Gun culture curse: three killed in US spa shooting

22 October, 2012

Notwithstanding the police claims that it was related to domestic violence, Sunday's mass shooting, in which three people died, is likely to initiate again the debate on the much-talked about and criticised gun culture in the United States.

LESS THAN three months after a white supremacist, Michael Page went on a rampage inside a US Gurdwara, killing six devotees and injuring four others, another gunman on Sunday (yesterday) made his way into a day spa and started firing indiscriminately on women receiving massages and nail treatments.

Three people, who police wouldn't identify have been killed, while four others have been injured, according to AFP. The body of 45-year-old Radcliffe Haughton, believed to be the suspect – was later found at the crime scene in Brookfield, and police believe that he has died due to self-inflicted wounds.

Television footage showed clients, dressed in white spa robes, running for cover, as police started the combing operations in the building. Though FBI don't suspect it to be an act of terrorism, but police believe that the act might be linked to domestic violence issue, given the fact that the suspect's estranged wife, who apparently wanted a divorce from him, worked in the same Azana spa.

Lending credence to police theories, the suspect's father, Radcliffe Haughton Sr. Has told TMj4 News: “This is not the way I raised my son...My son is facing a domestic problem. Things happen, and some people can't take it.”

In August, earlier this year, Michael Wade Page has gunned down six people at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, only few miles away from the scene of Sunday's mass shooting.

On July 20 this year, during a midnight screening of the film 'The Dark Knight Rises', a gunman dressed in military fatigues and armed with tear gas grenades and automatic weapons, sprayed bullets into the audience, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. The incident drew a lot of debate across the country over the open use and sale of guns.

Even though police believe that the incident is related to domestic violence, but the use of firearms to settle scores, instead of self-defence, as is evident from this case, could be used by some politicians to call for the ban on sale of weapons across the country.