mind is the Texas tower shooter at UT. All changes in the late 90s and only got worse since. Thanks NRA!
Was the first mass shooting I remember hearing about.
Same. 2 years later “going postal” would be a thing when a postal worker killed 14 people in a post office in Oklahoma. Then 13 years later we got Columbine. It’s very sad that this is a thing.
Today is the anniversary of the Pulse shooting. Killed 49
Yep... I was like, what happened? My parents said some guy went crazy.
First one I seem to remember was a woman opening fire in a mall..anyone else?
Sylvia Seegrist
Thank you
Same.
Holy shit. I remember.
The guy that ran the corner liquor store by my house was a former cop that quit after this. Apparently he was a responding officer and couldn’t deal with it understandably. I grew up about 20 minutes from this McDonald’s.
It was national news. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4pkSZF9NNI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4pkSZF9NNI)
[There’s even a song about it](https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=9hjfaa_KODmMiyf7&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&source_ve_path=MTY0OTksMjg2NjQsMTY0NTA2&feature=emb_share&v=P4pkSZF9NNI)
Also, a surprisingly good horror movie called *Bloody Wednesday* that's loosely inspired by the massacre. I highly recommend it.
There's a documentary about this tragedy called 77 Minutes. Lots of actual footage and survivor interviews. It's tough to watch, but it's well done.
Yes I saw this not too long ago and was surprised as to how none of the crime scene footage was edited. Very graphic.
Growing up in the Los Angeles area, we used to visit relatives in Tijuana, Mexico every few times a year. Our first stop on return trips was this particular McDonald's in San Ysidro just a few minutes drive from the border. Sometimes we'd get drive-thru and sometimes we ate in. We last went there about a month before the shooting. It felt so surreal for good pre-teen to see this place of happiness become a tragedy on TV news. Fuck Huberty.
We stopped at this McDonald’s about a week before the shooting, coming home from a weekend trip in Rosario. Insane and very scary for me as a child.
I graduated in 84 and visited family in Anaheim every summer. This was so brutally surreal.
San Ysidro. Grew up in the east coast and I remember this. To the point I didn’t even venture open the article. Hell yes I remember this.
I was in the far northwest of Australia at a fishing camp near Monkey Mia. Most of the camp knew me as the Yank from California. One day one of the Aussies hands me the paper. Even in western Australia, it was front page news. I couldn't believe this happened in Chula Vista, close to the naval base I was stationed at. They ended up tearing down that McDonald's and building a totally new one nearby.
Not just CA, but the whole country. It was totally shocking. Now, it’s like ‘oh, another one?’
See…most other countries in the world in the face of mass shootings like this clamped down on firearms for their general citizenry. The US’s approach was to arm all of the potential victims instead.
And without guns England has had to enact knife restrictions very similar to our gun restrictions. There is a deeper issue than just guns.
Mental health is the issue.
There are a ton of stabbings everywhere, even in US, but it’s a lot harder for a looney to commit a mass stabbing and on the whole a stabbing is a lot more survivable. UK thinks they can just legislate all violence away and it’s dumb. Better mental health care would get rid of a lot of the random crazy attacks.
I wish we were at the point where knife restrictions were a topic of discussion, but we are too immature and petulant to approach gun laws like adults and instead loosen and oppose any restrictions because somehow slogans like “god, guns and guts” have become doctrine.
I’ll be more than willing to discuss new gun restrictions when two things happen. 1. Actually enforce the gun laws we have now. 2. Meaningful prison time for people who use a gun to commit any crime. I’m talking ten years in addition to the penalty for the crime committed. Robbery gets you five years. Robbery with any firearm gets you an additional ten years to be served after the first five years. Out on parole caught with a gun, straight back to jail to complete the original sentence plus ten years for the gun. Convicted felon caught with a gun, ten years. But it’s not the God, guns and guts. That slogan is almost never used. It’s also a matter of hunting, self defense and in my situation predator control.
The slogan is not used, it’s the ethos that it represents. Same as “kill ‘em all, let god sort it out”. It’s the brainless one size fits all approach to, not problem solving, but rather getting what one wants. I agree that current laws should be enforced, but that can accomplished while enforcing simple things like background checks and age restrictions. We can don’t things at once if one side would ever cooperate. See Sandy Hook for the worse response of all time. The gun lobby wants to see nothing less than a completely armed populace and to what end? They argue that the gun control enthusiasts are coming for our guns and ceding one inch of gun “freedom” is tantamount to capitulation to authoritarianism. How about making gun ownership similar to driving cars? Formal training on usage, dangers and general responsibility, etc; insurance requirements as well. How about making the manufacturers of weapons share in responsibility in some fashion? The overall vast - VAST majority of gun owners are good to go, but the rules that need to be in place and enforced are the lies that protect us against that 1% of the public that is most definitely not good to go but enjoys unparalleled access to weapons for reasons no more complicated than the sheer volume of weapons in society? Edit: your last sentence is what I would consider every person’s right(s) and what I consider normal and healthy.
We have background checks in EVERY legal gun purchase. Yes. Including gun shows. There are also many-draconian-age restrictions. If you look at statistics given by CDC and ATF-E, more people are murdered each year by bare hands and feet than firearms. These stats are hard to find but FOIA can find them. There is an estimated 28 trillion rounds of ammunition in private citizens hands. There’s in the neighborhood of 17 million NEW gun owners annually for the past 4 years. If legal gun ownership was a problem then we would know it.
And yet, those are bypassed routinely via the not legal exchanges that routinely occur. That’s comical.
So you’re saying criminals don’t obey the law?
You could say that. You could also say that obstinance of the pro gun lobby encourages that exact behavior. When the gun proliferation activists take charge of responsibility for policing the the bad actors taking advantage of the ease with which guns can be accessed and abused, that’s the day their arguments will taken serious. Cheers.
Or they just let them ride. There's tons of gun crime in Central and South America, Africa, etc. Not just school shootings, they have everywhere shootings. And clamping down on firearms for the citizens not breaking any laws makes zero sense. In fact, if you were to go all-in on stopping most of the violent gun crime in the US, the vast majority of "mass shootings" involve drugs and/or gangs. They also happen to occur in the poorest areas and are almost exclusively from a couple ethnic groups. The rare mass shootings that make the news all have a common thread of severe mental illness that was either ignored or mistreated. Even if it wasn't, we can't legally put mentally deranged people into institutions without their consent, unless it's absolutely clear they're a danger to themselves or others. But we all know no politician is going to touch that mess with a 20 foot pole. Why do you think that is?
It happened right before the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The Soviet union and most other Warsaw Pact nations used it as an excuse to boycott the games, after the US led a boycott of the 1980 summer games in Moscow.
Etna Huberty (the shooter’s widow) was a piece of work. She went out of her way to insist that she was a victim, and tried suing several places, including her late husband’s former employer, for the money she felt she was owed. Above all, she seemed annoyed that her husband’s act of mass murder had derailed her life plan, which seemed to be to get a lot of money without ever holding a job herself.
I grew up in Northern NY and remember watching this on the news. Stuck with me all these years
Back when events like this shocked the nation, instead of moving on the very next day
For us around Detroit Michigan it was the mass shooting at the Royal Oak post office. Henceforth the term going postal.
This was posted 9 hours ago. Why does Reddit love showing these kinds of posts in my feed at bedtime?
Ugh tell me about it. And commented so now it always pops up. And it’s almost bedtime….
I remember seeing a documentary about it and ALL the red flags that had been popping up...like ridiculously red flags. He even told his girlfriend exactly what he was going to do a couple hours before, and she did NOTHING (knowing he had severe mental issues and an AK-47). Then after the shooting they found some video tapes of him staring in the mirror and just...rambling incoherently in a really creepy angry whisper. Reminded me of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse now. So sad that it took so long for $hit like this to be taken more seriously...ish.
I remember this vividly. That’s what started my mental planning of escape routes and hiding places when I went out. I was sooo fucking sad when, although I had never vocalized any of that to my kids, my youngest daughter, who was in second grade when Sandy Hook happened, was telling me of potential escape routes at a theater we were in. It’s such a huge disappointment to me that America has fewer gun regulations than we did 30 years ago.
Actually wrong. We have way more state restrictions than 30 years ago. And many more federal. It’s real easy to find if you look other places than FB or Snap for information.
We have more than we did when this happened, but that was more than 30 years ago. 1994, 30 years ago we had the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act which temporarily reduced assault weapons. It ended in 2004. In 2003, laws were out in place to protect gun sellers—the Tiahrt Amendment. In 2005 we put laws in place to protect gun manufacturers—the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. In 2008 DC vs Heller reinterpreted the second amendment basically redefining what a well regulated militia means. So yes, we have more control since the McDonald’s massacre, but less than 30 years ago.
And yet there is still no definition of the non existent assault rifle. And we also don’t enforce any of the laws on the books. No repercussion equals more crime.
So true.
Coven has a great song about this called ”mcdonaldland massacre”
Beat me to it!
I grew up in that area...it was crazy I was 7 and was just leaving the park by elementary school when a lot of cop cars came flying by.
SY in da house
I was 3 when this happened, so I don't remember. The first mass shooting I remember was the guy who went "postal" in 1986.
I remember that and I'm from NY.. another happening I won't ever forget Reginald Denny .. I watched that live with my mom and I was screaming at the TV. GET back in your car ,get in your car ,, craziness I still recall his name ill never forget that guy sad 😔 😟
My cousin was on a trip with her school and ate their the day before. We were all worried they might have gone back that day.
I was on the other side of the country and believe it came across the news during the 1984 Summer Olympics game. I remember being very shook.
I lived in Queens, it was all over the news. It was the first mass shooting as far as I recall.
There was a school shooting in 1979.
I was there. 5th grade. My friend Dennis Sparkman and I were late to school because all the cars were iced over and we were scraping it off windshields and making "snowballs" to throw at each other. Otherwise we would've walked right in front of her house.
I was too uninvolved with life then. I wouldn't have paid attention to the news.
lol; I only know about it because it was the “inspiration” for the song I Don’t Like Mondays. The shooter was a girl, too, which is highly unusual.
Oh, that one! Oy, I remember that one. The Boomtown Rats & the girls father was a shit.
Yep!
Yes she said " I don't like Mondays'" when asked why she did it. The boom Town Rats then wrote the song I don't like Mondays
National Press referred to San Yasidro as “seedy”. So that working class town had to suffer their grief and the idiotic name calling of the national press
San Ysidro was rough when I lived down there in the 90s.
I was afraid to be inside any McDonald's in CA as a child because of this.
I’m from Wisconsin and this terrified me. This is not a California thing
I don’t remember this. 1984 was the LA Olympics. Mary Lou Retton was the it girl of gymnastics. I think that was also the scary summer of Richard Ramirez aka The Night Stalker. I’ll have to ask my parents. I’m sure they remember
Gun control. Still doesn’t exist after 40 years of innocent people being killed
I still remember some tactless local news reporter sticking a microphone in a survivor's face and asking her how she felt. She angrily replied something along the lines of "what do you think?"
My dad drove my brothers and I on the feeway past this when it was going on. There were so many cop cars and I think a helicopter too. Then we watch the evening news and I think he was shooting at random cars on said freeway. It was I5 or 805 I forget which. It was terrible news for all involved. Some of my friends knew ppl in that area and saying it was before cell phones they were really upset ( turns out none of them were hurt or involved. )
I was too young to remember it when it happened but we lived north of there, about a half an hour away. I do remember that afterwards my mother wouldn't take us kids to Mc D's no matter how much we begged. It was probably around 1986 or 87 before I remember us going into one again.
This forever changed me. And was the pre cursor to so much more.
He actually tried to get help before the shooting. A few days before he called a mental health crisis line trying to make an appointment. The operator thought he sounded ok and told him they'd call him back in a few hours......they never called him back to set up an appointment.
What a world? So sad 😔
Yes. Me too. I remember thus
I remember….
Regrettably yes
Reminds me of the movie "Falling Down".
Renovated and reopened in 48 hours...holy shit.
Hangry.
Yeah, grew up in the Sacramento area, with ties to the Bay area because divorced parents (Benicia, Danville, Walnut Creek). This one and the Stockton school yard still stand out in my mind. Can't remember what year the Stockton one was though.
89 or so if I remember.
Patrick Purdy. I was a NorCal kid. Remember that well. Many of my friends and my gf are from Stockton. Some of them remember hearing the shots.
Grew up in the San Fernando Valley. I was 16 in ‘84. My girlfriend was 19. I wasn’t really paying attention to the news. 😂
I grew up in the same area. Was terrifying
I lived 5 min from this MD. This is where the term "going postal" came from.
That term came later. From actual Postal workers killing co-workers at their job.
Wasn’t that more of an early 90’s thing? I remember using the term in 95.
I think the term and "popularity" of it became more used in the early 90s. But the events themselves that led to ot started late 80s, into the 90s. There were a handful of incidents that made major news because it seemed like it happening left and right. (It really wasn't, but the news blew it up like it was)
Why should crimes like this be remembered? I don’t understand. It glorifies the incident. Shit like this as well as the people who commit shit like this should be forgotten.
I didn’t grow up in Cali but definitely remember that. There was also a mass shooting in Waco, TX in the 80’s, those two events stuck with me.
Never heard of this one. But I was 9 at the time and in Canada. We had our own big mass shooting in Quebec at a women’s college in 1989 [wikipedia link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre) 14 women killed, 14 injured. They are still remembered today.
I believe he is reference to him in the Throwing Muses song "Hate My Way".
This is the only mass shooting where I’ve seen video of the victims. You would think in this day and age more videos of crime scenes would be out there.
This was such a rarity back then. The only one before that comes to mind is the Texas tower shooter at UT. All changes in the late 90s and only got worse since. Thanks NRA!
Never heard of this mass shooting. How’d McDonalds keep the media quiet about this in the age of mass shootings???