Small Alabama Town Tries to Come to Grips With Kidnapping
Many things hold little Southern towns together. There is a common love of the region, the peace that comes with a rural life and, often, prayer. In this town of 2,300 in the heart of peanut country, people drew on all of those as they endured what by Thursday night had stretched into an unimaginable situation.
A relative newcomer to town — a man who had fought in Vietnam and appeared to harbor a deep distrust of government and a grudge against every neighbor — shot and killed a bus driver, grabbed a five-year-old boy named Ethan and then disappeared with the boy into a well-equipped bunker he had spent the last several months digging in his yard. By all accounts, the man neighbors identified as Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, had no connection to the boy.
“As far as we know, there is no relation at all — he just wanted a child for a hostage situation,” said Michael Senn, a pastor at the Midway Assembly of God Church who comforted some of the children who escaped from the bus and ran to his church. He, like so many clerics in this Bible-reading community, has been leading prayer services as the hours stretched into days.
“They’re taking time and trying to wear him out,” he said. “He may do harm if they try to rush him. We don’t know how much ammunition or bombs he has.” Mr. Dykes, neighbors said, has been known to stay in his bunker for up to eight days. Some said they watched him build it, carrying cinder blocks and digging for hours.
“He don’t care too much for the government. That’s all we know,” Mr. Arrington said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/us/standoff-in-alabama-kidnapping-continues.html?_r=0
The killing of the bus driver and the resulting standoff soon became one more point of discussion in the national debate about guns. Most people here own guns and hunt. And Mr. Cobb and others are steadfast in their belief that guns are not the problem, mental health is. 
= new reply since forum marked as read
Agree and fear there is not going to be a happy ending to this standoff. 
Residents think the solution to prevent bus drivers from getting shot is to arm them along with teachers, & probably students.
The US has become the country of stupiville.