The Mass Shooting Blame Game – WSJ

We ve supported immigration longer than Mr. Schumer has been in Congress, and politicians should be careful in their rhetoric. But note his logic of massacre causation: Political opposition to unchecked immigration, or support for ballot integrity and American values, drove Payton Gendron to kill 10 African-Americans at a Buffalo supermarket. Oh, and Mr. Schumer also threw in Fox News (where we have a TV show) as fellow travelers in domestic terrorism.

Mr. Gendron did descend into some ideological rabbit hole, but he also may be mentally ill. He had spoken about shooting up his high school, perhaps at graduation. The school referred him to the police, who referred him for mental counseling. But he claimed to have been lost in the healthcare maze, and he was allowed to buy a gun. One question that should be asked is why so many adults failed to act to protect the community from a young man at an age when mental illness so often strikes.

As for his manifesto, it is clearly full of racist and anti-Semitic ranting. But it s also full of other rants against conservatives, for eco-fascism. They are the incoherent product of a deeply troubled mind. The idea that Mr. Gendron was driven to mass murder by the anti-immigration Facebook ads of Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik is preposterous.

The media s massacre blame-game also goes only one way. When a deranged black man ran down white grandmothers at a Waukesha, Wis., holiday parade, the media soon turned away from the awful story. President Biden didn t show up and claim America is at risk of losing its democracy, as he did in Buffalo on Tuesday.

via www.wsj.com