An X account that appears to have belonged to the deceased suspect has violent anti-LGBTQ messages dating to 2018.
The 27-year-old man who police say shot and killed a California business owner over a Pride flag draped in her store appears to have had a yearslong history of posting disturbing — and often violent — anti-LGBTQ messages on social media.
The suspect, Travis Ikeguchi, gunned down Laura Ann Carleton, 66, on Friday, after confronting her and “yelling many homophobic slurs” over her clothing store’s Pride flag, San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus said at a news conference Monday. Shortly after fleeing the store, Mag.Pi, Ikeguchi was killed in a shootout with law enforcement.
Also a little surprised the police shot him instead of making nice. On the one hand I'm not sad the violent bigot is dead. On the other summary execution by the police is fucked up.
I blocked the troll and like 90% of the comment section disappeared. That's how much damage that shitbag did by getting people to respond to contrarian trash.
Quit making a martyr out of this loser and wannabe terrorist. He deserves to die in obscurity, not have his story told as part of the victim's own tale.
27 years old. Barely not a fucking stupid kid. I wish you could see how much pain you caused. I wish you could've let it go. What did you think you'd accomplish, I don't care because it hurts to think about what you could've accomplished of you lived your life with peace rather than anger.
Bigotry is not a mental illness, and actually mentally ill people are much more likely to be the victims of violence than to perpetrate it.
Please stop spreading this ableist excuse.
This guy killed someone because he was a violent hateful bigot, and is direct and not at all unexpected result of a violent hateful and bigoted society. That might not be an easy or comfortable reality to deal with, but that's what it is. Stop scapegoating mentally ill people (who yes, deserve significantly more help and support than we get, but that doesn't change the fact that society created this, and many other, killers, not mental illness).
It's also not ableist because "mentally ill people" is not even close to a homogeneous group of people. There are thousands of different mental illnesses and more than 20 % of people in the USA are mentally ill.
No one is saying these people are all murderers.
Please stop trying to push this weird agenda of "some people are just born evil" or made evil or whatever it is you are trying to say. It's a step forward to recognise how society can prevent criminal behaviour, for example by treating mental illness better. "Evil" does not exist. There is always a reason of why someone behaves the way they do.
"...political conservatism and motivated social cognition (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski & Sulloway, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” Psychological Bulletin). In a nutshell, the article—by Stanford and UC Berkeley researchers—seems to suggest that conservatism is a mild form of insanity. Here are the facts. A meta-analysis culled from 88 samples in 12 countries, and with an N of 22,818, revealed that “several psychological variables predicted political conservatism.” Which variables exactly? In order of predictive power: death anxiety, system instability, dogmatism/intolerance of ambiguity, closed-mindedness, low tolerance of uncertainty, high needs for order, structure, and closure, low integrative complexity, fear of threat and loss, and low self-esteem. The researchers conclude, a little chillingly, that “the core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and a justification of inequality.” The above list of variables is more than a little unsavory. We are talking about someone full of fear, with a poor sense of self, and a lack of mental dexterity. "-above is an excerpt from Psychology today article
No, these people literally need medical intervention and they'd very likely be better, more compassionate, healthier people.
Mental illness is chemical imbalance, inherited conditions and unresolved trauma. Science has answers and therapies, but this group is socially conditioned to avoid addressing their metal health and our society fails (largely in a broken loop full of the same conservatives denying funding) in not making access to care undeniably available, affordable/free and encouraged.
Honest question - where do we draw the line between mental illness and reactionary/far right politics? Noone of sound mind would believe the ludicrous conspiracism that the mainstream conservative media like Fox constantly spews forth - and that's to say nothing of the more extreme OAN and Infowars.
Case in point - gay and trans people are inherently paedophiles (honestly wtf?)... A super-common talking point that begs the question what do we do about the people (the lunatics stupidly think are) raping our children?
We've reached the point in the medicalisation of everything where being an asshole must be a mental health problem because 'no sane person would think that'. Being irrational and believing lies is not mental illness, it is normal human behaviour. Cruelty is normal human behaviour.
I think the courts use the criteria that if they knew what they were doing would get them in trouble. Running away, hiding evidence, obscuring identity.
Having beliefs that don't match the real world isn't mental illness in of itself.