Shots Fired at W. Pa. Gas Drilling Site
Posted: Mar 12, 2013 10:02 AM EDT Updated: Mar 12, 2013 10:02 AM EDT
HARRISVILLE, Pa. (AP) – Police say there are no injuries after an apparent drive-by shooting at a Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling site in northwestern Pennsylvania.
The Butler Eagle (http://bit.ly/hMQZ9u ) reports that on Saturday a suspect in a pickup truck pointed a small-caliber rifle in the direction of a drilling rig and fired two rounds.
State police report that the occupants of the vehicle were shouting profanities at the drilling site as they fled the scene.
Authorities say there’s no known motive for the shooting, nor were there any previous threats directed at the operators of the site or its employees.
Shell Exploration & Production Co., a unit of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, owns the drilling site.
Authorities are searching for leads in the case.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” candidate Barack Obama April 2008
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 
I generally really like reading your blog but I really can’t find any logical connection between the first part of your post (the Butler frack-shoot) and the second part (Obama’s sweeping generalization about a region and religion).
Do you think the shooter was clinging to guns to explain his frustrations?
I honestly don’t get what you’re trying to say, and what does come across is alienating.
Is that what you intended? Seriously.
Perhaps you are right that there is no connection between the shooting and Obama’s generalization about people in the depressed rust belt in the west and central PA. The Whiskey Rebellion is a more famous incidence of folks in these parts using their guns to express opposition to policies that injured them. To some extent Obama is correct. The opposition to fracking may become widespread and violent in western PA, reminiscent of that rebellion, as food, farms, property, and water suffer widespread destruction. I hope you won’t let this post drive you away from our blog. Thanks for your comment.
Obama said that people turn to guns and religion because they cannot explain their situations, as if guns and religion were magic tokens. (reducing religion to superstition) It seems unlikely that this shooting is in response to general economic malaise as much as fracking in particular. And so, I ask again; can you explain the connection between these two things that you chose to put together? You would have done better to stop after relating the news story.
In the Canadian Documentary “Weibos War”, Weibo Ludwig was sent to jail for supposedly blowing up a shack on a gas drilling site. There is a you tube on weibo that shows the gas drillers blew up the shack to silence Mr Ludwig. He has died from cancer and the family remains on their organic toxic farm. In Canada , the property owner owns the first 3 inches of soil. The government owns the rest. People have no say as to where they drill.His cattle died 1 month before being born along with the sheep. Then his granddaugher died 1 month before being born. The childrens faces were rashed from the rain water from rain barrels.This is a must see documentary, because you are next.Be afraid , be very afraid!