The Annapolis shooting was an attack on a newspaper — and on women.
July 3, 2018 4:10 PM   Subscribe

Former Capital Gazette staffer on last week's shooting: "The fight isn’t just about guns or the news media. The fight is also about the idea that any woman owes any man anything." Also, the woman who was stalked by the shooter told authorities, "He will be your next shooter."
posted by Ralston McTodd (18 comments total) 33 users marked this as a favorite
 
I've been following this case and was wondering about the content of the 2011 piece in the Capital Gazette that set this dude off. This is a summary of one of his court cases and includes a transcript of the original column. It's a PDF. Once again, misogyny and gun violence intersect...
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 4:30 PM on July 3, 2018 [7 favorites]


Don't read the comments section on the first link. Just don't.
posted by spoobnooble II: electric bugaboo at 4:41 PM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


Samantha Bee did this segment about domestic violence related mass shootings.

And this kind of bullshit doesn't help: Trump Calls the News Media the ‘Enemy of the American People’

If it were up to me, you'd take all your guns and throw them in a volcano. But can you at least make sure if you've got a DV record, then you don't get to have a gun?

No? *sigh*
posted by adept256 at 4:41 PM on July 3, 2018 [5 favorites]


Thank you so much for posting this. When I initially read the story, the moment I got to the part about his stalking after misconstruing a "relationship" and believing there was one when there if fact, was not, I closed the paper. It is terrifying and entirely too close yo home for so many of us.

This immediately brought back so many icky memories of dating men who not only refused to hear NO, that they threw a tantrum that took the form of violence, stalking, alienation and running my reputation through the sewer because they were incapable of dealing with their own emotions like goddamned adults. Yes, we are not fully formed to handle emotions, all of, so we put in the freakin work. Ugh. THIS is the real problem and it needs to be addressed. If I had a nickel for either myself or every girlfriend, coworker, etc. who had at least two of these stories. If it were up to me I would have an emotions class for every middle school boy and girl to develop empathy and compassion for their peers and humans.
posted by floweredfish at 5:03 PM on July 3, 2018 [34 favorites]


I find it interesting that Trump initially denied a request to lower flags to half staff in memory of those slain (although he changed his mind after negative publicity). I guess these things have become so common that they have to meet certain criteria for national mourning or else we would never have our flags at full staff for more than a day or so.
posted by TedW at 5:03 PM on July 3, 2018 [6 favorites]


Woman: "He will be your next shooter."

Authorities: "What?? We talked to him, and he's a standup guy!"

Woman: "Uh-huh."
posted by jamjam at 5:28 PM on July 3, 2018 [29 favorites]


I was stalked for years. I’m sure dealing with this shortened my mother and step-father’s lives.
Not being able to take ‘No’, or ‘It’s over’ in an adult fashion is not at all good. Abuse, stalking, bullying, rape, murder all cost women and children YEARS out of their lives. It would be great if police, judges and lawmakers understood the damage. It would be great if they cared. If someone is an abuser, a stalker, a rapist they aren’t going to stop. You expect more out of those charged with upholding social order. You expect them not to punish the victims.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:30 PM on July 3, 2018 [46 favorites]


“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
posted by gucci mane at 5:41 PM on July 3, 2018 [29 favorites]


I went to high school with the shooter. He was a year behind me. In his class picture, which now means I have a portrait of a mass shooter in my house, he looks like your standard washout metal kid. It makes for a weird yearbook, but not as weird as my sister's, who would have been a freshman along with Eric Snowden when this guy was a senior. Either one of us might have known the woman who was the victim of his initial stalking.

Other friends I went to high school with lost friends in the attack. One of the murdered reporters phoned members of the Drama Club to let them know that their teacher was about to be got on kiddie porn charges and gave them tips on seeking help if they needed it.

.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:44 PM on July 3, 2018 [38 favorites]


It is always, always, always a guy who has felt Not Treated Nicely Enough by either women or one specific woman. The women in question always, always knew, and I am so fucking exhausted.

My ex husband might be a mass shooter someday. I don’t know, I don’t know if he will be set off. I know he held me at gunpoint until I agreed to have sex with him, to protect the life of my child, and then I proceeded to not be in the same state as him for the next thirteen years. I know I reported him to the police and the military police. I had cause, later, to pull up the civilian police report. It states “Victim declined to press charges.” I did not, in fact, decline to press charges. I asked for protection and said I was at risk. They said “no, you’ll be fine. We won’t provide you any protection.” I declined to be in the same room without protection, and that is “declining to file charges”. If he murders someone, sometime, I am sorry. I did my best.

I do not know what it will take for police to start treating domestic violence seriously, but given the DV rates in the police force, I think it’s more a problem of the call coming from inside the house.
posted by corb at 7:05 PM on July 3, 2018 [124 favorites]


Before the dictator took over there was a program on la's npr station about gun control. A man called in upset that his guns were taken away after he was charged with dv....according to him it didn't count as dv "because it didn't happen in their home". He was called out on his bullshit.
posted by brujita at 7:52 PM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


TedW: I guess these things have become so common that they have to meet certain criteria for national mourning or else we would never have our flags at full staff for more than a day or so.

And then we might realize it's time for an act of true patriotism: fly the American flag upside down (this Fourth of July) [Salon, July 3, 2017]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:23 PM on July 3, 2018 [5 favorites]


Yes, thanks for posting this.

This has been driving me bonkers - so many articles on this shooting (and commentaries around it), even those who agree it was not only a tragedy but yet another symptom of our out-of-control gun culture and the current administration's attacks on the free press, are framing it as, "Well, disturbed guy with a long-standing grudge against the paper . . . ." and it's like, "NO, you're leaving out the part where his grudge against the paper started because they reported the fact that he plead guilty to stalking and harassment." He didn't develop a grudge against the paper because they wouldn't report that he was getting alien messages through the fillings in his teeth, he got mad because they reported that he got busted being a predator. That's an important fucking part of the story that's getting lost.
posted by soundguy99 at 8:45 PM on July 3, 2018 [38 favorites]


Holy shit that comment section is a sewer. The author of this article isn't attacking men, they are pointing out a pattern that exists that we aren't addressing as a society. If you care about men's rights at all you'd think you would want to see the issues that they are most prone to addressed.

I think a lot of people have become so partisan that just seeing certain phrases leads to a knee jerk response/attack.
posted by backlikeclap at 11:43 PM on July 3, 2018


Neither of those links is available to me. The Post has a paywall, and the Daily News stopped serving pages in the UK when GDPR took effect. So if anyone knows of other, freely accessible links, I'd be glad to have sight of them.
posted by rustipi at 12:42 AM on July 4, 2018


disabling javascript will unwall it for you. Using firefox, open add-ons (ctrl-shift-a) select extensions and search for 'noscript'. I suppose other browsers have a similar deal.
posted by adept256 at 2:29 AM on July 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


“Women are the canary in the coal mine almost every time.”
posted by ActingTheGoat at 3:27 AM on July 4, 2018 [12 favorites]


Removing the gender component, it's learning how to deal with rejection.

While rejection doesn't necessarily have a gender component, it oftentimes does, as in this case and most commomly when women reject men, it takes a very destructive turn. Women and minorities, we are taught to deal with rejection because it's unfortunately, a lot of what we know having to tiptoe around the patriarchy. However, rejection at its core really is gender neutral.

Think of all the gender neutral rejection scenarios that we learn to deal with...not being invited to an event, job rejections, college rejections, rejections of loans, purchases, applications for whatever, pets...the list goes on. It's when these rejections have a hyper-emotional component (such as relationships or attempts at bring vulnerable to others with our emotions) do we see the worst in others when coping with said rejections.

This is not a mental health issue. This in itself is not a gender issue per se, but it is a human issue. Unfortunately, gender emerges as a major theme and it screams at how we need to teach coping skills just as we teach money skills and other skills. These skills are important to being good humans towards our fellow humans.
posted by floweredfish at 9:42 AM on July 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


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