the media:
we’ll stop naming school shooters due to copycat killers
also the media:
his name was thomas matthew and here’s a 90 minute special about his preferred breakfast cereal
👀 👀 👀
Did the media ever really say they’d stop naming school shooters??
Also, I’m told this wasn’t a school shooting.
I know of one who should have been in school
For like 2 weeks and they went back to it
I vaguely remember a pinky swear.
The media is not one thing. Media is plural. Good luck getting “the media” to agree on anything.
They sure can agree on a few things:
- Ads make money.
- More ads make more money.
- Money.
- More money.
- 🦀 money money money 🦀
But are they concerned with making money? 😁
If they’re privately held, yes.
If they’re publicly traded, yes.
If they’re publicly funded, also yes, but only because they wouldn’t exist otherwise.Even if they don’t say it, it’s always a priority :)
There are several large nonprofit media corporations such as NPR.
Yet I feel like every time I listen to them they’re basically running an ad for a movie/TV show/book through a fluff interview with someone who worked on it.
But there is no incentive to get more money than they need to operate, because the shareholders and board don’t profit from it personally. NPR income is spent over 92% on program funding and 7% on administrative.
It’s basically run the same way as Wikipedia. If enough people donated, there would be no ads at all.
They run programming that they suspect will get them money, either through donations or government funding- because for those working to get raises the organization needs to have money. (As well as other reasons of course)
Who ever kills Trump will get an entire movie about them.
Yeah, wouldn’t that be a crying shame, this time.
If this encourages these psychos to stop shooting children and shoot politicians instead, I’ll take that trade.
you know what, fuck yeah. People can only afford so many bullets these days, so just like Halloween warnings avout drugs and the reality of who the fuck would waste their hard earned drug money on random kids, why should anyone waste bullet money on them either. shoot a politician, save a child.
I’ll say the name of anyone that takes a shot at a fascist, for any reason. Even being the wrong kind of fascist.
I’ve always said we need a Walter Audisio day as a national holiday.
Like the guy who liked Hitler.
Wish.com Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t shoot up a school though
Noticed this too. They just plaster his face and have analysis and stories all over youtube and news. I thought US are already over this yet here we are.
I guess they made the call that releasing this information is the lesser of two evils, the other one being to withhold it and to let speculation run wild in a heated political climate, in which one side is not shy about threats of violence.
I just saw a headline on 1440 that the Secret Service around Trump had been increasing security due to an Iranian security threat and that this shooting may be related to that.
I don’t buy it, but do think it is a signal of where our next Middle East War will be.
Middle East III: Ayatollah We’d Be Back.
Because when the Ayatollah wants someone killed he picks a bullied kid who’s also a terrible shot. /s
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Wasn’t that $15 from a 69 year old veteran with the same name?
Funny how I heard about the $15 on the news but not about how it turned out to be a better person with the same name.
This has been disproven.
Wasn’t this proven false?
Eyup
What, you expect journalists to investigate claims?
Or be a human being?
I’ve tried to find sources for this, but all lead into a circle of people just saying this without providing an actual verifiable link or anything.
Edit: This comment from someone was the closest I got: https://lemmy.world/comment/11189733
I’m confused.
You know how some hunters want to hunt a particular majestic animal? Except for “majestic”, of course.
Maybe he missed on purpose and it was all a ruse to give trump a bump in the polls or demonize the Democrats?
You cant miss like that on purpose. If trump had moved slightly differently the shot would have hit. It was within inches
With the timing, I think it’s stuff like the epstein news that broke something for him
The what? Epstein was years ago… has there been something new in the last few weeks?
Released court documents.
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It makes a difference. If he was a leftist then the right could point a finger and say that the left are dangerous killers who are trying to kill the nominee.
Yeah man who cares what materials were used in making a bridge that fell apart
Come the fuck on dude, your colors are showing lmao
It kind of does matter. If it were just about any other type of person they could be like “See? Proof gay/trans/stoners/poor people/people of color/people who support abortion cause violence, let’s send them all to camps” and use it to influence what bills get passed in congress.
You say that like they won’t do that anyway.
.
I feel bad for the yard-neighbor, bet it hurt to get impaled with those signs.
If he could choose, do you think he’d prefer to be impaled by a Biden sign instead?
If he could choose, I think he’d prefer not to be impaled at all. Don’t know him personally though so can’t say for sure.
I know him; he’s into it. Like that.
It’s into him, too.
They found themselves a useful idiot
OK, so the signs were in his family’s yard. This means his parents were supporters and the kid grew up w/ conservative parents. My guess (and this is just a guess) is his actions were in part a rebellious act against his parents.
Except kids classmates and teachers say he was staunchly conservative.
He was a young man still finding his way. Even accepting the fact that he had conservative leanings, that doesn’t preclude the possibility of him doing something to lash out at his parents particularly if that something involved causing the death of a prominent “conservative” his parents hold dear. My presumption is that his conservative parents were strict and overbearing, which isn’t a stretch based on my own experiences.
We really don’t have a lot of facts here. What we have so far:
- He ranted against paedophiles.
- He was a registered Republican.
- There were Trump signs in his (family’s) yard.
- He was bullied in school.
- A donation was made in his name for $15 to an Act Blue subsidiary.
- He was denied being on the rifle team due to his behaviour and his lack of skill with a rifle.
And that’s about it. Not much room to base your guess.
It’s just as likely that he bought into the notion that the elites are all a bunch of baby-eating, baby-fucking Satan worshippers, but NOT the notion that that only applied to the Left, and tried to remove a Right-Winger with a history of visiting powerful men and diddling kids on exclusive islands.
is the rant against pedos credible? someone above said it was a fake IG post or something
facts arent facts just yet, me thinks
My guess was based on knowing that his parents were likely conservative (owing to the signs in the yard). In my experience conservative parents are often stricter than more liberal leaning parents. If that was the case here then knowing he was bullied and denied being on the rifle team, I can imagine that things weren’t exactly chipper for him in the family home either.
My guess was, of course, just speculation. However, I would urge whoever is investigating his actions to look into the family situation to get a better picture of what might have motivated the young man’s actions.
Some classmates said he took conservative positions in a history class and that he was definitely conservative.
He did it as a Tiktok challenge.
It is crazy how missing one shot could have changed the course of history. People are really trying to paint this guy as a leftist because of a donation lol.
The donation of a 69 year old man with the same name…
Can you provide a source?
Considering that address match, and the fact that the location on the in-question FEC filing does not exist in Pittsburgh, evidence favors the conclusion that the shooter made the donation — not someone else with the same name.
So he spent $20 on trump signs. Are we in agreement he was a fucking Nazi dickwad as well?
To be fair, I think he was living with his parents so there’s no way to know who wanted them. Maybe they all did, maybe not.
Either way, from what I’ve heard it doesn’t seem like he was that political. It appears like he was just a kid who liked guns but was such a bad shot the shooting club at his school wouldn’t let him in. He then decided to immortalize himself as a presidential assassin, but instead immortalized himself as the terrible shot everyone thought he was.
You can’t say this and not provide a source
Snopes already debunked.
I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, I’ve seen the donation and registration myself and all details matched. So unless those details were altered by someone managing either of those two registries, it doesn’t seem like those were made by 2 different people.
Edit: that being said the donation is inconsequential at best, it could have been something like “donate and get a funny hat” or anything like this.
If you seen it “for yourself”, please provide the source.
I’ll let you know I actively despise you specifically for making my lazy ass repeat due diligence in verifying information for you. This is something you could have researched yourself using advanced modern technologies such as Google. Those materials are openly available, and if you distrust my opinion, then you should never trust any sources I provide instead of researching on your own. You’ll notice that all websites I’ll provide as sources end with “.gov”, which not only means those are somewhat legitimate, but also discoverable by most lazy of fucks. Oh well.
You can check the individual contributions here: https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=Thomas+Crooks&contributor_zip=15102
You can check the voter registration status here: https://www.pavoterservices.pa.gov/pages/voterregistrationstatus.aspx
And if you use ActBlue donor data, ZIP code, and all other details we know about the shooter like their birth date and such, you will get this:
If you search on Google Maps for “USA 15102,” you will get sent to Bethel Park, PA 15102, which we know the shooter lived in. Here’s the “source” for that:
You might notice that on the donor registration there is a location of “PITTSBURGH, PA 15102” instead of Bethel Park, but as far as I understand the USA ZIP code system, that place doesn’t exist. 15102 points specifically to Bethel Park. You can try putting “PITTSBURGH, PA 15102” into Google Maps and you’ll be sent to Bethel Park. We can then double check if some parts of Pittsburgh are recognized as belonging under 15102 on the USPS ZIP Code Lookup Tool, instead of it being solely used for Bethel Park:
As you can see, it doesn’t seem to be the case. So, can anyone else living in Bethel Park with this same name be the person who made the donation? Sure, but the narrative that addresses differ or that the person from this address made multiple donations over the years is fake, as you can clearly see on the donor’s receipts, there being only one donation under that ZIP code and name. By the way, you might need to use a VPN to access the www.pavoterservices.pa.gov thing. I used Opera for that as it gave me a free one.
Ok. But I don’t use Google in this way. My search engine heads towards me and I live somewhere else. I’m checking the validity of your claim. I don’t see conclusive proof. The Thomas Crooks that made a donation does not have a middle name in his donation. From what I have seen that is the crux if the discussion.
I don’t know if middle name is required, and I sort of doubt it seeing as they got city wrong as well. That was most likely typed by hand, someone put in city before asking for ZIP code, I’d wager. Still, that Thomas Crooks would need to live in same neighbourhood, and arguments about it being a democrat that donated repeatedly also couldn’t be true unless they moved into this neighbourhood, made this donation, and moved out. At this point what’s inconclusive is any argument I’ve heard against this in my opinion, as most of them are invalidated by either wrong adresses or counts of donations. If you can point me to anyone else who would meet all of the criteria then I’ll concede that the evidence about this donation being made by the shooter is not conclusive, before that we can conjure magical creatures and claim it could have been them.
It was made on January 21st, 2021… the day after Trump was inaugurated. Like you said, there’s no way to tie a motive or belief system to the small record, but it has definitely been food for thought, for journalists at least.
Not to be that guy but you meant “the day after Biden was inaugurated”
Makes sense, most shooters show warning signs.
PFFFFF YOOO 💀😭
You ok?
I’m good, that was just one hell of a burn.
Do records show that he donated to a progressive PAC? I thought they show a person with the same name donated but that the age was different
It says Pittsburgh, but 15102 is the zip code for Bethel Park
If it’s 30 minutes from the city people will call it Pittsburgh.
This one has gone back and forth a couple of times, but snopes says it really was him. shrug
The address on the filing has his street address and zip but the wrong city.
Would be common to use the city of Pittsburgh for the suburb of Bethel Park:
(have not looked into the guy nor his possible donations at all myself)
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Look at the timing - Jan 20th, 2021. The day Biden was sworn in.
$15 is not much and could very well be him delivering on a bet over the election
Yeah that kind of struck me as a potential possibility. Maybe he bet someone that small amount that Biden wouldn’t actually be seated.
Or a friend donating in his name as a joke
I mean it doesn’t sound like he has friends, but it is weird that a 16-17 year old would donate on his own. It feels like it would go through his parents. Did they give him a credit card or something? Was it cash?
Coudl have friends online, back when I was 16-17 thats how I was. Mind you im only friends with the ones Ive met IRL at this point but thats because my other groups imploded or went nuts for no reason.
Arma ops group imploded because of a shit Zeus.
And the EU4 group devolved into femcatboy roleplay server, which made me uncomfortable because most of them were like 30.
No. Giving 15$ dollars to a liberal cause is a clear indication that you are a political dissident willing to die for the DNC. End of story.
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I fell into that initially as well, but I checked the FEC filing to get the address, then used the address to check property records, then went back and looked at the interviews with his folks to see their names for reference. The residence is that of his parents, so it seems to be him that donated.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A neighbor of the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump said there have been pro-Trump signs on display in the yard of his family’s home.
Authorities identified Thomas Matthew Crooks as the gunman who opened fired from a rooftop as the former president spoke at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
He was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania, but records show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on January 20, 2021—the day President Joe Biden was sworn into office.
A neighbor in Bethel Park, the Pittsburgh suburb where Crooks lived, said they saw pro-Trump signs in the family’s yard as recently as a few months ago.
Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022 and worked as a dietary aide at a nursing home less than a mile from his family’s house.
His father Matthew Crooks told CNN late on Saturday that he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” and would not speak publicly about his son until after he talked to law enforcement.
The original article contains 416 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 57%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Who’s seen the new season of the boys
The more we know, the more this looks to me like a suicide by cop that wanted (and failed) to leave a huge thing done so people remembered him.
He was a self proclaimed Pedo Hunter
I keep hearing this but what’s the source?
The only place I’ve seen that is screenshots of clearly fake Instagram account bios.
That explains his target
Zing!
That’s exactly what Trump heard on that stage.
Not even a zing, it’s a sad fact
Here is my irresponsible speculation: kid did it to get back at his dad. Dad was a republican flying trump signs in the yard, mom is registered democratic. Kid grows up wearing hunting outfits to school, trying to get on the shooting team, getting bullied (even after that time he tried to fit in by getting on the antitrump bandwagon following j6), trying to be the version of manliness his conservative father believes in, seaking his father’s approval, and paying the price socially with his peers. But as much as he tries, and fails, to get dad’s approval, mom is always there for him. Mom is a dem, probably secretly, with dad forcing strict “traditional” family roles (hence the signs in the yard, mom probably didn’t agree with but was powerless to stop). Kid seems to fit the stereotype of young man, bullied in school, working a dead end job, few if any friends, no future to speak of, just generally mentally unstable, ripe for suicide by cop alreadt. Then something happens, dad hits mom, dad cheats on mom, dad screams at kid calling him a loser and also yells at mom for rasing a mommas boy, something like that. Kid snaps, betrayed by his father again, but also protective of his mom who was always there for him. Kid decides rather than killing his dad (either because of unshakable childhood fear, or a desire to cause more pain to his father then death would afford), he would kill something his dad loved more than anything, more than his dad loved his mom, and especially more than his dad loved him. He’d kill dad’s god king Trump, and go out along with him. His dad would lose his hero, and the world would know his dad was responsible because he failed as a father, and thus his father would be the greatest traitor to the Maga movement ever.
I base this on no evidence other than the couple of facts we know about voter registrations and the yard signs and the like. Again this is just my speculation, which it is completely irresponsible to engage in right now (fun though!).
Your chair must have massive armrests
Seems as reasonable as most other theories
You should write… because you basically nailed a believable story here.
really thought you were going to end that with the source of the truma being because in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell.
We really need users like that on Lemmy to replicate the positive aspects of the Reddit community that are worth bringing over. Something original to here, hopefully.
I base this on no evidence other than the fact that in nineteen ninety eight the undertaker threw mankind off hеll in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer’s table.
It very well could be that. It could also be a girl told him she’d let him touch her boobies for 10 seconds if he shot Trump.
You are right, this post was incredibly irresponsible.
Like you already said, you’re obviously speculating, but I think you might be onto something re: the dad. Dad trauma combined with suicidal ideation…it’s plausible and way more reasonable a motive than a lot of the stuff out there.
Which is definitely why the media is posting his picture and personal details everywhere right? To make sure other people aren’t persuaded to seek fame in the same way.
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If there’s one guarantee in this world, it’s that shooting someplace up will always get your name in the news.
Although in the US it’s so common you’ll be forgotten in days unless the target is somebody famous.
Good. Let’s keep running that so the famous people are the ones getting shot. Not our nations children in schools 😊
The guy tried (and almost managed) to kill an ex-president and candidate for a second term. Of course the media is going to cover all the shit they can. It gives them clicks and that’s all that matter.
On the other handl, apparently, the guy had some mental health issues was bullied and honestly, what other outcome can you expect if not a very fast death when you try to do what he did in the way he did it?
Either he was out of his mind and was completely delusional, or was trying to leave the world with a huge kill in his name to be remembered.
Edit: typo
I absolutely agree, but I think it’s important to neither glorify nor demonize the attacker. This isn’t a route we should keep open to gain fame/infamy.
We shouldn’t demonize him, but we should be sober about him.
He was a loser who intended to make our country worse.
Highly skeptical on that worse part.
How so?
I’m also skeptical. Just like the candidate, I feel like this sort of behavior tends to be very self-centered. Maybe his action will leave the country worse off but I doubt he thought beyond himself, that he would do something significant and be remembered.
Worse how?
Had he been successful, the far right would likely start engaging in Timothy McVeigh style acts of terror.
Seeing that he failed, we will probably still get that, except they have Trump to be the general giving orders.
Look at all these down votes I have gotten for calling this kid a loser incel. Some of these down voters, considering the demographic of people who use Lemmy, are going to be the victims dying in the name of Trump’s revenge.
the far right would likely start engaging in Timothy McVeigh style acts of terror.
Sounds like they’re a dangerous bunch and 2nd Amendment people should do something about their leader.
You got downvoted for the make our country worse part. He would have made it better no matter how YOU want to view it. The racist rapist with 34 felonies is not only a terrible human being, he literally wants to be Hitler. Fuck that, and fuck anyone voting for him.
Welcome to late stage Capitalism.
You’re not wrong, but it can be put even more succinctly: “But, money!”
