Talk:Richard Baumhammers

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Stay

Richard Baumhammers has been granted stay of execution, with a hearing scheduled for November.

Link to article:

http://www.wpxi.com/news/22683035/detail.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thewrestlingbabe1 (talk • contribs) 18:28, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 18 July 2025

It has been proposed in this section that Richard Baumhammers be renamed and moved to 2000 Pittsburgh shooting.

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Richard Baumhammers → 2000 Pittsburgh shooting – WP:BIO1E. Shooting was the single significant event while subject has not gained notability past the event. Compare 2000 Wilkinsburg shooting. Rubintyrann (talk) 14:26, 18 July 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. Agent 007 (talk) 14:43, 25 July 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. CoconutOctopus talk 18:25, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, oppose, given the way this specific case is covered. Per BIO1E there are often exceptions, e.g. we have a featured article on Gaetano Bresci and not the assassination he committed. While the current article is bad, the coverage on this is so overwhelmingly on Baumhammers as a person and with his personal background in the extremist movement (and he as a person has entries in various extremism encyclopedias - not the event) that I think it would be extremely confusing to write as an event, and not reflective of the way sources tend to cover him (as a right-wing extremist in that context). Why write an article about the event if everything is going to be about the person? We would have to cover it in a manner that gives undue weight to one aspect of it, downplaying information on Baumhammers's background in contradiction to how it was covered by the sources, or we would have to write an event article that is almost entirely biographical information. Either way is problematic. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:15, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not a good comparison, given the differences between targeted assassinations and rampage killings. Bresci is also notable as a martyr figure in anarchist circles and inspired several later killings. Did Baumhammers hold a similar reputation for later rampage killers/right-wing murderers, similar to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold or Anders Behring Breivik? Baumhammers' name brings up 3,500 hits online, mostly digitialized court-related material. In books, Baumhammers is a passing mention of maybe four sentences.

Another thing with this case is that it happened shortly after the aforementioned Wilkinsburg shooting, in the same county, also with racial and antisemitic motives, within a month of eachother, also known as Pittsburgh shooting in reports. So it's easier to differentiate between the two by just the names of the perpetrators, with Baumhammers proving slightly more recognizable than Ronald Taylor. Looking up their names +Pittsburgh puts nearly identical results of ~250. It definitely helps that "Baumhammers" is less common than "Taylor".

And simply because a fairly complete biographical outline of Baumhammers' life is available, doesn't automatically mean it has due weight. It's sourced from three citations, primarily Duquesne University's student paper, as well as Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Media local to the city where the murders occurred naturally have a greater interest in the background of the shooter. This interest is not reflected in national coverage, whether contemporary to the shootings or later. Rubintyrann (talk) 18:29, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Targeted assassinations are not any less "one event" than mass murder, no? The other shooting is of no relevance to the name of this article, because they were covered in different ways. Breivik and Columbine are different cases because those are size splits.

I am not talking about the sources in the article now, or news sources, which as it is now are not even enough to establish notability and which we should not be using, but the most reliable sources aka academic books or journals. Google results are useless for this, but a book search on archive.org/google scholar/ google books shows this. Off the top of my head Baumhammers himself has an entire entry in the Encyclopedia of Modern American Extremists and Extremist Groups and other academic/book sources are the same way, they focus on his background as a white supremacist. So large portions of the non-biographical material are undue weight. The scholarly and book sources tend to focus on the perpetrator and his background. If we're not going to include in the article the only thing the reliable sources focus on, it should be deleted, not moved. PARAKANYAA (talk) 18:50, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

With regards to the proposed title below, it's better than the rest of the options if we are to make this article event based, but I am still not in agreement that should be done. The relevant guideline, WP:BIO1E, does not say that event-based coverage is an absolute rule but generally, aka with some exceptions if there are particularities to a case where it should be covered person-based; I think this is the case here. PARAKANYAA (talk) 22:00, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - for one, the shooting wasn't exclusively in Pittsburgh, instead being in a number of surrounding townships and boroughs. In addition, the subject has a lot of other details that deserve discussion besides the shooting spree. Cutlass ^Ciera 02:40, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Allegheny and Beaver Counties shooting isn't really a good name and most reports generally just report it as a shooting in Pittsburgh or its metropolitan area. And what deserves discussion that's not related to the shooting? Right now, the article otherwise only gives WP:UNDUEWEIGHT to things like travels through eastern Europe which seems entirely unrelated to the crimes or their motivation. Besides the shooting, the single notable event in his life, and his trial, Baumhammers has not become relevant, whether before as an immigration attorney or after as a death row inmate, enough to have a solely dedicated article. The two books I found that deal with Baumhammers as a criminal subject rather than a passing example don't seem enough to justify the focus on the perpetrator over the event. The notability remains with the shooting. Rubintyrann (talk) 16:17, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is the shooting even notable outside of Baumhammers, though? It did not have a substantial impact or WP:EFFECT on anything and all sourcing I can find is just biographical on Baumhammers. PARAKANYAA (talk) 16:44, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Move to Richard Baumhammers shooting spree or similar? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 19:54, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- Support, given that the shootings took place in six different locations and are apparently more associated with the perpetrator. While not an ideal name, there is also Maksim Gelman stabbing spree, so it should work.
Rubintyrann (talk) 21:32, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]