EL PASO SHOOTING - ACT OF POLITICAL INTIMIDATION (TERRORISM) AGAINST TRUMP ADMIN FOR ENFORCING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION LAWS:
OHIO SHOOTING - CAREFULLY PLOTTED SMOKESCREEN USED TO MAKE EL PASO SHOOTING APPEAR AS ACT OF RETALIATION OVER RACISM & ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND TO PUSH CONGRESS TO PASS GUN CONTROL.
IT’S NOT ABOUT RACISM, IT’S PURE POLITICAL INTIMIDATION OVER ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.
I’M NOT OPPOSED TO GUN CONTROL BUT POLITICAL INTIMIDATION, FALSE CLAIMS OF RACISM AND KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE IS NOT HOW IT SHOULD BE LEGISLATED.
Post Sources: ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, MSNBC, Youtube
****** Trump: Hate has no place in our country; El Paso shooting is being treated as a case of ‘domestic terrorism’
President Donald Trump on Sunday weighed in on two mass shootings that occurred 13 hours apart in Texas and Ohio, acknowledging “perhaps more has to be done” to address gun violence.
“We’ve done actually a lot,” Trump told reporters of his administration’s work on the issue, “but perhaps more has to be done.”
Trump, who made the comments to reporters on a tarmac in New Jersey after a weekend spent at his golf club in Bedminster, has overseen a ban on so-called bump stocks, but has not pursued large-scale gun control efforts. His predecessor, President Barack Obama, took executive actions on gun control, including on background checks and mental health.
Early Sunday, a shooter opened fire in Dayton, Ohio, killing nine people in the city’s Oregon District, a popular downtown area. The shooter was shot and killed by responding officers. Hours before on Saturday, a shooter opened fire at an El Paso, Texas, shopping center, killing at least 20 people. A 21-year-old white supremacist is in custody in the Texas domestic terrorism case.
Speaking broadly of the two recent mass shootings, Trump said, “I just want to say that these are two incredible places, we love the people.”
The President, who has regularly used incendiary language at rallies across the country, added, “Hate has no place in our country and we’re gonna take care of it.”
Praising law enforcement, Trump added that the massacres could have been worse. “It would have been unbelievable. It (was) horrible but it would have been so much worse,” he said.
Trump then said he would be making an official statement around 10 a.m. ET Monday on the mass shootings.
Earlier Sunday, Trump tweeted, “God bless the people of El Paso Texas. God bless the people of Dayton, Ohio,” and, separately, ordered American flags to be flown at half-staff as “a mark of solemn respect” for the victims of the tragedies.
Trump called the El Paso, Texas, shooting an “act of cowardice” on Saturday and said there “are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing people.”
The President also relayed earlier in a tweet that he had spoken with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, about the El Paso shooting and had offered the “total support” of the federal government to the state.
“Today’s shooting in El Paso, Texas, was not only tragic, it was an act of cowardice. I know that I stand with everyone in this Country to condemn today’s hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people,” Trump tweeted Saturday night.
Trump ended his comments to reporters Sunday stating “on behalf of our first lady and myself, condolences to all. We have to get it stopped. This has been going on for years.”
Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown wrote in a tweet Sunday that “thoughts and prayers are not enough, we have a responsibility to act.”
“We are also angry — angry that shooting after shooting politicians in Washington and Columbus refuse to pass sensible gun-safety laws to protect our communities,” Brown said.
Three sources have identified the suspect as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius of Allen, Texas.
The case appears to meet the statutory definition of domestic terrorism, Bash said. Saturday’s shooting at an El Paso shopping center — which left at least 20 people dead and 26 injured — “appears to be designed to intimidate a civilian population, to say the least,” he said.
“We’re going to do what we do to terrorists in this country, which is to deliver swift and certain justice,” Bash said.
El Paso County District Attorney Jaime Esparza said the suspect faces capital murder charges and will be eligible for the death penalty.
“We will seek the death penalty,” he said.
Racist ‘manifesto’ posted on 8chan
Authorities are investigating a racist, anti-immigrant screed that they believe was posted by a man who opened fire Saturday morning, shortly after 10:30 a.m. local time.
About 20 minutes earlier, a post on the online message board 8chan believed to be from the suspect laid out a dark vision of America overrun by Hispanic immigrants. The 2,300-word document, which police called a “manifesto,” was attached to a post that said, “I’m probably going to die today.”
The writing is filled with white nationalist language and racist hatred aimed at immigrants and Latinos. It blames immigrants and first-generation Americans for taking away jobs.
The writer cited a fear that an influential Hispanic population in Texas would make the state a “Democratic stronghold,” though he said “the Republican Party is also terrible,” because the GOP is in his mind pro-corporation, which could lead to more immigration.
The writer of the document said they had held these beliefs for years before Donald Trump was elected President.
It took less than a month to plan the shooting, the author says.
The mass shooting happened in one of the largest and safest cities on the US-Mexico border, a place central to the Trump administration’s hardline stance on immigration and a city that Rep. Cesar Blanco called “ground zero” of the administration’s family separations policy.
El Paso County had an estimated population of 840,000 people as of July 2018, according to the US Census Bureau. An estimated 83% were Hispanic or Latino.
Saturday’s shooting is at least the third atrocity this year where a shooting suspect is thought to have posted to 8chan in advance of an attack.
Before the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March, an account believed to belong to the gunman posted a link to an 87-page white nationalist manifesto on Twitter and 8chan.
And 73 minutes before the deadly shooting at Congregation Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, in April, someone identifying himself as the suspect in that attack posted a link to a hate-speech-filled manifesto hyperlinked on 8chan.
A week bookended by shootings
The El Paso shooting was one of several that happened across the country over the last eight days. It was followed just 13 hours later by another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio.
At least nine people were killed and at least 26 were injured in a popular nightclub district by a lone gunman, identified as 24-year-old Connor Betts. Dayton Police said the suspect is dead.
Last Sunday, a 19-year-old gunman wearing tactical gear opened fire at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California, killing three people, including a 6-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl.
And gunfire erupted Tuesday at another neighborhood Walmart in Mississippi, killing two employees and wounding a police officer. At least 34 people were left dead across all four scenes.
The first call of an active shooter in El Paso went out at 10:39 a.m. local time, El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said. The first officer arrived on scene at the Walmart near the Cielo Vista Mall six minutes later.
Adria Gonzalez was walking by the meat section on a Saturday morning shopping trip with her mom when she heard the shots.
She said she stepped up to see what was happening and that’s when she saw the shooter near the main entrance, wearing headphones or earmuffs and carrying a gun.
“I could only think about getting my mom and others out of the store,” she said. “We gotta get out of here.”
After she saw the shooter, Gonzalez said she saw a grade-school aged boy get shot in the leg, a man bleeding on the floor and another man, covered in blood, reaching for a nearby child.
“We heard two to three shots, four to five shots, then six to seven shots,” Gonzalez told CNN.
She and her mother took off — along with about 40 other people, Gonzalez said. They waited in a storage area of the store until they no longer heard the gunfire.
“You see this happening in the movies, but when you live it yourself, when you see a person killing, the blood everywhere, you are in shock,” she said.
‘I never knew there was an odor to blood’
Officials from two local hospitals said they had received at least 24 people.
Thirteen people were taken to University Medical Center of El Paso, spokesman Ryan Mielke told CNN, and one of them has died. Two children with non-life-threatening injuries were transferred to a children’s medical facility, Mielke said.
Eleven victims were transported to the Del Sol Medical Center, Dr. Stephen Flaherty said.
Eight are in stable condition and three are in critical condition, and the patients ranged in age from 35 to 82, he said.
Of the 20 killed, three were Mexican nationals, according to a tweet from President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Of the 26 injured, six were Mexican, Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard wrote on Twitter.
“The ages and genders of all these people injured and killed are numerous in the age groups,” Allen, the police chief, said Saturday. “The situation, needless to say, is a horrific one.”
The next day, when asked why he used the word “horrific” to describe the scene, Allen told reporters, “There’s not words you can place to say something like that. You have to see it for yourself.”
“When I first got to this job,” he said, “I never knew there was an odor to blood, but there is … I can’t tell you what it means … It will leave an impression that you’ll never forget.”
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