Details are sketchy -- to say the least -- but apparently one congressman was wounded (Steve Scalise) as well as a couple of cops on protective duty. The suspect is said to be in custody.
Some wag said, "Well, he must be white then."
This wouldn't be the first time a congressmember was shot and wounded by the Lone Gunman, and it will be interesting to see what kind of outrage emerges from this one. Gabby Giffords was shot and critically wounded in 2011 and had to leave congress on account of her injuries, but all the outrage her shooting provoked had zero effect on her former colleagues who rather ostentatiously and arrogantly refused to consider legislation that might further restrict access to firearms for people with mental illness. As I recall -- but my memory is failing -- congress actually passed legislation easing access to guns in the wake of Gabby Giffords' shooting.
How much bigger a "Fuck you!" could they have engineered?
Shootings by these Lone Gunmen are commonplace, of course, but they almost never target people with money or power. That's why the Giffords shooting was so odd. Today's incident is also odd.
Ah, but we've been in this chaotic matrix for some time now, and these sorts of oddities are bound to become more and more common. The question is not whether they will happen -- they will -- but rather what the response of the Powers That Be will be.
If as I suspect the shooting today can be labeled "terrorism" -- even better if the shooter is brown, black, or Muslim(!) or better still a "damn dirty librul"*-- then we will see a prompt response from Power and Authority to tighten the ratchet on all sorts of irritating people and behavior.
This isn't a Reichstag Fire type incident, but given the hysterics of Our Rulers (well, some of them) over the Terrorist Threat (to themselves, of course, they don't give a shit about the rest of us) the reaction is liable to be similar.
As if we didn't have enough of that already.
It's the world we live in.
Gak.
UPDATE: * And so, here we are:
His Twitter profile shows that Hodgkinson is a left-wing supporter of Bernie Sanders who has also posted several memes on his Facebook page critical of President Donald Trump. He also called Georgia Republican congressional candidate Karen Handel a “b*tch” for saying she didn’t support a living wage during a debate with Democratic rival Jon Ossoff.http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/gop-baseball-practice-shooter-identified-as-66-year-old-james-t-hodgkinson/
