The shooter who killed two children and injured 21 others at a Minneapolis church was seen on video visiting a suburban gun shop the weekend before the attack.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) September 5, 2025 at 12:30 AM
… Krause stressed that nothing in Westman’s conduct raised any concerns among his staffers, who he said are trained to watch for warning signs.
“This person said all the right things, they checked all the right boxes, asked all the questions, they were friendly, talkative, making jokes, laughing, knowledgeable about guns, handled a lot of guns that were not the type of guns you would think are of the interest of somebody looking to do a mass shooting,” Krause told the AP.
Krause said his employees have extensive experience in picking out bad actors, straw purchasers, people who are homicidal, suicidal, mentally unstable or under the influence of alcohol or drugs. He said nothing stood out with Westman.
“We’re still going over it,” Krause said. “We’re still scratching our heads thinking, ‘What did we miss? What could we have done?’ But it always ends with the answer of ‘nothing.’ There was just nothing there. And that’s what makes this situation so unique.”…
The Mass Shooters Are Performing for One Another www.theatlantic.com/technology/a…
— Jennifer Ouellette (@jenlucpiquant.bsky.social) September 4, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Charlie Warzel, at the Atlantic, suggests “The Mass Shooters Are Performing for One Another” [gift link]:
Last week, a 23-year-old opened fire outside a church at a Minneapolis Catholic school, killing two children and injuring 19 other people before dying by suicide. Just a few hours later, the shooter’s YouTube videos began to circulate online. In one, the shooter shows off an arsenal of weapons and ammunition laid out on a bed. The killer laughs and offers a stream-of-consciousness monologue. “I didn’t ask for life,” they say, the camera focused on the shooter’s vape. “You didn’t ask for death.”…
… The video was picked apart by people looking for some hints as to the shooter’s motivation or politics. Some right-wing influencers and MAGA-friendly news outlets seized on the killer’s gender identity, insinuating that the shooting had something to do with them being trans. Others fixated on the message about killing Trump and suggested the killer was a deranged liberal. Some left-leaning commentators seized upon the anti-Semitic scrawlings and racial slurs and said the killer was clearly a neo-Nazi.
But the rush to make sense of the shooting based on these messages and symbols is misguided. As incoherent, unhinged, or even cringey as the Minneapolis shooter’s videos might seem, they are part of a familiar template of terroristic behavior—one that continues to spread in online communities dedicated to mass shootings and other forms of brutality. In these morbid spaces, killers are viewed as martyrs, and they’re dubbed “saints.” Really, they’re influencers.
These disaffected communities live on social networks, message boards, and private Discords. They are populated by trolls, gore addicts, and, of course, aspiring shooters, who study, debate, and praise mass-shooting tactics and manifestos. Frequently, these groups adopt the aesthetics of neo-Nazis and white supremacists—sometimes because they are earnestly neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and sometimes because it’s the look and language that they’re cribbing from elsewhere. It’s always blurry, but it usually amounts to the same thing. In an article published by this magazine last year, Dave Cullen, author of the book Columbine, summed it all up: “As you read this, a distraught, lonely kid somewhere is contemplating an attack—and the one community they trust is screaming, Do it!”…
To understand the dynamics at play here, I spoke at length with Alex Newhouse, a researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder who studies online extremism. He told me that the “proximate goal of these attacks is to entrench the shooter in the broader legacy of violence and propel the legacy further.” The idea, in other words, is to motivate someone else to become a shooter—by creating a public manifesto, leaving a trail of digital evidence, and even livestreaming attacks in some cases. “The more frequently the template shows up, the more likely it will repeat,” Newhouse said. “It’s not ideological in the sense that we tend to think about it. There may be anti-Semitic or fascistic elements therein, but the real incentive is the self-reinforcing legacy of these shooters.”…
Much more at the link.
Meanwhile… speaking of ‘trolls, gore addicts, and… aspiring shooters’:
Inside the gun absolutists’ bold plot to repeal one of America’s strongest firearms laws
— The Guardian (@theguardian.com) September 5, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Wapiti
Guns are just tools. I mean, who of us hasn’t seen someone at the gun range, going apeshit with a crowbar or hammer, attacking a target with _________’s face attached to it. /sarcasm
Baud
Their personalities are being normalized. Soon they’ll be a guest at the SOTU.
Scout211
That Guardian article about the Gun Owners of America is truly frightening. Everyone’s attention has been on the NRA for decades when behind the scenes, the GOA has been working on destroying any last regulation on guns that may still be on the books. Like the National Firearms Act of 1934, and their latest crusade is to restore the right to own machine guns.
I posted excerpts of the article on Friday but it is well worth a read.
John Revolta
“Waiting period? But I’m mad now!”
-Homer Simpson
Baud
John Revolta
When you’re too damn nuts for the NRA
Raoul Paste
At the gym, I overheard one person talk about only one thing- his gun collection and all the accessories that he had purchased. He was talking excitedly and hurriedly; it was important to him to get it all out there.
Now, this stuff is expensive, and it has little use. Shotguns? High caliber pistols? It’s beyond my understanding. But in some circles, it’s akin to bragging about your new sports car.
dc
Why did Youtube allow this channel? I know there are lots of other platforms with little to no regulation. But Youtube is a generalist platform and they delete videos and whole channels for less.
dc
Also, the shooter appears in the image above to be dressed as a man and presenting as such.
Another Scott
Hmm. What else can Google tell me about this Kory Krause fellow?
KARE11.com from November 2022:
Waddaya gonna do?? Bidness is bidness, scrambled eggs and dead school kids, oh well, amirite??
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
dc
Says the gun shop owner living a world of countries where this kind of thing does not happen like clockwork despite having all the same kinds of people as anywhere else.
Teresa
@Baud:
That family is so twisted. Their cruelty and arrogance, topped with their religious hypocrisy is revolting.
It’s hard to tell them apart from the DeVos family.
Parfigliano
@Raoul Paste: Shotguns. Bird hunting.
hells littlest angel
I have come to regard The Atlantic as synonymous with specious generalizations.
eclare
I have no idea. The one here did a lot of damage in one day.
actionnews5.com/2025/08/12/suspect-behind-deadly-shooting-spree-that-put-memphis-lockdown-plea-guilt…
I will never forget that day.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Next R nominee.
Tehanu
@dc:
And like a large percentage of Americans, having zero knowledge of, interest in, or respect for anyone who isn’t exactly the same as them. Ignorant, uncaring, and smug.
CliosFanboy
This reminds me of the “Cereal Collectors” convention in Sandman. For those who are unfamiliar with it, it was actually a convention of serial killers, comparing notes, holding panels, etc.
CliosFanboy
@Teresa:
remember. Her brother got in trouble for torturing a dog to death. You just know there is at least one active pedophile in that family.
sab
@John Revolta: Only two transgender women in the long history history of US mass shootings, so we want to ban them and only them from getting guns.
Deputinize America
@Another Scott:
1. Police walk out of the evidence room with the valuable or specialty pieces. Happens over and over.
2. Frequently, stolen firearms used in another crime are sold off at auction, the original owners and insurers never notified, and state laws often prohibit their destruction.
Albatrossity
Somehow, I have a hard time imagining that someone who owns a gun store would be good at figuring out who might be a problematic gun owner. Cult members think other cult members are perfectly normal…
mrmoshpotato
@Albatrossity:
And 💰💰💰
kindness
Funny how that ‘gun absolutist’ organization refuses to see the ‘well regulated’ part of the 2nd Amendment.
Professor Bigfoot
I can tell most of you
guysgood folks have never been in a gun store and never been on a gun range.Edited to remove gendered language.
fourmorewars
Years ago, a guy who’d brought a gun onboard a plane so he could kill his boss, proceeded to shoot the pilots and bring down the plane, killing everybody. No way to mock him in life, but I had this thought. Maybe people should bring balloons and stuffed animals to his gravesite. Y’know, ’cause he thought he was badass but he really went out like a spoiled brat.
The intended audience for this would be the next guy who was contemplating something like this. ‘This is how we’re going to treat you. This is how you’ll be remembered.’ Couldn’t hurt, imho.
Teresa
@CliosFanboy:
Yes, I remember. I am sure they have more dark secrets in their family. A family foundation that revolves around cruelty, lies and arrogance almost always has more problems that span generations.
MagdaInBlack
@Professor Bigfoot: I have been in a gun store once, during the Obama years, with all the signs telling me Obama was gonna take the guns so BUY NOW, and all the freaks fondling the guns.
It terrified me. It was not a world I wished to spend time in.
Both my parents and husband were hunters and there was no gun worship in their lives.
WTFGhost
@Baud: Meh – you’re ignoring the point of the article, he had prompts to make sure he didn’t raise red flags.
That said: you’re certainly not wrong. I mean, remember Trump getting shot at, and the response of “what would we do, shoot every weird guy with an AR-15? That would be a massacre!”
If people only have to play normal, for a few minutes, and they can rehearse, that means most gun shop owners won’t spot them. I mean, can’t you imagine going into a shop that caters to your hobby, and asking questions about some of your favorite stuff, before deciding on the hobby item good for slaughter?
The problem is still, as you say, that slaughter prep is a hobby, and it’s really horrible that it is so. This is the sort of thing that comes from over-militarism, but also from right wing terrorism, which we aren’t investigating, because Republicans killed funding, to investigate the kinds of people, who put Trump in power and powered J6.
Professor Bigfoot
@MagdaInBlack: Before January 2017 I owned three pistols that had literally not seen the light of day throughout the entire Obama administrations.
Because who needs to hear those bubbas going on about that, right?
But after a few weeks in a fugue state after November 2016, I went to the nearest sporting goods store waving my credit card.
One of my great pleasures these days is having a lane next to one of those goobers and shooting better groups at longer distances, faster than them.
I want them to know they are not the only ones who own guns and know how to use them.
satby
Been in a gun store, learned to handle, load, unload, properly store, and shoot before I was 13. Cop’s kids (especially homicide cops) are taught to respect (and slightly fear) the lethality of guns; at least my cousins and I all were. Gun owners are a minority and a lot are absolutely perverts about their guns.
Jay
@MagdaInBlack:
There are “gun owners”, and then there are “ammosexuals”.
The weird part is how many “ammosexuals” there are in the US, compared to the ROW,
and unfortunately, like many things “American”, that sick fetish has leaked across the US borders and infected small, but loud minorities in other countries.
Professor Bigfoot
@WTFGhost: Conservatives have been stockpiling guns and ammunition since the Clinton administration.
They’re stupid, but they know damned well that despite all their rhetoric that they couldn’t stand against a single Marine fire team.
(Of course, these guys regularly lie to themselves, so)
But what they CAN do is ethnic cleansing, and we have PLENTY of examples of that in American history.
Ruviana
@Scout211: Back when Adam covered a range of topics beyond the Ukraine War, he mentioned Gun Owners of America and how they made the NRA look like the Boy Scouts. So there’s been some awareness of them for awhile.
Professor Bigfoot
@Jay: This.
I have noticed a decided correlation between ammosexuality and conservatism; but I have met some Black gun owners who exhibited that kind of behavior.
The dudes who just cannot wait to shoot someone.
I can’t stand those people.
Jay
@satby:
There are roughly 80 million gun owners in the US.
There are roughly, somewhere between almost 400 million to 500 million guns in the US.
That does not mean that each gun owner has 6.25 guns.
Median gun ownership is 1 to 2 guns.
Lot’s of really sick puppies in the US.
Professor Bigfoot
@satby: I confess… it’s become a whole lot of fun for me now.
Putting multiple shots quickly into a small ring at 5 or 10 meters requires skill and practice.
That said, I’m a complete paranoid about gun safety— ALL my guns are in one safe or another; and I only have one loaded gun in the house, in a biometric safe two steps from my bedside.
Heh, I carry my Dyson stick vacuum with a finger off the trigger unless I’m actually vacuuming… likewise a power drill, or even a bottle of spray cleaner.
I may look like an idiot, but good habits are always worth cultivating.
Professor Bigfoot
@Jay: I have several guns that just sit in the safe gathering dust, because selling them is just too big a pain in the ass to individuals and stores will low-ball the hell outta ya.
Meanwhile new technologies emerge and cooler machines become available.
I’m probably gonna go ahead and “bite the bullet” and “eat the loss” and sell them to a shop.
I doubt I’m the only one in that position.
TONYG
@Baud: I wonder how many other customers of that gun store are also murderers.
MagdaInBlack
@Professor Bigfoot: Stored n a cedar chest, I have an octagon barrel Marlin 22 that was my fathers and that he referred to as a “gallery rifle.”
That’s it. Altho I was a good shot with it, in a past life.
prostratedragon
Addendum: The ad refers at the end to “knowing the signs.” The one “sign” one really needs to know is the ready availability of guns.
Jay
@MagdaInBlack:
If the S/N is below 10,000, it’s unsafe to shoot with modern ammo.
Ealbert
I will come right out and say it: I am for repeal of the Second Amendment. It was written for a different time and for different conditions and equipment. I am done with people having to preface their statement with: I’m not against the Second Amendment…. I realize that it will be difficult if not impossible to do, but I think there are a lot of people who feel the same way. This doesn’t mean that no one can have a gun, it means that we can have logical regulations about possessing one.
Until we have that, I would like to see Responsible Gun Owner laws. If you own a gun you will be a responsible gun owner or you will be the owner responsible. Your gun was stolen from your home and you didn’t have it in a locked gun safe? You are responsible! Your gun was stolen from your car? You are responsible! Your child took a gun from your home that you hadn’t secured under lock and key? You are responsible!
If you have more than five(?), 10(?) guns you need to have a safety plan submitted with the local authority and it will have to be reviewed (in your residence) every so many years. We need to view guns not as a piece of decor but as an Attractive Nuisance and with the same type of safety regulations. And in my view semi automatic weapons should only be allowed if they are kept in locked storage at a gun range. I am told that they are fun to shoot. That may be true, but if that is the best reason for owning one, that is the only place they should be kept.
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: I have not touched it in the 29 years since my husband passed and I moved to the suburbs. I imagine its a collectors gun, at this point. My father was born in 1906 and it was his as a young man
Purely sentimental to me.
Jay
@MagdaInBlack:
Yup, it’s a “Collector” gun.
Marc
I had this hobby for many years, racing high performance sailplanes in mountainous terrain. Costs were comparable to owning a good size sailboat, but man I got to do some cool shit. The real problems was that it was pretty damn dangerous. Out of our regional cohort of a few hundred pilots, one or two a year, usually someone I knew on a first name basis, would end up as wreckage on a mountainside somewhere. The last straw was when two 25+ year close friends, both extremely experienced, bought it in the same kind of two seat glider I usually flew. I knew both of their families, and the memorial was a pretty messed up scene, I decide then and there to quit.
Funny thing happens with guys (the few women were fine) when you quit a shared “manly” activity like that, they shun you. As if quitting because of risk is the same as suggesting that the rest of them are idiots. Out of 50 or so people I’d see almost every weekend with decent weather, often traveling with them with our gliders throughout the western states, picking them and their gliders up in the middle of nowhere, two guys remained friends after I quit. I’ve never heard from any of the others, I’m as dead to them as the ones in the wreckage.
A similar thing happened with all of my close gun-owning friends who I’d know since we were all confused black teenagers at a 99% white engineering school. Around Trump V1 they moved from having a single pistol or shotgun to building multiple AR-15s and tried to convince me to join up with them weekends at the gun range, all in the spirit of fun and comradery. I went once and failed to see the fun. As time progressed they started listening to right-wing radio and buying Teslas (I kid not). We finally had it out when day at a restaurant post-pandemic when I told them I had no interest in their politics or guns. I was then told I was a coward for not buying a gun to protect my family, so I left. None have ever made any effort to speak to me again.
I’d say both situations resulted from some male cultural thing I never understood. Guns are a tribal manhood thing, as much as driving cars too fast, jumping out of airplanes, or risking minimal mountainside clearance for a few extra miles. When I’m declared dictator, that will be fixed :)
Professor Bigfoot
@Ealbert: Get those white supremacist neo-Confederate conservatives to give up their guns and I’ll hand mine over with a smile.
Until then…
Kayla Rudbek
@Marc: I think that cycling also has its share of meat headed men who enjoy the macho posturing and gear headed-ness (racing bikes versus Dutch-style city bikes for one, and the UCF’s discouraging attitude towards bikes with fairings which in my opinion would make cycling more enjoyable and safer if there was a separate competition that wasn’t limited to extreme hobbyists). A nice leisurely ride can turn into a hammer fest very quickly if you have enough competition on the ride.
Ealbert
@Professor Bigfoot:
Do you have 10 plus guns sitting around your home? Do you take Christmas card photos with everyone in your home holding their semiautomatic weapons? Do you leave your handgun sitting out between the seats while you run in to buy something at the convenience store and had it stolen? Have you left your gun sitting on the toilet paper dispenser because you were in a rush and forgot it? If not, I wasn’t talking about you. And yes, all those things have happened and there was huge disagreement about making those last 2 misdemeanors.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ealbert: Fair point.
As mentioned above, I’m fairly paranoid about gun safety and security. The mere thought of doing ANY of those things gives me a stomach ache.
THOSE assholes piss me off, too.
Jay
@Professor Bigfoot:
So you haven’t been an elected ReThug who “forgot” you had a loaded gun in your carry on?
Glidwrith
@Professor Bigfoot: I think you’re right about the ethnic cleansing part, at least as these asses fantasize.
I have an uncle that tried to feed me the line about using their guns against the tyranny of government.
I asked him if things went so wrong (and he served as a Naval officer) that the US government turned against us that we could actually fight off the Armed Forces?
No answer, turned around and walked away.
Professor Bigfoot
@Jay: HAYLLL NAW.
I will never get so damn comfortable with a loaded firearm that I COULD just “leave it somewhere.”
For example, my very first firearms instructor taught us to never keep a loaded gun where we could get to it without being FULLY AWAKE, so the only loaded gun in my house is in a biometric safe two steps from my bedside. I figure if they manage to get past my Yorkies without them raising a ruckus and past my 110 pound Italian Mastiff and get up the stairs before I can get to it, well, that day is just gonna suck for all of us.
(but the probability of us ever actually needing it is very very low… and I live with the belief that “it’s better to have and not need than to need and not have”)
Professor Bigfoot
@Glidwrith: The Sack of Black Wall Street remains in living memory.
Paul in KY
@John Revolta: The NRA is about selling guns. Transgender people are assumed to have money, so ipso facto should be allowed to purchase as many firearms as they like!
I too think adult transgender people should be allowed to purchase as many firearms as the law allows, but for different reasons than the NRA.
Paul in KY
@dc: I was thinking that if the shooter was self identifying as female, then she was going the super-butch route.
Paul in KY
@Albatrossity: These whackos, like this shooter above, come in all happy and cheerful, cause they are going to be killing a bunch of people later and that makes them happy. Duh.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: “Uh, my name is Sergeant Johnson, and I’m a Master Drone Operator. My drone carries 8 hellfire missiles. So you see them all in that group? OK, put crosshairs on them, push button to fire missile….and they’re all dead.”
Paul in KY
@Marc: I think maybe (for the sailplane fliers) you (and your getting out) remind them of the extreme danger and how you avoided that (remembered when they are in their death spiral to the ground).
Best to keep those thoughts out of their adrenalin junkie minds.