Nikolas Cruz Was A Registered Democrat True Or False?

Exit it to lawmakers and pundits to ascribe political motivations to people who may have none.

Information technology didn't take long afterward the shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school for politicians and pundits to speculate on whether the suspect was left- or right-leaning.

CNN's Van Jones retweeted an account that suggested about mass shooters are Republicans. Meanwhile, a land legislator in North Carolina claimed on Facebook that most shooters are "communist Democrats," and a Congresswoman from New York made a similar merits. (Read most her claim here.)

In NC, state Rep. Larry Pittman, a Republican state House member from Cabarrus County, virtually Charlotte, was reacting to a photo on Facebook that purported to show the Parkland shooter wearing a pro-Communism shirt. (It was not the Parkland shooter.)

"So many of these shooters turn out to be communist Democrats, that I doubtable they are doing these things to push for gun control so they can more easily accept over the state," Pittman wrote. The postal service was later deleted and he apologized.

There's a lot we do know almost the people who comport mass shootings. For instance, they're by and large white men. They're usually young. And some take a history of mental disease.

Every bit for their political affiliation? Here's what we constitute.

Mass shooters since Columbine

There is no universal definition for mass shootings.

Nosotros looked at xix shootings that have received pregnant national media coverage since the Columbine Loftier Schoolhouse shooting in 1999. More eight people were killed in each of the shootings.

Nosotros establish very few cases in which the political affiliation of the shooter could be verified.

Omar Mateen, the shooter who killed 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016, was registered as a Democrat in 2006. He voted in the Florida primary in 2016, according to reporting from Politico.

A dating profile for Chris Harper-Mercer, who killed ix people at a community college in Oregon in 2015, said he was a Republican, according to reporting from CBS News. There was no prove of his political amalgamation beyond the contour.

A friend of Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013, said in a CNN interview that the shooter was "more of a liberal type." At that place were no other reports of his political affiliation.

Politicians were the victims of a couple of recent shooting rampages that weren't on our listing of 19 mass shootings.

In 2017, 66-year-onetime James Thomas Hodgkinson shot and injured six people at a congressional baseball game game in Virginia — nearly killing Firm Bulk Whip Steve Scalise. Hodgkinson volunteered for the presidential campaign of Democrat Bernie Sanders and manifestly targeted the Republican team.

In 2011, 22-year-onetime Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in Tucson at an consequence hosted by Rep. Gabby Giffords, an Arizona Democrat. Loughner killed six and injured thirteen others, including Giffords. Authorities reported that he was obsessed with Giffords.

Inaccurate reporting

In that location was speculation nearly the political leanings of some of the other shooters.

ABC News falsely reported that James Holmes, who killed 12 people in Colorado in 2012, was a member of the conservative Tea Political party. ABC apologized for the error. Breitbart News reported that Holmes may have been a registered Democrat, but also walked back that merits. Holmes' political affiliation was never verified.

Simulated news websites claimed Devin Patrick Kelley, who killed 26 people in a Texas church concluding year, was linked to anti-fascist groups. PolitiFact debunked that claim.

Websites fabricated the same claim most Las Vegas shooter Stephen Craig Paddock. Nosotros debunked that, too. Paddock wasn't registered to vote and his family said he didn't have stiff political views, co-ordinate to a report from Trick News.

There were also claims that Adam Lanza, who killed 20 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, was a Democrat. He was not registered to vote, according to the Washington Post.

Most recently, our friends at Snopes debunked the claim that Nikolas Cruz, who allegedly killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Loftier School in Florida, was a Democrat. A search of Florida's voter database yielded no results for Cruz'south party affiliation.

At that place was no reporting on the political leanings of the other xi shooters.

Is it relevant?

Mass shooters are rarely motivated by a political agenda, experts told u.s..

Mass shootings are frequently perpetrated by young men who are socially isolated or accept a mental illness, experience a trauma or conflict that sends them reeling emotionally, and have easy admission to guns, said Alan Lipman, professor at George Washington University Medical Centre and founder of the Centre for the Study of Violence.

"Their motives are well-nigh always, without exception, nonpolitical. And they don't depict themselves as having a item political motivation," Lipman said.

Some — like Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at a church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015 — might channel their rage at a specific group of people, said James Alan Fob, criminologist at Northeastern Academy and author of "Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder." Only that doesn't mean they're interim on a Republican or Democratic mission, he said.

"Very few are motivated by any sort of political agenda in terms in parties. They might be anti-gay or anti-black or anti-white. You lot could argue those are political, I guess," he said.

Even then, those beliefs are often built-in out of personal vendettas — not political propaganda, said Katherine Ramsland, professor of psychology at DeSales Academy.

"Look at Stephen Paddock. We don't know his motive," Ramsland said in an email, referring to the Las Vegas shooter. "Devin Kelly — his political amalgamation is secondary to his family disputes and need for payback. I but call up it'south overly simplistic to align a mass shooter'southward influence with a political ideology unless it's clear from the shooter that this was his (or her) driving event."

Other experts reacted similarly to the assertion that shooters tend to have mutual political beliefs.

"Most of the school shooters are children who wouldn't know a conservative from a communist," said Jack Levin, Northeastern professor and co-director of the Brudnick Eye on Violence and Disharmonize. "The idea of associating politics with these mass murders is absurd. Information technology has absolutely zilch to do with it."

Lipman agreed: "In that location is admittedly no bear witness to show that mass killings are motivated by political ideologies of any blazon. All of the mass killings we've seen have been motivated by a lethal combination of a small subgroup of mental illnesses, and easy accessibility to weapons of mass killing during the peak symptomatology of those illnesses."

Our ruling

Pittman said many perpetrators of mass shootings plow out to exist communist Democrats. We establish no testify to back up that statement and experts say only a small-scale fraction of mass shooters were motivated by a political agenda. We rate this Pants on Fire.