Before his loss, people covering the event noted he was reluctant to speak at all--taciturn--but said he would 'speak through his skills.' After speaking through his skills said 'I-am-Loser' he went to his car, got a legally purchased handgun with an aftermarket laser sight, re-entered the building, and killed two people, wounding 11 more, and then taking his own life.
The Political Aftermath
There was a predictable scramble in some quarters to determine:
- The shooter's race (white, which gave the people asking the question 'a sad')
- The shooter's politics
On the second count Internet-Sleuths identified a different guy with a similar handle who said some anti-Trump stuff online. Since the Royal Internet Mounted Police always Get-Their-Man, the trusted-by-conservative news sites like the Gateway Pundit, The True Pundit, and Rush Limbaugh all ran with the story that the murderer was a lefty.
Some of them cleared it up. Some haven't.
Oh well: the hope (probably) is that few people would notice the retraction anyway--for guys like The Gateway Pundit, spreading the word of lefty-violence is more important than getting any story right. For guys like The True Pundit, it's all about those clicks, baby.
Gun Control Again
Yet again, a disaffected young guy manages to kill or wound a bunch of people because of the force-amplifier of a firearm. Katz had a history of mental illness but was not deemed legally incompetent. He purchased a firearm, passing the background check. The NRA has come out against, you guessed it, violence in video games--but Madden is about as violent as chess (imagine the pawn as a peasant being trampled by the mighty knight's horse, yeah?).
At this point the answer is clear: only gun-control laws people have not floated would have stopped this (don't sell to anyone with a police record? Don't sell to anyone with a history of taking anti-psychotic drugs? Pass some kind of screening?).
In any event, everyone knows there are people like Katz who should not have handguns--but the gun lobby knows (correctly) that the steps taken to prevent that would infringe on a portion of their rights. They are willing to put up with dead young people for that.
Tree of liberty. Blood of (other) people. All that.
Exit Question: If Katz had a relatively low body count with a handgun, what if he'd had an AR-15 firing into densely packed crowds with a 30 round magazine?
The Omnivore thinks you know the answer.
The Politics of Violence and the Coming Election
Trump spoke to evangelical leaders on Monday and said that if the Democrats win the election they "will overturn everything that we've done and will do it quickly and violently." He called out antifa, specifically, as proof of Democrat violence.
He encouraged them to go and get out the vote from their pulpits stating, incorrectly, he had overturned the law preventing the mixing of politics and religions.
If a bunch of churches lose their tax-exempt status due to believing President Liar-Face? Well, thoughts & prayers, guys. Thoughts and prayers.
That said, the scramble to pin the violence on a leftie is not a single event: It has been ongoing and has taken hold. People on the right believe Antifa to be a massively violent mob-agency. The narrative on the right is that the Democrats endorsed riots in Ferguson and Baltimore--encouraged burning and looting.
This is, of course, nonsense--but they believe it.
Will anything come of this?
The Omnivore is dubious--but with the president going and saying it outloud, we should be careful. The threat of violence is, of course, met with violence--and if people believe that there will be a vengeful, violent reign of Democrats after the midterms (however ludicrous that is--even assuming they win back the house)--they could react to it.
This is messaging we don't need.
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