UPDATE: The shooter has been identified as 26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer. Rumors spread earlier in the day that the shooter was a a regular 4channer and active Youtuber known as “the eggman.” Obviously they were wrong.
This is beyond fucked up. In this archived thread from 4chan’s /r9k/ board, the apparent shooter at Umpqua Community College told fellow channers yesterday of his plans to shoot up a school today. He didn’t specify which school, mentioning only that it was in the “northwest.” /r9k/ is a board heavily populated by so-called “incels,” and the media is reporting that the apparent shooter regularly posted bitter complaints about his lack of success with women,
UPDATE 2: There is a lot of confusing and contradictory information out there, and the IDing of the killer has actually raised more questions than it’s resolved. An apparent Myspace page for Harper-Mercer suggests that he was obsessed both with guns and with the IRA.
There have also been reports that he was targeting Christians. According to the New York Post, a “woman who claimed to have a grandmother inside a writing class in Snyder Hall, where a portion the massacre unfolded” reported that
“The shooter was lining people up and asking if they were Christian,” she wrote. “If they said yes, then they were shot in the head. If they said no, or didn’t answer, they were shot in the legs.
So was he — as an apparent supporter of the IRA — targeting Protestants? The Daiy Beast, for its part, says the shooter “hated religion.” Chuck C. Johnson of GotNews says he’s “confirmed” that the shooter was a Muslim.
Is the Myspace page really his? Is the report from the alleged granddaughter bullshit? Was the 4chan posting yesterday actually from him, or a comment from a troll that just happened to have been posted the day before a school shooting in the northwest?
I don’t know. But I still recommend that you read the rest of this post, if only to see the comments from the other 4channers.
Screenshots below:
Here’s his first comment warning fellow channers not to go to school today if they live in the northwest.
He then said he’d post again shortly before he started to shoot. (I don’t know if he did.)
Because 4chan is a fucking cesspool, other channers offered him advice:
Another anon suggested that indiscriminate killing wasn’t the solution, seeming to imply that more targeted killing was?
Others put forth their ideas of what sorts of people might be considered appropriate targets:
More encouragement. Note the reference to Elliot Rodger, the Santa Barbara “incel” killer.
A few others urged the OP to NOT carry out his plans.
After reports of the shooting hit the news, anons reacted with amazement:
Amazement and enthusiasm:
In case you’re wondering, “kek” is the equivalent of “lol.”
More excitement:
There’s much more of this in the thread.
Naturally, someone claims that the shooting could have been averted if only the shooter could have found a girlfriend.
Yes that’s right: he thinks the shooter was himself a victim, presumably of the entire female gender.
There’s a lot more in the thread but honestly I can’t stomach it right now.
Note: This post has been updated numerous times.
(Contains typical British usage of a certain genital-based swearword.)
Law enforcement is unlikely to leave them alive most likely due to the fact that they are armed and have shown they are willing to kill, which means that not stopping them immediately could led to more deaths, either the officers or more bystanders. Combine this with the fact that shooting to disarm is incredibly hard in a good situation and you are making a life and death dission and you can’t really blame them for killing the mass murderer.
Yup. You want to go for the largest target. Going for small targets, there’s a big risk you won’t hit them.
My understanding is also that law enforcement is trained in a very binary way whether to use deadly force–I think the official reason is that if you are not justified in killing someone [when there’s a threat to cop or bystander of death or serious bodily harm], you are not justified in shooting at them, because the risk of killing them is too high. I suspect that the small-target thing and the KISS (keep it simple) principle are probably also part of the reason. (And remember, if you’re in a situation where you’re justified in aiming for a small target, you have to also be justified in shooting them, so do you want to increase your risk of missing substantially in a life-or-death situation?)
I wouldn’t be surprised if law enforcement is not particularly motivated to take a mass shooter alive, even if it involves only a small additional risk to themselves or others, and I can’t say I disagree. But I think the conspiracy theory that they’re trying to make sure they’re not taken alive so people don’t find out their real motivations is pretty implausible, because if you’re saying that that’s why the individual police officers are doing it, that’s a LOT of low-level people in on the conspiracy. There are about 765,000 full-time police officers in the US. Even if they were only told “Psst, don’t take mass shooters alive, we don’t want those bastards alive”, it would be surprising that not one officer has blabbed to someone who’d pass it on, and said that they were being told that.
And as BeyondOcean said, the killers DO tell us.
I guess in a way it would be nice to think that there’s a government/vast right-wing conspiracy to keep us from knowing the truth, instead of the reality that the American public is apathetic and only too happy to shrug and blame it on mental illness.
@David,
I think that begins with tearing down walls of fear between people groups (the cis/trans wall, the black/white wall, the gay/straight wall, the Christian/atheist wall, the American/Muslim wall, male/female, etc.).
I get what you’re trying to say and agree with the general sentiment, but there are muslims of many different nationalities, including American.
I an absolutely disgusted by this. Nit only were these people egging him on, they celebrated the deaths of 10 innocent people. I am completely chilled to the bone. I know this stuff happens on 4chan and the manosphere after a mass killing, but it makes my blood run cold every time. Absolutely disgusting. There are really no depths that these guys refuse to sink to. None.
Sorry, I meant ‘not’. I still can’t believe that people would stoop so low. These people know that real people have died, but they do this anyway. No regard to human life and no respect to his victims or their families. They just don’t give a shit!
The ‘status quo vs outright ban’ is a false dichotomy usually trotted out by gun nuts and conservatives who resist change no matter what the cost in human lives.
Bring US gun laws in line with the majority of other developed nations. Restrict ownership of handguns and military style weapons so that there are too many requirements and expenses for the average citizen to bother with. Require licensing and registration for other types of firearms. Not that it’s actually going to happen any time soon.
@ Bryce
Isn’t it problematic to base gun ownership on financial status? Whilst it’s probably true that the “1%” don’t engage in mass shootings it still seems unfair. Wealthy people are less likely to be crime victims anyway.
There was an interesting documentary here in the UK the other day. A reporter went to Ferguson. He was surprised at the prevailing attitude in the back community that guns for home protection was an absolute necessity.
Of course, when you feel you can’t trust the police that’s perhaps understandable.
So it’s not just the NRA types you have to convince.
Maybe Ferguson swings that way, but black Americans overwhelmingly favour gun control, despite some shifts. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/15/us-africanamerican-guns-idUSKCN0PP2N320150715
@ Ignorantia
Cheers, that was interesting; especially the bit about the new black panthers and the open carry thing.
Those are tweets from a 15yr Jared Michael Padgett who opened fire at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Oregon on June 10, 2014. Do you research.
What, 4chan has a time machine?!
Those are dated this week, not a year ago >.<
Death by self inflicted gunshot according to Coroner
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/03/oregon-community-college-gunman-killed-himself-sheriff
Uh…what tweets?
Jesus, the 4chan propaganda brigade couldn’t even be bothered to read the OP.
And now someone’s threatening Austin using the exact same wording. 4chan: turning mass shooting threats into copypasta memes. /gag