The Gorge Amphitheater is a very familiar concert venue to many residents of the Pacific Northwest. I’ve attended dozens of concerts there over the decades. I saw Bob Dylan paly there in the 1980s to seeing Modest Mouse and the Decemberists there in 2015. The Gorge draws music fans from Seattle, Portland, and Spokane. That’s why this story is so disturbing to me.
EPHRATA - The Grant County Sheriff's Office says deputies likely stopped an Ephrata man on Friday night who may have had plans to commit a mass shooting at the Gorge Amphitheater.
The Sheriff's Office says citizens and venue security notified deputies around 9:00 p.m. of a man in the parking lot. Witnesses’ suspicions were raised when they saw the man inhale an unknown substance or gas from a balloon and then load two 9mm pistols from the trunk of his car. The man concealed one pistol in the rear of his waistband and the other in an outside-the-waistband holster.
The suspect, later identified as 31-year-old Jonathan R. Moody, of Ephrata, approached concertgoers, asking what time the concert ended and where people would be exiting the venue.
The concert series Bass Canyon, an electronic dance music festival, was playing at the Gorge Amphitheater to a sold out crowd, with upwards of 25,000 people attending.
Right Wing hate talkers, and twisted preachers, have demonized so many aspects of modern American culture (including electronic dance music festivals apparently), it’s getting hard to keep track of how many groups of Americans now have targets on their backs. We should probably assume most Americans do.
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Across the country a pair of sibling gun nuts acted out their dark macho fantasy of having a shootout with police, that included shooting at police helicopters. This after having stockpiled 1,000 firearms and 140,000 rounds of ammunition in their compound. That standoff ended when they charged the police line guns blazing, like the final scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
From the SPLC:
Jan. 6 should be recognized for what it was: a full-on violent assault on democracy that showcased the strength of the hard right. In the wake of that day, the hard right is reorganizing, re-strategizing and planning to emerge stronger. Throughout 2021, the hard right hit the streets across the U.S., blocked important policy, attacked democratic institutions, engaged in violence and energized their base of supporters. The 12 months that followed Jan. 6 showed beyond a doubt that they will not go quietly.