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The Perry High School shooting was nothing new, and neither were the responses

The Perry High School shooting was nothing new, and neither were the responses

One week.

We couldn’t go one week into the new year without a school shooting happening. If that doesn’t sum us up as a country, I don’t know what does.

As you may have heard, there was a school shooting this past Thursday at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa. This would have been the first day back for students after the holiday break. While the school was serving breakfast to some students before classes even began, 17-year-old Dylan Butler stormed the school armed with a shotgun and a small caliber handgun. After Butler opened fire, one person was dead, and six others were wounded. When police arrived at the scene, Butler had already taken his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot. Attached to his body was a homemade bomb, which officers were able to render inert.

Not long after the shooting took place, a motive of bullying was already being floated by the media, even though police have not released any such information. Two sisters who were interviewed by the Associated Press claimed Butler had been incessantly bullied since grade school. The bullying was said to have gotten worse once his sister started at Perry High School.

Like most school shooters who were supposedly bullied, Butler did not take his vengeance out on his bullies. Instead, he killed an 11-year-old boy who was a student at the adjoining middle school. The lone fatality was Ahmir Jolliff who attended Perry Middle School. He was such a happy kid, he was nicknamed ‘Smiley’ by his family. He was so generous, he would leave an unlocked crate of toys in his yard for any kid to play with. I seriously doubt Butler was being bullied by this kindhearted boy. It always seems like the children with the most potential to give back to this world are the ones whose lives are cut short in these selfish and cowardly attacks.

Getting back to the bullying allegations, I’m once again casting doubt on that as a motive. Butler is said to have belonged to a Discord server called “School Massacres Discussion”. If I had to hazard a guess, they probably weren’t discussing the sociological ramifications of school shootings. If anything, I imagine it was more of a murder-groupie hangout. One Discord user was so concerned about the server’s activity, they notified the FBI, who never responded. Butler was an active member of the server at the time. That server was shut down before the shooting.

However, on another Discord server, Butler detailed the moments leading up to the shooting. He told the group he was nervous while ‘gearing up’ while in the school’s bathroom. Two minutes later, Butler sent the following in chat…

“There’s a n—– in the bathroom, I need him to leave so I can assemble my guns.”

Butler even posted a short video to TikTok before the shooting. It was a selfie of Butler in a bathroom stall with a blue duffle bag on the ground with the caption ‘Now we wait’. Accompanying the picture was the song ‘Stray Bullet’ by KMFDM. That’s significant because that song was a favorite of the Columbine cowards Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

Investigators also found pictures of Butler posing with various guns.

To me, it seems like Butler was a racist columbiner. For those not in the know, a columbiner is someone who has an unhealthy admiration for the Columbine shooters. Columbine set off the myth of the bullied school shooter when it was initially misreported that Harris and Klebold were bullied, when the evidence indicates that they weren’t. There’s more evidence to show that they were bullies themselves.

So again I have to ask, was he bullied, or was he just an antisocial troll? Even if he was bullied, homicide is never the proper response to bullying. Only cowards take up guns to resolve their problems.

I think it’s more likely that Butler was just another Columbine copycat in a long line of losers who think Columbine was the coolest thing.

As I am writing this, it’s yet to be revealed where Butler was able to obtain the firearms.

In one of his TikTok videos, Butler claimed to be genderfluid. This means people who identify as genderfluid may feel different genders at different times or in different situations. Of course, right-wing media has labeled Butler as another ‘crazed trans shooter’. You can see my takes on that from previous instances here and here.

Once again, I’m doubtful of this claim. If Butler was really genderfluid, knowing the discrimination that the LGBTQ+ community has faced lately, he’d be a little more sympathetic toward marginalized groups and not use racial epithets. Plus, I’m reminded of the Club Q mass shooting in Colorado. That shooter claimed to be non-binary at the time of his arrest, but neighbors testified the shooter was incredibly homophobic, and even had anti-LGBTQ+ shooting targets in his home. The right-wing types still cling to the claim that the shooter is trans. Again, I could list a number of right-wing school shooters alone that would be as long as my arm, and my arms are pretty long.

Speaking of the right-wing, Republican politicians could not be more tone-deaf in their responses to the shooting. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, no relation, went straight for the ‘thoughts and prayers’.

“Our hearts are heavy today and our prayers are with the Perry community,” Reynolds said at an afternoon news conference. “This senseless tragedy has shaken our entire state to the core.”

Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis and his platform boots were campaigning in Iowa when the Florida Governor was asked if he would support any changes at the federal level to prevent future shootings. DeSantis claimed that shootings like this are ‘more of a local and state issue’. He then added, “We’ve shown how it’s done in Florida.” Oh, really? According to a report by US News and World Report, there were 55 school shootings in the Sunshine State between 2018-2023. In that same timeframe, Iowa had 8 shootings. So yeah, Ron, tell us how Florida does it.

DeSantis then went back to the old chestnut of school shooting being a mental health issue, once again proclaiming Florida as a bastion of mental health reform. What reforms are those exactly? Does Florida have available and affordable mental health services for all residents? No. No, they don’t.

Former South Carolina Governor and Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s response was equally disappointing. She said, “We have got to secure our schools the same way we secure our airports and our courthouses.” So, she wants police states in our schools, got it. Again, there is no evidence to show armed security in schools discourages school shootings, and often police presence in schools just makes things worse.

And since we’re talking about presidential candidates, we have to talk about the 800 lb. orangutan in the room. The tangerine tinged sex pest told an Iowa campaign crowd, “It’s horrible, but we have to get over it.” I would say tell that to Ahmir Jolliff’s family, but Trump’s such an egomaniac, he probably would.

With the exception of Governor Reynolds, these are three politicians who could potentially be passing critical legislation for the next four years, and none of them mentioned the easy access to guns as the main problem. Not that I would ever expect them to.

Then we go from the absurd to the even more absurd. The conspiracy theorists, who seem to make up the majority of the Republican voter base these days, are claiming the shooting was a false flag. This time, the supposed false flag was meant to distract us from the Jeffrey Epstein list being released. You can’t make this shit up, folks. I have no doubt that Trump’s name is on that list, but that won’t matter to his cult members. They’ll just claim it’s some deep state trick, or he was there to rescue the victims, or some such bullshit. But, I digress.

And we can’t talk about conspiracy theory bullshit without bringing up BloodEmerald McHairpiece himself, the man who misses Apartheid, Elon Musk. On his Nazified version of Twitter, some celebrated right-wing troll posted, “Trans extremists are a serious threat. The media will bury this.” To which Musk replied, “This is happening a lot. Something is deeply wrong.” That wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Elon has a trans daughter who has gone no contact with him, would it?

Has our country always been this selfish? We no longer care about our fellow Americans. It’s no longer ‘We the people’. Now it’s ‘Fuck you. I got mine.’ It’s this attitude that keeps getting our school children killed.

(Sources)

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