Three people plus suspect killed in New Mexico shooting

Image by Brett_Hondow from Pixabay

It’s never a good day when I have to start it off by writing about a mass shooting pretty much anywhere.

Today is, unfortunately, not a good day.

It seems an 18-year-old suspect has killed three people in Farmington, New Mexico.

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An 18-year-old gunman fired indiscriminately while roaming a residential street in Farmington, N.M., on Monday morning, killing three people before the police arrived and killed the suspect, the authorities said. Six other people, including two officers, were injured.

The authorities received several reports of shots fired near Dustin Avenue and Ute Street just before 11 a.m., Chief Steve Hebbe of the Farmington Police Department said in a video statement released on Monday night, adding that the rampage appeared to be “purely random.”

Chief Hebbe said that the gunman, whom he did not name, had used at least three different weapons, including an “AR-style rifle,” a gun commonly used in mass shootings, as he roamed through the neighborhood, randomly firing “at whatever entered his head to shoot at” including at least six houses and three cars.

Officers located the shooter in the 700 block of North Dustin Avenue, Chief Hebbe said, where they shot and killed him.

The two injured police officers — one from the Farmington Police Department, and a state police officer — were treated at the San Juan Regional Medical Center in Farmington, the authorities said. The state police officer had been released by Monday night and the other officer was “doing well,” according to Chief Hebbe.

Earlier on Monday, the authorities said that nine people, not including the shooter, had been injured, before lowering that number to six.

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Of course, this is still subject to change, especially since we don’t know the condition of any of the injured. Some may end up being fatalities after the fact, though I’m praying that’s not the case.

Undoubtedly, we’ll see the politicization of this shooting at some point later today, and that’s just assuming I haven’t missed it already. I fully expect President Biden to call for a new assault weapon ban because, well, it’s Tuesday. It’s what he does.

However, there are still a lot of questions left unanswered, such as whether the killer legally acquired his firearm or not. We know that it’s an “AR-style rifle” but nothing beyond that descriptor. We also don’t know if there’s any reason this person should have been prohibited from owning a firearm in the first place.

Authorities on the ground in New Mexico will answer those as soon as they can, but for now, the situation is likely still pretty fluid.

Such is the state of things in the aftermath of a shooting, which is why many people have a 72-hour rule in place. The news seems to fluctuate a bit right afterward as people are still trying to figure out what happened. I suspect this will be no different.

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What I don’t suspect because I know it for a fact is that New Mexico gun control advocates will latch onto this horrible tragedy to push their agenda. It’s what happens in every mass shooting.

For gun rights activists in New Mexico, I can just say to dig in. The fight is coming.

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