Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for a St. Louis man accused of killing nine people since 2008 during his involvement in a drug trafficking ring. Prosecutors say he killed three people in 2008, two in 2010, three in 2013 and one man in 2014. Several of the victims were killed while inside vehicles or in drive-by shootings. One woman, a grandmother of eight, died when she was hit by a stray bullet while looking out her apartment window.
BUSH: What we keep getting wrong about mass shootings
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"There is a special kind of stupidity that approaches terrible and repeating problems with an obstinate assurance of what the answer will or won’t be. Or maybe it’s cynicism — just digging in against any sort of movement that might be politically dangerous, even if it promises to break the paralysis of doing nothing repeatedly," says columnist Rudolph Bush. "By now, with more than 200 mass shootings since Columbine and already 33 this year, we have to acknowledge that we are a deeply unwell nation. Or at least we are a nation cultivating terribly unwell people with the nihilistic will to kill all in their paths."
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