White Supremacist Shooting Shocks Community

An 18-year-old white gunman murdered 10 people in Buffalo, New York. He deliberately sought out a site with a high black population.

• Patrick Gendron, an 18-year-old white supremacist drove over 320km to carry out his racially motivated attack. President Biden described the attack as “abhorrent.”
• The gunman deliberately sought out Black victims. The mayor of the town explained that Gendron arrived with the intention to take as many black lives as possible.
• Gendron was already on the radar of the authorities, as he previously threatened a shooting at his high school last June. He underwent a mental health examination following this.
• They concluded in a 180 page document that Gendron was a white supremacist and facist. With this in mind, people are asking: how could the authorities let someone like this slip through the cracks?
• Shootings such as this one are becoming an all too familiar pattern. Fuelled by the extremist online communities, young men live-stream their deadly rampages and leave behind a “manifesto.”
• The shooting comes amid a rise in racially motivated violence in the US. Hate crimes have soared in recent years and some argue this is due to online breeding grounds for extremist ideologies.