The man who tried to shoot up Comet Pizza 8 years ago was killed in a confrontation with police on Monday.
— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) January 9, 2025 at 4:18 PM
He was clearly not a well man, more shame to the monsters & grifters who manipulated decades of Hillary-hate to send him haring off to a DC pizza parlor. From the local Charlotte Observer, “‘Pizzagate’ gunman fatally shot by police outside Charlotte in traffic stop”:
The Salisbury man who died Monday after he was shot by two Kannapolis police officers over the weekend was the ‘Pizzagate’ gunman arrested in Washington, D.C., in 2016 after he terrified people with a loaded AR-15 inside a restaurant.
Edgar Maddison Welch, the man killed, made national headlines in 2016 when he entered Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C., armed with an assault rifle and loaded revolver. He drove from Salisbury to the nation’s capital in search of an alleged child sex ring linked to Hillary Clinton — something he learned about from a fake news story, The Washington Post reported.
Around 10 p.m. Saturday, Welch was sitting in the passenger seat of a gray 2001 GMC Yukon when an officer pulled it over near Cannon Boulevard, a Kannapolis Police Department press release said Thursday.
The officer recognized the vehicle, having arrested Welch in the past, and knew he had an outstanding warrant for his arrest for a felony probation violation, police said. The press release said the officer spoke with the vehicle’s driver and recognized Welch in the passenger seat as two more officers arrived. The officer that pulled the vehicle over then moved to the front passenger seat where Welch was sitting to arrest him. But when he opened the door, Welch pulled out a handgun from his jacket and pointed it at the officer, police said.
The arresting officer and a second officer at the scene shot Welch after he refused orders to drop his gun…
Sidebar: Can’t say I’m impressed by the general tenet of the BlueSky responses to this. Not to defend Welch’s behavior, but the ‘kinder, gentler, more thoughtful’ vows about decorum on this new platform don’t seem to have survived contact with People We Don’t Like. Peril of rapid expansion, I guess.
War for Ukraine Day 1,051: President Zelenskyy Addresses What Is Likely to Be the Last Ukraine Contact Group Meeting
KatKapCC
Ah yes. Simpler times.
KatKapCC
Newsom just posted that Palisades fire is at 6% containment. Hopefully as the winds continue to chill out a little, that will improve more quickly, but it’s terrific to see them making progress.
HeleninEire
LOL. Yeah that is my only comment. Fuck him.
Urza
Why as this guy not still in jail or a mental insitution?
Poe Larity.
With Anita Bryant, Charon’s boat may be getting full. Safe voyage.
SpaceUnit
I’m going to miss him so much.
Michael Bersin
@Urza:
I keep asking that question about Donald Trump (r).
Melancholy Jaques
The internet does bring out the best in people, doesn’t it?
NobodySpecial
One less domestic terrorist, died of dumb. Oh well.
CliosFanboy
Some people don’t get the kinder, gentler. The guy terrorized families trying to enjoy dinner out at a neighborhood pizza place. And he pulled a gun on a cop because of a probation violation. We’re just lucky he did not kill anyone in the pizza place.
Elizabelle
Improved this world by leaving it. So sad, too bad.
Jackie
@Elizabelle: He and Anita Bryant have made this world a little better by being gone. Good.
scav
Is it kinder gentler to point out that at least he died doing what he loved best?
TBone
@Urza: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the judge at the time – 4 yrs. plus 3 on probation and a fine.
B1naryS3rf
@Melancholy Jaques: I have zero empathy for these cosplay with firearms idiots, and bluesky’s response only reflects much of the same. If by some miracle of societal outlier probability this man didn’t pass the paper bag test, I’d suspect more nefarious motives by the cops, but as it is this fool inhaled propaganda years back like it was nitrous and thus the description of his eventual demise was completely predictable if not likely. If he truly regretted what he did in 16 and wasn’t just aiming for a lighter sentence, maybe he wouldn’t have been so gunplay happy with a peace officer.
We’re going to see a lot more of these destructive fools under Trump II collide sharply with reality. I only hope we’re not collateral damage.
Betty
And that was just the beginning of the MAGA nuttiness.
TBone
The Q adjacent freaks of the New Apostolic Reformation (article originally from the Atlantic) are getting covered again.
…
…
https://dnyuz.com/2025/01/09/the-army-of-god-comes-out-of-the-shadows/
different-church-lady
Another martyr. /s
different-church-lady
@TBone:
TBone
@different-church-lady: why not both?
Fair Economist
@KatKapCC: The good news is that once a fire has any degree of containment, the growth generally slows to a crawl or stops entirely. I think the fire agencies must be super cautious about calling something “containment”.
mrmoshpotato
FTSFTLF
Fixed that shit for the lying fuckers.
hitchhiker
@TBone: I read that article. What stands out to me is how their intense nuttiness is on a straight-up collision course with the ever-more-rapidly-growing segment of the population that has no use for ANY brand of “organized religion.”
My current get-me-out-of-this-century obsession is the English Civil war, fought in the 1640s. It was partly about power politics and partly about religion and mostly about men who could not figure out how to back up while it was still possible; the intense religiosity of one side led them to believe that they must be doing what God required of them, and they interpreted everything that happened through that lens.
Won a battle? God did that. God wanted them to win. Everything they did was justified. It’s hard not to see parallels.
billcoop4
I find people like this shooter-upper make it very difficult to remain consistent to my long-held agreement with John Donne:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
Or Richard Hooker:
God hath created nothing simply for itself: but each thing in all things, and of every thing each part in other hath such interest, that in the whole world nothing is found whereunto anything created can say, “I need thee not.”
BC
TBone
@hitchhiker: when I got to the part where Netanyahu is also participating…
Ugh.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/9/poland-says-it-will-protect-benjamin-netanyahu-from-potential-arrest
Citizen Alan
@TBone: American Taliban. They only ever objected to Sharia Law out of jealousy.
mrmoshpotato
@TBone: That’s fucking shameful! Shame on you, Donald Tusk!
hitchhiker
@TBone: Seriously.
KatKapCC
Hurst fire is at 37% containment and evac orders have been downgraded to warnings.
brantl
@Melancholy Jaques: tenor, not tenet.
mrmoshpotato
@TBone: I look forward to the day they can hump the bloated corpse of their orange savior.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@hitchhiker:
The ECW was fought in parallel, particularly in the terms you reference, to the bloody and bitter 30 Years War on the Continent.
The Englightenment was a direct result of much of 17th Century Yurp’s religious conflict.
We’ve come so far. /s
karen marie
@hitchhiker: Yet somehow, when they lose, it’s not God telling them to stop, it’s “a test” requiring them to double down. “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
I hate people but especially people who wear their religion on their sleeve.
People say you cannot prove a negative but I’d argue that the very existence of these holier-than-thou folks is solid proof that God does not exist.
Jay
@TBone:
Poland has a complex history with Israel and Judaism.
There is a lot of both National and Personal guilt involved.
Poland has since WWII whitewashed it’s history regarding Judaism.
CaseyL
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The US is going so far backward so fast it just takes my breath away.
I really do wonder if there’s some kind of “stupidity virus” that hits humanity every two or three generations.
It makes those previous descents into “Dark Ages” throughout history less of a mystery, though just as incomprehensible.
Belafon
I smiled when the first of the Koch brothers died, and i will smile at the second. I will do a little cheer when Trump dies. This guy bought into lies and acted on them, and then didn’t reform afterwards. Part of me feels that this last act was suicide by cop, but I’m not going to feel any remorse over him being gone or any guilt at not feeling that remorse.
hitchhiker
@karen marie: Yeah, Oliver Cromwell was 100% sure that he and the Almighty were on speaking terms. Sometimes this manifested as personal permission to be a murderous, unrepentant thug. Oh well!
A couple of years after his (natural) death and magnificent state funeral, his body was exhumed and hung. Then they cut off his moldering head and stuck it on a pike, where it rotted for the next 20 years or so.
We deserve to see today’s crop of religious lunatics enjoy such a fate.
Parfigliano
@hitchhiker: Sounds like the contents in the program to be handed to Trump funeral attendees
West of the Rockies
@mrmoshpotato:
I will literally (I genuinely mean this) will dance in the street when that heinous toad croaks.
Melancholy Jaques
@brantl:
Did I need to add a (sic) to the quoted passage? That seems a big much for a blog comment.
TBone
@hitchhiker: Coincidentally, I’m watching the movie “Oh God” on TCM right now, with George Burns, John Denver, and Terri Garr. Oh what sweet, summer children we were back then, it’s SO 70s!
JaySinWA
@TBone: I do believe that Gen. Flynn’s Army of God is part and parcel with the New Apostolic Reformation Christian Nationalist movement.
NotMax
Repeating for the late night cohort. FYI.
How to delete your Facebook account.
A multi-step procedure. Take special notice:
TBone
@JaySinWA: yep, they are trying to rebrand the “NAR” moniker now that they’ve been identified and tagged, and, if you read the rest of the article I posted, you’ll see how & where they got their ideas about how to fill and expand their churches and spread dominionism. There are tentacles reaching across the planet.
Also, they’ve got Project 2025 incoming!
Old Dan and Little Ann
Go Irish!
Kayla Rudbek
@TBone: this is the type of thing that makes me relieved that I’m a lapsed Catholic, and causes me to worry about my godson.
TBone
@Kayla Rudbek: we have a couple of huge, brand new “Harvest” facilities recently built here where I live. It’s really creepy to see how big they are, and how much money they have. We’ve got to figure out how to fight this scourge.
NotMax
Probably this now expired nutball was no relation but so old can remember the boycott of Welch’s jellies and juices because of Joseph Welch being figuratively in bed with the John Birch Society.
RevRick
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: To which English Civil War were you referring? The one between Matilda, Henry 1’s daughter, and Stephen, her cousin, who usurped the throne, called The Anarchy, and from 1138-1153? Or the War of the Roses, which went from 1455-1487? Or the ones between Charles 1 and Parliament from 1642-1651?
glory b
@JaySinWA: He’s meeting with Muslims in Michigan too.
I wonder how that will turn out.
By the way, is it “People We Don’t Like” or “People Who Would Prefer That We Don’t Exist?”
Asking for black people.
Ohio Mom
Shortly after Welch visited Comet Ping Pong, we were in D.C. for a wedding, a trip to which we added a few extra days for sightseeing. I insisted we eat dinner there on one of those extra evenings. It’s a few doors down from the famed Politcs and Prose bookstore and we stopped there as well.
It was pretty average pizza but clearly a well-loved neighborhood spot. I could see people happily running into friends. One of walls was lined with letters of support from neighborhood children — looked like a elementary school class project — that were adorably illustrated with drawings of people enjoying pizza. And yes, there is a ping pong table in the back, full of tweens no doubt bored of sitting with their parents and thrilled to be with their peers.
As for Welch’s demise, half of all people killed by police have a mental disability; that includes both mental illness and developmental disabilities like ID (intellectual disability) and autism. I don’t know off the top of my head the stats on how many incarcerated people have a mental disability but it is also a disproportionate and large amount.
TBone
@Jay: my ancestors are Ashkenazi Jews from Lithuania on bio dad’s side. My stepfather steeped our household in WWII history books with a heavy focus on the Nazis when I was growing up – bro and I were not shielded from any of that history starting at pretty young ages. We were soaking in it.
RevRick
@NotMax: The problem with deleting your Facebook account is that all your former friends will likely be bombarded with friend requests from copies of you, leaving them vulnerable to phishing.
TBone
@TBone: Also on two trips to Europe (especially in Germany) I saw that guilt Jay spoke of many times – I didn’t pass for Italian there.
TBone
@RevRick: so an advance alert to them all would be helpful. “I’m deleting my account, so if you get any requests, it’s NOT me!”
ArchTeryx
@hitchhiker: I would have preferred him suffer the fate he suffered in Wolfwalkers. Then he got to suffer thoroughly while he was still alive.
Cthulhu
I have sympathy in regards to his mental illness but, given the fact he was still allowed access to a lot of guns, this actually seems like a optimal outcome.
As to BlueSky moderation, this is the level they aspire to and I am fine with. The zone is not flooded.
Jay
@TBone:
Polish kids are, and Poland was a “nasty” place for Jewish people long before 1939, and it didn’t get any better after 1945.
Even now, it’s just marginal.
karen marie
@RevRick: That is a “them” problem.
Melancholy Jaques
I see that Anita Bryant died. I would have bet good money that she was already dead.
West of the Rockies
@Melancholy Jaques:
I kinda thought she passed on back in the 90’s.
matt
I don’t know why we give kid glove mental health consideration to right wing terrorists and no other category of them. A crazy terrorist is usually still a terrorist.
Oh yeah, power.
prostratedragon
“It is mystical, emotional, and, in its way, wildly utopian. It is transnational, multiracial, and unapologetically political. ”
Jim Jones and People’s Temple again, eh?
SFAW
@NotMax:
Robert Welch, maybe?
Joe Welch was the chief counsel for the US Army contra Tail Gunner Joe.
NotMax
@SFAW
Yeah, that sounds more like it. Misremembered the first name. It was the patriarch of the Welch company clan.
People were even throwing away the treasure empty jelly jars nearly every house in the 1950s kept around.
TS
@West of the Rockies:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-death-party-brixton-glasgow
And lots of places in between. Plenty of examples to choose from.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@hitchhiker: Brings to mind a quote, a wish, from Babylon 5:
NotMax
@TS
Remember the stories of the hoo-ha of people mourning Cher when the hashtag #thatcherisdead first made the rounds?
NotMax
@Bruce K in ATH-GR
Ah, Vir. And he did it.
Jay
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg7z9zjv90jt
bjacques
@matt: *white* rightwing terrorists. And white mass shooters in general. And that concern for mental health care always stops before reaching the House floor.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@RevRick: You forget the forgot the First Baron’s War 1215-1216 and King Louis I, in which the English pretend they weren’t successfully invaded by the French.
But I think he is referring the The War of the Three Kingdoms.
Going by English history the US is doing really good that we only had one civil war.
Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom
@billcoop4: Yeah, me too. I think of it as a form of emotional burn out. There is only so much of the damage MAGA is doing one can take, until the wells of sympathy & empathy are drained & there just isn’t any more. Hell, I’m still struggling not to all out hate the actual people of Russia despite the War In Ukraine. I know they live miserable lives & are constantly lied to & manipulated by what passes for their government. But then there will be yet another Russian atrocity in Ukraine, & my sympathy will start to fade.
Jay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
So far
Jay
@Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom:
Me, not so much.
The closest I come is to call them ruZZians,
I admire my self control.
JML
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Vir was a great character. RIP, Steven Furst.
different-church-lady
@Melancholy Jaques: Inside, perhaps.