Featured image: An Officer speaks to distressed bystanders near the scene of the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, Unite States on May 14, 2022, AP.
The United States has been hit by another mass shooting, this one streamed on streaming platform Twitch by a white supremacist who had no motive but racism and hatred for the attack.
18-year-old Payton Gendron has been detained without bail on first-degree murder charges following a mass shooting carried out on Saturday afternoon at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. The spree has claimed the lives of at least 10 people, the latest Buffalo Police Department tally revealed.
The heavily armed gunman had a rifle and tactical gear on his person at the time of the incident, which the Buffalo police commissioner said saw 13 people shot, 10 of whom died at the scene before the police apprehended the assailant.
The shooting, local media said, started in the parking lot and took into the supermarket itself shortly thereafter.
The attacker drove more than 320 km (200 miles) from his home to the site, wearing military-style gear and clothing, namely a bulletproof vest, a tactical helmet, and camo fatigues.
The spree, labeled a hate crime by the FBI and the police, continued until the shooter was apprehended by the Buffalo police. Upon arrival, police officers confronted the gunman, and he reportedly put the rifle to his neck before eventually being persuaded to drop the weapon and surrender.
The hate crime label comes due to the fact that 11 out of 13 of Grendon’s victims were black and varied between shoppers and employees, and the crime in its entirety was live-streamed on Twitch.
Gendron, after he was taken into custody, was taken into court for an arraignment. His court-appointed lawyer pleaded no guilty to first-degree murder charges on his behalf, the Buffalo Police Station reported.
He was remanded without bail and is due back in court on Thursday for the continuation of the procedure.
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Several graphic screenshots taken from the Twitch stream showed a body lying on the floor and a woman getting shot in the head.
The FBI is investigating the incident as both “a hate crime and a case of racially-motivated violent extremism,” Special Agent Stephen Belongia said.
Nazism has a play
A groundbreaking fact about the shooting is that it was carried out by a neo-Nazi white supremacist, who had published a fascist manifesto using the “black sun” Nazi symbol. The insignia is used by the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov battalion.
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Pictures were circulated of the militant wearing the “black sun” on his chest in photos taken prior to the mass shooting.
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Another fact is that the neo-Nazi-linked teen carried out his attack in a predominantly black neighborhood, reflecting his ideology’s racism by shooting 11 black people.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul called the attacker a “white supremacist who just perpetrated a hate crime on an innocent community,” expressing “sincere hope that this individual… will spend the rest of his days behind bars.”
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US President Joe Biden commented on the incident, saying, “Any act of domestic terrorism, including an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology, is antithetical to everything we stand for in America”, though he continuously voices support for the Kiev regime, which backs the nationalist, neo-Nazi Azov battalion, notorious for its white supremacy.
The attack came in light of soaring gun violence in the United States and loose gun laws that permit just about anyone to possess a firearm.
Over the past five-year period, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) could only trace 0.98% of suspected “ghost guns” handed in by law enforcement to an individual purchaser, the department added.
According to the organization Gun Violence Archive (GVA), more than 15,070 people have died from gun violence since the beginning of the year in the United States, including suicides.
Over the whole of 2020, the number was at 45,000 dead, said GVA, a figure which has prompted the White House to speak of an “epidemic”.
So far in 2022, according to the organization, 12,166 have sustained injuries from gun violence, with a total of 179 shootings carried out over the United States.
Featured image: An Officer speaks to distressed bystanders near the scene of the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, Unite States on May 14, 2022, AP.
