the El Paso shooting

Here's Chandler Crump on the Saturday shooting in El Paso, Texas, where over twenty people were killed (more on that story here; the shooter is 21-year-old Patrick Crusius of Allen, Texas, and he may have been an anti-immigrant white supremacist according to his manifesto):


Chandler makes some traditionally conservative points about the sort of opportunistic gun-grabbiness that always happens in the wake of shootings like this. He also expresses what I think is a reasonable social conservatism that is actually more libertarian than conservative: he's for gay marriage, and he's okay with minors who dress in drag, even if he personally finds it weird, but he draws the line at the sexualization of these minors. That strikes me as a reasonable stance, and if that's the nature of today's youths' social conservativism, then I support that point of view. Kids have the right to get weird if they want (although they should do so in dialogue with their parents as long as they're minors). Once they're of legal adult age, they then have the right to determine their sex/gender destiny, whether that means surgery, embracing a drag-queen life, or whatever.

Chandler's video also features an interview with the most awesome dude in Texas. Big thumbs-up to that guy.

Crusius was taken into custody. Wikipedia currently says the following:

A mass shooting took place at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, United States, on the morning of August 3, 2019, at approximately 10:40 a.m. local time (16:40 UTC) resulting in the deaths of 20 people and at least 26 injured, making it the deadliest shooting of 2019. A single white gunman is suspected of committing the shooting. He was apprehended by police shortly afterward and arrested. An ongoing FBI investigation suggests the shooting may have been a hate crime or act of domestic terrorism; no charges have been filed.

A white nationalist manifesto, published prior to the shooting on the website 8chan's /pol/ board and titled The Inconvenient Truth, is believed with "reasonable confidence" by police to have been written by the suspect. The manifesto expresses support for and inspiration by the Christchurch mosque shootings, makes reference to the white genocide conspiracy theory as motivation behind the massacre, and rants against "race-mixing." The suspect, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, was a reported follower of alt-right and pro-Donald Trump content on social media. Two law enforcement officers told ABC News that after Crusius was taken into custody, he told investigators that he wanted to inflict maximum Mexican casualties.