According to numerous reports, the shooter had been writing for months that he wanted to kill Black people. He had made menacing, violent threats against high school classmates. He was ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluations.
And yet he was able to walk into a store, plunk down money, pass an instant background check, and buy a Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic rifle.
He then went home and removed the state-mandated restraining bolt that had limited the gun's capacity to a 10-round clip. That modification let him load multiple 30-round magazines, making it easier for him to hunt, target and kill Black people, according to the manifesto he posted online.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the manifesto cites rhetoric embraced by white supremacists, making references to a racist conspiracy theory called "great replacement," which asserts that political elites use immigration and other policies to reduce the white population. The conspiracy theory has been cited as inspiration for several violent attacks against Hispanics, Muslims and Jews in the U.S. and abroad.
U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger and U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney lashed out at fellow Republicans for embracing the debunked "great replacement" theory; and the president, in Buffalo today, labeled it "domestic terrorism."
