As long as we’re on the subject, Sutherland Springs was not the only place in America where there were multiple gunshot murders at services this Sunday. From The Fresno Bee:

A divorce turned deadly Sunday morning when a Fresno man waiting at a church parking lot shot and killed his estranged wife and her boyfriend after they emerged from Mass at St. Alphonsus Church in southwest Fresno. The husband, Manuel Garcia, 64, then drove to the family home 11 blocks away and, as SWAT officers massed outside, took his own life, police said… Martha Garcia, 61, died at the parking lot. More than an hour later, her body, covered by a blue tarp, was still lying between two cars. The man, age 51, was rushed to Community Regional Medical Center, where he died Sunday night. Police chief Jerry Dyer earlier in the day did not release the man’s name so family could be notified.

And, as long as we’re on the subject, Sutherland Springs and Fresno were not the only places in America over the past few days where ordinary life was punctuated by deadly gun violence. From The Denver Post:

Ostrem allegedly used a handgun to shoot the three people in Walmart, Avila said. According to several witnesses the 6:10 p.m. shooting at the Walmart Supercenter, 9901 Grant St., appeared to be random, Avila said. “He walked in very nonchalantly with his hands in the pockets, raised a weapon and began shooting. Then he turns around and walks out of the store,” Avila said. “From what we have right now it appears to be random. It’s a crazy world we live in.”

And it turns out, according to the LA Times via The Chicago Tribune, that the Wal-Mart shooting was complicated because there were so many Good Guys With Guns drawing down after the shooting that they screwed up the investigation.



Police began combing through store security camera footage to identify him and determined whether he had an accomplice. "Once the building was safe…. we started reviewing that [surveillance video] as quickly as we could," Victor Avila, a spokesman for the Thornton Police Department, told reporters. But the videos showed several people in the store with their guns drawn. That forced detectives to watch more video, following the armed shoppers throughout the store in an effort to distinguish the good guys from the bad guy, Avila said. Investigators went "back to ground zero" several times as they struggled to pinpoint the suspect, he said.

Two churches and a big box store. Thirty-one people dead.

Life’s hard in a free society.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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