The Boys Are Not All Right

It is ghastly, yet true: Mass shootings are becoming so common that it now feels like a surprise if we can make it through three months without one. Now, Americans are reeling from not one, but three within the week.

July 28, Gilroy, CA: Three killed and more injured at the Gilroy Garlic Festival before the perpetrator turned the gun on himself.

Last Saturday morning, El Paso, TX: Twenty killed and over two dozen injured outside a Walmart. Age of youngest victim: 4 months old.

Sunday morning, in Dayton, OH: Nine killed and at least twenty-seven injured. Among the victims, the shooter’s own sister.

The brutal succession of shootings is prompting renewed reflection on the past spring’s killings in Christchurch and the Poway synagogue, as white nationalist terrorism is the through-line from those killings to El Paso in particular. Posts were found by the perpetrator on 8chan celebrating the Christchurch killer, echoing Poway copycat John Earnest. In his own manifesto, he explicitly draws a line between the Muslim “invasion” of New Zealand and the Hispanic “invasion” of his home state. He drove nine hours to El Paso from his family home in Allen, TX, to “kill as many Hispanics as possible.”