August 26, 2015

ABC News received a 22-page fax from someone claiming to be Bryce Williams this morning, blaming the shooting on the Charleston shootings earlier this year.

A man claiming to be the gunman who killed a reporter and cameraman on live television said in a rambling letter that he was motivated by the church shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, in June.

In a 23-page fax to ABC News headquarters in New York, the man, claiming to be Bryce Williams, also expressed admiration for the gunmen who carried out mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Columbine High School in 1999.

He said that he had suffered racial discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying at work and had been attacked for being a gay black man.

"The church shooting was the tipping point," he wrote, according to ABC News, "but my anger has been building steadily…I've been a human powder keg for a while…just waiting to go BOOM!!!!"

From what I read in the manifesto, I'd say it was an even more rambling and incoherent document than the one written by the Charleston shooter, but I'm almost certain we won't hear anything about mental illness for awhile.

Indeed, Breitbart News has already decided what this shooting was about:

https://twitter.com/hunterw/status/636567629466087424

Whether or not it's mental illness, pent-up frustration, hate, or whatever else was on the man's mind, he got a gun and he shot two people on live television before shooting himself. The common thread here is the gun. The gun he probably shouldn't have been allowed to get.

Democratic 2016 hopefuls reacted to the shootings on Twitter:

Bernie Sanders:

Hillary Clinton:

Martin O'Malley:

Jim Webb:

Lincoln Chafee had no response.

I would like to see all of the candidates articulate their positions on gun safety. We can start with a call to repeal the tort liability laws protecting gun manufacturers and sellers, perhaps?

This is shocking, tragic, and depressing. But it's not that much different than what happens on a daily basis all over this country for a lot of different reasons. This one just unfolded on live television. I doubt that it will make much of a difference to policy in the end, given that the murder of 20 schoolchildren couldn't make a dent.

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