Gunman in latest mass shooting is Syrian immigrant who family says is mentally ill
US President Joe Biden has called for a ban on assault weapons in the wake of the deadly Colorado mass shooting in which the suspect complained of Islamophobia.
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The gunman who killed 10 people in a Colorado supermarket has been revealed as an anti-Donald Trump Syrian immigrant whose family believed he was mentally ill.
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa was named as US authorities were grappling with a new surge in mass shootings that coincided with the country reopening from COVID restrictions.
President Joe Biden called on the Senate to pass two gun control measures, including an assault weapons ban and expanded background checks, as he expressed his sympathy for the victims.
Noting that flags across the US remained at half mast from last week’s deadly attack on a Georgia massage parlor, Mr Biden said: “Our hears go out for the survivors”.
Authorities have released the names of all 10 victims, who ranged in age from 20 to 65 and included police officer Eric Talley, a father of seven.
“The world lost a great soul,” Mr Talley’s father, Homer Talley, told The New York Times.
“He was a devoted father — seven kids. The youngest was seven and the oldest was 20, and his family was the joy of his life.”
Mr Biden praised Mr Talley’s courage, calling him “the definition of an American hero”.
“I commend the exceptional bravery of Officer Eric Talley,” Mr Biden said at the White House.
“I send my deepest condolences to his family, his close close family of seven children.
“You know when he pinned on that badge yesterday morning he didn’t know what that day would bring.”
Mr Biden urged Congress to pass two background check laws and said he would have “much more to say” on gun control in coming days.
“I don’t need to wait another minute — or another hour — to take common sense steps that will save lives in the future,” Mr Biden said.
“We can ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines in this country.
“This is not and should not be a partisan issue. This is an American issue. It will save lives.. and we have to act.”
Meanwhile, Boulder police said the 21-year-old shooter would soon be transferred from hospital to jail after he was shot in the leg during his rampage on Monday afternoon, local time.
He will face 10 murder charges after opening fire with an AR 15 into a crowd that included people lining up for COVID vaccinations.
His brother described him as a loner who was mentally disturbed, telling The Daily Beast he was paranoid.
“When he was having lunch with my sister in a restaurant, he said, ‘People are in the parking lot, they are looking for me,’” said Ali Aliwi Alissa, 34.
“She went out, and there was no one. We didn’t know what was going on in his head.”
He also had a criminal record that included an assault at his former high school, according to the Denver Post.
There was no clear motive for the shooting.
“We don’t have the answer for that yet,” said Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty.
“The man who gunned them down will be held fully responsible.”
His social media posts included criticism of former US president Donald Trump as well as postings about Islam and anti gay marriage messaging, according to the Daily Beast.
The site reported that Alissa’s now deleted Facebook page said he was born in Syria and “came to the USA in 2002”.
He also appeared to be concerned someone had targeted his phone because they were anti-Muslim.
“Yeah if these racist islamophobic people would stop hacking my phone and let me have a normal life I probably could,” he posted in July 2019.
Following the 2019 Christchurch massacre he also shared a Facebook post from another user that read, “The Muslims at the #christchurch mosque were not the victims of a single shooter. They were the victims of the entire Islamophobia industry that vilified them.”
The massacre came less than a week after another gunman shot dead eight people at multiple spas in the Georgia state capital Atlanta. The suspect in that case is also facing murder charges.
OBAMA LASHES OUT: ‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’
Former President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for stricter gun laws following the mass shooting in Colorado, bemoaning what he called a national tolerance for “these kinds of random, senseless acts.”
Obama said in a statement that he and former first lady Michelle Obama are grieving with the families of the victims of Monday’s massacre in Boulder, but also said they “are also feeling a deep, familiar outrage” for these types of tragedies.
I’m heartbroken by these recent tragedies of gun violence, and I just keep thinking about all the leaders who won’t take a stand to save lives and yet line up to pass bills that make it harder for us to vote.
— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) March 23, 2021
The statement by Mr Obama came shortly before President Joe Biden publicly commented on the shooting, which took place at grocery store and left 10 dead, including a police officer.
“In so many ways, our lives may soon start to return to normal after a long, difficult year filled with so much loss. But in a normal life, we should be able to buy groceries without fear. We should be able to go to school, or go out with our friends, or worship together, without mentally planning our escape if someone shows up with a gun.
“We should be able to live our lives without wondering if the next trip outside our home could be our last.
“It is long past time for those with the power to fight this epidemic of gun violence to do so. It will take time to root out the disaffection, racism and misogyny that fuels so many of these senseless acts of violence.
“But we can make it harder for those with hate in their hearts to buy weapons of war. We can overcome opposition by cowardly politicians and the pressure of a gun lobby that opposes any limit on the ability of anyone to assemble and arsenal. We can, and we must.
“A once-in-a-century pandemic cannot be the only thing that slows mass shootings in this country. We shouldn’t have to choose between one type of tragedy and another. It’s time for leaders everywhere to listen to the American people when they say enough is enough.”
TIGHTER GUN CONTROL URGED
Together the killings ignited new calls for US politicians to act against the country’s notoriously lax gun ownership laws.
Tighter gun control is overwhelmingly popular with Americans — and backed by President Joe Biden — but Republicans have long stood against what a minority view as any infringement on their right to bear arms.
With a Senate Judiciary hearing on the subject already scheduled for Tuesday, the familiar bipartisan divide was emerging once more.
“Too many families in too many places are being forced to endure this unfathomable pain and anguish,” the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement.
“Action is needed now to prevent this scourge from continuing to ravage our communities,” she said.
Colorado has previously suffered two of the most infamous mass shootings in US history — at Columbine High School in 1999, and at a movie theater in Aurora in 2012.
Those massacres prompted nationwide soul-searching but did not result in major changes to gun laws.
The city of Boulder imposed a ban on “assault-style weapons” and large-capacity gun magazines in the wake of the Parkland, Florida shooting in 2018.
But a judge last week blocked that ban, the Denver Post reported, in a decision hailed by the NRA, a powerful pro-gun advocacy group.
The NRA tweeted a copy of the Second Amendment on the right to bear arms after the Colorado shooting.
On Tuesday Biden senior advisor Cedric Richmond told MSNBC that “the regular sentiment of hearts and prayers are not enough. We need action.”
“The good news is that this president has a track record of fighting against the NRA and beating them,” he added.
TRUMP’S DIRE MIGRANT WARNING
After two months of plain sailing US President Joe Biden stands accused of inciting a chaotic migrant rush on the US border with Mexico, with the crisis set to loom large over his high-stakes first press conference later this week.
The influx of thousands of migrants has finally given Republicans, who had struggled to find an angle of attack as Mr Biden ramped up the US response to the coronavirus pandemic, some purchase — uniting their fractured party in the process.
In unison, they have accused the new president of creating the border crisis with a naive immigration stance.
“It’s insane and it’s nothing compared to what it’s going to be over the coming months,” Mr Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump said in a podcast by conservative host Lisa Boothe that aired Monday morning local time.
“They will be coming up by the millions,” Mr Trump predicted, fanning the flames after weeks of relative silence since he moved to Florida, on a topic that has long been a trigger for his base.
So far Mr Biden has largely avoided the issue, putting his team out front instead. But faced with reporters’ questions at his press conference on Thursday he knows he will have to address it head on.
Asked on Sunday evening after a weekend at Camp David, he remained evasive. Does he intend to address the immigration issue? “At some point I will, yes.”
Doesn’t he feel the need to see for himself what is going on there? “I know what’s going on in those facilities.”
Mr Biden’s Twitter account is far less of a stream of consciousness than Mr Trump’s was. But in a revealing detail, his last 10 tweets discuss masks, vaccinations, St Patrick’s Day, the stimulus package, global warming, and violence against Asian Americans … not the situation on the border.
The crisis is thwarting the White House’s plans to continue the “Help is Here” tour — a victory lap promoting the merits of Mr Biden’s gigantic, massively popular $1.9 trillion ($A2.45tn) economic aid plan adopted by Congress.
But at a time when elected officials from both sides of the aisle are multiplying trips to the border — and the first photos of unaccompanied migrant children, who are at the heart of the controversy, are being released — the executive branch is struggling to explain how it ended up here and what comes next.
Mr Biden has pledged to erase what he has called “a moral and national shame” inherited from Mr Trump, namely the separation of thousands of migrant families, some of whom have still not been reunited.
But while children are no longer separated from their parents at the border, the arrival of large numbers of unaccompanied minors remains a real and pressing issue.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas did not deny the number of 5,200 children currently being held in border centres meant for adults — well above the peak under former President Trump.
More than 600 of these children have also been there for more than 10 days, even though the law only allows them to transit for a maximum of three days.
A bipartisan group of US politicians visited immigration facilities in the El Paso, Texas area last week and several emerged with sharp criticism.
Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, said he saw hundreds of children packed into a “big, open room,” and “fought back tears” as he listened to a 13-year-old girl who was distraught after being separated from her grandmother.
A number of migrants who have spoken to AFP at the border have described fleeing poverty and violence in Central America, with activists comparing them to Syrians fleeing the brutality of the Islamic State group. That is the push.
But the pull, many of them said, has been Mr Biden’s promise of a more “humane” immigration policy than Mr Trump’s.
— With Merryn Johns and wires
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Originally published as Gunman in latest mass shooting is Syrian immigrant who family says is mentally ill
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