this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2025
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Does it really matter?
The 30-06 casing is pretty big, and has about 2"/50mm of space before it tapers down to where the bullet is. There's plenty of space for a short message, and you could probably engrave it with a nail. I'm guessing it would take a couple hours to engrave four bullets, which is totally feasible.
We have specific messages, and the benefit to lying about it is incredibly low, so why bother?
The benefit is really low?
Those "engravings" have been used in the last 48 hours to call for a civil war. I'm unsure what you mean with "benefits" to one side being "low" here
It means the messages aren't specific to any one movement. It seems like wasted effort if they were going to slot him in to any category, since they're open to interpretation as either ultra right wing memes or antifacist memelord quotes. Depending on the news source, they are being interpreted differently.
Or, maybe "they" made it intentionally occlusive to avoid a civil war. Because let's face it, the right were calling for a violence before the casings even came out. Hell, they were calling for violence before the shooting, too.
Oh, I agree. I'm not sold on them even existing, either. But I'm debating available reported evidence.
My new personal, not totally serious, conspiracy theory is: They are real, Tyler is an edgy memelord with no affiliation, and someone at one of these organizations shoehorned the Groyper connection because they own Groyper Coin.
Is it plausible? Maybe. But we're in a platos' cave of media lies just trying to figure out what the shapes mean.
We have specific messages though, they were reported yesterday IIRC, after they arrested their primary suspect. It would be pretty incredible for them to completely fabricate the messages as well as have Utah's governor believe them.
I never said they fabricated messages. Just that if they're real, I don't totally believe the guy's a Groyper because of them.
You shouldn't form an opinion based on one piece of evidence. There are other details that I think adds to that conclusion, such as his conservative family (and apparently good relationship with them), apparent recent engagement with online communities (didn't vote in 2024), attendance at schools in conservative areas, etc. He was likely conservative, and recently radicalized, so it's more likely for him to shift to the radical right than the radical left.
You say "likely" a lot for someone arguing against me for not holding a hard opinion.
I've probably read more on this than you have, and posted what I felt about the available evidence, item by item, in another comment Here.
OK, I misread your comment. You said "don't totally believe" and I took that as "totally don't believe." It sounded like you were completely dismissing the possibility instead of expressing a lack of certainty.
But yeah, I'm on the same page here of not willing to say for certainty anything about this. I think the evidence is stronger for a far right motivation than a far left motivation. I also admit I have a less scientific reason for wanting that to be true: I want Trump to eat his words.
Hey fair enough. It's hard to tell if someone's misreading or lacks nuance. Glad to hear we're on the same-ish page.
I'm rooting for "disenfranchised guy who was sick of everything," because nothing will piss off both parties more than someone they can't fit in a box.
They falsely claimed the “engravings” were something to do with “trans ideology,” so the benefit is whipping up more hatred.
I think there's a good chance it's a misunderstanding of the evidence early on.
I think this can be taken either as supporting or not supporting trans people. It could also be a furry thing. If you combine with the other engravings, esp the "Bella ciao" one, it definitely seems like leftist messaging.
I personally think he's on the right wing. The far right also opposes Trump, and targeting Kirk seems like a natural thing in that case. I don't think a leftist radical would though, because they care less about individual action and more about collective action. If anything there is leftist, it's ironically leftist just to spite Kirk even more. That tracks with the "if you're reading this you're gay" message, the engravings seemed to be intended to amuse the shooter, not send a message.
Using Hanlon's razor, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", I think it's likely they misinterpreted the evidence, not that they intentionally misdirected the public.
Trump is obviously motivated to point the finger at the left because his party isn't looking so hot for the next election. That makes sense to me. But the FBI doesn't seem to have that same motivation, they want to catch the suspect, and providing information early is important for that in a case like this. Utah is very conservative, so if the shooter is a leftist, that dramatically reduces the search pool.
Anyway, that's my guess here. I guess we'll see as more information is reported whether he's likely a leftist or far right extremist.