1 hour ago
1
In the past month, the US has had to reckon with three deadly, high-profile shootings, and in each one, investigators have dealt with a seldom-seen piece of evidence in shooting cases, high-profile and otherwise: messages the shooter left on shell casings and firearm magazines.
The suspect in the 27 August shooting at Annunciation Catholic school in Minneapolis allegedly left several firearm magazines with messages like “suck on this” written in white marker. Tyler Robinson, the man who’s accused of killing Charlie Kirk, allegedly engraved his bullet casings with “Hey fascist! Catch!” and “Bella ciao.” Authorities say the man who’s suspected of opening fire at an US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Texas this week wrote “Anti-Ice” on his bullet casings.
While investigators have long scoured manifestos, online interactions and comments to establish what led someone to shoot others on campuses, nightclubs and in places of worship, messages written on shell casings and firearm magazines are adding to the materials law enforcement, reporters and researchers pour over after an incident.
It’s an ongoing phenomenon that shooters seek to leave their final messages behind to be regurgitated in the national news and, in some cases, send signals to the digital communities they are embedded in, said Jonathan Lewis, a research fellow at the program for extremism at The George Washington University.
“They want people to go on Fox News and say, ‘if you’re reading this you’re gay,’” they want this to be their moment in the sun,” he said. “Not only is it an ‘I did it,’ it’s an, ‘I did it for my guys. I’m wearing my team’s jersey so everyone knows.’
“Bullet inscriptions, manifestos, the use of wearing a skull mask or other iconography: it’s all performative.”
There are some historic analogies. Second world war soldiers wrote messages on artillery shells, and in more recent history, Americans have paid to have bespoke notes written on Ukrainian bombs meant to be fired at Russian forces and in 2024, Nikki Haley wrote the phrase “finish them” on an Israeli artillery shell.
But Lewis cites the 2019 shooting at two New Zealand mosques as a watershed moment for the most recent wave of shooters writing on shell casings or guns that will later be discovered by authorities. “When you trace it back you can look at the Christchurch shooting as a moment where this trend really emerged out of containment, out of these online spaces,”
After 51 people were killed and across two New Zealand mosques in March 2019, investigators found a rifle scrawled with white supremist memes. Three years later a shooter who killed 10 Black people and injured three others in Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York left behind several rifles with nazi symbols, including some of the same markings used in the New Zealand massacres, and references to racist descriptions of Black people.
“They’re very nonsensical if you’re not a part of that online sphere,” said Kristen Elmore-Garcia, a Buffalo-based attorney, who along with her father, John Elmore, is representing one survivor and the family members of three of the victims in lawsuits against the parents of the convicted shooter, 10 tech companies including Meta; Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube; Discord; 4chan; Reddit; and Amazon. They are also suing firearm and gun-accessory retailers RMA Armament, Mean LLC and Vintage Firearms, where the shooter bought his gun.
Since the lawsuit began, Elmore-Garcia has had to become a kind of expert in the internet spaces that the Buffalo shooter frequented, she said, including places like 4Chan where she’s seen users call her a “she-boon lawyer”. This experience, she said, has shown her how these phrases and ideas transfer from one isolated person to another and eventually come to real-world prominence through violence.
“You see them taking these completely online-native words and expressions and bringing them into the real world with shootings,” she added.
Two years after the Buffalo shooting, shell casings would be back in the headlines following the December killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The suspected shooter, Luigi Mangione, allegedly wrote the words “deny”, “depose” and “defend” in permanent marker on the shell casings found after the fatal shooting.
And while these incidents – from Christchurch to the most recent shooting at the Texas Ice facility – are united by the use of writing on shell casings and firearms, the specifics of the writings point to distinctions in the motivations of these shooters and alleged gunmen, or to no motivation at all.
In the case of Mangione and Robinson, the inscription points to targeted violence directed at one person or organization, while those found after the Christchurch, Tops and Annunciation shootings are more in-line with neo-Nazi, nihilistic, edgelord internet culture, Lewis adds.
Despite the variants in purpose, location and target, these shooters and the specific use of markings on their weapons and ammunition point to “a new trend that is a part of a broader package” of shooters trying to ensure their final messages will be thoroughly disseminated through the news and statements by public officials, the experts said.
“It is something else that the perpetrator wants to be seen along with a manifesto or livestream. And the most recent shootings let people know that they can ask the FBI director to tweet a picture of everything they say.”
Experts warn it’s now important for investigators and policy makers to familiarize themselves with the history and internet culture behind these inscriptions. Many Americans continue to have little knowledge of the dark corners of online forums like 4chan and Telegram. For the victims of these shootings that involve inscribed casings, firearms and magazines, the insider meme language can add to the confusion and pain of victims and their families, Elmore-Garcia adds.
“It can be distressing and disturbing. You are looking at the loss of human life and for a victim, it can feel even more nonsensical for them to see these bizarre words and phrases used in the context of a killing of their loved one.”
