A heinous, racist shooting in Florida

Opinion editor's note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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The racially motivated murders of three Black Jacksonville citizens in a Dollar General store took the priceless lives of Angela Michelle Carr, 52; Anolt Joseph Laguerre Jr., 29; and Jerrald De'Shaun Gallion, 19, who were randomly targeted by 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter, who officials said took his own life after the shooting.

Palmeter made sure there was no nuance over his motivation, leaving a 20-plus-page racist manifesto on his home computer and putting swastikas on his Glock handgun and an AR-15-style rifle, both of which he bought legally.

"We have three people who are dead because they are Black," Tracie Davis, a state senator from Jacksonville said at a Sunday news conference. "Shopping. In our community. Gunned down. Because they were Black."

"When a person grabs ahold of a gun with hateful intentions, it's very difficult to stop that from happening," Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said at the news conference.

That may be true, just as it was in other racially motivated shootings in places like Buffalo, N.Y., and Charleston, S.C. But less difficult would be keeping people like Palmeter from purchasing weapons in the first place — that is, if elected leaders would only heed the overwhelming numbers of Americans crying out for more common-sense gun legislation.

Palmeter's racist ramblings were "quite frankly, the diary of a madman," the sheriff said. "He was just completely irrational. But with irrational thoughts, he knew what he was doing. He was 100% lucid."

Palmeter's irrationality and, as Waters termed it, his madness should have meant he couldn't buy firearms. But even though he had an involuntary 72-hour psychiatric evaluation in 2017, when he was just 15, as well as a domestic-violence call involving his brother, Palmeter was not prohibited from purchasing guns because he did not have a criminal record.

The "hateful intentions" Waters spoke about are becoming more mainstream. "The broadest context is that society is changing in many respects," including demographically, which threatens some people, Christopher Federico, a University of Minnesota professor of psychology and political science, told an editorial writer. While not diagnosing the Jacksonville shooting in particular, Federico added that "in the last 10 or 15 years there's been a weakening of the norms against displays of extremism, particularly extremism of a racist nature."

Every citizen can fight back against the mainstreaming of hate, be it in private conversations or public social-media feeds. "We've seen a shift in the norms about what kind of opinions are acceptable and what sort of messages get out there across a variety of platforms," Federico said.

Using the platform of the bully pulpit, President Joe Biden said in a statement, "We must say clearly and forcefully that white supremacy has no place in America. We must refuse to live in a country where Black families going to the store or Black students going to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the color of their skin."

One of the Republicans trying to take Biden's job, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, told reporters, "Perpetuating violence of this kind is unacceptable, and targeting people due to their race has no place in the state of Florida."

DeSantis, whose divisive rhetoric has become central to his governance and politics, was greeted at a Jacksonville vigil with boos. But the crowd was quieted by Jacksonville City Council Member Ju'Coby Pittman, who said that a bullet doesn't "know a party."

That's true. Which is why both parties should put aside their enmity and work together to prevent Jacksonville from being just another city on the list of places where extremism steals invaluable lives.