What We Can, and Can’t, Glean from the Dayton Shooter’s Online Behavior

What We Can, and Can’t, Glean from the Dayton Shooter’s Online Behavior

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/mass-shooters-online-behavior-should-not-be-used-to-score-cheap-political-points/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202019-08-05&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart

Excerpt:No manifesto or statement of purpose has surfaced from the Dayton shooter. His Twitter profile, which has since been suspended, is insufficient to establish a motive. But he left a footprint behind, both online and in the real world. He was highly active on Twitter, having “liked” more than 220,000 tweets in the time he had an account. He referred to himself as an atheist and a Satanist — and had a history, former classmates say, of making violent threats. “He loved to look at you and pretend to shoot with guns, guns with his hands,” a female student, who once turned the shooter down for a date, told CNN. And, per a report from Heavy early Monday morning, the gunman “was a self-described ‘leftist,’ who wrote that he would happily vote for Democrat Elizabeth Warren, praised Satan, was upset about the 2016 presidential election results, and added, ‘I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.’” Just before last year’s midterm elections, he tweeted “Vote blue for gods sake,” and more recently shared an article criticizing establishment Democrats such as House speaker Nancy Pelosi for not supporting progressive freshmen congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley, along with the message “read it.”