The story of last week’s mass shooting at a high school in Perry, Iowa has morphed into some familiar patterns that we’ve seen over the past few years. The shooter was eventually identified as Dylan “DJ” Butler, after taking the life of one child and injuring several others. But rather than just another “average kid gone bad” story, the details were more complicated. Butler identified as transgender and regularly posted in LGBTQ forums. The most disturbing detail of all was recently revealed, however. Like others before him, Butler was already known to authorities and the FBI had previously been informed of his participation in online discussions of mass school shootings. Rebecca Downs reports at Townhall.
Last week, 17-year-old student Dylan “DJ” Butler shot multiple people. He also killed a sixth-grade student before taking his own life. As Mia and Matt highlighted, Butler’s social media posts pointed to an interest in the LGBT movement and identified as “gender fluid,” using “he/they” pronouns. Now, more tragic but sadly not surprising details have come out, which is that he was known to authorities.
The Libs of TikTok X account shared coverage from the Daily Mail on Monday, which noted that Butler had been posting about the attack on the Discord social media site. “Butler posted a video to TikTok from an account with the username ‘tooktoomuch’ in the minutes leading up to the shooting. A Discord account with a similar name, ‘took2much’ appears to also belong to the shooter. A Discord spokesperson told the outlet they believe the account belonged to Butler,” the report mentioned. A TikTok post came “hours before.”
Here’s the Libs of TikTok screen capture of the relevant information regarding the FBI. The Bureau had been warned about Butler’s online activities in advance, but no action was taken.
Source: https://t.co/XVfVdOVRDy pic.twitter.com/vme7GR9QPh
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 8, 2024
In another striking similarity to Audrey Hale, the trans shooter in Tennessee, it appears that every possible effort was made to scrub Butler’s online history and hide from the public any suggestion that he was trans or in any way associated with the LGBTQ movement. If they could have found a way to make him out to be a Trump-loving, red MAGA hat-wearing redneck, they no doubt would have tried. And yet the truth somehow came to light.
It’s very disturbing that these lunatics keep being reported to the FBI or the police, but no action is taken until after it’s too late. To a certain extent, I can feel some sympathy for the authorities in this regard. There are just too many people out there on social media chatting about everything imaginable to chase down every one of them. But if someone is out there on a Discord server talking about shooting up a school, that should be a big enough red flag for them, shouldn’t it?
Does the FBI hesitate when they receive troubling information about someone who is associated with a favored political group like the LGBTQ community out of fear of being branded “transphobic” or whatever? Or are they simply too overwhelmed with potential suspects to head them all off at the pass? We may never know.
The one thing we can say with a fair amount of certainty is that there is an ongoing campaign to keep any negative information regarding trans people away from the public. The majority of the legacy media plays along with this and attempts to discredit anyone who points such things out. We saw that again last week with NBC News’ Matt Lavietes.
NEW: Elon Musk and far-right figures seize on Iowa shooter’s possible LGBTQ identity https://t.co/vwidGshD0t
— Matt Lavietes (@mattlavietes) January 5, 2024
Yes, pointing out something that is clearly true is now “seizing” in the newsroom of NBC. Meanwhile, they ignore the truly important parts of these stories, such as when an attacker had previously been identified to authorities.
The pinkwashing continues. We still don’t have access to all of the background information on Audrey Hale, despite her alignment and self-identification being painfully evident. The typical excuse given is that we need to avoid people having to “relive the trauma” of a horrible event. But hiding it doesn’t get us any closer to understanding how these things happen or help prevent them from happening again in the future. It’s enough to make you shake your head.
