well! I haven't been keeping up with all the mass murders

Shooting in Buffalo, NY: 18-year-old Payton Gendron, white, went into a mostly black neighborhood where he shot and killed ten people. Gendron apparently wrote an unhinged manifesto railing about the so-called "replacement" of whites by minorities. The left has, of course, leaped upon this as evidence that they've been right about ambient white supremacy all along. This might have implications for November if the public has a long-enough memory (which it probably doesn't). The left is also blaming righties like Tucker Carlson for egging on people like Gendron through their extremist rhetoric. 

My take: people generally accept that video games don't cause violence—an idea that has been massively debunked by statistics. Why, then, argue that rhetoric causes violence? It does not. The path of violence is a choice made by free human beings gifted with moral agency—people with violence already in their hearts. This is something the left is at pains to deny because it puts too much focus on the individual. The left prefers to focus on systems and structures. According to this point of view, we are in the thrall of forces beyond our control, bereft of choice and buffeted about by the winds of bigotry, extremism, etc. Free will and moral agency never enter the picture. In the second link above, the author of the article calls for the execution of Gendron as a recognition of his culpability. In a morally clear country that's actually interested in justice, this is indeed what should happen, but it probably won't. New York State doesn't have the death penalty, anyway.

And in other shooting news, a deranged Chinese immigrant named David Chou went into Geneva Presbyterian church in California and, motivated by hatred of Taiwanese people, began shooting. He killed Dr. John Cheng, 52, who charged at and tackled the shooter to stop him, allowing others to tie Chou up. Five other people were injured. (If this had been a Texas church, Chou would have been gunned down right away.)

There will, of course, be the standard (and wrong-headed) calls for gun control and all the usual yadda-yadda about the easy availability of firearms. Once again, the argument will be that guns are the problem, not people. And once again, this will be incorrect. Put a gun on a tabletop for a hundred years, and it'll never kill anyone—not until someone picks it up and points it at a living human being. Just ask Alec Baldwin.

Wikipedia has an impressive list of 2022 mass shootings thus far. There are a lot of assholes out there, and they probably all deserve to fry.*

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*I don't support the death penalty because I think it'll deter other criminals. I support it because it guarantees that that criminal will never commit that crime ever again.