Perhaps file this one under the apple does not fall far from the tree. The Colorado shooter who is alleged to have killed five people, and injured twenty-five more is reported to be the grandson of Randy Voepel. Who is Randy Voepel?
Mr. Voepel has quite the history. Now of course none of this is to say that he directly influenced his grandson, assisted, encouraged, or looked the other way. It is to say that this particular family has a history of extremist views that before manifesting itself in actual tragedy, frequently flirted with it.
Randy Voepel was previously condemned over comments he made where he compared the January 6 riot at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., to the American Revolutionary War.
Just three days after the riot, Randy Voepel told the Union-Tribune: "This is Lexington and Concord. First shots fired against tyranny.
He is also an astute world traveler-
Randy Voepel, who will almost certainly be the next state assemblyman from northeastern San Diego, believes that climate change is good.
“Our enemies are on the equator,” Voepel told a reporter nine years ago, adding that a warmer climate would make it worse for them.
And a humanitarian!
In a television interview two years ago, Voepel blamed homeless residents for stripping copper out of a Santee park. “I served two tours in Vietnam. And I’m getting attacked here by the Viet Cong, stealing my copper, and I don’t like it,” Voepel said, waving a copper bar at the camera.
His grandson, just 22, has a history of his own.
Law enforcement officials said Aldrich’s “interactions with law enforcement” are part of the broader investigation, and they would not say if he’d previously been contacted by police. A man with the same name and matching age was arrested in June 2021 for threatening his mother with “a homemade bomb, multiple weapons and ammunition,” according to media reports at the time. That man was arrested after a brief standoff.
You might wonder how someone threatening a relative with a homemade incendiary device, would not result in an instantaneaous prohibition on acquiring firearms.
The answer to that is symbolic laws are useless.
But the law that allows guns to be removed from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others has seldom been used in the state, particularly in El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs, where the 22-year-old Aldrich allegedly went into Club Q with a long gun at just before midnight and opened fire before he was subdued by patrons.
An Associated Press analysis found Colorado has one of the lowest rates of red flag usage despite widespread gun ownership and several high-profile mass shootings.
Courts issued 151 gun surrender orders from when the law took effect in April 2019 through 2021, three surrender orders for every 100,000 adults in the state. That’s a third of the ratio of orders issued for the 19 states and District of Columbia with surrender laws on their books.
Randy Voepel has a proven track record of extremism, and is prone to promoting conspiracies.
Now his grandson stands accused of ending five lives, and changing forever more than two dozen others.
They, meaning Voepel, Boebert, MTG, Jordan, should not be given a pass on this.
The castle of hate must be torn down.
-ROC
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Love,
-ROC
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