It Could Happen Here - The Weaponization of Mass Shootings

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Garrison talks about how politicians and media figures weaponize public acts of violence though the lens of partisan political ideology.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Klepper.

Listen to season four of Snafoo with Ed Helm. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes, Game, where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatis, this is the untold story of an industry built

a ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight, and so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old. And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again?

Listen to heavyweight on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. CallZone Media This is It Could Happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. On the morning of Sunday, September 28th, a 40-year-old man drove a pickup truck into a grand blanc Michigan church. The man started shooting people inside and then set the church on fire, burning the building down. Four churchgoers died, eight others were injured but have survived, and police killed the shooter on the scene. The president, the vice president, and the rest of

the right were quick to call this yet, quote, another targeted attack on Christians in the United States. To quote, Trump on truth social. White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt went on Fox and Friends the day after the shooting and said this. It's unfathomable. And as the president rightfully put in his truth social yesterday, this appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians. As the church was still burning, right-wing podcaster Betty Johnson, who recently rode with ICE in Chicago, posted on X the Everything app, quote, church is on fire. Christianity is under attack. Pray, unquote. What Benny Johnson neglected to mention, this was a Mormon church, and pretty soon it became clear, the attacker was not some

transgender leftist Antifa, but a Christian Trump supporter who thought Mormons were, quote-unquote, the Antichrist, according to Burton, city council candidate Chris Johns, who claims to have spoken with the shooter just days prior while canvassing. One of the shooter's friends told the New York Times that the shooter believed that Mormons, quote, are going to take over the world, unquote. This guy obsessively talked about his dislike of Mormons, stemming from a breakup with a Mormon girlfriend over a decade ago. After the background of this shooter and his apparent motive became more clear,

the Trump admin quite quickly stopped talking about this specific attack, save for vague references to attacks on Christianity. But this attack was more deadly than any recent school shooting or any instance of targeted violence, which the administration has then framed as political violence, happening this year. After the shooter was identified, rather than talk about his apparent motive,

people online argued about his political orientation. A picture spread online of him wearing a Trump-2020, Camo shirt that read Make Liberals Cry Again. The right wing outlet The Daily Caller attacked Democrat Representative Eric Swalwell for posting a photo of that shirt

claiming that the Trump graphic was photoshopped. With the Daily Caller sharing a version of the shirt that they alleged to be the original unedited photo without the Trump graphic. Except that version without the Trump graphic

is in fact the doctor photo. The Trump one is the authentic version. Right-wing users on X-The Everything app spread a list of political donations to progressive organizations that they attributed to the shooter, as well as a screenshot of a Twitter account with a bio that read, politically active Democratic Socialist. Except that account and those donations were from a completely different person, just with a similar name. Now, just because it's pretty clear that this shooter supported Trump, doesn't mean that we should frame this as partisan political violence. This was a classic American shooting. A Marine veteran who moved to Utah after getting back from Iraq, got involved

with a Mormon woman, had negative experiences with the Mormon church, moved to Michigan, but continued to have very strong anti-Mormant sentiments, which he held until he acted on those sentiments leading to his death and the deaths of four other people. And extremely tragic, yet extremely American sequence of events. But the conversation and coverage surrounding this Mormon church shooting is such an open display of this game of picking and choosing shootings to care about and then which can be weaponized against political enemies. Former assistant FBI director Chris Swecker went on Fox News to discuss this shooting, where he laid blame on politicians' rhetoric calling people Nazis.

So, you know, this is a situation of you find a manufactured grievance, if you will, and then a whole lot of stimulus from people either on the Internet or even politicians, irresponsible politicians. We all know who they are. You know, they're talking about Nazis and anarchists and existential threats. You know, they need to crawl back into their dark places. These people are out there that has to be taken into account when you start firing off your mouth. That simply has nothing to do with this specific attack.

But both politicians and the media have this obsession with only talking about shooters insofar as they can try to identify a shooter's orientation towards a political party and then weaponize that suspected orientation against political opponents by trying to frame every deranged shooter as emblematic of the oppositional political project. Following Charlie Kirk's assassination and the media blitz, around it, fellow far-right commentator, Stephen Crowder, has revived his long-dormant college debate series, Change My Mind, now with the prompt, the left is violent. Propagandists collapse political violence into a simple binary, which is just a very limited way in trying

to actually understand public acts of violence. The idea that things can only happen because of ideologies, not downstream of personal experiences, material conditions, or class. This year, there's been one other targeted attack that ties the Mormon church shooting for the highest fatalities and attacks this year, and that was the Midtown Manhattan mass shooting in July, where the gunmen attempted to shoot up the NFL offices, motivated by getting CTE from playing football in high school. No clear ideological motivations here. Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snafoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode.

32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads? Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests.

The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcast we were doing. Nick Kroll.

I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snap-Foo with Ed, Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know.

A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her Or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said it They literally made me say that I took a match And struck and threw it on her

They made me say that I poured gas on her From Lava for Good This is Graves County A show about just how far Our legal system will go In order to find someone to blame America y'all better work the hell up Bad things happens

to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season at free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight,

I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down, and I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother try to solve my problems. Through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing

where you're like super charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to heavyweight on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only, Cardi B.

My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. How do you think you're misunderstood? I'm not this evil, mean person that people think that I am. I'm too compassionate. I have sympathy for that fuck my man. Put so much heart and soul into your work.

What's the hardest part for you to take that criticism? This shit was not given to me. I worked my own. ass off for me. Even when I was a stripper, I'm going to be the best pole dancer in here. When was the moment you felt I did it? I still, to this day, don't feel comfortable. I fight every day to keep this level of success because people want to take it from you so bad. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. in like the ordinary political sense.

The only recent shooter that could be accurately categorized as quote-unquote leftist is the former PSL member who assassinated two Israeli embassy staffers in May of 2025. Now, under no circumstances, do you have to hand it to Bill Maher? But this exchange between him and Ben Shapiro

just two days after the Charlie Kirk assassination demonstrates this point about how media and politicians only understand and weaponize public acts of violence through ideology, long before we have any actual clear indication on what motivated a shooter to commit an attack. There's a shooting at a synagogue. It is very likely to be either a white supremacist or a radical Muslim. If it is a shooting of a Republican politician,

it is very likely to be a trans-Antifa Marxist shooter. That is just not true. We don't know what this kid is. We do know this kid was of the left. We do know that. We do know what? that this kid was of the political left. That is according to contemporaneous reporting from The Guardian as well as Tablet Magazine today.

It's two days out. We don't know shit, Ben. We don't know shit. They never do. The Internet is undefeated in getting it wrong to begin with. It's not about the Internet. That's about the actual reporting by mainstream, except the Guardian is not right. Here's what we heard.

Here's what I was told so far, and I'll tell you what was wrong. First, I heard he's a registered Republican. Not true. Okay. Then he was a donor to Trump. Not true. His father works in the sheriff's office. Not true.

There was a picture of him wearing a pro-Trump shirt. Not true. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Not true. We don't know what he is. How are you so sure he's of the left? Now, I agree when you write on a bullet. What did he write on the bullet?

Catch this. Catch this fascist, which is also a gamer thing. Okay, but now I'm hearing he may have been part of that group for whom Charlie Kirk was not right wing enough. You mean, the Groyper's, yes. I mean, so that would... That you're sure he's not that. I'm not sure that he's not that.

Oh, a minute ago, you were sure what he was. Hold on, Bill. Hold on. Okay, because I've been... You were. Another thing that can be tricky to understand is just because the target of violence is a political figure

does not mean that it's political violence. The attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan is a key example of this. And for the Kirk assassination, available evidence points towards more of a personal motivation based on romantic attraction a la dog day afternoon over any larger partisan political motivation. It doesn't even make sense to view the first attempted Trump assassination as political violence. Thomas Crooks searched online for a variety of events to commit a shooting at. In the month prior to the shooting, he did more than 60 internet searches related to Biden,

Trump, and information about the upcoming DNC and RNC conventions. Donald Trump's campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, just happened to fall into the right place at the right time. The mass killer-obsessed school shooter from last August, who shot two kids at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, which the Wright branded as a trans terrorist, originally planned to do the shooting at a small LGBTQ music venue, but feared that trans girls attending the concert would be armed

for self-defense. As I've previously reported on this show, this shooting bared similarity to TCC or True Crime Community, not as in True Crime Podcasts, but an online community of usually young people obsessed with school shooters or mass shooters akin to Neo-Columbiners who encourage each other online to then commit their own acts of violence

inspired by or replicating those of previous school shooting. or mass shootings. This pseudo-mass shooter fandom demonstrates the extent to which the role of quote-unquote the shooter can be its own motivating force beyond any culture war issues or ordinary partisan politics that might get sprinkled on top as seasoning. On Wednesday, September 24th, a 29-year-old opened fire with a bolt-action rifle targeting an ICE field office in Dallas, Texas. This attack claimed the lives of three immigrants who were detained by ICE. In a copycat style following the Kirk assassination and the United

Healthcare CEO assassination, this shooter allegedly wrote anti-ice on unfired bullet casings. In the immediate wake of this attack, the right attributed this shooting to the radical left and blamed Democrat politicians for spreading anti-ice rhetoric. At a North Carolina event, J.D. Vance said, quote, here's what happens when Democrats like Gavin Newsom say these people are part of an authoritarian government. When the left-wing media lies about what they're doing, when they lie about who they're arresting, when they lie about the actual job of law enforcement, what they are doing is encouraging crazy people to go and commit violence. Here's a brief Fox News report.

We have a problem, America. We are living through a scourge of left-wing political violence that three weeks into this month has made it bloody September. Today, another attack on ice. As is not uncommon with mass shooters, this guy was a registered independent, and the shooter's brother told NBC news that he wasn't really interested in politics.

I find it highly unlikely that this millennial and other james, insie shooters are regularly watching liberal news, getting their opinions from politicians and news anchors on MSNBC or CNN. Journalist Ken Clippenstein spoke with friends of this shooter, who described him as a libertarian-leaning four-chan edge lord who hated both political parties and most mainstream politicians. Friends believed that the bullet inscriptions could have been written as a joke, intended to rile people up. And they told Klippenstein, the shooter became more isolated in recent years

as friends drifted away due to his continuous antisocial edge lord behavior in regular day-to-day interactions. Nancy Larson, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said the shooter left behind a writing where he referred to ICE operations as human trafficking. Larson says the shooter did not mention any government agency besides ice, but left a note for police reading, quote, good luck with the digital footprint. This shooter killed himself after the attack.

These public acts of violence usually have a suicidal component, a drive for self-annihilation while simultaneously gaining some final sense of meaning or purpose by crudely emblazoning yourself in history through a violent act. What causes someone to do this can be a mix of many factors, including. access to guns, individual motivations, social alienation, self-annihilation. Insofar as there's an overtly political element, it's often the result of a political alienation. Usually the type of person who commits a bloody act of violence lacks a recognizably coherent political philosophy that can be easily grafted onto our Democrat-Republican binary, with there sometimes being a mix of political

beliefs across the left-right spectrum. Mass shootings, which are accompanied by express political motivations, usually stem from anti-Muslim or great replacement rhetoric. The idea that white people in Western culture will slowly be replaced by brown immigrants. Hey, it's Ed Helms and welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons? Wait, stop?

What? Yeah. Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads? Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow.

Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch? into the show. Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcasts we were doing. Nick Kroll, I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes.

Listen to season four of Snap-Fu with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told. And that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved. Until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV.

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up.

Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad for you. Subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old.

And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to heavyweight on the I-heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hey, I'm Jay Chetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only, Cardi B. My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. How do you think you're misunderstood? I'm not this evil, mean person that people think that I am. I'm too compassionate.

I have sympathy for that fuck my man. You put so much heart and soul into your work? What's the hardest part for you to take that criticism? This shit was not given to me. I worked my ass off for me. Even when I was a stripper, I'm gonna be the best pole dancer in here. When was the moment you felt I did it? I still, to this day, don't feel comfortable.

I fight every day to keep this level of success because people want to take it from you so bad. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty. with Jay Chetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. But throughout the next three years under Trump's federal government and the right-wing anti-woke backlash currently flexing dominance over our culture, nihilistic, self-destructive acts against American society may take a form which could be characterized as quote-unquote left-wing violence, despite most of these shooters being far from your average DNC acolyte or

bread tube-watching leftist. Considering the Mormon church shooting, the Kirk assassination, the ICE detainee shooting, and the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting, in the year of our brain rot 2025, I think it's pretty clear that the current U.S. state apparatus does not need to stage false flags. The state just tries to take advantage of naturally emergent events, twisting them to fit narratives in an ad hoc manipulation of consensus reality. No crude fabrication of physical reality is needed. They are more than happy to simply pick and choose and magnify and obscure various events to fit their preferred version of reality. The night before the shooting at the Mormon church, another Iraq war veteran did a mass shooting in North Carolina, which did not result in nearly

as many national headlines. The shooter targeted a waterfront bar, killing three people, injuring six others. The suspect rode a boat up to the bar, fired with an AR, mounted with a scope and silencer, before speeding off on water. Police have also deemed this a targeted attack, but without a tangential link to culture war issues. This event will be quickly forgotten. As I'm recording this episode, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that he's launching undercover operations to infiltrate and uproot, quote, leftist terror cells in Texas. Leftist political terrorism is a clear and present danger.

There can be no compromise with those who want us dead, unquote. This mirrors President Trump's national security presidential memorandum number seven, which targets, quote-unquote, domestic terrorism indicators like anti-Christianity, anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, extremism on race, gender, immigration, and hostility towards traditional American values. All this partisan rhetoric on targeted violence and political violence is in service of authoritarian crackdowns and enhanced surveillance against their political opposition. Meanwhile, this past Saturday morning, the home of a South Carolina circuit court judge was burned down, hospitalizing her husband, a former state senator, and their son. The judge was out of the house at the time. Last month, the judge temporarily blocked a voter suppression executive order signed by President Trump. In the weeks leading up to the fire, the judge had received death threats.

This has been It Could Happen here. See you on the other side. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups.

On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single. single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop. What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Clepper, listen to season four of

Snafu with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatis,

this is the untold story of an industry built a ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight... And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old. And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago.

How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? Listen to Heavyweight on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.