Plano, Texas, mass shooting that occurred in September.
Ed Scruggs talking:
One of the biggest missed stories of the year, or at least the last several months, was this mass shooting, which occurred in Plano, near Dallas. A football watching party where an estranged husband, accused of domestic abuse, or at least heavily suspected, in the process of divorcing his wife or splitting up—she was holding a football watching party, like they tended to do during their relationship. He didn’t like that. He showed up at the home in the middle of the party with an AR-15. They argued. He shot her. He entered the home. He shot everyone in the home and then was taken down by police and killed.
This received almost no national attention on the news. I believe there was something going on with the Russia investigation during that time, or something to that effect, but it received almost no coverage. I may have seen one small crawl on CNN, and that’s it—not one interview, not one report from the scene.
And what’s troubling about that is, one, we’ve become so desensitized that now nine deaths doesn’t qualify as news, but that the domestic violence component, it is—again, as I think Sarah mentioned earlier, it is a common link in many mass shootings. And this almost was a textbook case, where it evolved into a mass shooting of a large scale. And that was a direct connection. You can link it to this case of the church shooting, domestic violence included. The first mass shooting in the United States in the modern history, well known to many, the 1966 UT tower shooting here in Austin, that shooter, serious domestic violence against his wife. It is just a common thing.
So, we were—the media did not have its eye on the ball when the Plano shooting occurred. And it really has just stopped covering all of these smaller shootings, of murder-suicides. The majority of those involve domestic violence, where perhaps a spouse is killed, perhaps a child, one other person. That is happening all across the state and across this country. And we have just either become desensitized or not interested in covering that. So, people are shocked that this type of crime can happen in the church shooting in Texas, but the truth is, it has been happening on a rather large scale, but people have just not been paying attention. And that is very disturbing to me and, I think, to many other people.
– Charles Whitman, the former Marine sharpshooter, who took rifles and weapons to the observation deck atop the main building tower at the University of Texas, Austin, opened fire for the next hour and a half, killed 15 people. Ultimately, he was shot dead, but again with domestic violence.
And I would just say that Whitman had a history of abuse himself, with a very abusive father, and surrounded by violence and surrounded by firearms at a very young age. I think that’s something, when you go into these cases and look at them, you’ll also find that with many of these shooters, as well. So, you know, one way to attack gun violence is to attack domestic violence.
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Ed Scruggs
vice chair and spokesperson for Texas Gun Sense.
— source democracynow.org 2017-11-07
This happens if the terrorist is white.