“The responsibility for Kirk’s killing, as in basically all acts of political violence, does not flow “directly” from political rhetoric, no matter how vile, but rather from the finger of the sniper; motives and mental state to hopefully be determined later. And all of Trump’s cited examples of violence were left-wingers targeting either conservatives or businessmen or law enforcement; nothing about the assassination this June of Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman (D–Brooklyn Park), no word about the 2022 skull-fracturing home-invasion hammer-attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul (which Trump has serially joked about); and certainly full radio silence on the multiple assaults on law enforcement committed by Trump’s own supporters on January 6, 2021.
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“The Left is the party of murder,” Elon Musk wrote. Fox host Jesse Watters on Wednesday asserted that, “They are at war with us. Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it?” Self-described “Libertarian, GMU Econ, Writer and Think Tanker” Simon Laird declared, “I’m done with de-escalation. I’m done with compromise,” adding: “Killing a few dozen Federal judges and New York Times journalists would have an effect. I’m not calling for violence at this time, but I’m done with the idea that violence is not an option on the negotiation table.”
The above is people on the right hypocritically and falsely claiming that “the left” was responsible for this murder while implying that further murders against people who had nothing to do with Kirk’s death would be justified.
Charlie Kirk was a gifted Trump activist. He often said things that were false and misleading. He propagandistically supported Trump and Trump’s falsehoods while maligning the left and trans people. Whatever he said and supported, his murder is an outrage. Political violence is unacceptable. The perpetrators need to be prosecuted, and those who encouraged or celebrated this heinous assassination should be criticized for their indirect support of murder. Political violence is more than normal violence. It is an attack on democracy and tears at the fabric of society.
Prominent people on the right are using this horrible murder to falsely blame Democrats and the entire left. They falsely claim all of the right is under attack, subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, encouraging more violence. While, of course, ignoring the times people on the left are attacked and murdered.
“Social media platforms have birthed viral rumors for more than a decade, but in recent years some online platforms have shifted radically away from content moderation and fact-checking while monetarily incentivizing viral posting. After Musk bought Twitter, which he renamed X, the service reinstated many previously banned users, stopped enforcing some rules about hateful content and began sharing revenue with users if they get engagement. This year, Instagram and Facebook’s parent company, Meta, stopped fact-checking in the United States. Meta is rolling out a crowdsourced “community notes” system, like a system on X in which users submit their own addenda to other users’ posts, which other users then vote on. Use of the system on X has plummeted since the beginning of this year, according to an NBC News analysis. X didn’t respond to a request for comment on the conspiracy theories on its app.
Now, the apps are fertile ground for hoaxes and unconfirmed accusations to spread, experts said.
“The design of social media platforms facilitates and even incentivizes this kind of rumoring and political point-scoring in the wake of crisis events,” Kate Starbird, a professor and co-founder at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, said in an email.
“Some of the most prominent accounts on X gained their audiences by strategically posting breaking news content with a political angle for clicks and follows,” Starbird said.
Even though federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Boelter, Republicans continued to spread the seemingly false narrative Monday.”
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““There’s this rush to create the first narrative, and this is really crucial if you want to spread misinformation. And it’s not very difficult, because it will always take more time for the real information to come out,” he said.
“Once the narrative takes hold, it’s very, very difficult to debunk,” he said.”
“Kits package together some unregulated parts. But the mechanism that makes a gun go “bang” is regulated and must either pass through the same channels as a commercially manufactured firearm or else be constructed from scratch or from unfinished blanks. That’s not necessarily difficult, but it means there’s really no magic legislative wand that can be waved to make DIY guns disappear.
After the high-profile assassination of a political figure in 2022, Reuters’ Ju-min Park and Daniel Leussink reported, “the man suspected of killing former Japanese premier Shinzo Abe with a hand-made gun on Friday could have made the weapon in a day or two after obtaining readily available materials such as wood and metal pipes, analysts say. The attack showed gun violence cannot be totally eliminated even in a country where tough gun laws mean it is nearly unheard of for citizens to buy or own firearms.”
The weapon the assassin used in Japan was a crude but effective two-shot firearm that looked more like an old-fashioned zip gun than the 3D-printed pistol used to kill Thompson. But while not pretty, it was just as effective.
In 2019, TheFirearmBlog published a retrospective pointing out that during the zip gun heyday in the 1950s, “a mechanically inclined youngster might upon obtaining ammunition, most often widely available .22 rimfire, find that such rounds will fit into a section of suitably sized steel tubing, often a section of the salvaged car radio antenna. From then on it is a simple matter of fabricating a means of striking the rear of the cartridge while ensuring the entire assembly is held firmly together.” The article included photographs of homemade firearms discovered in the tightly controlled confines of prisons, crafted by inmates from found materials including pipes and plumbing fittings.”
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“A 2018 Small Arms Survey report on improvised and craft-produced weapons noted that such “weapons have been manufactured for as long as firearms have existed, typically by hand or in small workshops.” Among the weapons manufactured by craft producers, the authors noted, are “mortars, recoilless guns, and grenade launchers.”
Revisiting the subject last year in the context of Europe, Small Arms Survey noted that evolving technologies make it much easier to share plans for privately manufactured firearms and to create sophisticated devices at home without specialized skills.”
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“In September, Lizzie Dearden and Thomas Gibbons-Neff wrote for The New York Times about the worldwide proliferation of designs for the FGC-9, a partially 3D-printed weapon that can “be built entirely from scratch, without commercial gun parts, which are often regulated and tracked by law enforcement agencies internationally.”
As one expert told the reporters: “Now you have something that people can make at home with unregulated components. So from a law enforcement perspective, how do you stop that?””
LC: Yes, some people will always be able to build their own deadly weapons. But, most people can’t or won’t. Most gun deaths are from people who have the deadly weapon because it is easily accessible, not because they were determined to build the weapon by whatever means necessary.
“Mangione never mentioned being covered by or angry with United Healthcare specifically in any social media, according to multiple reports. But Samadani, who treats patients with spondylolisthesis, notes that many insurers require patients to undergo six to 12 weeks of physical therapy before the companies will agree to cover surgery or even imaging to diagnose the condition. And for someone with severe spondylolisthesis, physical therapy can be “excruciating” and won’t necessarily help, she adds. “It’s sort of like a torture, a mandatory torture imposed by the insurance company,” Samadani says.
And that’s if they are treated at all. Samadani says she’s seen multiple young patients who were initially turned away by doctors who didn’t believe they could have chronic back pain. “In the case of this particular kid, my guess is that he was in massive pain,” she says.”
“Luigi Mangione appeared carefree while enjoying a trip across Asia just months before he allegedly gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, suggesting he suffered a rapid unraveling in the lead-up to the brazen slaying.
One of a pair of friends who were vacationing across Asia told TMZ that they met 26-year-old Mangione by chance at a Muay Thai fight in Krabi, Thailand in April of this year. The trio quickly hit it off and decided to travel together.
After exploring Krabi together, the group parted ways when Mangione went to Phuket, while the pair of friends visited Malaysia. But they later reconnected for a road trip across Thailand, stopping off in Khao Sok and Bangkok, according to TMZ.
All the while, the source told TMZ, the software engineer did not show any signs of being a cold-blooded killer—in fact, he seemed like the typical young man enjoying the chance to explore a different country.
The source’s characterization of Mangione as a “super friendly, communicative, and open” person aligns with other accounts from people who had encountered the Ivy League graduate before he entered the public eye this week.”
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“There have been some signs, though, that in the months leading up to the shooting Mangione took a dark turn. His social media presence has revealed a suite of health struggles—as well as a penchant for radical political and social texts, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto.
Loved ones had expressed concern about Mangione on social media days before the murder, and The New York Post reported that his mother filed a missing-persons report for him last month.”
““I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy?””
“Luigi Mangione, the man charged with murder in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, seemed to support Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appeared to harbor frustrations with the medical field, and expressed skepticism toward both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, deleted X posts show.
Mangione, a 26-year-old software developer who reportedly fell out of touch with friends and family after back surgery last year, reposted Edward Snowden’s suggestion that Democrats should nominate Kennedy for president following Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June.”