Tangle - The Colorado Springs shooting.

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

In today's edition of Tangle, we're going to be breaking down the Colorado Springs shooting and what we know about it. We also have the news you missed over Thanksgiving, an opportunity to tell your story to Tangle readers, and a fascinating "under the radar" section. We're skipping our reader question today. You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here.Today’s clickables: Holiday weekend quick hits (3:02), Today's quick hits (4:00), Today’s story (5:00), Right’s take (14:08), Left’s take (8:28), Isaac’s take (19:16), Under the Radar (25:13), Numbers (26:07), Have a nice day (26:47) You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tango Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and we are coming back after a couple days off for Thanksgiving. So we have a few things we got to do today. First of all,

we need to update you on some of the stories you missed and then give you our quick hits for today. And then we are going to jump into a story about the shooting in Colorado Springs, what we know about it, and some of the commentary around it. Before we do any of that, though, I do want to give you a quick heads up about something that I put in today's newsletter, and I want to make sure podcast listeners are aware of it because it is probably even more relevant to you than it is to newsletter readers. I would like to get to know my Tangle community, listeners and readers, a little bit better. So I've decided to do something we've never done before. I'm going to interview five random Tangle readers,

listeners, and publish those interviews as a podcast and a transcription in the newsletter during a couple weeks that will be off for the holiday break. The idea is pretty simple. Five conversations with five people who engage Tangle either via the podcast or the newsletter. We'll talk about life and politics, how you ended up chatting with me, whatever comes up. I think it'll be a pretty interesting way just to get to know some of the people and profile them who are engaging with our content. I'm mostly going to choose randomly. So if you want to be a candidate for an interview, there is a survey link in today's episode description. You fill out the

survey, give me your name and email address, a couple of details about you. I'm going to put all those email addresses into a little digital hat and then pull five people out. Hopefully, those five will just be the five people I get to use in the event that they're four people all from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with the same politics or whatever, I might make some decisions, editorial choices about who to pick. But that's the plan. I am trying to do the interviews this month in the next couple of weeks before the holiday break around Christmas and the new year. So again, if you would like to get that, please fill out the form by clicking what is in today's episode description or what is in the newsletter. And yeah, hopefully you and I will get to know each other a little bit better. All right. With that out of the way, we'll start off today with

what you missed. Some quick hits from the last week. First up, President Biden announced an extension to the student loan payment moratorium through June 30th, 2023, or 60 days after the Supreme Court resolves the dispute over his cancellation program. Number two, the Supreme Court allowed the release of former President Trump's tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee. 3. Six people were killed when a fellow employee opened fire inside a Chesapeake, Virginia Walmart. The gunman was also found dead. 4. Former President Donald Trump came under fire after hosting rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, and white nationalist Nick Fuentes for dinner at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday. Trump denied knowing who Fuentes was, saying Ye brought him as a guest. Number five,

China hit a new daily record of COVID-19 cases after reporting 31,000 cases on Wednesday last week, setting off a wave of lockdowns and protests. All right, that is it for our quick hits from last week, which brings us to today's quick hits. First up, China's government says it is going to stick with its zero COVID lockdown policies, even as protests against the lockdowns break out across the country. Number two, President Biden will host his first state dinner on Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron. Number three, Ye announced his plans to run for president in 2024. Separately, California Governor Gavin Newsom says he won't challenge President Biden in 2024. Number four, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen says she will resign as head of the governing

Democratic Progressive Party shortly after it suffered losses in local elections. Number five, Houston, the fourth most populous city in America, is under a boil water notice after a power outage knocked down water pressure in the city's primary water system. We are once again starting another week talking about another mass shooting in this country. There are new details tonight in the LGBTQ nightclub shooting in Colorado Springs. The suspect made their first court appearance today, expected to face murder and hate crime charges for allegedly killing five people. It was rapid fire. murder, and hate crime charges for allegedly killing five people. It was rapid fire. One of the patrons had subdued him, got him to the ground, and held him down, face down, until the police had arrived.

Last week, five people were killed and 19 more were injured when a shooter opened fire inside a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs. The 22-year-old suspect made their first court appearance via video call on Wednesday. A quick editor's note, Tangle does not name mass shooters because of the well-documented contagion effect. For similar reasons, we also try to share limited information about the shooter and their alleged motives where possible. In this case, the 22-year-old suspect's lawyers say they identify as non-binary, so like other news organizations, we will refer to them with they-them pronouns in this piece. Police say the alleged shooter walked into Club Q in Colorado Springs around midnight last Saturday and began shooting with an AR-15 style

rifle. The shooter, who also possessed a handgun during the attack, was subdued by patrons of the club who tackled them to the ground. One of the attendees of the club who brought down the shooter was an Army veteran who was at the club watching a drag show with his wife, daughter, and some friends. Police, prosecutors, and defense attorneys have not yet made a case for the motive of the attack. The five killed in the shooting were Raymond Green Vance, Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derek Rump, and Ashley Paul. The alleged shooter did not have a significant internet presence, though they did frequent a far-right internet forum where they had been bullied about their weight. The suspect is also the grandson of Randy Vopal, the outgoing California Assemblyman, according to several news reports. Last year, they had weapons seized from their home after holding members of their own family hostage at gunpoint. The alleged shooter's mother said they also threatened to hurt the family with a

homemade bomb, which led to an arrest but no charges. Colorado has red flag laws designed to prevent people with violent criminal histories from purchasing firearms, but it's still not known if the weapons in this case were bought legally or whether they were bought before or after the incident from last year. Authorities did say red flag laws were not used when the alleged shooter's weapons were confiscated. Today, we're going to take a look at some reactions from the left and the right to the shooting, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. Many on the left point to a moral panic from conservatives about drag shows and transgender people as a potential contributing cause for the violence. Some call out the uniquely American

problem of mass shootings and suggest our gun laws need further overhaul. Others say right-wing violence is going to proliferate because the conservative movement is failing. In the New York Times, columnist Michelle Goldberg argued that the shooting is hard to separate from the right's fixation on drag shows. In recent years, the right has become increasingly fixated on all-ages drag shows, part of a growing moral panic about children being groomed into gender nonconformity, Goldberg said. Club Q hosted a drag show on Saturday night and had an all-ages drag brunch scheduled for Sunday. Perhaps we'll learn something in the coming days that will put these murders,

which took place on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, into a new light. murders, which took place on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, into a new light, but right now, it seems hard to separate them from a nationwide campaign of anti-LGBTQ incitement. During the early years of Donald Trump's administration, conservatives downplayed the contempt for homosexuality and gender nonconformity that had once been central to their movement, foregrounding racial resentment instead. Opposition to gay marriage had become a political loser, and it was hard to pose as champions of wholesome family values while enthusiastically supporting a thrice-married libertine who'd made a cameo in softcore porn. But in recent years,

as growing numbers of kids started identifying as trans, the puritanical tendency on the right has come roaring back, part of an increasingly apocalyptic worldview that sees the erosion of traditional gender roles as a harbinger of national collapse, she said. The language of grooming recapitulated old homophobic tropes about gay people recruiting children, while also playing into the newer delusions of QAnon, which holds that elite liberals are part of a sprawling satanic child abuse ring. Conservatives hope to turn this conspiracy theory into political power. According to the Human Rights Campaign, Republicans and Republican-aligned groups spent at least $50 million on anti-LGBTQ ads in the midterms.

In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch put the shooting in the context of rising anger on the right because they are losing. In normal times, the horror that was perpetrated a week ago at Club Q would have triggered a flood of thoughts and prayers from some of the worst Republicans who'd sought to normalize political hatred toward the LGBTQ community during the 2022 midterms, but maybe also some actual heartfelt talk of dialing back the rhetoric, he said. Just 11 years later, there was no such reckoning after Colorado Springs. To the contrary, the right was doubling down in its attack against drag shows of the type that took place at Club Q on the transgender community and against LGBTQ culture in general. The dead in

Colorado hadn't yet been buried, and Tucker Carlson followed his brief, tepid condemnation of the killer with an on-screen graphic, stop sexualizing kids, and the shocking take that shootings will continue until we end this evil agenda that is attacking children. It's true that we don't know the exact motivation of the Club Q shooter, a young person with a muddled and confusing background, but we do know they were raised in a family that has openly embraced political violence and homophobia. The killer's grandfather, an outgoing California GOP state lawmaker named Randy Vopal, compared the January 6th insurrection to the American Revolution. The first shots fired against tyranny, he said. The gunman's dad, tracked down by a San Diego TV reporter, expressed no remorse for the nightclub massacre. Instead,

he claimed to be relieved because he determined his child is not gay, so I said, phew, I am a conservative Republican, end quote. The antisemitism, the homophobia, the violence, this isn't the American right flexing its muscles out of strength. Quite the opposite. The forces of 400 years of white supremacy culture are like a wounded bear right now, lashing out and extremely dangerous because its proponents know they are a seriously endangered species. The Washington Post editorial board pleaded with Americans to be honest about guns. The United States has averaged nearly two mass shootings a day this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks when four or more people are shot. To put that another way, it's now unusual to have a day without a mass shooting, the board said. It can happen anywhere to anyone. Fourteen Americans mowed down this month at a University

of Virginia Club Q in Colorado Springs and a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, were doing normal activities of daily life, going to school, enjoying a performance, or working. They leave behind grieving loved ones who ask why. In each case, as usually happens, there were warning signs missed or ignored. The chilling note that the Walmart shooter left in his phone railing against his co-workers and claiming his phone was hacked suggests he was a deeply disturbed 31-year-old. And yet, he was able to buy a pistol just hours before he massacred six fellow employees in a break room. In Colorado Springs, a 22-year-old suspect who had been arrested last year for an alleged bomb threat but never prosecuted was not prevented from obtaining an AR-15-style weapon and a handgun, the board said.

It's eerily similar to the University of Virginia shooting. The 22-year-old suspect had multiple prior run-ins with the law, including a 2021 conviction for possessing a concealed firearm without a license. Too often, these tragedies are written off to individual cases of mental illness. That does not explain why the United States has had more than 600 mass shootings every year since 2020 and why no other country has anything close to this level of gun violence. All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right criticized the left for blaming conservatives when we still don't know what the shooter's motive was. Some argue that new laws aren't needed, but the story is actually one of law enforcement failures. Others argue the instant blaming of the right without more information

is what will actually lead to more political violence. National Review's editors criticized the instant politicization of the event and assumptions about the shooter's motive. All through the house, not one person was stressing. Holla differently this year with DoorDash. Don't want to holla do the most? Holla don't. More festive, less frantic. Get deals for every occasion with DoorDash. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history,

and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Club Q was an LGBT club where families of all ages gathered for brunch on Sundays to watch drag performers, the Washington Post reported. According to the burgeoning conventional wisdom, therefore, the true culprits of the Club Q shooting includes libs of TikTok, Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk's Twitter content moderation policies, the right-wing moral panic about drag queens' story hours, and, of course, the entire Republican Party, the editor said. It is grotesque to lay the blame for this shooting at the feet of the millions of Americans who have legitimate questions about

children being exposed to drag shows or undergoing irreversible sex change surgeries. The idea that those questions are not just beyond the pale, but are affirmatively responsible for the murder of gay and transgender Americans, is a shameless attempt to gain an edge in an ongoing culture war debate. In 2017, a Tennessee woman attempted to run a Republican congressman off the road for support for the GOP's Obamacare replacement bill. A month later, a former Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer opened fire on a number of House Republicans, putting House whip Steve Scalise in the hospital for six weeks. Sanders had previously argued that if the GOP's health care bill passed, thousands of Americans would die, a claim echoed by numerous top Democrats. Are they responsible for the attempted murders of their partisan opponents? Of course not, they said. From the 2012 shooting at the Family Research Council to the 2022 arrest of an armed

assassin outside of Brett Kavanaugh's house, political violence on the left is never seriously treated as the fruits of left-wing rhetoric. In the Washington Examiner, Zachary Faria blamed another law enforcement failure that gun control wouldn't solve. A gunman in Colorado Springs killed five people and injured 18, and unsurprisingly, he was already on the law enforcement's radar. In June 2021, he allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb. Neighbors were forced to evacuate from their homes and a bomb squad and crisis negotiators were brought in, Faria said. And yet, according to the Associated Press, there's no public record that prosecutors moved forward with felony kidnapping and menacing charges. Instead,

charges were dropped. The shooter was out on the streets with seemingly no restrictions and no felonies on his record, meaning it is entirely possible that the firearms he used in the shooting were purchased by him legally, as CNN claimed law enforcement believes. There is also no indication that Colorado's red flag law was ever used by the shooter's family or by law enforcement to remove firearms from his possession. Colorado has had universal background checks in place since 2013, and an assault weapons ban would have done little given that the shooter was armed with a handgun, he wrote. Yet again, it appears that none of the Democratic Party's favorite gun control ideas would have done anything to prevent the shooting. This has been par for the course. The Washington Post determined in 2015 that no mainstream gun

control proposals would have prevented mass shootings, and a follow-up in 2022 essentially reached the same conclusion. As usual, we have red flag laws around shooters being ignored and existing gun control laws failing or simply being ineffective. In USA Today, Ingrid Jacquez said we should pause and mourn before immediately trying to demonize one another. On Wednesday morning, I woke up to an NPR news report linking the deadly weekend shooting at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub with conservative-backed legislation regarding gay and transgender policies. There was no proof of this serious charge, yet it was pronounced as fact, she wrote. NPR is far from the only news outlet making these claims.

Headline after headline the past few days has made similar allegations. It strikes me as incredibly sad that as a country we can't come together to mourn such senseless violence without immediately pointing fingers at one another. It's also dangerous to assume blame and motive, and the knee-jerk instinct to quash serious debates, especially ones taking place about curriculum in public schools, is a threat to our freedom of speech. As someone in the business of words, I know that what we say does matter and that words hold power. And hate is real.

But the tendency to stereotype and ostracize others falls on both sides of the political spectrum, she said. Not all policy discussions around LGBTQ issues, however, deserve the label hate. It's a mistake to paint all Republicans and parents who may have concerns over what Not all policy discussions around LGBTQ issues, however, deserve the label hate. It's a mistake to paint all Republicans and parents who may have concerns over what children are learning in school and how gender identity affects sports teams as perpetrators of hate and violence. In a social media world where news spreads like wildfire, journalists and politicians have a special obligation not to fuel false or uncertain narratives.

Otherwise, the hate and distrust that fracture our country will deepen, and that, sadly, may lead to even more violence. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. are saying, which brings us to my take. So unfortunately, we've had to cover a few of these mass shootings now, and my response honestly is typically the same. It's unbelievably disheartening to watch them happen. It's important to me that we build what I call blame pyramids of responsibility, and it is absolutely within our power to do something about this. As I wrote after Uvalde and Buffalo, it's hard to deny that our country is broken. We can't pretend there is nothing we can do when what happens here is so utterly unique and horrifying. We don't have to pretend mass shootings make up a large chunk of gun deaths, they are a tiny fraction, in order to

recognize the traumatizing impact they have on society as a whole. Recently, they are a tiny fraction, in order to recognize the traumatizing impact they have on society as a whole. Recently, every time a shooting like this has happened, a familiar pattern plays out. Democrats blame loose gun laws and increasingly hysterical rhetoric from the right for motivating a killer. Republicans respond by pointing to unenforced gun control measures already in place and left-wing violence, reminding liberals they don't blame that violence on increasingly hysterical rhetoric from the left. My take is a little different. First and foremost, the responsibility for these attacks always lies primarily with the person holding the gun. Individuals make decisions to act violently, and we should center the responsibility on them lest

we reinforce the idea for future mass shooters that they are justified or were left no choice due to societal ills. Whether it is a mass shooter, gang violence, a police killing, a domestic dispute, or a suicide, there is a person with a gun making a decision. We should assess them and their choices first. Secondarily, and seldom mentioned, is the responsibility of families and immediate social circles. We don't yet know the motive of the Club Q mass shooter. We do know, like many, many others before them, that there were warning signs. There were opportunities for intervention.

There were chances to disarm, to get this person help, to ensure they were flagged in the system, and in this case, even to put this person behind bars before they could do harm. As with far too many others before them, their social circle appears to have utterly failed. It is my belief that the third layer of blame rests in our laws. I've written before about the idea of friction, how multi-billion dollar companies spend endless amounts of money trying to reduce friction for you to give them your money by purchasing their products. In too many states in America, buying a gun is a very low friction event. I believe more friction would make us

safer. As someone who enjoys guns and sees their role in society and believes strongly in the value of preserving our second amendment rights, I also think we can have far more friction than we do right now without infringing on those rights. Frankly, I think it's kind of absurd to believe otherwise. Key to this layer of blame, though, is the enforcement of those laws. Our background check system is riddled with flaws. Local police, military, federal and state courts, and hospitals are regularly failing to report records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. In this case, it is unfathomable that the alleged shooter was not reported in Colorado's red flag system. This is precisely the kind of person who must be prevented from obtaining or possessing any gun legally. And if it comes out that they did buy or possess this gun legally, it will be the latest indictment of that system. Earlier this year,

Democrats and a few Republicans passed a gun safety measure that called for more mental health funding and expanded background checks on 18 to 20-year-olds who were trying to buy guns. It also beefed up funding for the kinds of laws that allow the seizure of weapons from people with troubled or violent records. This was a good intervention, whose results will take time to see as it's implemented. In the meantime, we need to better enforce the laws we already have on the books. Fourth and finally is the rhetoric in our current political moment. Our general cultural environment is not the most important factor in gun deaths, but I'm not going to sit here and say alarmist rhetoric is blameless for what happens. It comes from both nationally syndicated pundits

and the dark corners of the internet. I'm certain that it plays some role. In this case, we still don't have a motive from the shooter, and I'm not going to invent one unless authorities give us an indication of what their investigation finds. It could have been a personal dispute, it could have been fervent anti-LGBTQ mania, or it could have been something else. We just don't know. What I can say is that our rhetoric matters, even if it is at the bottom of my blame pyramid. When we publish our deep dive on which party is more extreme this summer, one of the things I noted is that the data strongly suggests extreme right-wing violence is much more common than extreme left-wing violence. It'd make my job easier here if that wasn't the case, and I could scold both sides equally for their actions, but

that'd simply be a lie. That isn't a partisan talking point, but a reflection of what the FBI tells us about domestic threats. It's an uncomfortable truth. And right-wing pundits who regularly broad brush entire communities as pedophiles or threats to our children have to reckon with the fact that it only takes one unstable person with a weak support system to act on that hyperbolic language for an act of mass violence to be committed. But again, this isn't a uniquely right-wing problem. Threats to Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the 2017 congressional baseball shooting are easy reminders of that. When our politicians and pundits speak in increasingly hysterical terms about our political opponents, insisting their

actions are going to harm our children, destroy society, or end our lives, it is only logical for the few people who take them at face value to take action. For now, we have to wait for more information about how and why the shooter in Colorado Springs did what they did. But, when we find out, we should use the information to learn, to adapt, and to hold each other more accountable, not simply dismiss this as something that is impossible to prevent or entirely unpredictable. Alright, that is it for my take, which brings us to our under the radar section because we are skipping today's reader question. Lawmakers and agriculture groups are working hard to pass an overhaul of the farmworker visa program before the GOP takes control of the House of Representatives next year. A bill providing a path to citizenship for some one million farmworkers that would create

a capped number of new year-round visas has already passed in the House and is now being circulated in the Senate. The measure is supported by many immigrant advocacy organizations as well as farmer groups who say they badly need more laborers to harvest their crops. Senators Michael Bennett, the Democrat from Colorado, and Mike Crapo, the Republican from Idaho, are trying to reach an agreement to secure 60 votes in Biden's lame duck session. The Wall Street Journal has the story and there's a link in today's episode description. The Wall Street Journal has the story and there's a link in today's episode description. Next up is our numbers section. The number of mass shootings in which four or more people are shot in November was 42, according to a gun violence archive. The total number of gun deaths in 2022, according to gun violence archive, was 40,252 in the United States. The number of gun deaths in 2022, according to Gun Violence Archive, was 40,252 in the United States.

The number of gun deaths this year in the U.S. that were suicides was 21,912. The number of mass shootings to date in the U.S. in 2022 was 617. The number of mass shootings in the U.S. in all of 2014 was 269. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day section. The U.S. Coast Guard made one of its most remarkable rescues ever after a cruise ship passenger fell overboard near Southwest Pass, Louisiana. A 28-year-old man had been in the water for hours after falling from a ship heading to Mexico. He had gone to the bar at 11pm on Wednesday night and didn't return, and his sister did not report him missing until the next day. The U.S. Coast Guard found a person 20 miles off the coast.

In the incredible image that you can see in today's newsletter, you can barely make out the man's head poking out of the water. The man reportedly spent 15 hours in the ocean before being found. BBC News has the remarkable story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please share this podcast with some friends or family or go to readtangle.com slash membership and become a member. And don't forget, there is a survey in today's episode description if you are interested in being interviewed for a forthcoming Tangle series. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one.

Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Peace. our logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our website at www.readtangle.com. Thanks for watching! about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.