Eight people were killed one person was injured in series of shootings targeting three Asian massage parlors in Atlanta. Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A suspect, 21 year old Robert Aaron Long, was arrested for the attacks. Surveillance footage showed Long at the three different sites. The victims were mostly Asian women with a white woman and white man also being killed while the one wounded person was a Hispanic male. No motive has been released for the crime.
My Comment:
This shooting seems more than a little convenient for the left. They have been trying to push both gun control and the idea that racism against Asians is on the rise and coming from white males. Though I don't want to suggest anything I don't understand why such an attack would occur just when the left was making a big deal out of this. It could even be that the guy heard the media and decided that "hey this is a good idea, why not?" I remain convinced that media coverage, more than any other factor, is the reason why mass shootings happen.
There could be a million and one reasons for this attack and I won't speculate too much other than listing the possible options. The least likely is racism as far as I am concerned. Very few people hate Asians and those that do tend to be inner city blacks. I honestly have never heard anyone be out and out racist against Asians and it's not like there weren't given opportunities. Such bigotry could certainly be possible but if it is the motive it would be fairly unprecedented.
It's also possible that the guy had some grudge against women instead of Asians. That seems possible as the picture of the suspect doesn't look like someone who had much success in that area. Still, it doesn't make much sense why he would target Asian massage parlors.
As far as political messages I have no idea. It's possible that these massage parlors were not legitimate (or the suspect assumed that they were not) and this was an attack on prostitution. It could be an anti-immigration thing but again, I don't think too many people are upset with Asian immigrants. I also don't think it was a Republican vs Democrat thing as the target doesn't make sense for that.
Finally, it could just be a random attack. That seems pretty unlikely considered he targeted multiple locations, that usually doesn't happen in a random attack. This seems like it was planned. It might have been something as simple as a personal dispute with these massage parlors. We will likely find out soon enough, as I am assuming that this story will be a major one.
The left will almost certainly exploit this tragedy to push their agenda, most notably gun control. The gun control issue should be dead nationally after the 2020 series of disaster and only a major shooting could give them any momentum at all. I still don't think anything major will pass but it could give them enough support to ban the private sale of firearms.
It's also clear that the narrative that Asians are suffering from a massive wave of hate crimes committed by whites, which isn't supported by the crime statistics, is going to be supported by this attack. That narrative is so dishonest that I am surprised that the Democrats have been going with it. My guess is that this is an effort to shore up the Democratic coalition as Asian Americans have been wavering. Asians have been fairly furious about affirmative action, which actively discriminates against them.
There has also been major tension between the Asian American and African American communities. This dates back as far as the Rodney King Riots and actually has shown up in the crime statistics. There have been several high profile attacks against Asian Americans committed by blacks but that is a very inconvenient fact for the left.
Time will tell how this narrative will play out. Without further information about this attack it's unclear what the media spin will be. If the attacker was motivated by anti-Asian racism (which is certainly possible) expect it to be a huge story about racism. If he used an assault rifle expect a major gun control push. If he hated women expect a feminism push. And if he had some other motive and used non-AR weapons? Expect this story to disappear soon...
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