Season of Peace, Weekend of Violence

Three mass shootings in South Carolina and Pittsburgh disrupted a rare triple-holiday weekend for three major world religions.

Summary

Three mass shootings disrupted an otherwise peaceful triple-holiday weekend for Christians, Muslims, and Jews celebrating Easter, Ramadan, and Passover.

• More than ninety rounds were fired at an Airbnb party in Pittsburgh’s North Side. Most of the more than 200 attendees were underage. Two teens were killed, and eight others were shot.
• The perpetrators remain at large. Pittsburgh police vowed “we’re not going to sleep until we get who did this.”
• A Saturday shooting at a Columbia, South Carolina mall wounded nine people. A man arrested claimed self-defense after he claimed he was confronted by other shooters.
• The arrested South Carolina mall perpetrator was released on $25,000 bond, given an ankle monitor and placed on house arrest.
• An early Sunday morning shooting rocked South Carolina, the state’s second mass shooting in as many days. Nine people were wounded at a nightclub in Hampton County, eighty miles west of Charleston.

• The Washington Post linked the Pittsburgh shootings with the upsurge in violence over the past month and with President Biden’s announced crackdown on “ghost guns” last week.
• Politico wrote crime is upstaging progressive priorities in this year’s Los Angeles mayoral election.
• The Guardian noted the weekend’s three shootings come after two other mass shootings in recent weeks. Six people were killed and twelve people wounded in Sacramento on April 3, and ten people were shot and over twenty people wounded on a New York City subway last week.

• The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review interviewed witnesses at the Pittsburgh shooting. Neighbors described it as “a war scene” and “chaos.”
• Fox News interviewed Multnomah County, Oregon Sheriff Mike Reese. Reese wrote an open letter to his constituents about his concerns over rising violent crime in Portland and its neighboring communities and fears it will only increase as the weather warms.
• The Washington Free Beacon indicted the media for setting out “to incite the next subway shooter.” The Beacon lambasted the mainstream media for downplaying or ignoring the race and targets of the Brooklyn subway shooter, a black nationalist who “professed bigotry against whites and Jews.”

On Your Radar

Fox News – Border Patrol stopped 23 people on terrorist database at southern border in 2021

Reuters – Ukraine says first civilians killed in western city of Lviv, fighters cling on in Mariupol.

Politico – McConnell-tied super PAC makes early $141,000,000 play for the Senate

The New York Times – Mar-a-Lago Machine: Trump as a modern-day party boss

The Washington Post – Top 10 Democratic presidential candidates for 2024, ranked

The Washington Examiner – Democrats desert Biden over looming border disaster.

CNN – Joe Biden’s numbers are collapsing among a group you really wouldn’t expect: young people

Washington Free Beacon – Florida’s no-show Congressman Al Lawson (D) could end up a redistricting casualty.

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© Dominic Moore, 2022