It’s been addressed, but I’ll put my $0.02 in. He’s show some actual detailed planning, getting the targets location and timing, planning on how to get there and out quickly and reasonably efficiently, and has had at least a minimal amount of firearm practice (clearing a failure to feed/stovepipe/etc).
IE he’s about as good as a TT-RPG’er who’s planned this sort of thing in a fictional environment a couple of times, who’s had an 8 hour gun safety course and some practice.
Not a high bar.
I promise, at least 40% of the Table Top Role-Players on this board who’ve played modern games could have planned it as well. The whole “professional hitman” thing you see in movies and TV is almost entirely myth. This guy could be one of those yahoo’s who’ve seen the “real thing” (almost always caught) and said “I can do better!” on behalf of someone close to, or wronged by the victim, but I that would be the closest to “professional” as I expect.
It’s just that, as @scabpicker pointed out, MOST mass shooters aren’t planning for much past the death of their targets, and most homicides tend to be people acting in the heat of the moment, or out of desperation with someone close to them. And if not caught in the act, the police almost always have a very good idea of who’s done it, just may lack the evidence.
All that being said, while I and others could probably plan something like this, it’s certainly abnormal to be able to carry it out without choking on the fear, the knowledge that you’re killing someone, or just the immensity of it all going right. It says something about the perp’s mind that they’re totally okay with it, and simultaneously capably of doing it while apparently being able to flirt with people in the leadup.
Not anything healthy about the perp’s mind to be clear.
No, it’s an international news story for the same reason that it spawned three different active discussion threads here on the SDMB – because it’s newsworthy for many different reasons. Unless you believe that the SDMB membership values rich white men and no one else.
Probably even more attention was given to the manhunt after the assassination of Martin Luther King. His assassin was pursued for more than two months across five countries until he was finally apprehended in the UK and extradited to the US. It was believed to be the most expensive and ambitious FBI investigation in history, though MLK was neither rich nor white.
One thing’s for sure: With all the media attention, all the reporting about what the guy did right and what he did wrong, the analysis of where and how his choices worked out versus where he made mistakes or overlooked things — the next time there’s a thoughtful and careful amateur assassin, their plan will be even better. (“Unexpected security camera in the hostel: keep the mask up. Another camera spotting the shooter making a call, giving the authorities a window of time to check cellular usage: bring a dummy phone and pretend to make calls so they waste time running down all those records.” Etc.)
(In the Hollywood version of this story, the authorities would be carefully controlling and skewing the emerging facts with an eye toward fooling future assassins into errors that make them catchable. But Hollywood, needless to say, is not real.)
Maybe to you (plural “you”), in the United States. To those of us who are not in the United States, it is a huge international news story because once again, we are left flabbergasted as to why Americans cherish their precious Second Amendment, but in spite of acts like this, and countless school and church shootings, not to mention toddlers who decide to play with Daddy’s gun and accidentally kill a playmate, the United States refuses to consider any form of gun control. “My freedom! America, yeah!” and all that.
This matter has grabbed the world’s attention because of all of the above. We’re left scratching our heads as to why and how this guy could (a) get a gun, (b) carry it on his person, (c) without anybody knowing or caring, and (d) use it openly on a street. In any other western country, with reasonable and sensible gun control, he never would have been able to do that. At least, not without jumping through a lot of hoops, dotting all “I’s” and crossing all “T’s,” filling out a bunch of forms, paying a lot of fees, and probably having to deal with local police as to safe storage and use. To us, it is odd that Americans don’t have to do all that, because we don’t get shot as often as Americans seem to get shot. And that’s why it’s an international news story.
“Rich” and “White” have nothing to do with it. Other countries are not as concerned with wealth and race as Americans seem to be. What we are concerned with is why individual Americans are still allowed to own and use these machines designed to kill, with few to no controls on such machines. Maybe it’s time to revisit the Second Amendment and revise or repeal it. There’s precedent; the 18th was repealed by the 21st. No reason why the Second cannot be.
Well, it kinda does. Rich mostly but since the rich people tend to be white the white figures in too.
I posted in another thread how it is worth noting the extreme effort of law enforcement to catch this shooter. There are, on average, more than one homicide per day in NYC. They do not get this level of attention or effort from law enforcement. Nowhere close.
If it was you or me shot I doubt much would happen beyond a police report. NYC homicide clearance rate is now around 33%. 1 in 3. But this guy gets all the effort. Why? Because he is rich and white.
I agree that large segments of the public celebrating the murder of a health insurance executive is not a sign of a healthy society, but that’s because America is not at all healthy. In America, the oligarchs virtually always win, the best we get is every once in a while an oligarch gets gunned down in the street and we take the win.
I think it is obvious this was a targeted hit and not some rando shooting another rando. Which means most people who are not a healthcare executive probably still feel safe in Manhattan.
Yeah you’re right. I’m trying to have empathy and not put everything on one person when it’s really a systemic issue. But then this morning I saw a clip of the CEO’s presumed replacement saying “We prevent unnecessary care” and wow. I can never condone premeditated murder, but hopefully that guy is looking over his shoulder in fear for the rest of his life, the way everyone else fears that their insurance company will shaft them at the wrong moment.
To some degree yes: something is not “news” when it is common. A murder of an executive of a major corporation presumptively by someone unhappy by what the company does is not something commonplace.
But rich white man killed murdered in a road rage incident, or during a robbery on the street, or by suicide? Would be commonplace enough to not get much attention.
The fact that it was in a crowded section of Midtown Manhattan where violence is rare and that the murderer was able to do that in a crowd in daylight, in an area with lots of surveillance, and get away easily … that dialed it to eleven as newsworthy.
But sure. Whatever the source of their power, money, running for president, whatever, a powerful person murdered will get attention. Loved or hated.
Plus, the murder itself was caught on video, which is ideal for getting it reproduced countless times on tv, internet news, and social media.
In addition to the sheer number of times it gets reproduced, it also spawns all the keyboard speculation and talking heads about the weapon, the suppressor, the type of back pack, the calmness displayed by the killer, and so on.
A shooting inside a house, out of the range of any cameras, doesn’t offer that “ripped from the videos” option.
That is not really true, though. The Gun Violence site so far in '24 has recorded at least 473 shootem-ups (involving 4 or more lead poisonings) in which 34 shooters have been “retired” in the course of the shooting and there have been arrests in 181 incidents. While not all of these incidents fit the description of shooting up a school or dance club, that is still a far cry from showing a trend such as you describe.
In fact we can have no idea from what you cite about whether or not every single mass school and dance club shooting ended up with the shooter dead or arrested or not. (The number of mass murders on that site is 26 btw) It provides no information.
What I would posit is that every one of the school and dance club mass shootings have been major news items with lots of law enforcement involvement. The comparison is to those of that group of four or more shot that are considered gang or domestic related violence. Those happen so often in this country that they are not paid any mind.
Just came across this essay on Substack this morning, and it’s well worth reading. I’m not going to excerpt any of it because it deserves to be read in full.
On the other hand, I’ve seen players take 20 minutes just to decide whether to take the left door or the right door even when they have absolutely no information about what’s behind either door. One key difference between making plans for a dungeon crawl and mudering a person in real life is that the stakes are so very low in the former. There’s no pressure. Not really. It’s a game and there are no real consequences to losing or winning.
I certainly don’t want to treat this guy as if he’s Jason Bourne, John Wick, and James Bond all rolled into one. But this guy came up with a solid plan, was able to follow through, and actually escaped (for now at least). Color me impressed. The fact that he took the time to write on some of the bullets is something I’d expect to see out of a Batman comic. Obviously someone wanted to send a message. Although who knows? Maybe this guy is just trying to throw off investigators.
