That’s Number Three

Apologies for no post yesterday, I was at the Toledo Zoo with my wife and an Amish family. Saw the new baby elephant, etc. It was super hot so I tapped out around lunch time and sat in the park across the street reading in the shade but a good time was had by all. Anyway….

I came across a third unicorn, another White mass shooter. I might have missed this one except it is of course getting a lot of coverage and it also happened in Florence, Kentucky. Florence is a large suburb in Northern Kentucky, with over 30,000 people living there as of the last census, and is famous for it’s “Florence Y’all” water tower. This is what I mean…

In the early 2000s we lived in the towns of Walton and Independence, also in Northern Kentucky and fairly close to Florence so the news story caught my eye. The town is 80% White and growing fast as one of the Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati so I suspected from the killed/wounded ration, volume of coverage and the location that this wasn’t a Miracle-American shooting. I was correct.

Here’s what we know about a mass shooting in Florence early Saturday that left four people dead and three wounded. The shooter also died.

Police have identified the shooter as 21-year-old Chase Garvey, a Florence resident. They believe he turned the gun on himself a short time after the shooting and died at a local hospital.

During a press conference Saturday, Florence Police Chief Jeff Mallery said Garvey is believed to have gunned down seven people at a private residence, killing four and injuring three others.

It was during a birthday party at a home in the 2600 block of Ridgecrest Drive around 2:50 a.m.

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From what I have seen all of the deceased are White. Here is the shooter, one Chase Garvey:

He apparently fled the scene and shot himself in the head, not wanting to go back to prison. See, ol’ Chase here is a piece of shit who was convicted of rape and sodomy involving a 13 year old girl he met on Snapchat: Man charged with raping girl, 13, he met on Snapchat, police say. According to the same article archive linked above, he was subsequently sentenced five years of probation for “unlawful transaction with a minor in the second degree”. That is also a felony. Under Kentucky law an unlawful transaction with a minor in the second degree is basically helping a minor to get high. Fun fact, in Kentucky you can be busted for a misdemeanor version, Unlawful transaction with minor in the third degree if one: “….persistently and knowingly induces, assists or causes a minor to disobey his parent or guardian”. Knowing is half the battle.

The obvious question is why a man convicted of “rape in the 1st degree and sodomy in the 2nd degree” in 2021 and then a subsequent felony conviction in 2023 is out of prison and shooting people in 2024.

There is no word yet as to why he was at this birthday party at almost 3 AM in the first place in most media but as is often the case, the British media comes through. His ex-girlfriend, Delaney Eary, was one of those killed at the party. I wonder if she knew her former boyfriend had been convicted of raping a 13 year old girl a few years ago.

With America at 278 mass shootings according to the Gun Violence Archive, this is the third White guy I am aware of. That would be just above 1% of all mass shootings. Again, there might be some I am unaware of although I try to watch for outliers like “4 killed, 3 injured” but I just haven’t seen many.

As an interesting sidenote, the Cincinnati Enquirer story above provides not only the standard media source definition of a mass shooting from the Gun Violence Archive (four or more shot, excluding the shooter) but also definitions from Everytown For Gun Safety and the FBI:

Everytown For Gun Safety, a gun violence prevention organization that tracks shootings across the U.S., has defined a mass shooting as any incident in which four or more people are killed, excluding the shooter. The organization noted, however, that “research and news coverage of these tragic events has expanded greatly, but the question of how to best define a mass shooting remains unsettled.”

The FBI calls it a mass shooting “when one or more people engage in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” The bureau’s definition excludes shootings motivated by gang violence, drug violence, domestic disputes or hostage situations. It also does not include shootings resulting from another criminal act, such as a bank robbery.

Everytown was founded by Jewish billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, a man no doubt surrounded 24-7 by heavily armed security, but the FBI definition is interesting in that it helpfully excludes many mass shootings that are typically committed by blacks, specifically those motivated by gang violence or drug violence. Given how many young black men are either in gangs or involved in the drug trade or both, that certainly helps to eliminate a lot of mass shootings where blacks are the perpetrators. It also means that as this was an ex-girlfriend according to the FBI it ought to qualify as a “domestic dispute” and therefore was NOT a mass shooting even though 7 people were shot, 4 fatally. Weird how the media uses the definitions that best suit their agenda in running a story.

I will continue to sift through the hundreds of black mass shootings to find the occasional White guy because the very rarity of those shooters makes my case better than reporting on the endless parade of black mass shooters.