Another mass shooting has occurred in the United States although this one is different. It occurred in the office of the Capital Gazette, a newspaper based in Annapolis.
Current reports are that there are four dead and dozens injured.
From Radio New Zealand:
Several people were fatally shot at a newspaper office in Maryland and a suspect was apprehended, the local sheriff told Fox News.
Anne Arundel Sheriff Ron Bateman told Fox News the incident took place outside the Capital Gazette office.
Phil Davis, a Gazette reporter, said that multiple people had been shot, according to a report from the Baltimore Sun, which owns the paper.
Agents from the Baltimore office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were responding to the incident, the bureau tweeted.
Local police in Anne Arundel County have not responded to the reports of deaths or injuries but cited an active shooter.
I wonder if the shooter will be characterised as having mental health issues? Because already there is speculation about the motivation.
Fortune magazine posted this three days ago:
“I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight,” Yiannopoulos frequently writes via email or text message to reporters who contact him.
Yiannopoulos made the apparent mocking threat today in response to queries to the Observer asking about a restaurant he frequents and to the Daily Beast about an effort he’s apparently part of to take over the United Kingdom’s far-right white ethno-state party UKIP. The party has foundered after the Brexit referendum passed, one of its goals, and never won a seat in Parliament.
Yiannopoulos told the Observer‘s David Richardson that this is now his standard response to a request for comment.
The threat is clearly less than earnest, an escalation of provocative and potentially harmful statements he has made previously, but along similar lines in which he stands teetering on the brink of free speech limits in the U.S. (Yiannopoulos reportedly currently lives in America.)
POTUS has not been helping.
Dark times …
Update: the shooter has been named by the Washington Post as Jarrod Ramos. He had a longstanding argument with the Gazette over an article it ran about him based on criminal proceedings that he faced. The detail is set out in this court decision. He is in custody. He apparently had mangled his fingerprints and facial recognition had to be used to identify him.
For those thinking that Yiannopoulos’s or for that matter Trump’s rhetoric is not related can I politely disagree. The contempt and violence contained in their public statements makes this sort of incident more likely to happen.
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I am constantly surprised by how many people I come across here in my part of New Zealand who still think the media are hard on Trump
Why don’t you feel they are hard on Trump?
RedLogix last night speaking about TS: Too often it’s the same old people playing tiresome old games that wouldn’t be tolerated ten minutes in real world beyond social media.
Snap!
I’m astonished as well by the number of people convinced about the whole conspiracy theory that climate change isn’t real it is just part of the UN agenda 21 plot to take over the world.
Seriously. The sort of paranoids Fox thrives on feeding in the USA exist here today.
Amongst people from both the left and the right of the political spectrum.
Are you really pulling the ‘we’re all equally bad’ line on a post about a mass shooting? What sort of jerk are you?
Are you pulling ‘the left has a monopoly on virtue’ line in thread about mass death? What sort of …. humanitarian rationalist are you?
No.
I am particularly heartened by Ocasio-Cortez who said “she wants to focus her campaign on rebutting the president’s policies rather than picking personal fights with him.
“What we need to do is lay out a plan and a vision that people can believe in, and getting into Twitter fights with the president is not exactly, I think, where we’re going to find progress as a nation”
That is really where the future lies.
If the Left, and the Centrists and their media outlets, put as much time into planning a viable and positive future, and presenting and selling it to the people, as it does to hang wringing, teeth gnashing and blaming everything on Trump and the Russians, we might actually see, not only an undoing of Trumps carnage, but an actual step forward and re setting of the social contract.
In the United States.
And even here in NZ>
(and by a ‘positive plan’ I mean something a little more believable and immediate than “Hope” or “Lets do this”. Because it seems the poor and disenfranchised aren’t really buying that quick sell anymore-if they ever did)
Nail on head. But we be living in a world of spanners.
but but, surely any time now the resident hate monger is gonna bring peace and freeance to the oppressed white evangelic male with economic anxiety and their spouses, and all shall gather round a big fire and sing ‘America the beautiful”. Right?
Good grief.
Good fucking grief.
White evangelists are being used the same as [pick a label]
Aren’t people here being as guilty as people who jump to conclusions about the Religious motivations of terror attacks?
As usual cowboyhatboy you are just bullshit stirring. You act like a trump. Sad.
Are you happy then that when any potential terrorist attack occurs people jump to conclusions over who did it and their motivations?
Human nature – look it up, humans do that because it helps sort it – why do you not like human nature?
Human nature can be used to excuse all sorts of ugly behaviour.
Yep – especially capitalism.
So he was sick of his newspaper being delivered wet and no one doing anything about it ?
Theres a good chance it was a political attack, whereas a school or factory isnt
So shocking this escalation – no matter the reason for this the faketrumpnews will spin it and disturbed individuals will smile evilier dreams as they sleep.
Things are getting worse – I’ve been watching a series on building bunkers – business is booming! And the cl8ents wanting bunkers? I wouldn’t want to survive with them that’s for sure
Another thread derailed. Mission accomplished.
We need more information. The USA was awash with gun violence long before Trump.
And although it feels true that Trump supporters are much more likely to be both armed and deranged than Trump opponents, we shouldn’t go hunting for validation of that without some evidence. The coincidence is interesting, but no more than that, yet.
Yes. 4 dead would normally hardly be mentioned beyond the regional area- unless its a school or have some other ‘news hook’
This clearly has that newshook.
This archive has pages and pages for this year
http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
Remember the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando and how it was put down to being a terrorist attack specifically targeting the LGBTQ community?
How many people still believe that; take it as a read?
On the suspicion that the answer to that is “many”, I’m providing this Glen Greenwald piece, and a link to a list of other decent pieces on the Pulse massacre and the aftermath published at The Intercept… and then just quietly walking.
well thoughts and prayers were offered so its all good.
Very likely how the world ends, Captain Kirk (Liberals) vs Gorn (Trump). Notice how Kirk has to ran away at the end.. – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SK0cUNMnMM
Notice how it was cut?
It doesn’t show the full fight.
Yup. Doesn’t show Kirk using his brain to macgyver his way to victory.
white male shooter apprehended and an explosive devise was found.
How long until the US descend into Rwanda?
Really???
Are you seriously trying to suggest that the US is on the verge of descending in to Rwanda genocide level of violence?
I think you need to get out more.
I habitually turnover when a Trump story appears, coz it’s all bullcrap. Not that the media is hard on him, but hey I suppose it does look that way, ain’t anything good that can be said about him, like he goes out of his way to play up and get the press he wants. It’s just look at me. Ask the next question of people, do they dare that Trump isn’t getting favorable Press?
Here is the suspect’s Twitter feed.
It seems he had a long running feud with the paper and this is unlikely a politically motivated attack
https://twitter.com/erichartleyfrnd?lang=en
Thread.
https://twitter.com/traciemac_Bmore/status/1012490702360645632
The mention of ‘Trump’ will one day be the subject of Godwin’s law.
If its not already.
It depends what you identify as “politcally motivated”.
The harassment charges against Ramos were for harassing a woman who rejected him.
So it does come under gender politics, and a guy threatening violence to a woman who rejected him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/us/jarrod-ramos-annapolis-shooting.html
When Trump first became President I concluded there are seven ways his Presidency could end (and then ranked them on probability – 1 being most likely)):
1) Democrats clean out all three houses in 2020 (1)
2) Some international or domestic incident sufficiently severe in terms of consequences that to avoid either impeachment or one of the other possibilities mentioned below, he has to resign (2)
3) Impeachment – Trump does something unconstitutional that is bad enough that Republicans support it just to save face (6)
4) Civil War – some say the U.S. is getting close to this now; not sure about that, but certainly the division makes the alternative label “Divided States of America” look quite appropriate now (3)
5) World War 3 – U.S. provokes Russia or China or North Korea (Kim Jong Un has given up nothing and this has all been for show) (7)
6) Assassination – there are enough rogue or severely anti-Trump/anti-Government agents in the U.S. that someone might be nutty enough to try (4)
7) Somehow Trump completes two full terms (5)
Send the shooter over to NZ and Andrew MP would have him out on our streets in a blow of a whistle, bowling over our excess news media cranks for sure.
Gosh I have forgotten Andrew’s last name already.
NOT appropriate.
Send you over to the USA, where you can join ICE, and wear a smart uniform with shiny buttons, and open and close the gates when the trucks roll by.
That way you can evade your personal responsibility for supporting penal policies that increase the crime rate.
As opposed to Garth McVicar who would have people hanged or flogged for the slightest indescrestion.
Hide your guns, Jethro.