The suspect in the Boulder shooting that left 10 people dead including a cop has been identified as Ahmad al-Aliwi Alissa. Daily Camera. Alissa allegedly opened fire at people at a King Soopers grocery store. Police engaged him with Alissa killing one of the officers before being injured and captured. He has been charged with 10 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder and if convicted would face life in prison. No motive has been released for the attack.
Heavy has more information on the suspect. Alissa was described as paranoid and very defensive of his Muslim faith. He was also convicted for assault for attacking a class mate in high school, but it was only a misdemeanor. He was also an immigrant from Syria and regularly posted anti-Trump posts on Facebook.
My Comment:
I wasn't going to comment on this case as I do believe that coverage of mass shootings encourages them. Indeed, I think the coverage of the Atlanta shootings may have inspired these attacks. Though I have heard rumors that Alissa was planning previous attacks, I haven't been able to confirm these. With no motive being released we can only speculate.
But I do think that the coverage of this case was newsworthy itself, not only for the shameful way the media handled this case but for the obvious possible impact on our gun rights this case may have. In a perfect world cases like this would remain local stories without long term coverage but that is not the world we live in.
The reaction to this case was extremely racists. There were a lot of journalists and other blue check marks on Twitter that were blaming this attack on white people. Middle Eastern Muslims are not central examples of white people. People were saying that white people were a major threat and that Alissa was captured instead of killed (even though he was shot) because he was "white".
That narrative lasted for about a day. When it was found out that Alissa was a Syrian refugee a lot of tweets got deleted and people had to eat crow. Some doubled down of course but it's clear in all cases that a lot of people used this attack to express their obvious racism.
Though the motive has not been released it's clear that this wasn't a right wing terror attack. Alissa was a Muslim and apparently a fairly extreme one. And he was an anti-Trump activist as well and blamed racism for all of his problems. He is not a right winger at all and though the motive hasn't been released it's probably either Islamic or Woke in nature.
Immigration is an issue here as well. There is pretty much no reason for Alissa to be in this country in the first place. He and his family came here in the late 90's from Syria at a time when Syria was not the hellhole it is now thanks to Obama's Arab Spring. Had we had a better immigration system this attack never would have occurred.
The biggest threat of this attack is gun control legislation. A couple of bills have passed congress and will be considered in the Senate concerning background checks and now there are efforts to ban "assault weapons" and standard capacity magazines. Joe Biden has also said that he might make an executive order on guns.
The good news here is that those gun laws are unlikely to pass. Senator Joe Manchin has already said he will not support the background check bills. With those less serious bills DOA it would be insane to me if the Democrats somehow got the 60 votes they needed to pass a bill or even the 50 votes they need if the blew up the filibuster.
Biden is a bit of a more serious problem. My fear is that he might issue an executive order reclassifying AR pistols since that is what Alissa used. I don't think that will happen as Biden is both senile and incompetent but it is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.
Long term though I think this incident will be forgotten quickly. It went against the narrative that the Democrats and media were trying to fabricate and the desire for gun control is mostly non-existent. After all, 2020 was the best argument against gun control in existence. Pushing new laws is a lose lose for the Democrats as if they win it's a civil war and even if they fail they will probably lose the house and senate in the 2022 midterms. Not only will the right be extremely motivated to punish the left for even attempting this b.s. the few leftists that actually support this garbage will be furious with them for failing. If they were smart they would memory hole this entire effort as soon as possible.
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