Knoxville Police Department officers lead Jim David Adkisson to a squad car Sunday. In this gray Portland summer day that has found your intrepid blogger tired, melancholy and at a loss for queer-spirited in your face news and commentary, there isn’t even a local story than I can readily copy and paste a press release from.
So from the myriad of national bits of gossip, news, outrage, or outing of celebrity trans children, I choose bring you the incredibly sad and disturbing story of the gunman who opened fire on a play performed at a Unitarian Church in Tennessee.
Jim D. Adkisson hid a shot gun in a guitar case that he brought into the church’s sanctuary and began firing at the 200 assembled people attending a screening of the children’s movie Annie Jr. Seven people are critically injured and two are dead. In purely anecdotal evidence from my mom (who was not anywhere near the scene) many adults jumped in front of the children in attendance.
In evidence that this crime was due to the congregation’s welcoming attitude Knox News has said:
The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday’s mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of “the liberal movement,” and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.
[Adkisson] of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he stated his “hatred of the liberal movement,” Owen said. “Liberals in general, as well as gays.”
For those of us who pray, our payers are with the UU’s of Tennessee.
