Home / General / The family business

The family business

/
/
/
1895 Views

The Colorado Springs terrorist shooter is the grandson of a California insurrectionist Republican politician:

The 22-year-old man arrested early Sunday as the suspected gunman in a deadly mass shooting at a LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado is the grandson of longtime East County politician Randy Voepel, according to media reports.

Voepel did not return messages seeking comment, and the Union-Tribune could not immediately independently confirm the reports.

Shortly before midnight Saturday, a gunman opened fire in Club Q in Colorado Springs, police there said. Five people died and 25 more were injured. Five minutes after the first calls came in, police arrested the suspected shooter: Anderson Lee Aldrich.

Aldrich’s mother appears to be Laura Voepel, according to media outlets including The Guardian, The Hill and The Gazette in Colorado Springs. Records reviewed by the Union-Tribune list the same Colorado Springs apartment address for her and Aldrich.

Laura Voepel is the daughter of state Assemblymember Randy Voepel, 71, who has represented the 71st District since 2016. He served on the Santee City Council as a council member and mayor for two decades.

[…]

Last year, Voepel faced criticism after he compared the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to the American Revolutionary War.

“This is Lexington and Concord. First shots fired against tyranny,” Voepel told the Union-Tribune three days after the deadly Capitol riot. “Tyranny will follow in the aftermath of the Biden swear-in on January 20th.”

The terrorist also threatened his mother with a bomb, which needless to say compelled local authorities to take no steps to take away his military-grade arsenal:

A year and a half before he was arrested in the Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooting that left five people dead, Anderson Lee Aldrich allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb, forcing neighbors in surrounding homes to evacuate while the bomb squad and crisis negotiators talked him into surrendering.

Yet despite that scare, there’s no public record that prosecutors moved forward with felony kidnapping and menacing charges against Aldrich, or that police or relatives tried to trigger Colorado’s “red flag” law that would have allowed authorities to seize the weapons and ammo the man’s mother says he had with him.

[…]

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.

While the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence is a problem that’s about to become a bigger one, it’s misleading to suggest that the Second Amendment per se is the biggest barrier to gun control legislation in the U.S. The brutal truth is that most jurisdictions did far less than they were clearly permitted to do before 2022, because this level of gun violence is widely tolerated where it isn’t actively encouraged.

Speaking of active encouragement, take Lauren Boebert, I’m begging you.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar
Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views :