The shooter was 12 when Trump was first elected. archive
This isn’t as easy as it seems. Apparently it’s not uncommon to register to vote in a closed primary like PA for the opposite party you prefer in order to dilute the vote for the candidate you don’t like by voting for the person running against them in the party. So he may be a “registered republican voter”, but that may be as a minor act of sabotage rather than his real politics.
E: what’s up with the rebuttals? “Yeah it happens but not really”? So it happens, but it couldn’t with this guy? If I’m wrong and he’s actually a Republican, great! But downvoting the possibility he registered the opposite of his beliefs isn’t gonna make it disappear.
Apparently it’s not uncommon
You know what’s incredibly more common? Being an actual Republican and voting in a Republican Primary.
Everyone loves a harmless conspiracy theory, but this theory is anything but. Unless the shooter specifically admitted to this conspiracy theory, peddling this bullshit is reckless. About as stupid as child molesters in pizza place basements that don’t exist.
Is it even more common to being a republican and assassinating the leader of the party? He “said” he was republican, but the shooting at republicans say otherwise. And i trust actions more than words. And the actions don’t get any more louder than that. Besides it does not matter one iota what Party he is affiliated with. The only thing that matters is the disappointment that he missed
The dislike for Trump crosses party affiliation and traditional right/left dichotomies. That is to say that there are A LOT of Republicans that dislike Trump and don’t see him as an ally, or see him as quite the opposite, in fact.
I’d point you to the assassin of John Lennon - he is/was a big Beatles fan but murdered John anyway because of who John became. That still doesn’t have anything to do with the parallel argument, in this case, of the likelihood that Mark was pretending to be a Beatles fan or not.
Actions do speak louder than words - this would-be assassin registered as a Republican. The conspiracy theory that he was trying to affect a Primary makes no sense based on timing alone, let alone there not being an iota of evidence indicating he wasn’t a Republican. Republicans created the environment for this kid to do what he attempted to do and they should own up to their culpability rather than rely on bots and useful idiots to blame everyone but themselves for this problem.
That is almost entirely a myth. Yes, there are ‘cross over votes’ in states that don’t have open primaries but facilitate party enrollment, but those cross over voters are almost always ‘independent’ voters who enroll and then unenroll and are not doing anything other than voting for the candidate of their choice in the primary that candidate is running in. So called ‘strategic voting’, as far as I know, has never made any difference in any presidential primary, but go ahead and bring up the bodies.
It’s not for presidential races.
Its for state level races where you’re in one of the 40+ states where it’s a forgone conclusion what party wins the general.
So some people give up their presidential primary vote, to vote in the state level primaries for the party virtually guaranteed to win their state, then vote for their preferred party in the general even if their candidate won the primary for the other party
You might not think it’s common, but it’s the only way a lot of people’s votes have any actual effect, so lots of people do it
I would agree with the theory (as I’ve personally witnessed people registering for opposing party to wreck havoc there internally), BUT: I rarely came across hardcore gun-loving Democrat, watching NRA-related content.
This definitely happens, though it’s not remotely as common as just voting for your preferred party in the primary.
A friend and I both voted Republican in a primary a couple years ago. The Democratic lineup wasn’t interesting and it was obvious who was going to win on it. Quite frankly our votes didn’t matter much there. But the GOP contenders were a mixed bag of semi-moderates and MAGA bootlickers. We felt it was most important to keep the Trumpy psychos out of the general election, so we voted against them.
In a way I think it was the right call at the time. On the other hand, I get a lot of SMS spam to my number now from scammy pro-Trump sources. Of course I report those to the FTC every time, but it’s still gross.
Some articles (like this one from USA Today have mentioned that in '21 he made a small donation to the Progressive Turnout Project, and it’s interesting that that’s missing from this article. Did it turn out to not be true or did they purposefully omit that?
I’m from Yurop so I don’t even pretend to understand the election system in the US let alone PA, but I’ve seen some comments that led me to understand that he could well be a Democrat even though he was a “registered Republican” because there might not even be good D candidates for him to vote for in PA, and many D voters tactically vote for the least bad R candidate.
Not sure him being a “gun lover” really necessarily paints him as a Republican either; Americans regardless of party affiliation can be pretty… uh, enthusiastic about guns, although yeah it does seem to be more common on the right but I’m not sure it’s enough to draw any conclusions from it.
And just so there’s no misunderstandings, I really don’t have a dog in this hunt so I’m not looking to blame Democrats for the shooting, I’m just trying to digest the news I’ve been reading.
I definitely think it’s possible he could be either. The bit about guns is mainly because guns is one of their things. Some Republicans love guns more than anything.
Either way, I’m mostly impressed at how quickly those facts became the most important bits of information. I guess it makes sense though. I’m just glad he’s white and not brown. lol
The Republican party registration has other corroborating information listed such as middle initial address and date of birth.
The donation only has the same first and last name.
So they’re including the Republican party registration, as it’s more confirmed… And they’re not saying he voted Republican, just that he was registered that way.
As for having an interest in guns, he owned an AR-15, so must have had some interest there.
Some articles (like this one from USA Today have mentioned that in '21 he made a small donation to the Progressive Turnout Project, and it’s interesting that that’s missing from this article. Did it turn out to not be true or did they purposefully omit that?
It was a donation to a get out the vote project. On inauguration day. About as useful as tits on a tractor.
I don’t know if he made the donation to make it seem like he was a Democrat or for no good reason, but he didn’t donate $15 on January 20th to help Democratic turnout.
They probably left it out because getting into it would only muddy the waters or even lend false credence to the cult’s conspiracy theories about him being “deep state antifa” or whatever.
The donation is not confirmed to be him. The listed donation just came with a first and last name. No age or birth date, with no middle initial or name. There are a lot of people with the same first and last name and there’s no reason to believe it was this particular Thomas Crooks that made the donation.
How did they identify him using DNA? That’s a fucking red flag. Is there some database I’m not aware of? Or did he have prior arrests?
There are genealogy databases that are public and or cooperate with authorities. Perhaps I’m a privacy nihilist, but IMHO, the cat’s kind of out of the bag for a lot of this. If you didn’t submit your DNA to a genealogy DB, you probably have family members that did so could see if they were 30% Italian or something.
Yes all these rocks and minerals need to be watched closely
Lol
I think you mean genealogy maybe?
It was the only reliable way to find who the biological parents of my father were, so yeah.
I once read an expert on this and it seems they only need a very low amount of DNA samples (like 0.1% of the population) in the database to be able to narrow down any search to the sibling level.
And traditional detective work can then figure out which sibling, if there are multiple.
So yeah, the cat is out of the bag with this one.
Exactly, your DNA doesn’t need to be in the DB at all, you just your relatives DNA in the DB.
When you’re rooting for a conspiracy all new info cam be read as a red flag if you’re creative and paranoid enough.
Because it’s potentially indicative of a national database of everyone’s DNA, rather than just the criminal database, which would be (and perhaps is) a privacy nightmare
Some states have been collecting blood for almost 40 years and can’t even really say why. They just started doing it…
https://www.ibj.com/articles/58596-storing-babies-blood-samples-pits-privacy-versus-science
Like, they have an excuse for taking the samples that seems valid. Except I don’t think they’re actually testing them. And there’s no reason to keep after testing.
Now, I dont think it’s for a secret DNA database, I think it’s normal red state bullshit.
Just pointing out in some states the take and keep blood samples from every birth
Privacy minded people don’t like the idea of easily accessible geology databases. This was a good use of that technology, but people worry about that technology be used for evil. Health insurance companies reflagging you, or much worse.
California has been collecting dna from babies since the 80s apparantly
I wonder how many people there are aware
I didn’t realize how sketchy that all was. The form mentions genetic testing for conditions, but that was just like 2 of the spots. They did like 6 to a tiny newborn. I’d recommend other parents to object.
And I’m going to submit the destruction forms for my kids and myself.
They could easily get samples from family members to confirm. I’m sure one or both of his parents were in discussions with the FBI shortly after this all went down
Some organizations do mass DNA collection from kids to help identify them later in life.
The school sends out a notification that the parents can sign up to have their kid swabbed so their kid’s tiny corpse can be identified. They don’t word it like that, but that is the idea.
So he may have been swabbed as a kid and they referenced that.
Poor bastard. At 20, mental capacity is nowhere near its peak, and how bad must your life be if you are willing to throw it away for some obese self-tanning cream using orange dipshit? This is what happens when mental illnesses aren’t taken serious, and treatment is not easily available.
Well, let’s see
Looks at everything on fire around us
Yeah I have no clue what could have caused his life to be bad enough to do something like that!
I think you misunderstood. I wasn’t saying I don’t see how people could have mental problems in this world. That was a rhetorical question, observing that the poor bastard was obviously very broken / brainwashed / ill / whatever.
Right…the problem is the very troubled young man, not the fact that he had easy access to firearms.
There is so much that is unknown. Everything about his true motives will, likely, be speculation forever. But it’s best to let the FBI be the one that does the information reveal.
This kid was 20 though. He might have had psychosis. Last presidential assassination attempt was Hinkley. This is around the age things like schizophrenia start to present themselves IIRC. This might have been a suicide by cop type situation and he wanted to be famous in the process? Who the hell knows.
What if we had a law that you had to be 21 to buy guns though? That’s in line with “common sense” gun control. I’ve heard Obama say that phrase countless times since Sandy Hook. It could have made this a little different, maybe? It almost certainly would have prevented Uvalde. This is political violence, it’s horrible, I think this will help Trump win. Any left leaning person with half a brain can see that imo. This is also gun violence though. Gun control has to part of the answer to this. Remember who the Brady Bill was named after.
The gun wasn’t his. He stole it from his dad. In a country with more guns than people it’s simply impossible to disarm the bad guys.
Instead maybe we should tackle things like mental illness, lack of critical thinking skills, cognitive dissonance, and the destruction of family values. Also people should have to go through training and be licensed to be allowed on the internet.
Why not both? Tackle guns with more control and better mental health care and education.
Disarming bad guys shouldn’t be the goal. Much like smoking in the UK. You wont stop all the older generationa from smoking but you can make it illegal for all the younger generations and over a longer peeiod of time theres no kne left that smokes.
If you tackle guns now and provide greater control over ownership whilst simultaneously educating younger people you will effectively prevent this sort of crim in the future.
At least thats my view.
I understand the sentiment but I’d be a fan of having an adult age across the board.
If you can be drafted, you should be able to drink, buy guns, rent cars, vote, etc. That should all be at the same age, whatever that age is.
Couldn’t agree more. Let’s make the adult age a nice even 20 and call it a day.
(Or ideally 25 if you want to be more realistic about it, given the rate that people mature at, but I have a feeling that would be extremely unpopular.)
I think 25 is far too old. We already have a problem of not letting teenagers learn to become an adult. Yes you’re going to make stupid decisions in your early 20s, you’re better off making a variety of stupid decisions while you’re still maturing rather than waiting until you’ve finished before taking actions that have consequences.
Also imagine being a 24 year old who either is expected to live with your parents or get an adult to cosign your lease. Or can’t vote. Or can’t decide to have certain medical procedures like an abortion without parental permission. We’ve become far too comfortable with the idea we need to legally disenfranchise young people further.
It was reported that the weapon was his father’s.
Sometimes not even a safe will keep everything locked up. With enough time you can saw through most of the commercially available ones.
There are insurance/registration issues that can address that. Of course there endless possible hypotheticals. I’m personally in favor of some sort of “drivers license” equivalent for guns.
But a 21 year old age limit almost certainly would have prevented Uvalde.
disagree. if people want to do something, terrible or not, they will find a way illegally.
I’m going to go very basic here and say look at piracy.
I am highly skeptical of registration because there is a 99.99% certainty that it will be the GOP to use it and strip away weapons from anyone who is not a registered Republican.
With enough time you can saw through most of the commercially available ones.
This is technically true but with the amount of time and effort it takes to get through a good portion of the safes I’ve seen, it would honestly be easier to go and steal one from some schmuck with a truck gun or whatever that’s insecurely, uhhh, secured.
This kid was 20 though. He might have had psychosis. Last presidential assassination attempt was Hinkley. This is around the age things like schizophrenia start to present themselves IIRC.
This is highly true and not something I’ve seen anyone bring up until now. It’s a good point and I think it actually might be pretty likely. Good job.
Last presidential assassination attempt was Hinkley.
That may just be the last one you were aware of, there have been a number of attempts since, several involving guns being fired at the president (or fired at a position the shooter thought he was)
