DETROIT, Michigan (The Dissociated Press) - The Tarheels of North Carolina dominated the Michigan State Spartans here Monday night, 89 - 72, to win the national men's Division-I college basketball title for the second time in five years. But, while the 65-team NCAA tournament has come to a close for another year, it seems that NRA (National Rifle Association) March Madness is just hitting its stride.
Alabama got things started on March 10th, when 28 year-old Michael McLendon shot and killed 11 people, starting with his girlfriend and mother, in 6 different locations around the town of Samson before taking his own life.
On March 21st, California answered with a quadruple homicide of Oakland police officers when 26 year-old parolee Lovelle Mixon, who had failed to contact his parole agent for over a month, was pulled over for a routine traffic stop. Mixon fatally shot the two officers who stopped him and then fled on foot to his sister's apartment, nearby. When police tried to apprehend him there about an hour later, he killed two of them before being killed, himself.
It was California rising to the occasion again, on March 29th, when Devan Kalathat, 42, a Silicon Valley engineer living in Santa Clara, shot dead his two children and three other relatives before turning his gun on himself.
North Carolina, with hot shooting Robert Stewart, fired its first salvo of the NRA tournament on the same day. Stewart, 45, burst into a Carthage nursing home and gunned down 7 elderly residents and a 39 year-old nurse. He was injured, but not killed, in a subsequent shootout with police, who then took him into custody.
New York at Binghamton turned in an impressive performance last Friday with a body count of 14, including the anti-climactic suicide of the 41 year-old gunman, Jiverly Wong, at the American Civic Association immigrant center. Wong, in an apparent failed attempt to protect himself from himself, was wearing bullet-proof armor when he died.
Pennsylvania got into the hunt on Saturday, in Pittsburgh, when a dog urinating in the home of 23 year-old Richard Poplawski prompted an argument between Poplawski and his mother, whom he lives with, which prompted the mother to call police, which prompted Poplawski to heavily arm himself and lie in wait, outside the house, for the police to arrive, at which point he killed 3 of them. Poplawski was also wearing protective armor but, unlike Wong, managed not to commit suicide. He was, instead, taken into custody after a 4-hour siege.
Finally, also on Saturday, northwestern powerhouse Washington moved up in the tournament ranks when James Harrison, 34, of Graham, shot his 5 children, ages 7 - 16, and then himself, after learning that his wife had planned to leave him for another man. Four of the five children were apparently in their beds, asleep, when they were killed.
"It's an impressive field, to be sure," said Adam Heggenstaller, a reporter for the NRA's Shooting Illustrated magazine in a telephone conference call. "But, at this point, it's hard to see anyone beating out Alabama for the title.
"Other teams, like Carolina and NY-Binghamton, have impressive numbers too, but walking into a nursing home or immigrant center and shooting the place up, especially when you're wearing protective gear, is just not the same as going to 6 different places inside of an hour, like McClendon did. That's doing something!
"I do, however, want to say that I'm really sick of seeing teams advance in the tournament with these mass killings of children. I say this not only as the employee of an NRA publication, but as someone who strongly advocates for the right of law-abiding citizens to own guns - it's time for the NRA tournament to clean up its act!" said Heggenstaller.
Also on the conference call was SI's Richard Mann.
"I've got to agree with Andy, which is rare," said Mann. "It's going to be extremely tough to get past Alabama."
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