White religious fundamentalist’s massacre in Louisiana, USA, cinema

This 24 July 2015 video from the USA is called John Russell Houser Is Louisiana Theater Shooter #Lafayette.

Theater shooting leaves 3 dead, 9 wounded in Louisiana

25 July 2015

A gunman opened fire in a movie theater near downtown Lafayette on Thursday, killing two and wounding eight before turning the gun on himself.

This was at least the third mass shooting in the United States in little more than a month. It follows the massacre by Dylann Roof, a teenager influenced by white supremacism, at a black church in South Carolina in mid-June, and the shooting last Thursday by Mohammad Abdulazeez, a naturalized US citizen from Kuwait, at a Naval Reserve Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Witnesses described a chaotic scene as moviegoers, some still bleeding from gunshot wounds, fled in a panic through the theater’s hallways and into the parking lot. “I saw a woman lying on the ground outside [the theater] with blood everywhere. She was shot in the leg,” one witness told the Daily Advertiser.

The gunman, identified as 59 year-old John Russell Houser, initially attracted no suspicion from fellow moviegoers as he sat and watched the beginning of the comedy film Trainwreck. …

Houser’s possible motivations for the attack are not yet known. Sparse Internet postings indicate a deep demoralization and anger infused with right-wing evangelical views. One post from his Facebook page in 2013 reads: “The bible doesn’t ask me to like what it says, only to obey it. Death comes soon to the financially failing filth farm called the US.” The post then links to a 2011 post from a Nigerian message board which reads “A Woman’s Place In The Church And The Weak Church Elder.”

Another post from Christmas of 2013 reads: “I believe you should be much stronger. The end to the modern day Rome comes soon.” It links to an article from another religious website which reads, “7 signs of a weak leader.”

Houser’s rambling Linkedin page describes him as an entrepreneur with a law degree from Faulkner University and an accounting degree from Columbus State University. His work history indicates a handful of brief business ventures, including two bars that closed within three years of opening. The most recent listing shows that he was a “real estate developer” for eight months in 2006.

Friends and acquaintances described Houser as being “a little unbalanced” and struggling with depression and alcoholism. “He seemed to be more and more unstable,” an acquaintance told the Advocate. He was also apparently known to Phenix City police for his “strange behavior.” Houser’s prior criminal record is thin, however, including arson, selling alcohol to a minor, and speeding, all of which date from more than 10 years ago.

A report by USA Today from July 17, six days before the Lafayette shooting, found that since the massacre in Aurora in 2012 nearly 400 people have been killed in 72 separate mass shootings in the United States. However, because this list includes only incidents where 4 or more people were killed, killings such as those in Lafayette would not have been included in these already staggering figures.

The source of this epidemic of mass shootings is the deepening social crisis in the United States, to which a small number of people have responded with homicidal violence born of deep social alienation. Added to this is the unending violence promoted and perpetrated by the state, at home and abroad.

However, the political establishment, predictably, has avoided any mention of these broader social conditions in its reaction to the shooting.

Louisiana governor and long-shot Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal made an appearance in Lafayette Thursday evening in which he promoted religious obscurantism. “The best thing we can do across Lafayette, across Louisiana, across our country is come together in thoughts, in love, in prayer,” Jindal told a local TV station in remarks which were televised nationally.

The actions of Houser were “evil,” Jindal declared.

One week before calling for “love and prayer” in response to the mass shooting in Lafayette, Jindal penned an editorial on the Chattanooga shooting calculated to whip up anti-Muslim bigotry, attacking president Obama for neglecting to call the shooting of four Naval reservists by a Muslim man “terrorism.” “The truth is that Radical Islam is at war with us,” Jindal declared. “This is grotesque. You cannot defeat evil until you admit that it exists.”

THE gunman who killed two people and wounded nine more in a Louisiana cinema last Thursday was able to buy a gun despite a history of mental illness, police acknowledged at the weekend: here.

THE LOOPHOLE THAT ALLOWED THE LAFAYETTE SHOOTER TO BUY A GUN How John Russell Houser was able to buy the gun that he used to kill two women in a movie theater last week, and the problem that gun rights and gun control activists agree on. [WaPo]

AMY SCHUMER ENLISTS SOME FAMILY HELP IN CALL FOR GUN CONTROL She and her cousin, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), made an emotional plea yesterday for gun control. Their joint press conference comes two weeks after two people died after John Houser opened fire at a screening of Schumer’s new movie, “Trainwreck.” [HuffPost]