A small detail in the context of the latest mass shooting, this time in Allen, Texas. Eight people dead, including children. (The gunman was also shot to death by a police officer who happened to be at the mall for reasons unrelated to the shooting.) That detail is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, just the worst kind of racist degenerate who somehow has managed to become the de facto leader of House Republicans in the new Congress.
This morning Greene went on Twitter to note that the shooter “appears Hispanic” and had what she decided “looks like a gang tattoo on his hand.” And then added “Title 42 ends on Thursday and CBP says 700,000+ migrants are going to rush the border.”
The shooter has been identified as Mauricio Garcia, a 38-year-old security guard from Dallas. I haven’t seen any reporting on Garcia’s immigration or citizenship status. But it seems likely he’s an American citizen. If he was working as a security guard that makes it highly unlikely he was undocumented. Regardless, for Greene the shooting is about Title 42 and keeping undocumented migrants out of the country.
In the real world, law enforcement officials told NBC News and other news outlets that “Garcia had several social media accounts and appeared to be drawn to neo-Nazi and white supremacist content. He was also wearing, when he was killed, a patch on his chest with a right-wing acronym.”
In other words, basically your garden-variety mass shooter and far-right terrorist.
It’s part of a new pattern we’ve seen multiple times just this month: Out-of-control mass shootings are about the unknowable mystery of human evil, an American mental health crisis or the need for even more guns. (Greene repeated the last argument.) Unless the shooter is Hispanic, in which case everything changes.
