The U.S. Marine Corps veteran accused of killing three people and injuring five others in a mass shooting at a North Carolina waterfront restaurant on Saturday spent years filing federal lawsuits filled with sprawling conspiracies and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. His final complaint was filed just three days before the September 27 attack. Authorities say Nigel Max Edge, of Oak Island, positioned his center-console vessel alongside the deck of the American Fish Company, a popular bar and filming site for Nicholas Sparks' , and unleashed a burst of gunfire into a crowd gathered for live music.
As the visibility of LGBTQ+ people has risen in many countries in the last decade, so too has a backlash from conservative parts of societies, fuelled in many cases by far-right activists and politicians using gay and transgender people as scapegoats for other problems. There is a growing weaponisation of hate, said Alberto de Belaunde, a director at Outright International, an NGO that promotes LGBTQ+ rights globally.
Mace, who announced her gubernatorial bid on August 4 with anti- LGBTQ+ rhetoric and declared herself a "proud transphobe," had advertised that more than 100 people would attend a Moms for Liberty event at Forward Church on Thursday. But at the scheduled start time, rows of empty chairs greeted her. Only eight attendees were present, not including reporters and security, according to My Horry News.
