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The hoped-for narrative in the Boulder shooting collapses, so the narrative will focus on gun control — 32 Comments

1. He bought one of the guns a week ago. This means he passed the background check, having no felonies on his record. Only two things could have prevented this: suspending all gun sales, or having family get treatment for his apparent mental instability.

2. He bought an AR-15 platformed AR-pistol 6 days before the shooting. Unfortunately, a Colorado judge had struck down a Boulder city ordinance banning the sale of so-called assault rifles like the AR-15 about 10 days before the shooting. It is not clear where the shooter bought his rifle, and he lived outside of Boulder.

   The judge’s case was simple. Colorado state law forbids municipal or county gun laws that override state laws, and Boulder violated that principle.

   Having bought a few guns in California, it is possible that CA regs. would have blocked the sale. I recalled having to attest that I’ve have not been convicted of any violent misdemeanors. Though in Al Issa’s case he was a minor(?) and maybe his record could have been sealed?

   https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/boulder-suspect-bought-an-ar-15-rifle-six-days-before-supermarket-shooting/

3. To paraphrase a saying, “The mass shootings will continue until the Democrat anti-gun critters get their way.” After that they’ll still happen but no reporting will be done past the local level —– if that.

4. One of my favorite tweets featured on Twitchy was

   “Why would anyone need an AR-15?”

   My answer would be to protect myself from foreign born terrorists while i am out shopping. I did not see that answer anyplace

5. The NYT just did a story on the victims, with pictures. As I suspected, all of them were white. Dollars to donuts that if even one of them was a minority, the shooter would be declared white and a white supremacist.

   So, the white supremacist narrative is likely dead, and the chattering classes will return to the cliched hyperbole about guns. Evil, evil guns. Expect a chorus of sanctimonious posturing from the halls of Congress, from the cavalcade of vapid talking heads and from the loathsome, insipid ‘comedians’ who lack any comedy or creativity.

   Shooter was a Trump hater? So, this tragedy is EVEN MORE the fault of Trump. Orange man created this toxic environment. Shooter was taunted in high school? The taunters’ social media will be mined for anything pro-Trump. That’s what drove the shooter to his breaking point! See…it is white supremacy after all!

   Also, we really should be focused on the expected massive backlash against all Muslims that is absolutely going to come from this. They are the biggest victims here.

6. TommyJay:

   I don’t think he was a minor at the time or we would not know about the offense even now. That happened with Michael Brown; he apparently had some juvenile offense we were never allowed to learn about, even after his death.

7. The families of the deceased should sue the FBI into oblivion.

8. I grew up in Boulder (and I’ve probably been in that King Soopers a gazillion times), so this incident is bit more scary to me. The question I have is why the shooter made the trek all the way from Arvada to Boulder? If the shooter is such a big Trump hater why pick Boulder to go on a rampage? I can’t think of a place in the country less likely to have Trump fans.

9. ‘The hoped-far narrative’

   Are you appropriating a southern accent there?

10. The one thing which could have mitigated the carnage, if not prevented all of it, is if some alert citizen was carrying near the perp and used his weapon to stop him.

11. A tweet shows a Kings Soopers ad as “Your one-stop shop for all things kosher.” No idea if this is true or if it has any bearing on the shooter’s planning.

12. Thinking I was navigating to another site, I opened BabylonBee and saw this. I thought it was real for a few seconds:

    https://babylonbee.com/news/media-now-claims-shooter-was-factually-arabic-but-morally-white

    The Bee has about eight home runs among its March 23 posts.

13. CB, I have also been in that King’s a gazillion times.

    John Lott is speculating that it was a gun free zone, but I don’t recall ever seeing a sign to that effect. I’ve checked with a couple of others and neither of them recall seeing such a sign. Just curious if you’ve noticed one. I’d hate to see “our side” promote fake news.

14. Griffin:

    Thanks, will fix.

15. Boulder is pretty much a gun free zone. Is there a more leftist city in North America ?

16. I lived in Boulder for 20 years. Raheem Kassan’s podcast at the National Pulse compiles more details, including his own study of the shooter’s Facebook page before it was removed. (https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis/boulder-shooting-victims/)

    White House sources say the accused gunman is a Syrian immigrant, age 21, who is naturalised American and admires ISIS. He wanted to visit Syria last summer, but could not because of virus lockdowns. (See the web site, the GellerReport https://gellerreport.com/2021/03/isis-boulder-mass-murderer-ahmad-al-issa-was-islamic-state-sympathizer.html/)

    Kassan says that the clear picture that emerges is of a Jihadi attack.

    FICUS Biden is deliberately lying and tells us that he doesn’t know what the shooter’s motive was. He does know this and is keeping important facts from the people. The Left kowtows to evil terrorist Jihadi’s, willing to sacrifice our fellow Americans for their hate-the-West treasonous goals.

    In fact, says Kassan, Biden ought to be raising alarm and general public awareness because one Jihadi attack too often inspires copycat attacks. And America is at risk now.

    And then there is the attack date of March 22. It marks five years since the Brussels terrorist attack, composed of three coordinated suicide attacks. (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9388935/King-Belgium-marks-fifth-anniversary-Brussels-terror-attack.html)

    Jihadi’s honor such date anniversaries to keep followers engaged, seeing God’s favor in their markers of successful enemy attacks.

    Kassan expands on his theme, citing reporter Jack Prosobiec: the Boulder shooter planned to attack a Trump rally in February, 2020, in Colorado Springs. But then he shifted his attentions to a later March, Denver, Trump event. But it was cancelled because of Covid.

    Prosobiec also reports that the shooter surveilled churches and the Colorado GOP’s offices.

    The shooter lived in Arvada, a Denver suburb to the Northwest, not far from Boulder, even further to the Northwest from Denver.

17. Why is the Left so focused on denying obvious reality? Islamist supremacism that thru openly proclaim?

    To divide and conquer and thus rule is true enough. But the strategy is much more, it is to cover for their weakness and lies by turning their complicity with evil into RACISM! (TM, all the time.)

    And I know of no better exposer of this fact than historian Jamie Glazov. Frontpagemag is serially publishing excerpts from his book, “Jihadi Psychopath.”

    This nub emerges from the first excerpt:

    “What we have here is a situation in which any desire to protect the West from the terrorist enemy is now categorized as a hatred of an entire group of people. It is also labelled ‘racist’ — even though Jihad is not a race and its Muslim practitioners come in all shapes, colors and ethnicities. And no matter how illogical and erroneous this line of thinking may be, it now prevails as the only permitted narrative in our cultural and official discourse.

    “Consequently, we have a disaster facing us. And that disaster, in a nutshell, is this: a totalitarian and expansionist ideology called Islamic supremacism is waging a deadly war on the West. It is a war that Islamic supremacists have openly proclaimed and shouted from the rooftops. They have made it abundantly clear as to why they are waging this war, why they hate us so much, and why they are so determined to destroy our way of life. But standing up to this ideology and protecting ourselves from those who heed its call is now, as noted above, considered hateful, racist and, of course, ‘racist.’ And since most people’s most dreaded fear in our leftist and politically correct culture is to be called a racist, our civilization’s will and ability to defend itself has been severely disabled. What we have, in essence, is our surrender to Islamic supremacism.”

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/jihad-denial-jamie-glazov/

18. The shooter we are informed lived “Most of” his life in the United States. And he was mostly peaceful, and mostly acted not too insane when he was not paranoid or lashing out.

    So it is obviously mostly the fault of everyone but him. Yeah.

    Hey! Do you remember the names of the guys up in Kenosha who were chasing Kyle Rittenhouse through the streets until he shot them in self-defense?

    You know who I mean: The bald and raging Antifa child molester guy who who was screaming “shoot me!”; or that nearly middle aged professional skateboarder who had abuse charges against him and was shot while in the act of striking a nearly recumbent Rittenhouse on the neck while using a skateboard as a weapon? Remember the images of him stumbling away shot through the heart after his assault backfired on him, and the scene of him lying open eyed and almost flat on his face, as he lay staring at the pavement while his life drained away? You know, because even if shot through the heart, he would not die before knowing and realizing how it was he came to be dying and why.

    No? Don’t remember the names of these nihilist sons-of-bitches who died while living out a perverse and destructive cliche?

    No, neither do I. And why should we? Our lives go on. But they have been dead for some months now. And they will remain dead forever. Because, there is no restart button if your own vicious stupidity cuts your life short

    And if they have souls, they may well be roasting in an inescapable Hell forever, having maliciously and vaingloriously pissed their one existence away for the sake of excitedly feeding their spite.

    Now, there may not be a God of the Christian Scriptures, much less a Heaven or a Hell.

    But if on the off chance there were a God of absolute integrity and Goodness, and there were only a quite logical bi-valued post-mortem existence of “You are in the light” or “You are outside in the darkness” available – as the often weeping and repentant survivors of these weird NDE’s testify on YouTube – then the seriousness of this existence becomes even more, not less apparent.

    Of course, maybe not if you are a Buddhist author whose protagonists need to lighten up and not take the pointless illusion called life so seriously. But otherwise then maybe yes.

    Yes, it might be pointless according to some interpretations of reality to spend your time wondering about right and wrong in an inexplicable “brute fact” reality, when the only “evidence” to indicate that there is something more behind it is comprised of mostly old tales, mystics (whatever they are), and the possible fever dreams of people who medicine pronounces to have died. But then, you would have to be almost crazy in some sense of the word, not to.

19. ‘Mr Cruz launched into a staunch defence of firearm ownership at a hearing on Tuesday, falsely accusing Democrats of trying to take guns away from “law-abiding citizens”.’

    That “falsely accusing” is a straight-up lie, isn’t it? Didn’t Biden promise to do precisely that? Maybe the logic is “when we pass a law to take the guns, then by definition they won’t be law-abiding.”

20. }}} One of my favorite tweets featured on Twitchy was

    “Why would anyone need an AR-15?”

    My favorite meme on this is:
    ================================
    “Why does she need an AR-15?”
    (pic of woman with badass gun)
    “Why did she need to sit in the front of the bus?”
    (pic of black woman, presumably Rosa Parks)

    Answer: It’s her right to do so, and that is all the answer you are entitled to.
    ================================

21. RockMeAle: interesting question about the gun free zone label. I don’t know the answer, but I have to admit I never paid any attention.

    TJ: I know Arvada isn’t that far from Boulder, but there are plenty of other towns closer by that would seem to have offered a similar target (Wheat Ridge, Broomfield, etc.) So why Boulder? Who knows, maybe he just didn’t like that King Soopers.

22. “The question I have is why the shooter made the trek all the way from Arvada to Boulder? If the shooter is such a big Trump hater why pick Boulder to go on a rampage? I can’t think of a place in the country less likely to have Trump fans.” & “Who knows, maybe he just didn’t like that King Soopers.” CB

    We have family in Boulder, and I have shopped in that store many times going to and fro. I would be willing to bet there were so few MAGA hat owning persons there that hitting one of them at random would have near-zero probability – because they were NOT wearing that hat in that store.

    https://election.boco.solutions/ElectionResults2020G
    77.19 % Biden, 20.62% Trump
    – and I’m surprised Trump’s total is that high, but the city doesn’t fill up the entire county.

23. Katie Pavlich at RedState: “Since a man opened fire in a Colorado grocery store Monday night, killing nine shoppers and a police officer, the Left has loudly proclaimed the shooter was a “white man” and “white supremacist.” In typical fashion, they didn’t wait for the facts.”

    They don’t wait for the facts because somewhere between half and all of the people who read their “breaking news” will never read the updates with the facts.

24. “Thinking I was navigating to another site, I opened BabylonBee and saw this. I thought it was real for a few seconds:” – Watt

    When I went over to RedState following a link on the shooting, I looked at all the current headlines and thought for a moment I had gotten onto the Bee’s site instead.

25. A good guy with a gun would have stopped it, but those types are not welcome in Boulder. Gun free zones are just free fire areas for crazy people.

26. 60 years – probably a lot more – of drug laws have not prevented those who seek illicit drugs from obtaining them.
    Even prisoners in state and federal prisons sometimes (often?) obtain drugs (and certainly other prohibited substances/items).
    And what more of a secure facility can there be?
    If there is a will, there is a way.

    It seems that the only way shooting tragedies of this sort can be stopped is if ALL law-abiding citizens are allowed and encouraged to carry guns, concealed or otherwise, after passing a required gun handling/shooting training course.

    Most of these mass shooters don’t have to worry about being challenged by armed civilians or even police (I have never seen a police officer in a grocery store or in a theater, etc. ) and I will surmise this eventuality would be a deterrent to most – but not all – mass shooters.

    Obtaining a gun and allowing law abiding folks to carry should be as commonplace as having a driver’s license or credit cards.

    I don’t own any guns, never have; but I have thought about it.

27. John Tyler:
    take action. Buy a gun, a .40 or. 45, caliber handgun and learn how to shoot. Try different ones, and be looking for one that your hand is comfortable on.

    Do you have a shooter friend that can guide you, teach you?

    What are you waiting for? Sales of guns and ammo have exploded upwards this past year. Ammo is becoming hard to find in many calibers.
    Do not wait!

    I do not care about deterring the crazies, who cannot be deterred simply because they are in fact crazy. I care about our 2nd Amendment and the emerging tyranny.

28. Soooooo…. Today’s RealClearPolitics has an article by the (Never, Ever Wrong) Barack Obama entitled: “Mass Shootings blah-blah Increase Racism and Misogyny” written & published before the Colorado murderer was identified as an Islamist from Syria and hater of Trump. Will SILENCE follow from
    His Majesty Obama, VTC*?? (*VAST Testicular Concavity) Rhetorical Question!!

29. “Falsely accusing (as with the MSM’s near-constant use of the terms “baseless,” “debunked,” etc.”

    I’ve noticed that the MSM has usually tended to qualify statements as “somebody said” or “according to so-and-so”, even when the statements are self-evidently true….”The sun will rise in the east tomorrow, astronomers say.” Except when it comes to a political line they are propounding, it’s all about assertions in absolutist terms. (“falsely accused”_

30. Cicero,
    I asked someone I know that has both a .40 and a .45 which he would prefer in a crisis. His answer: “The one with more bullets.” (i.e. the .40 w/15+1 rds)

31. AesopFan on March 24, 2021 at 3:49 am said:

    “The question I have is why the shooter made the trek all the way from Arvada to Boulder? If the shooter is such a big Trump hater why pick Boulder to go on a rampage? I can’t think of a place in the country less likely to have Trump fans.” & “Who knows, maybe he just didn’t like that King Soopers.”

    CB

    We have family in Boulder, and I have shopped in that store many times going to and fro. I would be willing to bet there were so few MAGA hat owning persons there that hitting one of them at random would have near-zero probability – because they were NOT wearing that hat in that store.

    I have just recently seen one or two persons asking the question as to whether the fact that that particular King Sooper prominently advertised itself as a one stop kosher shopping location might have had any bearing on it being chosen as a target. Seems quite a stretch. But then I guess that there have been a couple such targeted shootings. One in Paris, and one in New York or New Jersey?, come to mind.

    Never occurred to me that there might even be enough observant Jews in Colorado to justify a kosher anything. But all I knew of Colorado is from old western movies and references to the Air Force Academy.

    Then, in making a not very determined search, I came across this site. It sheds no light on the shooter’s motive, or even the comparative Jewishness of the population of Boulder.

    But golly gee whiz, it sure does exemplify certain patterns of thought, or better perhaps, psychological dispositions and responses, associated with stereotypical liberalism.

    As awful as the event was, this report reads, as so many news reports nowadays do, as almost, almost, a kind of gloomy satire.

    https://forward.com/news/466528/after-king-soopers-massacre-boulders-jews-mourn-friends-and-neighbors/

32. Unfortunately, a Colorado judge had struck down a Boulder city ordinance banning the sale of so-called assault rifles like the AR-15 about 10 days before the shooting. It is not clear where the shooter bought his rifle, and he lived outside of Boulder…

    Having bought a few guns in California, it is possible that CA regs. would have blocked the sale…

    Oh, TommyJay, you mean like French laws against “assualt-style weapons” prevented the January 2015 massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine? 10 people, the same number killed in Boulder, are alive today because it’s illegal to sell “assault-style weapons” such as the AR-15 in France. Not only are those rifles illegal, it’s illegal to sell a hunting or target rifle if it’s chambered in a cartridge that has ever been used in a military rifle, on the theory that shooters can’t access illicit supplies of military ammunition.

    Thank God Amedy Coulibaly, who had pledged loyalty to the Islamic State, was prevented by those French “regs” from getting his hands on two AKs, two military surplus pistols, and a submachine gun or otherwise 17 he would have killed 17 people in his planned attack on the Hypercasher Kosher Market in Paris two days after those strict gun laws stopped those would-be Muslim terrorists COLD, IN THEIR TRACKS from carrying out that massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine.

    And on 13 November 2015 all 1500 people who attended a rock concert at the Bataclan Nightclub in Paris returned home alive and well thanks to those vaunted French regs. As well as people at several other locations where would-be Muslim terrorists planned to carry out mass shootings. And would have, but thanks to those strict gun control laws they couldn’t.

    These city ordinances are a smashing success. Look at how tranquil Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, and East St. Louis are. And the nationwide bans on “assault-style” firearms work even better. Just look at France!

    I am of course being sarcastic. Did I miss the sarcasm in your comment, TommyJay? I hope you didn’t believe a word of what you wrote.

    And November 2015 Paris Massacre?

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