What We Know About Milwaukee Shooting :: 02/27/2020

Wednesday afternoon’s shooting at a Molson Coors brewery in Milwaukee, WI is just the latest in a long history of mass shootings. As it was breaking news, a lot of the information I shared last night was preliminary, which means it’s all subject to change. Situations like mass shootings are very confusing and the facts get misreported all the time.

That seems to, at least, be the case with last night.

The reports I had indicated that at least six people were killed and there were no mentions of the gunman’s identity. That changed overnight.

The five victims were all employees of Molson Coors Beverage Co., which was renamed from MillerCoors in 2019. Authorities have not released their names.

“There were five individuals who went to work today, just like everybody goes to work, and they thought they were going to go to work, finish their day and return to their families. They didn’t – and tragically they never will,” Barrett said.

On Wednesday night, Morales told reporters to respect the privacy of the victims’ families and allow them to grieve for their lost loved ones.

Who was the gunman?

Police have not released his name, saying only that he was a 51-year-old brewery employee. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Morales said.

…

What type of gun was used in the attack?

The Journal Sentinel, citing a police source, said the shooter was armed with two handguns, including one with a silencer. The make and model of the weapons, however, remained unknown early Thursday.

Silencers or suppressors are legal in 42 states, including Wisconsin, but must be registered under the National Firearms Act. According to the latest federal report, more than 29,000 were registered in the Badger State, the Journal Sentinel reported.

The inclusion of a single suppressor is odd. First, if you have two handguns, one isn’t suppressed. The moment you fire that weapon, you’ve killed any advantage you gained with having a suppressed weapon. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense.

This will undoubtedly lead to calls to further restrict suppressor ownership.

However, it should be noted that the weapons were handguns, not the assault weapons that some people generally assume are the preferred choice for mass shooters. They’re not, of course, and this is another data point that proves that.

While we don’t know the identity of the shooter, that’s fine. I don’t want to know his name. What we do know, though, is that he was an employee of the brewery.

We also know that the victims were all found in the same building of the brewery complex.

The company did not identify the 51-year-old shooter, but said he was an “active” employee at the sprawling facility. It did not provide details on a possible motive for the shooting Wednesday or the identities of the victims, pending family notification.

All the people killed are Molson Coors employees, and were found in the same building, police said.

Of course, there will still be a ton of questions to be answered. We don’t know why this person did something like this. Even if we did, it likely wouldn’t make sense to us, but even an answer to what triggered something like this would be useful information. We also don’t know anything about the man’s background, something which might provide hints as to what might have led to this kind of an act.

We here at Bearing Arms will be following this story as it develops.

Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/v

https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2020/02/27/what-about-milwaukee-shooting/