Revealing, yet again, their brazen double-standard, Democrats quickly pivoted away from suggestions of a “terrorist” attack after the alleged shooter at a Boulder, Colorado, grocery store was identified.
Colorado supermarket shooter identified as 21-year-old Ahmad Al-Issa. And watch the media pivot from this story in 3..2..1.
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) March 23, 2021
When an apparent white male was identified as the culprit in an attack last week on three massage parlors in Atlanta, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were practically tripping over themselves to denounce anti-Asian violence.
Federal investigators cautioned that the Atlanta attack did not appear to be racially motivated; nonetheless, media insisted that there might be latent bias on the part of 21-year-old alleged shooter Robert Aaron Long.
But following the preliminary reports on another 21-year-old gunman, who was accused of murdering at least 10 victims—including a police officer—at the Boulder-area King Soopers market on Monday, the idea of racial or ideological animus quickly became a nothing-burger.
The difference? Suspect Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa not only was of apparent Middle Eastern descent and bore an Islamic-sounding name, but he had a record of posting anti-Trump complaints and expressing pro-ISIS sympathies.
Right on cue, it went from a domestic terrorism threat to a “tragic” thing that some people did.
Left-wing journalists rushed to delete tweets suggesting the shooter was “white,” and social-media publishers scrambled to censor the spread of screenshots from Alissa’s own Facebook account showing his radical leftist views.
Many of those expressing official grief and condolences were pointedly vague.
“This is a tragedy and a nightmare,” said Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, according to the Associated Press.
“… These were people going about their day, doing their shopping,” he continued. “I promise the victims and the people of the state of Colorado that we will secure justice.”
Yet Dougherty, a far-left Democrat, maintained that investigators had not yet established a motive.
One likely possibility was mental-health problems, the AP noted, citing as its source an anonymous law-enforcement official.
“The suspect’s family told investigators they believed Alissa was suffering some type of mental illness, including delusions,” the AP wrote. “Relatives described times when Alissa told them people were following or chasing him, which they said may have contributed to the violence.”
Motive notwithstanding, the report left no doubt about the type of weapon that was used: “an AR-15 rifle, a lightweight semiautomatic rifle,” the AP wrote.
Indeed, several Democrats issued similar-sounding talking points that signaled they might try to salvage the “tragedy” to pursue an anti-gun agenda, already underway, with even greater vigor.
“Enough is enough,” said Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., who represents the Boulder area, in an appearance on CBS This Morning.
“The time for inaction is over. It does not have to be this way,” Neguse said.
“There are commonsense gun legislation reform proposals that have been debated in Congress for far too long,” he continued. “The gun lobby and so many others have stopped the ability to make meaningful reforms in the past, but that’s no excuse. I think the American people are tired of excuses.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., not only suggested that enough was enough, following decades of gun violence that overlapped with her leadership, but she also expressed solidarity with straw-people nationwide who were parroting her outrage.
“Action is needed now to prevent this scourge from continuing to ravage our communities,” she said in a statement Tuesday. “While we await further information on the details of this heinous crime, we continue to stand with victims, families and young people across the country saying, ‘Enough is enough.’”
The House recently passed a pair of bills that would require background checks on all firearms.
However, Colorado’s stringent background-check laws already on the books already should have barred Alissa from legally obtaining a firearm of his own.
While some reports were emerging that Alissa had purchased the weapon six days earlier, the AP said a police affidavit “did not detail where the gun was purchased” and that “[o]fficials were trying to trace the weapon.”
The bipartisan passage of the anti-gun bills in the evenly-divided Senate remains an uphill battle.
“The Senate is going to debate and address the epidemic of gun violence in this country,” pledged Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-NY.
But some had already speculated that Democrats might capitalize on something like a mass-shooting incident to eliminate the filibuster, thereby abnegating the need to seek consensus with their GOP opponents.
That would pave the way for them to pass additional measures like the HR1 election overhaul, a power-grab that would help them secure permanent majorities by eliminating safeguards against vote fraud.
Meanwhile, President Biden piled on some additional wish-list items on Tuesday, including bans on ‘assault weapons’ and high-capacity magazines.
“I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense steps that will save lives in the future,” Biden said, according to CNN.
“This is not — it should not be — a partisan issue. This is an American issue,” he said. “It will save lives, American lives. We have to act.”
Biden has floated the possibility of taking executive action on some gun-control measures, but those would likely face immediate court challenges from Second Amendment advocates.
