Massacre plot at Boston Pokémon TCG Championships stopped

[Jellicent♀]

Thank God everyone is safe. Extremely surprising, but thankfully this was released after the tournament. I can't imagine the amount of mass panic and hysteria that may have happened had people been aware of this during the time of the event, especially the amount of fear for the international players.

 

[Aeroblast]

this could have really turned out horrendous. thankfully it got stopped before anything serious could happen.

what else can I say other than the 2 people caught are sick cowardly bastards targetting innocent people, with children most likely there with their parents as well.

 

[gimmepie]

This is why gun control should be a thing.

Honestly though, I am just glad that the police were able to intervene and that nobody hurt. It doesn't matter that this was a pokemon event though, I don't get why that makes this any worse. It's disgusting and wrong to try such a thing regardless of where.

 

[Zeffy]

I... I don't know how to react to this. My initial question was "how were they able to get a hold of such weapons?"

I guess this is why there's a gun debate in the USA, huh?

 

[Esper]

To me the most chilling part of this whole plot is that the would-be terrorists were white guys and enough of the Pokemon "community" to be in the competition finals. "White guy" + "American" + "Pokemon fan" is fairly specific, but would still describe a whole lot of members to this forum. It wouldn't be completely out of the question to wonder if one of them once had an account here.

 

[twocows]

Getting rid of guns in any method we have available to us would largely just strip them from well-meaning citizens. They're too ingrained in our culture and economy; it's impossible to get them out of the hands of organized crime and even unorganized criminals. I do also question how they obtained them, though. I think that would provide some important context on that particular discussion. I applaud the authorities for being on top of this, though.

As far as the two guys themselves go, I don't know anything about them other than their attempted actions. I don't know what to say as far as a solution. Were they sick? Were they just bastards? I don't know. How do you fix that? Can you even fix that? I don't know. I don't think any suggestions I have would be particularly well-informed or useful, especially without knowing anything about who these two people are. Best to leave it to people who spend their lives researching these things, if you ask me. If it bothers you that much, dedicate yourself to becoming one of these people.

 

[Guest123_x1]

You know things are pretty bad in this world when would-be contestants of a major Pokémon competitive event plot to do something like this. I'm glad the perpetrators were stopped and this terroristic plot wasn't carried out.

Since everybody's bringing up about gun control, I do want to say that we'll keep bringing up about gun policy every time a massacre or massacre plot comes up, but likely no action will be taken in the near future. As much as I respect the Second Amendement, we do need limits somewhere, and if we're going to have gun control, at least reinstate the federal assault weapons ban (passed in 1994 and expired 10 years later). Even if we were to completely ban guns from civilians altogether like other countries, criminals will still get ahold of weapons one way or another.

 

[Salzorrah]

wait wait wait, my head is not wrapping around this

you mean to say someone tried to do acts of TERRORISM in a POKEMON COMPETITION?

smh the humanity these days

 

[Her]

this is probably one of top ten craziest stories of 2015

 

[Castaigne]

I thought this was a joke for a not insignificant period of time. Even when they were arrested I was waiting for Ashton Kutcher

 

[ORegan]

This article from The Herald has some more information. But this is troubling for many reasons.

• It's a goddamn kids tournament. Yes, adults also compete, but this is mainly for the kids.
• They were able to illegally have access to these guns. None of the sources I've read mentioned where they were attained. If they were sold by a gun shop that's uncaring for gun license laws, stolen, bought from an illegal seller, or 'borrowed' from friends/family hasn't been specified.
• The article mentions the main reasoning is due to being banned from a Pokemon forum, and the intended target was the mod who banned him. This is a popular Pokemon forum, and it's very likely that even if he wasn't banned from this forum, said threatened mod may have an account here. Either way, nothing on a forum matters, and there's no mention as to why the banning took place, though that's hardly important.
• The amount of ammunition is ridiculous. Since they were making reference to the Boston Bombing from a couple years ago, I don't doubt that they didn't intend to stop at one person.
• They were ON THE GUEST LIST FOR MASTERS. Since most people on the tournament scene to to multiple, they absolutely knew many of the people in attendance. They were going to potentially injury so many people that they've had conversations with.

Let's all just be lucky they were stupid enough to upload pictures to Facebook and easily traceable threats for the police to pick up on. If they weren't then even Pokemon wouldn't be safe anymore. There are people on this forum who I bet were in Boston at the time for the tournament, so lucky everyone wasn't harmed.

 

[Cherrim]

• The article mentions the main reasoning is due to being banned from a Pokemon forum, and the intended target was the mod who banned him. This is a popular Pokemon forum, and it's very likely that even if he wasn't banned from this forum, said threatened mod may have an account here. Either way, nothing on a forum matters, and there's no mention as to why the banning took place, though that's hardly important.

This news was scary for me originally, just because it's Pokémon and this is not the sort of news I would ever expect to come out of a Pokémon tournament, but this detail that's started surfacing brings it to a whole new level for me. As someone who has moderated a forum for many years, and has had people get really angry about moderation decisions, and has done little meet ups at fandom-related events... god, it could have been me? Like, not in a selfish "everything revolves around me" kind of way. It's just... this is a reaction I've seen first hand over and over, except now part of me wonders if the occasional angry threats could ever have been acted out if the circumstances had been a little different. It's a really sobering thought. I don't even have a whole lot more to say on the matter other than how uncomfortable it makes me. :( I hope nothing like this ever happens again.

 

[Cherrim]

That is definitely scary. I have to wonder where he got the information that said moderator would be at the TCG event though, providing the information was even true. If that really is one of the reasons for his actions, I think there's other problems that should be addressed beforehand.

I imagine it'd be as simple as the mod making a post on the forum (or in their blog, depending on software) or on twitter or anywhere saying "I'll be at Worlds this weekend, who else is attending?"

It's not like people are generally secretive about that kind of thing. It's my understanding that a lot of people attend these events even if they aren't competing.

 

[Cherrim]

Ah, yeah, that could definitely be the case too. Seeing as social media isn't exactly the most private way of sharing anything, they probably even knew who to look out for as well.

It probably wasn't even meant to be a private thing. Even on PC, you see people talking about what cons/events they're going to in the hopes that someone else is going and trying to meet up. I've done it in the past, I'll more than likely do it again. Yeah, when we were growing up we were always told not to divulge any personal information and the like because maybe bad people would find us but people who've grown up on the internet are pretty savvy about that kind of thing. We know to only meet up with new people in public places and whatnot, but when even big public events aren't necessarily safe? :s Ick.

 

[Evening]

World today's full of crazy news. Something tells me there's more to it than just that, for some reason.

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

Seeing as this is a Pokémon forum, I thought this news would be posted at a section that's Pokémon-related like the Pokémon General section. That being said, at least a massacre was averted, because the last thing we need from clueless politics is the revival of Pokémon being a bad influence from back in the 90's, claiming that Pokémon encourages shooting.