Fatal Shooting at Video Game Competition in Florida

[Content Note: Gun violence; self-harm.]

At least nine people were injured by gunfire and three more are dead, including the shooter, following a shooting in Jacksonville, Florida, at a tournament for players of the football video game Madden.

Alan Blinder, Christopher Mele, and Patricia Mazzei at the New York Times report:

A gunman armed with a handgun killed two people at a video gaming tournament on Sunday, turning a football competition waged in a virtual domain into the chaotic scene of a double murder. The shooting suspect, a gamer attending the event, fatally shot himself, the authorities said.

Sheriff Mike Williams of Jacksonville identified the suspect as David Katz, 24, of Baltimore, but said it was too early to know his motive. The sheriff said the F.B.I. and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives were assisting in the investigation.

A live-stream of the tournament caught the chilling moment when the shooting began. A red laser dot appeared on the chest of one of the players, who was wearing white headphones and a red sweatshirt. The video of the players then disappeared. Twelve gunshots rang out.

The presumption is that Katz was angry about losing the competition.

Naturally, lots of "thoughts and prayers" were offered in the wake of this shooting, but the GOP's intransigent fealty to the NRA will ensure, as ever, that no meaningful action is taken to prevent gun violence.

And of course we will immediately continue failing to urgently address the crisis of toxic masculinity that underwrites acts of public violence like this one.

Speaking outside a Jacksonville hospital on Sunday night, Gov. Rick Scott mourned another mass shooting in his state.

"We have got to change, we've got to really stop and say to ourselves, 'There's something wrong,'" said Mr. Scott, who signed gun-control legislation into law after the Feb. 14 rampage at a high school in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead. "Why are young men willing to give up their lives? Or why don't they value somebody else's life? We've got to figure this out. We don't ever want this to happen again."

Governor Rick Scott then resumed promoting the Republican Party agenda of misogyny, white supremacy, nativism, homophobia, transphobia, disablism, class warfare, and Christian Supremacy, as he wondered why it is that young white men don't value the lives of other people.