When UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was killed in the middle of a New York sidewalk, we saw some disturbing things, including a whole lot of people celebrating the guy’s demise, despite the fact that none of them had ever even spoken to him.
The case became a media circus, and eventually, Luigi Mangione was arrested for the murder. He became a media star in some segments of the population, with some leftist women absolutely swooning over the guy.
Earlier this week, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. It wasn’t the first assassination in the US since Thompson’s killing by any stretch of the imagination, but at The Reload, Stephen Gutowski ponders the possibility that there’s a common thread between the two. What’s more, there might be a commonality with Columbine.
The attack is the latest in a string of political violence over the past year, from the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump to the killing of Minnesota Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman. But it also shares a potential resemblance with the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson at the end of last year, which itself mirrored aspects of the Columbine shooting.
After that murder, I worried it would inspire other attacks like Columbine continues to do. There were good reasons to view the United killing as creating a new playbook for similar attacks. Now, we may be seeing it play out.
Of course, as I noted above, there are a lot of things we don’t know for sure. Early reporting is often unreliable in these situations, and we’ve already got a number of conflicting reports. Still, there’s enough to draw some connections.
For one, numerous outlets have reported that the shooter left some sort of messages on the ammunition that was found in the gun recovered by law enforcement. Early reports claimed the markings were “expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology,” but the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and CNN have since updated their stories with claims from law enforcement that isn’t necessarily the case. CNN has reported the markings may include a series of arrows of yet-to-be-determined meaning.
If the killer intended the markings to send a message, regardless of what exactly that message may be, the act will be very similar to what the CEO killer did with his ammunition.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, Charlie Kirk’s killer committed his atrocity in an extremely public way–just like the United killer. He attacked Kirk at a crowded event that was sure to be livestreamed and recorded a hundred times over. It was a very public act of violence against a high-profile political figure.
Gutowski notes that the Columbine killers hit at a certain point in history while also leaving a framework that others could eventually follow. I’ll add that a number of would-be mass killers view those two twits as martyrs, like they were heroes for simply murdering people.
Likewise, Mangione may have laid the groundwork that others could follow, and there are some reports that this killer might have done just that.
Of course, it’s way too early to tell, and I’d like to think that’s not what happened here, but I can’t dismiss it out of hand. That bothers me a lot.
However, right now, there’s some doubt that there are, in fact, messages on the shell casings. There’s also the fact that while Kirk was killed on a livestream during a public event, it was also an event held out on the open where the killer could put some distance between himself and Kirk.
So while I can’t dismiss Gutowski’s supposition out of hand, I can’t fully embrace it, either.
Of course, as I write this, we know that they now have a suspect in custody. Hopefully, if this is, in fact, the guy, we’ll get some answers in the near future. We’ll find out if we need to be concerned about a trend of Mangione-inspired (allegedly) assassins or if this is just a turbulent time in American history, not unlike the 1960s.
Personally, I pray that this has become a bridge too far for most Americans, and the hate that fuels this sort of thing will no longer be tolerated.
I’m just not holding my breath on that one.
Editor’s Note: Despite everything, we’ve seen plenty of people try to use these events to push their gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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