County sheriff says they weren’t at First Baptist at the time of Sunday’s massacre
Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackitt Jr. told CNN Monday that Devin Patrick Kelley’s former in-laws have attended First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, although they weren’t in church Sunday morning.
.. Kelley had been denied a license to carry a firearm in Texas, the state official said. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told CNN that Kelley was still able to buy a high-powered rifle from an Academy Sports and Outdoors store in San Antonio.
.. Kelley was court-martialed in 2012 for two counts of assault on his spouse and on their child. He was given a bad conduct discharge, confined for a year and reduced to the rank of E-1.
Fake News Fills Information Vacuum in Wake of Las Vegas Shooting
False information on the 4chan website made it to the top of Google search results before being debunked.
As law enforcement and news organizations raced to piece together what happened during the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history Sunday night in Las Vegas, web denizens less wedded to the truth rushed in to provide details of their own—which quickly went viral.
Links to the 4chan website that falsely identified the shooter and called him a leftist and Democratic supporter were showing up on the top of Google search results, according to tweets by Buzzfeed News reporter, Ryan Broderick. Conservative writer Joe Hoft pounced, publishing and then retracting an article about the misidentified man. Police later identified a different person, Stephen Paddock, as the shooter.
.. A few hours later, searches for the same name were showing articles debunking the 4chan post and cataloguing the trail of viral fake news after the shooting. Once police identified Paddock, accounts on Twitter and Facebook began claiming he was part of the leftist group Antifa.
The Washington Post Seeks a Right-Wing Scapegoat for Left-Wing Violence
Spend much time in left-wing circles — especially the kind of deep-blue progressive urban centers that produce our nation’s mainstream media — and you’ll find a sincere, abiding fear that “angry white-wing rhetoric” is on the verge of spurring a wave of murder and violence. I’ve had multiple conversations with otherwise smart people who are just convinced that people like my Rush Limbaugh–listening friends and neighbors are so seething with rage that they’re a hair’s breadth from snapping.
.. At the same time, many of these same folks are utterly unconcerned with the effects of angry left-wing rhetoric. Politician after politician can accuse Republicans of killing people with their health-care plan, and that’s just “speaking truth to power.” When Hillary Clinton calls Republicans the “death party,” then that’s just the #Resistance in action. When left-wing riots break out across the land, then the resulting chaos is glossed-over as “mostly peaceful” protest.
.. There is, in fact, a problem with far-left violence, and the roots of that rage should be explored with at least the same energy the media devotes to perceived right-wing threats.
What do many mass shooters have in common? A history of domestic violence.
Take violence against women seriously. It’s a red flag.
There is one thing, though, that an alarming number of the recent mass shooters in the United States share: A history of aggression and violence toward women. Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people in the horrific massacre at Virginia Tech in 2007, had been previously investigated for stalking two female classmates. Elliot Rodger, who killed six and wounded 13 in Isla Vista, Calif., in 2014, was obsessed with perceived rejection by women, and not long before the shooting had thrown coffee on two women at a bus stop because they failed to smile at him... Hodgkinson fits the same pattern. In 2006, police records show, Hodgkinson went to his neighbor’s house looking for his daughter and forced his way into the home, using “bodily force to damage” a door. A police narrative on file with the St. Clair County, Ill., Sheriff’s Department says witnesses said he grabbed his daughter by the hair, chased her to their neighbor’s car and used a knife to cut her seat belt off so he could pull her out. Police records say he also punched his neighbor in the face after she told him she would call 911... Hodgkinson appeared in court and had screaming outbursts that caused him to be removed. Nonetheless, the judge apparently dismissed his case after a witness accidentally failed to appear at a rescheduled hearing... at least 54 percent of mass shootings — or 85 out of 156 incidents — involved a current or former intimate partner or family member as a victim... domestic violence is a form of violence, just one that we don’t always take as seriously as other kinds.. People who are likely to act violently often start with those nearest to them, who are vulnerable due to proximity, and who are often financially, emotionally or legally dependent on their abuser.