Spa Shootings

NYMag with the Message From the Heart of the Atlanta Attacks: “America is getting worse. We just hope America goes in the right direction and not the wrong one.” There’s a bizarre public debate about whether this crime was about Asian hate. Of course it was, and there’s been a major increase in such crimes during the pandemic. It can be a sex-related crime, a mental illness crime, and an anti-Asian crime at all once. (What we know it wasn’t was just a “bad day” for the shooter.) But it’s also about America’s relationship with guns and violence. “The police said they had caught the suspect, Robert Aaron Long, 21, as he was on his way to Florida to carry out similar violence on a business tied to the ‘porn industry.’ They were able to track his phone after his parents called in the tip. Mr. Long had been found with a 9-millimeter gun when he was stopped, the police said. Matt Kilgo, a lawyer for Big Woods Goods, a gun shop and shooting range in Canton, Ga., said Mr. Long had bought a gun legally from the shop on Tuesday before the shooting.” Here’s the latest from the NYT.

+ WaPo: The long, ugly history of anti-Asian racism and violence in the U.S.

+ We’ve had a big increase in anti-Asian acts in the Bay Area. One ended a little differently than most. This Elderly Asian Woman Beat Her Attacker With a Stick and Left Him Bloodied.