[Trump Shooting] Suspect was registered as Republican voter, state records show

My biggest hope now is that he legally purchased the gun with no background check from a maga at a gun show.

You really think that any of the cultists are going to care about what actually happened?
Their story will be that he's a transwoman high on legal weed who listened to woke podcasts about Gaza.
- A brave and true republican boy, who got corrupted away from his family by the antifa deep state complex, he would have been such a great person, if only his parents had homeschooled him without interference from the communist atheists, and were allowed to hit him more as a child 😢
- You really think that any of the cultists are going to care about what actually happened?
  No, but it might be enough to convince independents not to feel sympathy for him.
- Holy shit AND tried to assassinate a fascist? Why do they keep making up such fucking cool people
- The cultists are gonna cultist no matter what. Truth still matters even in a political and media landscape that looks to be 'post-truth'. Don't get me wrong, I wish it mattered a whole lot more still.
- When it was discovered Rittenhouse beat up a little girl, the story the Right made up was that the "Girl was a transgender who was spying on his sister in the bathroom!" when there's no evidence for that claim.
Trump's already not pro-gun. He passed some of the most significant "anti" gun legislation during his term. Thing is, he's a pathological liar, so it doesn't matter what comes out of his mouth. He'll stay on the "pro-gun" rhetoric, and when he's elected will enact more anti-gun legislation, especially now that he's been on the receiving end.
And it won't matter, because MAGA's gonna MAGA. He'll lose maybe a few truly 2A-focused people, but it won't matter because after 2024 there will be no more free elections in the US.
- Trump's already not pro-gun.
  Point of order: Trump's not anything except Pro-Trump. THAT'S IT. That is the sum total of his actual identifiable personal beliefs.
  He's a demented narcissist and a sociopath. He's a rapist, a fraud, a money launderer for human traffickers, he's a traitor, a colluder, and a piece of shit.
  But he is absolutely NOT "not pro-gun". He does not give a single solitary shit-in-a-vacuum. This has been proven. It Is Known.
He was a responsible gun owner. They’re all responsible gun owners.
Until they’re not.
Close, got it from his dad.

People in this post thinking that any fact will matter to the MAGA base…

Yup even if it turns out it was the father of one of the children trump raped, they won't care.
"ReGiSteReD RePuBliCaNs aRe AnTiFa!!!!"
MAGA will spin this... He was a plant, he was hired by Biden, he was a sleeper agent meant to sow discord in the GOP.....
Whatever fox does with this story, the MAGA people will believe it.
- He was hired by Trump to miss, but "make it look good", and killed for being a "loose end"

Conservatives when a poc is convicted of rape:”if that was my daughter I’d happily be in JAIL now!”

Conservatives when their violent , rapist prez gets shot: “this is the democrats fault since they call him a fascist, let’s pull back the violent rhetoric peeps”

Only that the "let's" is referring to only Democrats. Republican/alt-right people will continue to use violent rhetoric.

Crooks was supposedly wearing a shirt for a YT channel “Demolition Ranch” being called a pro-gun channel by the news. Quick scan of their content seems to indicate that guns are toys to be played with and how much destruction you can do with them.

That’s one I had to stop my kid from watching because their gun safety is not non existent but is also not safe at all
IIRC, DemoRanch uses (or at least used to) a portion of its income to run his Veterinarian clinic, but that is a few years old and it looks like he stepped back from the business in 2021? I fell off from most of YouTube before the pandemic, so I'm bummed but not surprised that he's a Trump guy.
- Basically every single gun nut youtube is inherently right wing. Any content creator who actually gives a shit about humanity would have made MASSIVE changes following... ANY school shooting.
  The best you can hope for is channels like Forgotten Weapons where Ian actively refuses to "be political". He still lets his biases show any time he talks about legislation but he also has very clearly mocked a lot of the "loophole" devices and mostly comes across as a rich jerk talking about engineering. Or (funny enough) Carl at InRange who is 100% in the "useful idiot" category but seems to have a good heart.
- I bailed on his channel when he started making comments about the George Floyd protests in his videos. It was always pretty clear what his beliefs are from a religious and political standpoint, but up to then, he never brought it into his videos.
I think the channel is hilarious.
I also think the channel shows off WAY too much reckless, butthole puckering lack of safety. I'm actually surprised no one has gotten injured or killed.

I don't mean this in a conspiratorial way, but I would not be surprised if this kid was a huge Trump fan. What better way to pump up the MAGA crowd than more bullshit to make it seem like some shadowy force was trying to stop him.

Right now the FBI has all of his friends and family in custody for interviews, the NSA is pulling all the comms info they have on him, his phone company is pulling what they have to provide...his entire life is going to get taken apart in very short order. What we actually get to see of that data probably is very little. I really hope what we need to see is disseminated quickly to not make the situation more murky.

If it was a leg shot or a deliberate miss I could go for the conspiracy angle. But as it stands he was inches away from taking trumps life, which does not scream trump supporter to me.
- Apparently he was hit by shattered glass from the teleprompter being shot, not grazed by a bullet.
  (Not that I buy the conspiracy angle. I think it makes far more sense that we have a dangerously polarized society and a lot of seriously unhappy young men who don’t know what to do with their anger. That leads to violence.)
- A shot to the leg can cause significant bleeding and is often more deadly than say... headshots (see Gabbie Giffords).
  Trained gunmen / soldiers shoot for the center-of-mass. In fact, its clear that Trump wasn't struck by a bullet now but instead by glass shards. So some glass deflected the bullet out of the way.
- Read my comment again. The FIRST sentence specifically says I'm not going that way with my comment...
There’s apparently a video of him saying he hates trump and republicans. It’s getting messy.
- That was by a lookalike from 4chan I thought, the blue shirt video?
So we should all watch Rogan and infowars because those guys will figure it all out just by “asking questions” /s

Republican voter and somehow this will be blamed on everyone else.

"Missed to the left, therefore a leftie"
~ Maga probably
Used to vote for Republicans and then donated for Democrats
- He was 20. He could have voted only in a single election. Someone said he donated to democrats 3 years ago. This math is confusing the fuck out of me.
- Apprently that was a differnet person in Philly that shares his first and last name.

The mental illness angle will be met with

"Interesting how he so easily acquired a gun."

Funny how he chose an AR type, too.
- What's an AR type?
  Edit: right answers only
What's even better, he was already on secret service/security radar when he tried to enter the metal detectors by acting weird.
Why the fuck wasn't he literally followed at that point?
- I mean they probably get like a ton of people who enter the metal detectors and act weird. I don't really expect that to actually be a part of their security that's reliable or useful in really any way, it's TSA security theater shit.
- Asking this stuff will get you banned

He definitely could be Republican and I would not dismiss it at all. However, in the state of Pennsylvania it's common to register for the party primaries of the opposing party whose candidate is someone you're not in favor of and vote for someone else. It should be clear this does not mean he's not a Republican or imply that he might be a Democrat. It's only to add some context.

Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_elections_in_Pennsylvania

I wouldn’t say it’s common, that’s misleading. some people do it, probably, but I’ve lived in PA for 2 decades and have never met anyone who has claimed to do so nor have I seen any actual statistics on the matter
- My older sister has been doing it since the 80s. I don't think there's very many of them because assholes keep winning the Republican primaries
- As much as I've heard this parroted in multiple places since yesterday, I think this is just a talking point to edge towards it. In another couple of days it wont be maybe. It's directed to make it a left vs right, while, what's so outrageous about him being Republican and not liking Trump? It's not like there hasn't been a huge divide in the Republican party, so much so that we have the "alt right"
- That's fair, you're right as I haven't seen statistics either. While I don't do it myself, I've seen many speak about doing this over the years though I've only lived in PA for a little over a decade.
  Edit: autocorrect
He also has donated to Democratic cause three years ago. Might not mean anything but we'll see if they better figure out this guy.
- .. it would been a whole lot easier if he hadn't been shot dead.

just another case of Republican on Republican violence

He probably is a registered Republican. He's a kid. His dad probably made him register Republican. His dad bought him the gun.

What are the odds he hates his father and blames Trump for turning his dad into a soft-brain conspiracy-minded dumbass, filled with hate?

Listen, while I don't know exactly what his circumstances were, I agree he probably didn't like the convicted felon, alleged by victims child rapist and ex president Donald Trump. I share that hunch with you.
The guy was 20....he is an adult.
- Old enough to vote ....to young to drink. He's still a kid in my book until he can buy a round at the bar
- Nah I've been told here on lemmy that 20yr olds are kids.
  But I've also had comments removed for being "ageist" for pointing out 20yr olds have virtually no life experience.

How is voter registration even a thing. wtf

Can’t have homeless people or people with limited means actually voting. A republican would never win again.
For primaries, parties may close their primaries to only registered members of the party to vote in
republicans need barriers for people of color, poor people and young people traditionally to avoid full participation in democracy. In this modern time, some states actually still require you to print paper applications and mail them to your Secretary of State's office at the post office with a physical stamp to register to vote... The list of individual barriers to completion within those seemingly small actions can not be overstated, especially to young people who on average don't own home printers and may have literally never bought a stamp or mailed a physical letter.
Any time you apply for a driver's license or whatever, you are asked if you want to register with a party. That is the party that you will vote for in the primary elections. Some (many?) states offer same day registration which, in my opinion, is how it should be. It puts you in a database in case voter fraud ACTUALLY happens (insanely rare) where they can check to make sure Ur Quell only voted once and investigate what happened if they see multiple votes.
As for the primaries: This is how the US handles our version of Ranked Choice and... I kind of prefer it (with some major caveats). The general idea is that all right wing politicians should run for the republican seat and all sane people for the Democrat seat. You campaign at the tail end of the previous year and the party members vote on you in the spring. There is definitely some sketchiness with super delegates (although, that is not overly dissimilar from how many parliament systems pick a Prime Minister), but this creates a unified front come November.
Yes, two party systems are bad, but that is what things tend to converge on when push comes to shove. Just look at France where the Left more or less unified to stand a chance against fascism.
Like almost every aspect of the US government: it is a fundamentally good system that needs to be iterated on and better taught to the populace. It is just that republicans know that education hurts them and want to take advantage of all the loopholes that Tommy Jefferson obviously intentionally wrote while he was raping his plantation full of slaves.
- Thanks for the lengthy reply :)
You can register as Unaffiliated fwiw, you don't have to choose Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or Independant. It's mainly a choice of which primary to vote in anyway.
Its for the parties themselves.
But to answer your question, theres intentionally no list of citizens. The only way to verify that they can vote is registration, unless you want a passport or birth cert or whatever

So, can we get celebrate this patriot like they celebrate Kyle bitchenhouse?

Yeah, let’s not elevate idiots to a pedestal - and I’m not calling him an idiot (just Rittenhouse), we don’t know squat about him yet.
Atleast this one had the balls to go after someone more secure than a bunch of random protesters.
- True but didn't him shooting two innocents after Trump make this a bad thing?
Considering Trump can now campaign on being an assassination survivor and win with that? Lol no
- Yes you're right but that wasn't my point.

“False flag” - Fox and co-conspirators

Trump is literally a paid actor, how do we know he was actually shot and not just pretending for attention? /s
- How do we know he actually got shot?
Wait, are they really saying that? Do they know what that implies?

Standard procedure for antifa supersoldiers

What do you mean
- They made a conspiracy joke.

The 20-year old suspect involved in yesterday’s shooting at Donald Trump’s rally was reportedly bullied relentlessly, the local Pennsylvania outlet KDKA reports.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/jul/14/trump-rally-shooting-assassination-attempt-shooter-thomas-matthew-crooks-pennsylvania-latest?page=with:block-669404338f08d1ccb5785213#block-669404338f08d1ccb5785213

That really sucks.
I highly suggest everyone in this thread read Angry White Men by Michael Kimmel. HIGHLY suggest you read it to understand the kind of person in America that does this and why.

Pretty much expected. His precise reasons are what have me curious though

Maybe one of his cultists actually realized he's been lying to them for the past 8 years. It's a far fall from where MAGA is back down to reality.
- Maybe the creation of a martyr and just accelerationism. Or the shooter was just a patsy
Follow the money. Who paid him to do the shooting is what we should be asking.

Of course they are are, and the MAGA cult will buy it saying it was a deep state conspiracy to discredit them or some bullshit like that.

the MAGA cult will buy it saying it was a deep state conspiracy to discredit them
Isn't it funny how every single time a psycho with a long history of supporting republicans turns out to just be a deep state crisis actor paid by Soros to discredit them?

Thank god this is getting muddled.

I'll take a win where I can. The election is too close for comfort now (or even leaning towards a Trump victory right now). We have time to change that, but we need to recognize the threat is growing right now.

Biden's next presser:

Fuck Donald Trump, fuck Don Jr., fuck Trump's staff, his business company and as a motherfucking candidate!

And if you want to be down with MAGA Trump, then fuck you too! Barron XL: fuck you too! All you motherfuckers, fuck you too!

What about Eric?

Who????

PA has a closed primary. In closed primaries, people tend to switch their registration in order to effect the primary they see as most impactful. It is not unlikely that the shooter registered as republican to vote against Trump in the primary.

Edit: Downvotes without explanation are fun...

I will say, as someone who lives in a state with closed primaries it is very common for someone to register for the opposite party to vote for whoever you think will lose. This particular election cycle it would make sense that dude may not exactly be so much pro Biden, but anti-Trump, so he registered as a republican to vote against him in the primaries.

I am anti-Trump as they come, but it doesn't make sense that a republican would attempt to assassinate Trump. A lot of them may not like him, but they are a party of people that fall in line, not people that stand for what they believe is right. They are not selfless people that would give their life to protect the country from a facist. They are cowards that while they know it may not be right, at least he's on "their side". And let it play out.

You don't vote in your least favored party to vote for who you want to lose. You vote for who in that party you genuinely want to win - so even if your favored party loses, the winning candidate is at least not a piece of shit. It's an ad hoc way to do ranked choice.
This is why black voters in the south before the 60s frequently voted in the Democratic primaries despite the Republican party being less racist at the time; they could at least get an OK Democrat if they couldn't get a Republican.
Everyone should be voting in the primaries of their least favored party until ranked choice voting can realistically happen.

https://x.com/ThePatriotOasis/status/1812348501868556704 He also said "I hate republicans. I hate Trump"

That's supposedly a troll who resembles the shooter. Let's vet sources a little more before just blindly posting things.
The heck does "they got the wrong guy" mean? Is this someone else? Was this recorded after the shooting?
- Not him. This is a known troll x.com/jewgazing
Someone said that wasn’t him? It sure looks like him though. Couldn’t see some random dude looking like him and posting that.
Grand. So we’ll find out what his affiliations are.
Not him. This is a known troll x.com/jewgazing