Tag: mass shootings

Prominent Investigative Reporter Who Spearheaded Coverage of 2017 Las Vegas Massacre Found Dead Outside His Home

Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German was found stabbed to death outside of his home over the weekend and his killer remains at large.

Newsroom colleagues mourned his passing.

“The Review-Journal family is devastated to lose Jeff,” Executive Editor Glenn Cook said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “He was the gold standard of the news business. It’s hard to imagine what Las Vegas would be like today without his many years of shining a bright light on dark places.”

German was noted for a wide range of investigative reports about crime in Las Vegas, and also took a lead role in the Review-Journal’s coverage of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting.

Police said they were devoting maximum resources to find a suspect in the German slaying.

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Thirty Six Percent of Mass Shooters Were Trained by the U.S. Military, But Few Americans Know This Because the Media Never Report It

In the wake of a barrage of mass shootings, the media have offered a variety of explanations centering predominantly on the social isolation and mental illness of shooters and their easy access to military-style weaponry due to lax gun regulations.

These factors are significant but almost all media pundits avoid the gorilla sitting in the psyche of the American mind—that of the huge military budget and culture of military veneration, which is reminiscent of fascist cultures.

In a July 8 column entitled “Why Shooters Do the Evil They Do,” New York Times columnist David Brooks characteristically cites mental illness, loneliness and the need for recognition and power as lying at the root of recent mass shootings.

What is missing is any discussion of American-style militarism, something Brooks has whitewashed throughout his writing career.

According to David Swanson, Director of World Beyond War, 36% of mass shooters have been trained by the U.S. military—when only one percent of Americans serve in the military.

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How the FBI Undercounts Armed Citizen Responders to Mass Killers — and Media Play Along

The shooting that killed three people and injured another at a Greenwood, Indiana, mall on July 17 drew broad national attention because of how it ended – when 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, carrying a licensed handgun, fatally shot the attacker.

While Dicken was praised for his courage and skill – squeezing off his first shot 15 seconds after the attack began, from a distance of 40 yards – much of the news coverage drew from FBI-approved statistics to assert that armed citizens almost never stop such attackers: “Rare in US for an active shooter to be stopped by bystander” (Associated Press); “Rampage in Indiana a rare instance of armed civilian ending mass shooting” (Washington Post); and “After Indiana mall shooting, one hero but no lasting solution to gun violence” (New York Times). 

Evidence compiled by the organization I run, the Crime Prevention Research Center, and others suggest that the FBI undercounts by an order of more than three the number of instances in which armed citizens have thwarted such attacks, saving untold numbers of lives. Although those many news stories about the Greenwood shooting also suggested that the defensive use of guns might endanger others, there is no evidence that these acts have harmed innocent victims.

“So much of our public understanding of this issue is malformed by this single agency,” notes Theo Wold, former acting assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice. “When the Bureau gets it so systematically – and persistently – wrong, the cascading effect is incredibly deleterious. The FBI exerts considerable influence over state and local law enforcement and policymakers at all levels of government.”

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The Same FBI That Just Raided Trump Ignored Hundreds of Child Rape Victims and Warnings of Mass Shooters

Former president Donald Trump announced on Monday that his that his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida was “under siege, raided, and occupied” by federal agents taking part in an “unannounced raid.” The raid was conducted over allegations that Trump unlawfully removed and destroyed classified White House records after he left office in January 2021.

In February, the National Archives and Records Administration confirmed it had found 15 boxes of classified material at Trump’s home, all of which was reportedly taken from the White House.

The case is similar in kind to the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton in 2016, in which classified emails turned up during an investigation into Anthony Weiner’s sexting of a 15-year-old girl from NC. Weiner is Huma Abedin’s estranged husband and Abedin was one of Clinton’s closest confidants involved in the scandal and owned the home in which many of the classified emails were located.

Nothing would ever come of the investigation into Clinton, however, and the same will likely be true for Trump. Nevertheless, the sheer man hours devoted to such acts of political grandstanding are notable given the seeming lack of these hours devoted to investigating child sex trafficking and mass shooters.

As TFTP reported at the time, less than six weeks before the Parkland shooting, someone the FBI described as “a person close to” to the shooter, reached out to the agency and desperately pleaded for their help. The person reported the Parkland shooter’s “gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting.”

Instead of investigating the tip, the FBI later admitted that its agents failed to “follow protocols,” and did not follow up. But this was not the first time the FBI received reports of the Parkland shooter’s violent threats.

In September 2017, the mass murdering teen left a comment on a YouTube video that said, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” The user who uploaded the video immediately took a screenshot of the comment and submitted it to the FBI. While agents from a local field officer were quick to respond and followed up with an in-person interview, they never fully followed through with an investigation into the shooter.

The Parkland shooter also left comments on YouTube videos claiming that he was “going to kill law enforcement one day,” which should have added to the red flags that would have led to an investigation. But nothing happened.

In similar fashion — leading to the suffering of countless children — multiple agents within the FBI not only failed to investigate but knew about the rampant sex abuse of hundreds of children in the USA Gymnastics program and looked the other way.

The FBI knew about the abuse and allowed the depraved child predator, Larry Nassar, to continue preying on little girls for more than a year after finding out.

According to a report from the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Indianapolis FBI office facilitated this abuse as it violated agency procedures, made false statements and exhibited “extremely poor judgment” in the handling of 2015 sexual abuse allegations against Nassar.

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Alex Jones and the Right to Offend

On Dec. 14, 2012, a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut resulted in the deaths of 20 children and six staffers.  Alex Jones, a controversial far-right talk show host, called the Sandy Hook massacre a U.S. government hoax, staged using crisis actors, to serve as a pretext for gun control.  Parents of one of the slain children filed a defamation suit against Jones, claiming that followers of Jones had harassed them and sent them death threats for years in the false belief that they were lying about their son’s death.

Jones’s defense was his right to free speech and that he was not responsible for the harassment.  He lost.  The jury awarded the parents $45.2 million in punitive damages on top of $4.1 million in compensatory damages — another example of outrageous damage verdicts that plague the legal system.

Freedom of speech is coming under attack from all directions.  The primary assault is based on the existence of a new “right”: the right not to be offended.  It is claimed by many on the left that the right not to be offended is more important than the right to free expression.

Our colleges and universities have fallen victim to this new “right.”  The feelings of students often constitute sufficient justification for campus censorship.  If a conservative speaker offends some of the students, that speaker can be denied a platform.  “The belief that free speech rights don’t include the right to speak offensively is now firmly entrenched on campuses and enforced by repressive speech or harassment codes,” wrote attorney Wendy Kaminer in The Atlantic.

The problem is spreading to the mainstream.  In the 2010 case of Nurre v. Whitehead, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings that school authorities can deny students’ rights to free speech just to keep other students from being offended.  The courts are “allowing schools the discretion to let an offended minority control a cowed majority,” constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead wrote in the Huffington Post.  “There is no way to completely avoid giving offense,” he said.  “At some time or other, someone is going to take offense at something someone else says or does.  It’s inevitable.  Such politically correct thinking has resulted in a host of inane actions, from the Easter Bunny being renamed ‘Peter Rabbit’ to Christmas Concerts being dubbed ‘Winter’ Concerts.”

In a democratic republic, there can be no right not to be offended.  If anyone can prohibit another person’s speech because it’s offensive, there is no limit to the restrictions that can be placed on free expression.  As the late author Christopher Hitchens said, “[f]reedom of speech must include the license to offend.”

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Despite Strict Gun Control, California Had The Most Active Shooter Incidents In 2021: FBI

In a report issued by the FBI, California ranked first for the most active shooter incidents in 2021. The state has been in the top spot in three of the past five years.

According to the study, a total of 61 active shooter incidents occurred across 30 states last year with 103 people killed and 140 wounded. This is up from 40 incidents and 38 killed in 2020.

California had 6 incidents that claimed the lives of 19 people with 9 wounded. Texas and Georgia each had 5.

California, which has some of the strictest gun laws, saw 0.015 shootings per 100,000 people. Texas, which has very unrestrictive state gun laws, had nearly the same at 0.0167 per 100,000 people. Georgia had 0.045 per 100,000 people.

Criminal attorney Arash Hashemi told NTD, a sister outlet of The Epoch Times, that in his opinion there’s no easy answer to how gun laws should be handled.

“We need both sides to sit down and listen to what’s going on. I know one side says we need to ban guns, one side said there would be no regulation. But there needs to be a meeting of the minds in the middle,” Hashemi said.

California is moving ahead to implement more gun restrictions. The new state Senate Bill 918, which is currently on its way through the legislature, would ban the carrying of guns in most public areas, regardless of whether someone has a carry license or not.

However Hashemi suggested a slightly different approach. He said the Second Amendment can’t be violated, but he thinks certain people should be restricted from owning a firearm.

“I think California needs to implement these background checks but at the same time make sure they don’t infringe on people’s rights to bear arms,” Hashemi said.

He said vetting gun buyers for red flags like mental illness or psychiatric medication is important.

He added that the importance of the Second Amendment is to give the civilians of the United States a check on the government.

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Neo-Nazi Maniac Who Planned to Shoot Up Synagogue Was Given His Guns by Law Enforcement

Former U.S. Marine Matthew Belanger is a maniacal psychopath who reportedly belonged to a Neo-Nazi group called “Rapekrieg” which planned to carry out a mass shooting on a Synagogue. Kicked out of the Marine Corps over his affiliation with Neo-Nazis, Belanger was barred from purchasing firearms but that didn’t stop him from obtaining two of them.

Fortunately, Belanger was outed by a fellow member of the “Rapekrieg” group before he was able to commit mass murder. However, the details surrounding his case lay the groundwork for wild conspiracy theories — especially since it was a New York police officer who supplied Belanger with the guns to carry out the shooting.

An explosive article in Rolling Stone lays out Belanger’s story in shocking detail, up to and including the mission of the Rapekrieg Neo-Nazi group in which Belanger was a member and author of the group’s manifesto.

According to court documents, reported on by Rolling Stone, while he was in the Marine Corps, Belanger was plotting a killing spree against minorities and to rape “white women to increase the production of white children,” according to federal prosecutors.

In a July 14 court memo, federal prosecutors say that while a Marine, Belanger plotted far more serious crimes as part of the neo-Nazi group. The memo says Belanger trained with airsoft guns in the woods of Long Island as part of a plot to attack the “Zionist Order of Governments.” The memo also says Belanger was the subject of an FBI Joint Terrorism Taskforce investigation into allegedly plotting to “engage in widespread homicide and sexual assault.” Much of Belanger’s ideology and plotting, the memo says, is based around a desire to lessen the number of nonwhite Americans and to rape “white women to increase the production of white children.”

One would think that pursuing the mission of raping white women and murdering minorities would set off red flags for law enforcement and one would be right. Belanger was well known to law enforcement, according to court documents, but that didn’t stop law enforcement from illegally arming the racist Marine.

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10 Times a Good Guy With a Gun Saved Lives

Last weekend, a law-abiding citizen with a gun quickly ended a mass shooting in progress at an Indiana mall as soon as the gunman began firing. Less than three weeks after the state’s constitutional carry law took effect, the armed bystander, identified as 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, delivered the kill shot that stopped the active shooter who is accused of murdering three victims and wounding two others, including a little girl who suffered minor injuries.

Although it’s against Simon Property Group’s code of conduct for anyone to carry a weapon inside its shopping centers, local leadership was thankful the young man was “very proficient” with a pistol and took swift action regardless. Greenwood Police Chief Jim Ison told reporters at a news conference that “the real hero of the day is the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in that food court.” The city’s “grateful” Mayor Mark Myers praised the “good Samaritan” who “saved lives” during the Sunday shooting and prevented “further bloodshed.”

“Many people would have died” if not for Dicken responding within two minutes of the assailant opening fire on mall-goers, Ison noted, adding that the young man had no police training or military background.

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