Category: Crime

Well, it’s not the guns that are the problem. It’s the hands the guns are in.

When Gun Laws Don’t Prevent Gun Crime

On Monday, in the city of Highland Park, Ill., a deranged goblin of a man opened fire on a July 4 parade, killing seven innocent people and wounding three dozen others. After an intense search, the culprit was apprehended and taken into custody. Yet again, a mass shooting has sullied America.

And, yet again, it is unclear what lawmakers can do to prevent the next one. Just weeks ago, the Senate passed a gun-control bill that Chris Murphy described as “the most significant piece of anti-gun violence legislation in nearly 30 years.”

Today, posturing as if nothing has been done recently, Democrats are asking for more. But what, exactly, does that mean? A red-flag law? Illinois already has one. A permitting system for the purchase and ownership of guns? Illinois has that, too. “Universal” background checks? That’s already Illinois law. What about “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines? Highland Park has banned both since 2013. Concealed carry?

That was prohibited at the parade under an Illinois law that renders it illegal to carry firearms at “any public gathering held pursuant to a license issued by any governmental body.” Straw purchasing? That’s already illegal, and, besides, the gun was obtained legally. Can the courts be blamed, perhaps? They cannot. In 2015, the Seventh Circuit upheld Highland Park’s ban on “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines, and the Supreme Court then declined to take up the case. As for Heller, McDonald, and Bruen — thus far, nothing that has flowed from them even intersected with this case.

California added Montana to a list of states banned from state-funded travel in 2021.
Because they are, relatively speaking, so rare and so unpredictable — and because America is so free — mass shootings remain one of the most intractable forms of crime. The ubiquity of firearms all but guarantees that a person who wishes to obtain one will do so before too long. The breadth of the First Amendment makes it tough to track threatening or unusual conversations. Absent a set of reforms that would gut the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, there is no way for American authorities to keep tabs on everyone who comes across as a little weird.

But if states are going to institute systems designed to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, it is not too much to ask that they use them. In the aftermath of almost every mass shooting, we learn that the suspect was “known to authorities” — which, in almost every case, means that the shooter was known to his community, too.

And so it was here. The Highland Park shooter did not spring ex nihilo from the shadows; he repeatedly telegraphed his intentions. In one video, uploaded in August 2021, he foreshadowed his attack on the July 4 parade. In another, he dramatized a school shooting. In a third, he fantasized about getting into a shooting war with police. Per officials in the city, local cops had interacted with him twice in 2019 — once when he attempted suicide, and once when he threatened to “kill everyone” and had 16 knives, a dagger, and a sword confiscated as a result. Illinois has a broad “red flag” law in place, and it requires gun buyers to have a current permit. Why, we must ask, did these incidents not trigger prophylactic action?

We would put a similar question to the press. Study after study after study shows that mass shootings are highly “contagious,” and that, as NPR put it in 2019, “intensive media coverage seems to drive the contagion.” This is a free country, and its media must be free to act as they see fit. But perhaps they could see fit to take that into account? As of Tuesday afternoon, every major press outlet in the United States remains fixated upon the shooter. In our fame-drunk culture, this indulgence can be deleterious. A little less of it would be welcome. As a matter of course, we ask gun owners to be responsible, and we ask citizens to be vigilant. Is it too much to ask the press whether the need to squeeze a few extra clicks out of a story is worth the risk of encouraging the next shooter?

And beyond that? Beyond that, Americans would do well to set incidents such as this one in their proper context. Random acts of violence are, indeed, terrifying, but they are terrifying because they are so rare. When allocating our limited time and resources, we ought to remember that while the most spectacular criminals garner all the attention, a devastating attrition continues unabated in the background. On the day before the shooting in Highland Park, 15 people were killed in Chicago.

Thus far in 2022, there have been 250 murders in Philadelphia, 175 murders in Los Angeles, and 102 murders in Washington, D.C. Bringing down those numbers will take hard work, intelligent policing, a willingness to enforce the laws already on the books, and a commitment to engaging with the problem in its most common form — and not just when it provides clicks, outrage, and a chance to poke one’s political enemies in the eye.

We’ll have the shooting at Highland Park – just to the north of Chicago- blared loud for who knows how long, but just to the south? Nah.

Chicago shootings: 71 shot, 8 killed in 4th of July weekend violence

CHICAGO — Seventy one people were shot , eight fatally, in 4th of July holiday weekend shootings across the city, Chicago police said.

Last year, 19 people were killed and more than 100 people were shot over the long Fourth of July weekend.

The toll was lower that last year, when 19 people were killed and more than 100 people were shot over the long Fourth of July weekend. In 2020, 79 people were shot, 15 of them fatally; in 2019, 68 people were shot, 5 of them fatally.

Nine of the wounded were shot in two attacks on the West and South sides: Four people in West Garfield Park Friday evening, and five men in Parkway Gardens on the South Side early Monday.

At least 16 people were shot, two fatally, in a violent eight-hour span late Saturday into early Sunday in the city, according to Chicago police.

Continue reading “”

Mass Shooters Are Fueled by the Hatred and Division Sown by the Politics of the Left.

We could say that all mass shootings are inspired by hatred, but many are carried out by deranged individuals, susceptible to violence and possessing no clear and distinct political or religious motives. These disturbed, mentally unstable people are unhinged by the strain of the postmodern age and what they see and experience.

They are receptive to the influences of the perverse degeneration of the popular culture, media sensationalism, and the pursuit of celebrity status, even if they pay with their own lives to achieve the dubious notoriety they seek. Shooting rampages by these types of individuals may be the most common type of mass shootings, at least in the United States.

But there are other types of spree shootings, which are clearly of different varieties, especially those triggered by fanaticism or intense racial, ethnic, or political hatred.

Some shootings are motivated by Jihad and “home grown” Islamic radicalism. Others, perhaps the most odious, are the result of perverted political ideology and the increasing hatred boiling over from the atmosphere of racial and ethnic divisiveness and polarization of politics, largely created by the incitement of violence, directly or indirectly, by the political left and the propagandist media.

On May 14, 2022, Payton Gendron, an alleged “white supremacist,” shot and killed 10 people and injured three others at Tops Market in Buffalo, New York. The media has sensationalized this shooting not only to push for more gun control laws, but also because of the alleged “white supremacist” killer and his racial motivation. Now we are learning that a former FBI agent may have known of the gunman’s plan to commit mass murder, according to two law enforcement officials investigating the case.

According to the Buffalo News, the two law enforcement sources stated that at least six individuals had been communicating with the accused shooter in an online chat room and were invited by Gendron to read about his murderous plans and the target location about 30 minutes before the shooting. None of these individuals tipped the police or FBI prior to the shooting. No other information has been made available to the public from the two officials familiar with the investigation, the FBI, or the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Suffice to say, the FBI and media propagandists have been heavily the racial hatred narrative, the white supremacy of the shooter, and the fact the gunman used an AR-15. Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrat activist Beto O’ Rourke are, once again, pushing for banning “assault weapons,” especially the AR-15, and in the case of O’Rourke, calling for outright confiscation of those who already possess them legally.

Nothing has been said about much bigger societal problems, such as the increased polarization of America since the Obama administration and the incitement of violence by Democrats and the media — for example, calling rioters “peaceful protestors,” the gaslighting and justifying their criminal behavior, violence, looting and plundering, as reasonable social justice.

In fact, rioters advanced the leftist agenda of promoting chaos that the Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media exploit as a pretext to pass still more laws that affect not the criminal elements in society, but law-abiding gun owners and business people. At the same time, the orchestrated riots provide plunder for the looters, while the public and businesses aren’t protected.

We know that all resources available to the press were utilized for sustaining the constant barrage of negative propaganda. That this takes place in our United States, a nation with a purportedly free and independent press, is unconscionable. That a fifth column within the intelligence community was also deeply involved is abominable.

Where are the objective and intrepid investigative journalists of the mainstream media that should have been investigating these momentous omissions, these gaps in our public knowledge, in the study of criminal mass shooters and the societal factors that contribute to them? And when is the media finally going to admit that armed citizens could have stopped some of these mass murderers or, at the very least, diminished the number of casualties?

I know how to stop a looter and that looter still won’t spend a day in prison!

One Man’s Case Shows Why the Looting Isn’t Going To Stop Any Time Soon: Serial looter committed serious crimes, never spent a day in prison.

Two George Soros-backed prosecutors in suburban Washington, D.C., bounced a serial looter who committed multiple grand larcenies and assaulted a cop between their offices for years without a felony conviction.

Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano (D.) and Arlington County commonwealth’s attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti (D.) since 2020 dismissed or declined to prosecute a 25-year-old Maryland resident for nearly a dozen charges related to larceny. The looting incidents amounted to thousands of dollars in stolen merchandise and include felony offenses, including two grand larcenies and one assault on a police officer, making the offender eligible for years behind bars. The prosecutors found the looter guilty of just a few misdemeanors. No verdict levied more than a few hundred dollars in fines, and he served no time in prison.

The out-of-state offender, Ronald Thomas, spent virtually no time in jail after his arrests thanks to bail reform policies instituted by Descano and Dehghani-Tafti. At least five times he was charged for committing crimes in one jurisdiction while on pretrial release in another. He was twice charged for committing larcenies within a day of having similar larceny charges dropped—with one of those incidents happening in the same county.

The case exemplifies the degree to which lightened sentencing can embolden repeat offenders. Studies have shown that releasing defendants before their trial increases crime. A few years after Cook County, Ill., instituted bail reform, a 2020 study by the University of Utah found a 45 percent increase in the number of released defendants who were charged with committing new crimes and a 33 percent bump in released defendants charged with violent crimes. Continue reading “”

Democrats are selective in which shootings matter

Before I get started, let me make it clear that I know there are some pro-gun Democrats. I don’t think there are any left in Congress these days, but among the voters, there are. In what follows, I’m not talking about them and they should be excluded from this.

However, for the rest, which happens to be something like 90 percent-plus of all Democrats, this all applies.

What applies, you ask? How about the fact that while anti-gun Democrats will scream to high heaven about a Uvalde or a Buffalo, they only seem to care about certain tragedies. Why is that?

Because only certain tragedies help advance their agenda:

Democrats are silent after more than 30 people lost their lives this weekend to violent crime waves that continually sweep through the nation’s cities.

Why hasn’t President Joe Biden, who recently visited Uvalde, Texas, after 19 children and two adults died in a school shooting, tweeted something or planned trips to Nebraska, Illinois, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania, where violence and shootings took the lives of dozens of people including children?

Why hasn’t Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke executed another political stunt at a local press conference somewhere to call attention to a rise in domestic altercations that escalate into shootings? Mostly because none of the violence was politically advantageous for them.

The violence that took the lives of dozens of Americans over Memorial Day weekend either did not involve firearms such as AR-15s, which the left has openly admitted they want to confiscate, or occurred under the wrong conditions for grandstanding. Democrats pick and choose which tragedies to milk for their anti-gun agenda based on how much political leverage firearm-related deaths grant them.

It’s not wrong, folks.

Think about how many people die every weekend in gun-controlled Chicago. The numbers tend to be staggering, and we hear relatively little in the mainstream national media about that. Why don’t we? Because it not only fails to advance their anti-gun agenda, it actually undermines it.

Illinois has many of the measures Democrats have pushed for at the federal level, and none of it has seemed to do a damn thing. While officials are quick to blame other states for their problems, the truth is that gun control simply doesn’t work.

So what happens is that Democrats become selective in their outrage. They lash out when it’s convenient and stick their heads in the sand when the incident isn’t.

Think about how quickly Sacramento dropped from the headlines. A couple of criminals who had guns illegally, one of which had a full-auto switch which is even more illegal. Everything about it proved that criminals will keep getting guns no matter what you do.

It was a big story before we knew it was one of gun control failing. Now, Democrats and their allies in the media like to pretend it never happened.
But Buffalo and Uvalde? Those aren’t going anywhere because they get to demonize the AR-15.

See, all tragedies are awful, but for anti-gun Democrats, it’s only awful enough to talk about when it advances the narrative.

The state with the most restrictive gun laws had the most active shooter incidents last year

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is out with a new report on active shooter incidents across the United States last year, and there are some significant findings worth talking about, including the fact that several of the incidents were stopped by armed citizens.

The report details 61 “active shooter incidents” last year, which the agency defines as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in ai populated area.” Specifically excluded are acts of self-defense, gang and drug-related shootings, and domestic incidents, as well as “crossfire as a byproduct of another criminal act”. And while gun control activists invariably point to these types of attacks as justification for their attempts to criminalize the right to keep and bear arms, the report’s data suggests that gun control doesn’t serve any sort of preventative benefit to stopping these attacks.

According to the report, the most restrictive state in the Union when it comes to gun control laws also led the way in the number of active shooter incidents. California had six such incidents last year, more than any other state, though Texas and Georgia were close behind with five such incidents reported in each state. Active shooter incidents were reported in 30 states altogether, up from 19 states in 2020, with a total of 243 Americans killed or wounded in the attacks.

The FBI report notes that in 17 of the 61 incidents, law enforcement “engaged the shooter,” while there were six incidents where citizens either “engaged” the attacker or where “citizen involvement impacted the engagement.” It’s unclear to me what differentiates those two categories, because in both cases there were armed citizens who put a stop to the attack or prevented any further bloodshed.

One example of “engagement” noted by the FBI was the attack at a Metarie, Louisiana gun store in February of 2021, in which a suspect shot and killed two people and wounded two more before he was shot by multiple armed employees of the business. An example of “citizen involvement” in the FBI report was the shooting at an Agrex grain elevator in Superior, Nebraska last October when a recently fired employee left the building only to return a short time later with murder on his mind.

NSP said [the suspect] made his way into the door and shot a manager, Darin Koepke, 53, twice in the chest and the arm, the former of which was fatal. Roby said [the suspect] shot Koepke again as he lay on the floor.

The entire shooting event lasted under 20 seconds, according to NSP, and was briefly halted due to the gun jamming. NSP said [the suspect] fired a total of five rounds in the incident.

NSP said there were eight employees in the building at the time and others outside. Roby said supervisors were on scene during the shooting due to the termination and other employees were there “because they worked there.”

Roby said Koepke likely saved “countless lives” by barricading a door.

In addition, troopers say the man who returned fire did prevent it “from becoming even worse.”

Troopers say the Nuckolls County Attorney will not prosecute the man who returned fire.

…  “The Nebraska State Patrol considers all the survivors of this terrible incident to be victims,” said Capt. Jeff Roby.

Roby said NSP would not be naming the man who returned fire “and actively stopped this active shooting event. That man’s quick actions likely saved lives.”

Of the six incidents in which civilians either “engaged” or “involved” themselves in stopping the active shooter, four of them involved the defensive use of a firearm (the other two involved citizens tackling the shooter after five people were shot, and an Idaho teacher who talked a 12-year old girl into giving up a gun that she had used to shoot three people at a middle school). None of the incidents involving armed citizens took place in “may issue” states, by the way.

Just two of the 61 incidents covered in the FBI’s report took place at a school, with three other incidents unfolding at other government buildings. The vast majority of these targeted attacks took place in “areas of commerce” (32 incidents) or “business environments open to pedestrian traffic” (28 incidents).

The FBI report also notes what the agency calls an “emerging trend involving roving active shooters”; individuals who shoot in multiple locations and in some cases over multiple days, though it didn’t provide any details on exactly how many of the 61 incidents could be classified as such.

4 killed in shooting at Tulsa medical building, shooter dead

A gunman carrying a rifle and a handgun killed four people on Wednesday at a Tulsa medical building on a hospital campus, police said, the latest in a series of deadly mass shootings across the country in recent weeks.

Tulsa Police Department Deputy Chief Eric Dalgleish confirmed the number of dead and said the shooter also was dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“Catastrophic”: Five Dead Including Shooter At Tulsa Medical Building

Update (2030ET): Authorities in Tusla, Oklahoma, confirm five dead, including the shooter. Police said the man used a rifle and a handgun during the shooting on the second floor of the Natalie Medical Building.

48 shot, 9 dead in Chicago over the weekend but John Legend says it might be racist to talk about it

While tragic, school shootings aren’t as common as claimed

In the wake of the Robb Elementary School mass shooting, many are claiming that school shootings in the U.S. are widespread. Two organizations refute this claim, arguing they are exceedingly rare.

“School shootings are so rare that in the United States in 2021 there was one school-shooting death for every twenty-three million Americans,” Ryan McMaken at the Mises Institute reports. “By comparison, approximately one in 350,000 Americans drown each year.”

McMaken, editor at Mises Wire, says, “Our children are far, far more likely to be killed in an automobile accident than in a school shooting,” but “no one in Washington is talking about highway deaths.

“School shootings are a tiny subset of homicides which are themselves not exactly a leading cause of death in the United States,” he added.

In 2019, there were roughly 16,700 homicides in the U.S., a rate of five victims per 100,000 people. By comparison, more than 100,000 Americans die of diabetes every year, he notes.

Of the 16,700 homicides in 2019, 17 were victims of shootings at K–12 schools, or 0.1 percent of all homicides. School-shooting deaths also occurred at a rate of 0.005 per 100,000 Americans.

In recent history, the most deadly years for school shootings were in 2018 and 2012. In 2018, there were 39 victims killed at schools, in 2012, 26 were killed.

“The data suggests policy makers should be far more concerned about children dying due to drunk-driving incidents, car accidents in general, suicide, drowning, cancer, or child abuse,” McMaken said.

According to a Crime Prevention Research Center report, “schools that allow teachers to carry guns are extremely safe.” As of 2019, 20 states allow teachers and staff to carry guns to varying degrees on school property.

“There has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, between 6 a.m. and midnight at a school that lets teachers carry guns,” the report states. “Fears of teachers carrying guns in terms of such problems as students obtaining teachers guns have not occurred at all, and there was only one accidental discharge outside of school hours with no one was really harmed.

“While there have not been any problems at schools with armed teachers, the number of people killed at other schools has increased significantly – doubling between 2001 and 2008 versus 2009 and 2018,” the report points out.

Texas, being one of these states, has a School Marshall Program. The Texas Legislature created the program in 2013 after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. The bill was signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Perry. Initially, it allowed public school districts and open enrollment charter schools to appoint school marshals. In the next two legislative sessions, bills signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott expanded to include public two-year junior colleges and private schools in the list of institutions that can appoint school marshals.

“The sole purpose of a School Marshal is to prevent the act of murder or serious bodily injury on school premises, and act only as defined by the written regulations adopted by the School Board/Governing Body,” according to the Texas Commission of Law Enforcement.

Bosque County Sheriff Trace Hendricks has already called for schools to begin the process to implementing the program in his county. He is also offering assistance to help them do so.

“It is time to take aggressive and deliberate steps toward the enhancement of our security measures in order to better protect the lives our students and faculty,” he said in an open letter he published and sent to the heads of the school districts and school boards. “We must insure that our schools and the lives of our loved ones are as safe and secure as possible and that none are designated as a ‘soft target.’”

Uvalde, Texas school shooting: 14 students, one teacher killed, suspected shooter dead, Gov. Abbott says
Salvador Romas,18, killed multiple children and a teacher at an elementary school in Uvalde, a small city located 80 miles west of San Antonio, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said

A mass shooting at a Texas elementary school killed 14 children and one teacher Tuesday and the suspected gunman was killed, Gov. Greg Abbott said.

Abbott identified the suspect as Salvador Romas, a Uvalde resident, who is also dead and acted alone, authorities said. He had a handgun and possibly a rifle when he opened fire at Robb Elementary School, he said. Two police officers were shot and wounded but were expected to survive, Abbott said.

“Texans across the state are grieving for the victims of this senseless crime and for the community of Uvalde. Cecilia and I mourn this horrific loss and we urge all Texans to come together to show our unwavering support to all who are suffering,” he said in a statement.

The shooter was likely killed by responding officers but the investigation was still ongoing, authorities said.

A law enforcement officer helps people cross the street at Uvalde Memorial Hospital after a shooting was reported earlier in the day at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday. (Billy Calzada/The San Antonio Express-News via AP)

The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers have been instructed to work with local law enforcement.

As the incident unfolded, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin told Fox News that the shooter had become barricaded inside. The school, located 80 miles west of San Antonio, serves students in the second, third and fourth grades.

“There is an active shooter at Robb Elementary. Law enforcement is on site,” the school posted on Facebook shortly after shots rang out. “Your cooperation is needed at this time by not visiting the campus.”

University Health in San Antonio said it received two patients – a child and a 66-year-old woman who is in critical condition. The condition of the child was not released. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been briefed on the shooting.

The agency is also coordinating with local and state authorities. Uvalde Memorial Hospital said Tuesday evening it was having an emergency blood drive on Wednesday, though it was not clear if the event is related to the shooting.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District first reported the school lockdown at 11:43 a.m. local time.

“Please know at this time all campuses are under a Lockdown Status due to gunshots in the area. The students and staff are safe in the buildings,” the district had said in a message to parents.

The district initially asked parents not to pick up their children and that students needed to be accounted for before being released. Parents were notified to pick up their children around 2 p.m.

All district and campus activities, including after-school programs and events have been canceled. Parents were being asked to pick up their children at their regular dismissal times at their school campus. School bus transportation has also been canceled.

Police officers will escort students to the parent vehicles.

Folks, I don’t know how many times I’ve posted about this.
IF THE SCHOOL YOU SEND YOUR CHILDREN TO DOES NOT HAVE ARMED SECURITY ON SITE, and by that I mean not just uniformed armed ‘School Resource Officers’, but also armed teachers and staff, you do not have a ‘Gun Free Zone’ but a shooting gallery with your children as the targets.

It’s a continual amazement to me that parents apparently have to still learn this the hard way

California Church Shooter Has Chinese Communist Party Ties

David Chou, a 68-year-old Chinese immigrant who on Sunday killed one congregant and wounded five others at Geneva Presbyterian Church before being subdued by parishioners, in 2019 participated in an event hosted by the Las Vegas Association for China’s Peaceful Unification. The group is controlled by the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department and argues that “peaceful unification” between China and Taiwan “is the only way to avoid war.”

At the 2019 event, Chou hoisted a banner calling for the “eradication of pro-independence demons.”

The Las Vegas Association for China’s Peaceful Unification is a branch of the National Association for China’s Peaceful Unification, which the United States in 2020 designated as a foreign mission of the Chinese regime.

The Orange County sheriff’s office said on Monday that Chou’s attack on the church was motivated by his hatred for the Taiwanese.

demoncraps is such stupid people, but this moron is right about one should be “…sick of the pipeline from racist rhetoric to racist violence.”
So I wonder when the demoncraps will give up being racist?

Dem Rep. Beatty blames White supremacy for Dallas Korean hair salon shooting, but suspect is Black
Congressional Black Caucus chair blamed ‘White supremacy replacement theorist’ for Dallas Korean hair salon shooting

The chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) blamed White supremacy for last week’s shooting at a Dallas Korean hair salon, but the suspect charged with carrying out the attack is Black.

Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, made the claim at a Thursday press conference outside the Capitol that saw House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in attendance.

“On Monday, three people in a Korean-owned hair salon in Dallas were gunned by yet another White supremacy replacement theorist,” Beatty said to the assembled crowd.

In addition to botching the date of the shooting, Beatty got a key detail wrong about the “White supremacy replacement theorist” charged with attacking the Dallas salon: the suspect is Black.

Beatty’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Jeremy Smith, 37, was booked into the Dallas County jail and is charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He allegedly walked into the Hair World Salon on May 11 and opened fire on the seven people inside with a .22 caliber rifle, Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia told reporters.

Smith got off 13 shots before fleeing into a minivan, he said.

The FBI said it is investigating the shooting as a hate crime. Surveillance video captured Smith’s van with specific details and determined it to be a 2004 Honda Odyssey, authorities said.

An arrest warrant affidavit said Smith drove the minivan with a paper license plate that matched several of the numbers seen by witnesses. He also admitted to being in the area on the day of the shooting, Fox Dallas reported. A vehicle crash that occurred two years ago with an Asian male resulted in him having panic attacks and “delusions” when around people of Asian descent, Garcia said.

Smith was also fired from his previous job at an Ulta Beauty warehouse for attacking his Asian boss, the document states.

Chicago homicides in 2022: 204 people have been slain. 

Information about homicides is released daily by the city of Chicago. The release of homicide victims’ names is delayed by two weeks to allow time for the victims’ families to be notified of a death by Chicago police.

The homicide figures do not include killings that occurred in self-defense or in other circumstances not measured in Chicago police statistics. Homicide data from Illinois State Police, which patrols the city’s expressways, also is not included here.

Inconsistent nonsense and garbage? Not surprising as most of these morons are mentally defective, and no, that’s not saying this one is insane, just a room temperature IQ mental midget

BLUF:
But let’s not pretend that, assuming the manifesto is legitimate, the rhetoric espoused in its pages means the shooter cannot be legitimately aligned with either major political party or political movement. While I would argue that the views expressed in the manifesto echo rhetoric of radical leftism, the manifesto is full of nonsense and garbage that is at times inconsistent. The people who were quick to exploit the situation to attack Fox News and conservatives were wrong and should be ashamed of themselves.

Here’s What the Buffalo Shooter’s Alleged Manifesto Actually Says

On Saturday afternoon, an 18-year-old from Upstate New York traveled to Buffalo and live-streamed himself shooting several people, ten of whom he killed, at a Tops Friendly Market in a predominantly black neighborhood. The suspect was captured by law enforcement and has been arraigned on 10 first-degree murder charges.

With their usual swiftness, leftists on Twitter quickly launched a seemingly coordinated effort to blame Fox News and Tucker Carlson for allegedly radicalizing the suspect.

As word of the shooting quickly spread on social media, so did reports that the shooter had posted a 180-page manifesto online, explaining his racist and anti-Semitic motives and detailing how he planned to carry out the attack. PJ Media obtained a copy of the manifesto, and while we cannot independently verify its authenticity, it is widely believed to be genuine, and some left-wing operatives are intent on claiming that the manifesto proves the shooter was radicalized by Fox News and right-wing politics. I’ll show you want the manifesto actually says (though I will not link to it).

First, despite the coordinated effort to blame Fox News, the manifesto attacks a number of news networks, including Fox, for hiring Jews.

Continue reading “”

Buffalo Shooter Reportedly Chose a New York Target Because of the State’s Gun Control Laws

The officially unidentified shooter who opened fire at a Buffalo, New York grocery store reportedly published a racist, anti-semitic 180-page manifesto justifying his efforts to “show to the replacers that as long as the White man lives, our land will never be theirs and they will never be safe from us.”

The manifesto, which hasn’t yet been confirmed as being authored by the Buffalo shooter, identifies the author as 19-year-old – from Southern Tier, New York.

What was it about the Buffalo grocery store that convinced the shooter he’d chosen the right target? New York’s stringent gun control laws played a big part.

Why did you choose (REDACTED) for the place of attack?
(REDACTED) has the highest black population percentage (zip code *****) and isn’t that far away. Plus NY has heavy gun laws so it would ease me if I knew that any legally armed civilian was limited to 10 round magazines or cucked firearms.

I replaced the name of the city to redacted because I’d prefer that the FBI and local police don’t know until the attack has started. After the attack can somebody switch it over plz?

As for his choice of weapon — the same model used in the Sandy Hook shooting — the shooter apparently intended to spark another push for an “assault weapons” ban.

Why did you choose firearms?
Because they work, there are very few weapons that are easier to use and more effective at killing than firearms, especially the Bushmaster XM-15 I will be using. The effect it would have on social discourse, the extra media coverage they would provide, and the changes to gun laws that will be pushed will all help my case.

Again, none of this has been confirmed yet as being genuine or authored by the man now in custody.

Ten killed in mass shooting at Jefferson Avenue supermarket; officials describe attack as ‘hate crime’

Ten people were killed and three others were wounded – two of them critically – outside and inside a Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue on Saturday afternoon in what law enforcement officials described as a racially motivated hate crime.

“It’s like walking onto a horror movie, but everything is real. It is Armageddon-like,” said the police official at the scene. “It is so overwhelming.”

The gunman is 18 years old, police said. He has not been identified, but he was set to be arraigned Saturday evening.

The shooter was dressed in body armor and armed with a high-powered rifle, police sources said.

Police and prosecutors said they suspect the shooting had a racial motive.

“It was,” Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said, “straight up, a racially motivated hate crime.”

One of the deceased was a recently retired Buffalo police officer who was working security at the store, both sources said.

The Buffalo News is withholding the retired officer’s identity because it could not be determined whether his family had been notified.

As many as five bodies were found in the parking lot, the onsite police official said.

“Bullets and blood are everywhere,” the source said.

Shonnell Harris, an operation manager at the Tops, said she heard gun shots and ran frantically through the store, falling several times before exiting out the back. She saw the shooter, whom she described as a white man wearing camouflage. “He looked like he was in the Army.” Harris thought she heard 70 shots.

The shooter had a camera and police are looking into whether he live streamed from the scene, the official said.

The shooter was taken into custody and placed in a police vehicle at the scene, according to the two sources.

The shooter was cloaked in body armor and had a military grade helmet on his head.

It is unknown if he offered a reason for the massacre.

Video posted on Twitter showed two Buffalo Police officers with a man who appears to be in custody just outside the Tops store. The man is a white male dressed in camouflage pants, wearing what appears to be a mask over his mouth. The News has not been able to confirm that the person in custody in the video was the shooter.

Immediately after the shooting, Braedyn Kaphart and Shayne Hill said they came almost face to face with the shooter as they were turning their Equinox into a parking space in the Tops parking lot.

Kaphart described him as a while male in his late teens or early 20s with dirty blonde hair.

“He was standing there in his military gear with his weapon to his chin, looking like he was going to blow his head off,” Kaphart said. “We weren’t sure what was happening. As he continued to do that, he dropped to his knees still appearing as if he might shoot himself.”

Kaphart said she then looked away.

“I turned my head and back around as the police were telling us to get back in our cars,” she said.

When Kaphart looked back, she said it appeared police officers had tackled and apprehended the man. They watched as he was put in a police vehicle and taken away.

She shuddered to think what might have happened if they arrived at Tops a little earlier.

“A few more minutes and, God forbid, I don’t even want to think what would have happened,” Kaphart said.

Inside the supermarket, several other victims were found, the two sources said, and some of the deceased appeared to be hiding near cash register lines.

Adding to the horror, one of the sources said, was family members arriving after word spread in the community about the shooting.

Others at the scene started streaming the shooting on Facebook Live.
Will G., a dairy frozen worker at the Tops on Jefferson, said he walked into the cooler to stock milk about three minutes before the shooting. “I just heard shots. Shots and shots and shots,” he said. “It sounded like things were falling over.”

The worker hid in the cooler and more people joined him, he said. “I hid. I just hid. I wasn’t going to leave that room.”

Harris described the busy scene at Tops. “It was filled. It’s the weekend, so it was packed.”

“It’s like a dream, but I know it’s not a dream,” said Harris, the Tops operation manager. GYC Ministries pastor Tim Newkirk, with his arm around Harris, his sister, said, “It’s something you hear about, but you never experience.”

“You see it on TV, I never thought I’d be one of them,” Harris said. Harris, whose daughter Denise also works at the Tops, was found safe behind the supermarket. “I just grabbed her, I hugged her.”

Barbara Massey was frantically searching for her sister Katherine outside the Tops. She said her sister was shopping at the time of the shooting and the two have not been able to make contact despite several phone calls and requests to the police. Massey’s brother had dropped Katherine off for a routine grocery shopping trip.

“She was supposed to be waiting in front of the store for her brother to pick her up again,” Massey said.

Katherine Crofton, a retired firefighter and medic, witnessed the shooting from her porch on Riley Street. She said she was playing with her dog and smoking a cigarette when she heard a shot.

“I didn’t see him at first, I turned around and I saw him shoot this woman,” Crofton said. “She was just going into the store. And then he shot another woman. She was putting groceries into her car. I got down because I did not know if he was going to shoot me.”

Crofton saw the emergency responders arrive, too.

“The guy walked out of the store, the cops were just screaming at him, and he just stood there. He just stood there. It was like he wanted them to shoot him,” Crofton said. The shooter began to remove his gear, Crofton continued, when another police car pulled up, officers got out and jumped on the shooter.

Veronica Hemphill-Nichols said she was walking to the Tops for a loaf of bread and saw two bodies in the parking lot.

“When I saw those bodies, I just broke. I’m angry and I’m trying to power down,” she said.

Hemphill-Nichols also said she saw people rushing out of the store and saw a woman frantically asking, “Where is my daughter?”

Johnnie Emmons was inside her home, about five doors away from the Tops, down Landon Street, when she said she heard bursts of gunfire. First came a flurry of about 20 shots, then, after a brief pause, about 20 more shots.

A large police presence shut down the area north of Jefferson Avenue at Northampton Street. The Tops Markets is at the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Riley Street, about two blocks north of Jefferson and Northampton.

Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz tweeted at 2:49 p.m. that he was aware of an “active multiple shooting event” that occurred at the Tops Markets at 1275 Jefferson Ave. He urged the public to avoid the area.

Pro-Abortion Domestic Terrorists Firebomb Wisconsin Pro-Life Non-Profit.

I’m so glad we all know what the theme of this summer’s riots will be and can finally start our shopping and planning! To no one’s surprise, Leftist brownshirts have quickly spasmed from caterwauling to committing terrorism in their quest to interfere with the official business of the Supreme Court. And anyone else who dares to hold pro-life views had better watch their back, too.

On Mother’s Day Sunday, a violent incident occured in Madison, the capital of Wisconsin. (You may recall Madison earned its place on the Leftist extremism map in 2011 when union thugs, students, and assorted radicals occupied the state house for over a month in an attempt to derail Gov. Walker’s public union reforms. The goons ultimately failed, the reforms passed, and Walker was re-elected, lol.)

Madison police and fire departments were called to the office of Wisconsin Family Action (WFA) around 6 a.m. on Sunday after a passer-by reported smoke coming from the building. The flames were extinguished and thankfully, no one was injured. Investigators found a smashed window and at least one molotov cocktail that had failed to ignite. A fire inside the office burned books and damaged furnishings. Additionally, the building exterior was covered with spray-painted graffiti, including the anarchy symbol (an A inside a circle, also used by Antifa), the anti-police tag “1312” (which stands for ACAB — All Cops Are Bastards), and the threatening phrase, “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either.”

“We condemn violence and hatred in all forms, including the actions at Wisconsin Family Action in Madison last night,” said Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and “We reject violence against any person for disagreeing with another’s view.” But Evers also felt the need to say, “We will work against overturning Roe and attacks on reproductive rights by leading with empathy and compassion. We will defend what we believe in with our words and our voices — in the streets, in halls of government, and at the ballot box.”

Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes also issued a mealy-mouthed statement. “The Madison Police Department understands members of our community are feeling deep emotions due to the recent news involving the United States Supreme Court,” read the very first line. So, you know — if WFA didn’t want to get firebombed and vandalized, it shouldn’t have worn that short pro-life skirt.

“Early Sunday morning, our team began investigating a suspicious fire inside an office building on the city’s north side,” the statement continues. “It appears a specific non-profit that supports anti-abortion measures was targeted. Our department has and continues to support people being able to speak freely and openly about their beliefs. But we feel that any acts of violence, including the destruction of property, do not aid in any cause.” Is this the weakest law enforcement statement ever?

“The irony of this happening on Mother’s Day is very poignant,” said WFA President Juliane Appling, who was at a Mother’s Day event at her church when she received word of the damage to her organization’s offices. “I pray that this doesn’t happen to anyone else. This needs to stop right now.” Too bad she’s not the police chief.

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Wellllll. It seems that Polk County Florida Sheriff Grady Judd isn’t alone in his thoughts about how to handle bunglers

Florida sheriff promotes gun safety course for residents to shoot home invaders: ‘We prefer that you do’

Florida sheriff says homeowners are ‘more than welcome’ to shoot intruders

A sheriff in Florida is encouraging residents to take gun safety courses after a homeowner fired multiple shots at an intruder on Wednesday, stopping the individual who allegedly broke into several homes.

Police arrested Brandon J. Harris, 32, who was arrested after allegedly breaking into several homes in Pace, Florida, and was stopped by a homeowner who fired multiple gunshots at him, according to the Pensacola Daily News.

Calls of the break-ins began to come into the sheriff’s office at around 4:30 p.m., according to police. Harris is being charged with attempted burglary with assault, resisting arrest, criminal mischief, attempted larceny, and several other charges.

Brandon J. Harris

Brandon J. Harris (Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office )

Santa Rosa County Sheriff Bob Johnson said in a press conference on Thursday that one of the homeowners fired gunshots at Harris, and said that he was arrested after being cornered in a house that he allegedly broke into.

“Probably 20 deputies get there, the dogs are out, and he’s jumping fences and breaking into houses as he goes,” Johnson said. “One of the homeowners, he was breaking into their house, and they shot at him. So he continues to run, we finally corner him in a house that he broke into on Tom Sawyer and we cornered him in a bedroom.”

Johnson also encouraged other residents to follow in the homeowner’s footsteps and take gun safety classes, adding that they are “more than welcome” to shoot anyone who is breaking in to their house.

“I guess they think they did something wrong, which they did not. If someone’s breaking into your house, you’re more than welcome to shoot them in Santa Rosa County. We prefer that you do, actually. So, whoever that was, you’re not in trouble, come see us. We have a gun safety class we put on every other Saturday,” Johnson said.

The sheriff added that residents who take the course will shoot a gun “a lot better,” and maybe save taxpayers some money.

“If you take that, you’ll shoot a lot better, and hopefully you’ll save the taxpayers money,” Johnson said.

Johnson also described Harris as a “frequent flyer,” noting that he has been arrested 17 times before.

“You hear me talk about frequent flyers all the time. Our first interaction with this individual came when he was 13 years old. Since then, he’s had like 17 arrests,” Johnson said. “We sent him to prison for six and a half years for home invasion, and he just can’t seem to get the picture of crime does not pay.”

Duh.. Violent crime increasing the most in high crime neighborhoods

Mapping gun violence: A closer look at the intersection between place and gun homicides in four cities

The rise in gun homicides in the United States is having reverberating political ramifications at the federal, state, and local levels, with many elected officials falling back into “tough on crime” policies to curb the violence. This punitive turn can be seen in President Joe Biden’s proposed federal budget, in which he calls for “more police officers on the beat” and allocates an additional $30 billion for state and local governments to support law enforcement. Many local leaders are mirroring this approach, centering their gun violence prevention strategies on increasing funding for police and rolling back criminal justice reforms.  

What these enforcement-based approaches fail to recognize is that the recent rise in homicides is more nuanced than it appears. Rather than a widespread dispersal of gun violence within cities, the increases in gun homicides are largely concentrated in disinvested and structurally disadvantaged neighborhoods that had high rates of gun violence to begin with. This geographic concentration is a persistent challenge, not a new one—and it requires targeted solutions to improve outcomes in disinvested places rather than reverting to the old “tough on crime” playbook. 

This piece takes a deeper look at patterns of gun violence in four cities—Chicago, Nashville, Kansas City, Mo. and Baltimore—and finds that each city’s gun homicide increases were driven predominantly by increases in neighborhoods where gun violence has long been a persistent fixture of daily life, alongside systemic disinvestment, segregation, and economic inequality. These patterns point to the longer-term need to address the place-based factors that influence violence and invest in the critical community infrastructure that has not only been proven to make communities safer, but can also help them thrive.

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