The 21-year-old who murdered ten people at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado has been identified as Ahmad Al Issa. He is a refugee from Syria who came to the U.S. as a child. Based on what has emerged so far, Al Issa had anger issues and a paranoid streak. He might have been a paranoid schizophrenic, but so far nothing has emerged that suggests he was insane in a legal sense.
Al Issa’s social media accounts have now been deleted (by whom?). But based on screen shots that were taken before they disappeared, he was a virulent Trump-hater who swallowed the Left’s “racism” narrative:
Ahmad al-Issa, the suspect in the #Boulder, Colo. mass shooting, has had his social media removed. What posts some manage to see & screenshot show he identified as a Muslim & had grievances against Trump, US refugee settlement & Islamophobia. https://t.co/Xa5omrbRY2
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) March 23, 2021
More:
Suspect's now-removed Facebook page. pic.twitter.com/XCqh2TsyPa
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 23, 2021
There has been some suggestion that Al Issa may have been on the FBI’s radar as a potential terrorist or associate of terrorist sympathizers. More will likely emerge about this in the weeks to come:
NYT: “The suspect’s identity was previously known to the F.B.I. because he was linked to another individual under investigation by the bureau, according to law enforcement officials.”
https://t.co/oI6hJVN1cs— Kerry Picket (@KerryPicket) March 23, 2021
Now that the white supremacist angle hasn’t worked out, liberals will use the Boulder murders to justify more gun laws. Al Issa apparently bought the rifle that he used in the shootings a matter of days before the murders. It is not surprising that he was able to buy a firearm, since as far as we know he had no felonies on his record and had not been judged incompetent or confined for mental illness. As usual, the refrain of “expanded background checks” proves pointless.
Joe Biden has already called for a ban on “assault rifles,” presumably because the one that was enacted in the 1990s worked so well. An “assault rifle” is semi-automatic, like many rifles sold nowadays, and like the large majority of pistols. Those classified as “assault weapons” are usually relatively low-power rifles and are distinguished by features that people who know nothing about firearms consider scary, like barrel shrouds.
According to FBI data, rifles remain among the most unpopular of all murder weapons, ranking well below knives, blunt objects and bare hands. Nevertheless, we are in for another tiresome round of fruitless “assault rifle” hysteria.
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