When police confirmed, on February 11, that the suspect in a horrific mass shooting at a high school in Tumbler Ridge was an eighteen-year-old transgender woman named Jesse Van Rootselaar, right-wing media went into overdrive, blaming the violence on acceptance of trans people and even a pride flag that was displayed at the school.
Canada's worst school shooting happened on February 12 in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, a small western community of 2,000. Eight are dead. A community is in mourning. A nation paused to remember those killed, as a few days later, leaders of the five major political parties in Canada all came together to offer their collective support to the community. They, like the entire population of Tumbler Ridge, and many others across Canada, were bystanders to a senseless act of violence.
Queen guitarist Brian May has ruled out touring in the US for the foreseeable future, because of the potential danger it would pose. Speaking to the Daily Mail, the 78-year-old said: America is a dangerous place at the moment, so you have to take that into account. It's very sad because I feel like Queen grew up in America and we love it, but it's not what it was. Everyone is thinking twice about going there at the moment.
As Eric Lichtblau began research for a non-fiction book on the rise of hate crimes in the United States, he found that there was a seemingly unending array of horrific examples. In 2022, a White supremacist shot and killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. That same year, a Colorado Springs man, inspired by other hate-inspired mass shootings, killed five patrons at an LGBTQ nightclub.
The last 30 years have seen heinous mass shootings of innocents become "ho-hum" events of everyday life - from Columbine (1999) to Sandy Hook (2012) schools; to just-engaged 20-year-old-Israelis walking (2025) in Washington, D.C.; to Laney college football coach John Beam (November 2025). Mental health issues do occur; 100 years ago, such shootings didn't. Grievances exist, but why think cold-blooded murder solves anything?
Sydney, New South Wales An terrorist attack on a Hanukah celebration at Australia's most famous beach has left at least 12 people dead, including one attacker, after gunmen opened fire from a nearby footbridge. Prime minister Anthony Albanese said the targeted attack on Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukah, which should be a day of joy [was] an act of evil antisemitism. A further 29 people, including two police officers responding to the attack, were taken to hospital with injuries.
On Nov. 5, 1872, suffragist Susan B. Anthony defied the law by casting a vote in the presidential election; she was later arrested and charged with knowingly voting without having a lawful right to vote. Found guilty at trial, she was fined $100, which she refused to pay. Also on this date: In 1605, the Gunpowder Plot failed as Guy Fawkes was seized before he could blow up the English Parliament; Fawkes and his co-conspirators were later convicted of treason and hanged.
On Sept. 28, 2025, at least four people were killed and eight others injured during a Sunday service at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Just a month earlier, two people died and 21 were injured during a Mass for students at the Catholic Church of the Annunciation in Minneapolis. These tragedies may feel sudden and senseless, but they are part of a longer pattern that we have been tracking.
[T]he highest order of business" for journalists is to try and get to the facts without giving shooters the attention they seek, but that's become more difficult with this new wave of "performative" attacks,Terence Samuel, chair of the National Press Foundation Board of Directors and former editor-in-chief at USA Today, told Axios. Threat level: Theinternet subculture that fosters and spreads extremist communities online isn't going anywhere, and journalists have to learn how to navigate the toxic ideology they put out.
Previously, the routine would be we express our shock; we express our sadness; we offer our thoughts and prayers; we spend a day, maybe two, arguing about the appropriateness of bringing up guns at all; and then we do nothing until the next time. But as our politics becomes more polarized, even that learned cycle of helplessness has been replaced by a new, post-shooting pastime. That new pastime is, Was this one of yours?'
The North Carolina shooting erupted about 9.30pm near a popular stretch of bars and restaurants on Southport's waterfront, a historic port town about 30 miles (48km) south of Wilmington. Investigators said the assailant piloted a small boat close to shore, stopped briefly and fired into the crowd before speeding away. Roughly half an hour later, a US coast guard crew spotted a person matching the suspect's description pulling a boat from the water at a public ramp on nearby Oak Island.
After every school shooting, mass shooting, or act of targeted political violence, I've noticed a heartbreaking and consistent theme in my work with families. Mothers often come to me with the same fearful question:"Why does this keep happening with boys-and is my son at risk too?" Most recently, one mother sat across from me, exhausted and tearful, asking if her parenting was somehow creating a "narcissist" in her son. She feared what she was seeing-and even more, what it might mean.
Within minutes of Kirk's death, with the assassin still on the loose and with no proof of what the shooter's motives were, Trump and his allies declared that now was the time to use the full force of the state to, according to at least some of Trump's more outspoken supporters, eradicate the leftist menace. Some talked of a civil war; others of the need to "exterminate" people they see as "anarcho-terrorists."
Last week, a 23-year-old man who, according to police, was obsessed with previous mass shooters, opened fire at a school in Minneapolis, killing two children and injuring 18 others. It was the latest mass shooting to make headlines, and it ended the way most of them do, with the gunman killing himself. In highly publicized cases, the horror looms large in the public consciousness.
You know, 96% of attackers when you're looking at the US Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, looking at 172 mass attacks in the US between 2016 and 2020 96% were non-trans men, Keilar said. So I know you're focusing on this shooter being trans. The shooter was trans and that is certainly of note. But are you missing the bigger picture here when you zero in on that instead of more broadly these school shooters as an epidemic and you perhaps miss the through line that connects them all?
But Bruce then echoed comments from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) who rejected the calls for thoughts and prayers. As you heard from the mayor there in his heartfelt remarks saying, you know, praying isn't enough at this point, Bruce said. These children were quite literally praying when they were gunned down.
No mental health system is built to catch such rare and explosive crimes, experts said. But the potential solution is one that many politicians won't have the stomach to address: limiting access to guns.
Safety design experts say that preventative techniques work best. Threat mitigation should begin with the building design process, says Peggy Phillips, who leads engineering consulting firm Thornton Tomasetti's Protective Design and Security practice.
