Payton S. Gendron, the 18-year-old avowed white supremacist accused of fatally shooting 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, is facing a lot of time behind bars. And rightfully so.
According to court records obtained by The Buffalo News, the 25-count indictment includes charges of domestic terrorism motivated by hate, 10 counts of first-degree murder, 10 counts of second-degree murder, three counts of attempted second-degree murder as a hate crime, and a second-degree criminal possession of a weapon charge.
Gendron, who has been in custody since the May 14 shooting, has pleaded not guilty. He’s scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Erie County Court.
The domestic terrorism charge alleges that Gendron acted in “whole or in substantial part because of the perceived race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, gender identity or expression, religion, religious practice, age, disability, or sexual orientation of such other person or persons,” according to Section 490.28 of the New York State code, which defines a domestic act of terrorism motivated by hate in the first degree.
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NPR reports that former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo initially proposed the domestic terrorism law following a mass shooting that targeted Mexican people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The law was originally called the “No Hate in Our State Act,” but was eventually renamed the “Josef Neumann Hate Crimes Domestic Terrorism Act” after Rabbi Josef Neumann, who was stabbed, along with five other people, at a synagogue during Hanukkah. Neumann died of his wounds months later. The bill was signed into law on Nov. 2, 2020.
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The hate crime law includes a possible sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Gendron traveled more than 200 miles from Conklin, New York, to the Tops Friendly Market in East Side Buffalo, New York, because it is the only grocery store in the large Black community.
Gendron wrote extensively online about his racist ideology, and made repeated references to “replacement theory”—a conspiracy theory that there is a plot to replace white Americans with those who are Black, brown, or other people of color.
The Buffalo News reports that Gendron’s attorney filed for a gag order Friday "in an effort not to impact the fairness and integrity of the proceeding," according to Kait Munro, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.
The Buffalo mass shooting was followed just 10 days later by a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed by a gunman who locked himself inside their classroom for more than an hour.
On Wednesday, a gunman opened fire inside a medical building on the campus of Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, leaving four people dead, CNN reports.
“It was just madness inside, with hundreds of rooms and hundreds of people trying to get out of the building,” Tulsa Police Capt. Richard Meulenberg told CNN.
In all three of these mass shootings, the assailant used an AR-15-style rifle—yet Republican lawmakers refuse to ban these weapons, knowing fully the damage they can do to people.
Just so you know what we’re dealing with: The Minnesota Reformer reports that, according to estimates from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, there are around 5 to 10 million assault rifles in the U.S., if not more.
Gun ownership is growing as fast as the death count. Pew Research obtained statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finding that more Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2020 than any year on record—45,222 to be exact. As of 2022, firearms are the leading cause of death for American children—surpassing vehicle accidents, which had held the top ranking for more than 60 years.
"Most commonly what makes the news is these horrific mass shootings, but they are a small aspect of the overall problem," Patrick Carter, one of the authors of the research letter, told NPR. "The smallest portion are the mass shootings. ... it's these daily deaths that are occurring making up the totality of what we are seeing."
But by all means, let’s continue to do what we’ve been doing in this country with regard to guns: absolutely nothing.