So — Let’s Talk About The Shooting In Buffalo

On 5/14/2022, a man by the name of Payton S. Gendron shot thirteen people and killed ten — eleven of the people he shot were black. Gendron also did this in a majority black area, and his manifesto contained various racist statements — including references to the idea that white people in the United States were being replaced by minorities. (The word “replace” appears seventy six times in his one hundred eighty page manifesto.)

His manifesto contains many other passages that make it clear this shooting is racially motivated. For example, while talking about why he committed the massacre where he did, he wrote the following:

(REDACTED) has the highest black population percentage (zip code *****) and isn’t that far away. Plus NY has heavy gun laws so it would ease me if I knew that any legally armed civilian was limited to 10 round magazines or cucked firearms.

His manifesto goes on to say that, because these people are minorities living on what he believes to be the country of white people, they are not innocent by definition, they are aggressors. He even directly says that he does not hate black people, but he does hate the fact that black people are living in a country that he feels should be for whites. Here is a section of his manifesto where he responds to the question “Did, or do you personally hate blacks?”: