Three injured during shooting at Youtube.

Three people have been injured at Youtube headquarters in San Francisco, California. New York Times. The attacker was a woman who killed herself after shooting the three victims, one man and two women. Another person was injured fleeing from the scene. The attacker used a pistol and not a rifle. The idenity of the attacker and her motives have not been released. 

Youtube employees walk away from the scene of the violence. New York Times

My Comment:

Not a lot of information about this incident. Other outlets are saying this was a domestic dispute with strikes me as odd. If it was, why did the woman shoot three people instead of one? They are saying the male was the target of the attack, so why shoot the other women? Maybe expecting rational, logical behavior from a person that shot three people and then killed herself is too much to ask but even for that it seems very strange.  EDIT: This initial reporting was incorrect, the attacker had no relationship with any of the victims and was in fact a YouTube content creator who was angry about monetization of her videos. 

This case is odd in other ways as well. For one thing this was one of the rare cases of a mass shooting conducted by a woman, though I don't know if actually qualifies as only the shooter died and three people got hurt. Still, mass shootings committed by women are extremely rare with the most notable ones being the San Bernardino attack and the Cleveland Elementary School shooting back in 1979. Women attackers are rare but they aren't unheard of. Still, it's rare enough to merit discussion. 

Though I don't really believe the idea that women are less violent than men, they are pretty rare when it comes to mass shootings. In general, when women kill it is by poison, not shooting. However, domestic situations, which this apparently was, are one of the more likely situations where women can be violent. Unfortunately, women are just as capable of violence as men.

I have to mention that this attack kind of rocks the narrative that the left was going with after the Parkland shooting in Florida. This attack wasn't because of "Toxic Masculinity", a woman did it. It also wasn't committed by someone with a scary black rifle but with a pistol. And it happened in a gun free zone in a state with the toughest gun laws in the country. I am guessing that due to those factors, and the fact that nobody died, means that this story will go away very quickly. 

That being said, when I first heard the news that there was a mass shooting at Youtube I was scared that this was some kind of political attack. Youtube has angered the gun rights community fairly significantly by imposing restrictions on gun content on Youtube. My fear was that this was in response to that, which would be horrible for everyone involved. The parent company of Youtube, Google, which also hosts this blog, has been involved in some controversies as well, and I also feared that this might be in retaliation for that. 

Thankfully that wasn't the case. Instead of a political attack this seems very likely to not be that. This is a very good thing because nobody is helped by that kind of political terrorism. Not that a domestic dispute that ended with three people hurt and the attacker dead is a good thing, but a political terrorism attack at a major tech company is one of my fears. Just the other day I was thinking that something like this could happen, but thankfully, it didn't.