Trump-Loving Highland Park Shooter Was Inspired by Uvalde and Buffalo; GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Darren Bailey Tells Illinoisans to Get Over It

     Independence Day 2022 turned into a nightmare thanks to a Trump supporter and possible anti-Semite who had planned this attack very far in advance. Seven were killed and at least 40 injured when he climbed onto a rooftop and shot into a parade in Highland Park, Illinois. To clear up one bit of misinformation, I would like to thank the police in this scenario: they may not have killed him, but they did shoot him pretty severely; this wasn't a case of a white mass shooter getting taken to Burger King afterward. FOX News was among the first agencies to report the shooting, hoping it would fit their "Chicago is a crime-ridden liberal hellhole" narrative; they held their horses when what was revealed had the opposite effect.

     Robert "Bobby" Crimo III's uncle Paul claimed he "never could have seen this coming." In Daniel Tosh's Netflix special "People Pleaser," he says, "there's nothing more disrespectful" than doing that and that "maybe you should be locked up for six months" if you do. I agree: this young man spent years writing and posting terrible rap songs about mass homicide, and the uncle has the nerve to come out while people lay in the hospital dying and say that. Every school has had at least one SoundCloud rap scumbag: at my school, the young man who threatened to murder the school liaison officer among others at graduation had previously sent out an email to the whole school trying to raise $2,000 to produce his music. The fact that Mr. Crimo was a loner seemed to make former associates from high school think he was less likely to be violent, which seems bizarre to me. Virtually every mass shooter has at some point been described as a loner. I mean, somebody with face tattoos and crazy eyes on a tiny head doesn't belong anywhere near a weapon. Bobby Crimo III looks like a composite of the face of every mass shooter in the United States. We also know quite a bit about Bobby Crimo (ironic name, by the way) III's political affiliation. He was quite the Ben Shapiro fan, referencing him in at least one song that was virtually all autotune (from a fellow musician, what a talentless prick) and was photographed at a Trump rally dressed as Waldo and wearing a Trump flag. Whether or not his political affiliation was his motive, it was his means of attaining a firearm. After the Waukesha Parade tragedy in which a subhuman career criminal rammed into a crowd of innocent parade viewers while fleeing from law enforcement, the Right quickly branded him a "violent BLM terrorist" because he supported the Black Lives Matter movement (even though, as a black man in America, the odds were pretty high that would be true); if that's the game they want to play, we can play it. This is now the second mass shooting by a Trump supporter in a matter of two months, the other being the racially-motivated Buffalo shooting.

     The owner of Bob's Pantry and Deli, Robert Crimo, Jr., had a father, Robert Crimo, Sr., who died in 2018. Crimo, Jr. was the Republican nominee for mayor of Highland Park in 2018, running on a platform that called for deregulation. Among these regulations Crimo apparently felt could be done away with was the ban on assault rifles in Highland Park that was instituted nearly a decade ago. Around the time Crimo ran, several gun rights groups actually tried lobbying to get the ordinance repealed, to no avail. He lost to incumbent Mayor Nancy Rotering, a pro-gun control Democrat, by a two-to-one margin. His sentiment, still, never changed. Just days after the horrific mass shooting in Uvalde, Robert Jr., like his son, liked a post that, rather than expressing any sympathy for the students who were torn to shreds by a gunman, said that all Americans should, "Defend the Second Amendment like your life depends on it." Peoples' lives do depend on the battle for gun safety; it's people like Crimo who do the killing and innocent people who pay the price.

     There are some disturbing signs that this may have been a hate crime. Bobby Crimo III was apparently of the mindset that his life would end with him conducting a mass shooting for quite some time, and the subsequent massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde and debate and passage of the Bipartisan Safe Communities Act obviously angered him. Apparently, Rabbi Yosef Schanowitz recognized the youngest Crimo as a man unaffiliated with the local synagogue who had shown up at Passover in April. The Highland Park area has a large Jewish population; much like in Atlanta, where, no matter what the motive, the overwhelming majority of victims were Asian, in Highland Park the victims are disproportionately Jewish. Israel has been informed of several deaths of Jewish citizens, and I hope the United States maintains close contact with the nation throughout this investigation. After the spa shootings in Atlanta, the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act was passed. I'm calling on President Biden to build on the COVID-19 Hates Crimes Act and Emmett Till Antilynching Act by signing a comprehensive executive order to bolster the government's capacity to combat and prevent hate crimes in response to this shooting as well as the one in Buffalo. I'm also calling on Illinois to expand its gun control legislation like Delaware has and other states are in the process of doing, on President Biden to take even more executive action than he already has to combat gun violence, and on Congress to pass another bipartisan gun control bill, most notably one to close the gun show loophole. Under this Democratic administration, gun violence has been met with more than thoughts and prayers; I hope this trend continues.

     The GOP not only helped stoke this massacre like the one in Buffalo, but they actually claim that Crimo III is an ANTIFA operative trying to make the Right look bad; while Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker pointed out that this gun violence is a scourge unique to the United States, Republican nominee Darren Bailey told people to "move on" and "celebrate" before Crimo III had even been caught, as people lay in pools of blood, and as children received sutures in the hospital. This is the future the Supreme Court wants for America and the future the Republican Party wants for America. Illinoisans and other Americans alike should reject this future in November.