The trouble with the San Diego synagogue shooting narrative
(1) An armed man (an off-duty border guard) and an Iraq War veteran both charged the shooter and may have helped prevent further carnage.
(2) The shooter was a white supremacist, yes, but he hated Trump for Trump’s support of Israel.
Those are inconvenient truths for the left, and although they won’t stop them from using the shootings for the usual agenda, they certainly put a little cramp in their style.
The story of the Iraqi vet is interesting:
Stewart, 51, was in the back of the room when the shots rang out, he told reporters. The veteran said his military training kicked in.
“I ran to fire. That’s what I did. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t think about it. It’s just what I did,” he said.
Stewart said he started yelling expletives at the gunmen, who stopped shooting when he heard Stewart’s voice….
Stewart said he served in Iraq from March 2003 to April 2004. He had also been a bomb disposal tech in the Navy, and joined the Army after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
“I never thought I’d hear gunfire again,” he told the Union-Tribune.
It seems that the gun may have jammed, or perhaps Stewart wouldn’t be around to tell his story. Then again, in the confusion of such a scene, and with a fairly inexperienced and rattled gunman, an aggressively charging member of the congregation might be an unexpected challenge.
Stewart ended up following the gunman to his car:
Get down!” and “I’m going to kill you,” Stewart said he yelled.
According to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, the suspected gunman fled the synagogue to a nearby vehicle. Stewart was in close pursuit.
“Stewart caught up to the vehicle as the suspect was about to drive away,” the department said in a statement.
Stewart said he began punching the shooter’s window when Morales told him to get out of the way.
“He yelled, ‘Clear back, I have a gun,'” Stewart said. Then, Morales began firing.
The gunman got away, but the description of the car was what allowed the police to stop him.
Morales was the off-duty border control agent. And he has a very interesting story, too:
[Rabbi] Goldstein said Morales recently discovered his Jewish roots and traveled more than three hours from El Centro to pray with the congregation. The rabbi recalled telling Morales, “Please arm yourself when you are here. We never know when we’ll need it.”
If you follow genealogy, you may know that people who are of Spanish or part-Spanish descent—as the name “Morales” implies—often find when they do DNA testing that they have some proportion of Jewish DNA, sometimes a significant amount (the reason has to do with the history of Jews in Spain, the expulsion and the conversos; for a fuller treatment please see this). I am guessing that was the case with Morales, and he decided to embrace that aspect of his identity and attend services in a synagogue.
In addition, we have the prescient rabbi, who asked Morales to carry a weapon while in the synagogue. It paid off.
As for point #2, the Trump-hate of the shooter, we have this:
The evil psychopaths who shot up the synagogues in Poway and Pittsburgh undoubtedly share a number of traits in common, but prominent among them is unremitting hatred of Donald Trump. The Poway shooter put it — how shall we say it — in succinct terms, calling the president a “Zionist, Anti-White, Traitorous, C*cksucker.” His Pittsburgh doppelgänger was almost as disgusting.
Despicable as they are, these two creatures can’t really be accused of Trump Derangement Syndrome, because, unlike many in mainstream media, they are at least somewhat correct in their assessment. Trump is pro-Israel, indeed likely the most pro-Israel president since Truman…
The left is fond of calling Trump a white supremacist and/or saying that white supremacists adore him and are empowered by him. No, they don’t and no, they’re not.
The white supremacists also hated George W. Bush for his support of Israel. I once accidentally ended up on a white supremacist board while researching Israel and I did not realize it at first because they sounded so much like liberals in their hatred of W, of Israel, and support of Palestine. It wasn’t until I checked the name of the place that I realized it was a racist site.
Another account of the gun Morales used: “The congregant had come to the synagogue to say Yizkor, the memorial prayer for the dead, as is customary on the last day of Passover, which coincided with the Jewish Sabbath. He had brought a gun in his tallis (prayer shawl) bag as a precaution.
When the shooting started, according to the source, the congregant handed the gun to an off-duty Border Patrol agent, telling him that he knew better what to do with the gun than the congregant himself.”
https://www.breitbart.com/2nd-amendment/2019/04/27/exclusive-poway-synagogue-shooting/
As Instapundit likes to say, Trump is the Worst. Nazi. Ever.
And the left is still promulgating the “fine people” hoax.
Q: How do you know that a democrat is lying?
A: It’s lips are moving.
I guess I’m a small-S supreme of the white variety. The original Supremes were black and female.
Does being opposed to the invasion of our country by terrorists, moochers, and others, all illegal trespassers, all with the common denominator of being “people of color” make me a white supremacist?
An unacknowledged issue in this recent shooting is that the gunman dropped his rifle and ran when confronted by opposition. It highlights their cowardice in two ways; first, they pick targets that they know are not able or willing to defend themselves. The second is when confronted with violent pushback they run. Apparently the veteran wasn’t even armed but presented himself in such a way (loud, boisterous, aggressive) that the gunman deemed him to be a greater threat than he actually was. Unlike the vet, the gunman had no military experience. That would have made some difference here, but most of these shooters have no military experience either.
Both of these issues speak against the kind of gun control that the left likes to encourage in the aftermath of these shootings.
This incident is certainly an argument for the Second Amendment, the right to self defense. But I think that the Mueller investigation was an even better one. Twenty some heavily armed FBI agents in bullet proof jackets raiding the home of an elderly man, his deaf wife, and three lap dogs at dawn to serve a legal notice is an obscenity and the real reason for the Second Amendment.
It does seem to be a common thread in these mass shooting incidents that the shooters are unable to cope with someone attacking them. People as victims; running, hiding, begging for mercy is what they want. Someone fighting back, even empty handed, does not fit in their dream of blood and slaughter.
“The left is fond of calling Trump a white supremacist and/or saying that white supremacists adore him and are empowered by him. No, they don’t and no, they’re not.” – Neo
Everyone to the right of Lenin is a white supremacist.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/04/29/uc-berkeley-right-wing-studies-event-labels-conservatives-as-white-supremacists/
More rabbis, and teachers, should be getting guns and getting trained on how to use them.
The lying Open Border Democrats have helped to make America less safe, so normal folk need to protect themselves – when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
The Dems want normal Americans to be afraid, and defenseless — so as to support more laws and regulations to take more freedom away from normal folk and give more power to the sometimes-criminal deep state gov’t bureaucrats.
Better to have most adults mostly ready with guns to defend themselves, most of the time.
Well Cicero, you can sing it back to me. And you know what? I like to sing. I’m not good at it. I also have a sense of humor. Here’s the best poem ever written in the last ten thousand years. And I believe I’ve said this before. From the Sanskrit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=9qndT3j6ttQ
No, that wasn’t it. No that wasn’t it either.
Black Marigolds.
http://factualfiction.com/lighthouse/2013/10/04/black-marigolds-versified-translation-by-e-powys-mathers-of-the-11th-century-sanskrit-poem-caurapancasika-written-by-the-kasmiri-poet-bilhana-kavi/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=9qndT3j6ttQ
How I didn’t end up as a red smear on a white hull I don’t know. My dad was Coast Guard.
Heh. Not I. How did he not end up the hard way. I only lived a part of what he did during my service in the Navy. Now I live a thousand miles from the sea. Because I’m scared.
The ocean has that way with you. Rogue wave.
An incident that was a bit similar to Mr. Stewart’s actions happened some months ago in the Pacific Northwest. Some mentally ill, highly agitated man started shouting outside of a Starbucks. Then he entered the establishment increasingly agitated and hopped the counter, grabbed something heavy as a club and struck the female barista in the head who dropped unconscious.
He was preparing to strike her repeatedly, when a patron started shouting obnoxious things to the perpetrator distracting him. The perp came back over the counter and began approaching the patron preparing to swing his makeshift club, when the patron pulled his concealed weapon and shot him.
Even in blue country, the patron can legitimately claim that he acted in self-defense.
“…first, they pick targets that they know are not able or willing to defend themselves.”
Maybe they believe they can pick on church going Christians. And Jews and Muslims, I hope you can find some humor in this. They are picking on the wrong people.
There are inspirational posters about Navy Sailors shooting back from the fantail of a destroyer. There is much truth in that. I will shoot back.
Congregations that arm their members should publicize the fact for deterrence, and weather any gun-grabber tweet-storms that result.
FWIW, if any of Neo’s readers are planning to attack an LDS chapel: don’t do it.
I so hate the the words “Thank you for your service: I will kill you. And you know something ladies? You are more than equipped to kill me.