Buffalo shooter showed plans to some before attack
Copies of diary laced with white supremacist beliefs, baseless conspiracy theory
Shortly before he opened fire, the white gunman accused of killing 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket allowed a small group of people to see his detailed plans for the attack, which he had been chronicling for months in a private, online diary.
Discord, the chat platform where 18-year-old Payton Gendron kept the diary, confirmed Wednesday that an invitation to access his private writings was sent to the group about a halfhour before Saturday’s attack at Tops Friendly Market, which he live-streamed on another online service. Some of them accepted.
Gendron’s diary and its racist, anti-Semitic entries dated to last November included step-by-step descriptions of his assault plans, a detailed account of a reconnaissance trip he made to Buffalo in March, and maps of the store that he drew by hand.
“What we know at this time is that a private, invite-only server was created by the suspect to serve as a personal diary chat log,” a Discord spokesperson said in a written statement. “Approximately 30 minutes prior to the attack, however, a small group of people were invited to and joined the server. Before that, our records indicate no other people saw the diary chat log in this private server.”
It wasn’t clear if any of the people who accessed Gendron’s diary or saw his livestream did anything to alert the authorities or attempt to stop the attack. Discord said it removed Gendron’s diary as soon as the platform became aware of it, in accordance with the company’s policies against violent extremism.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said Monday that investigators were working to obtain, verify and review Gendron’s online postings.
Copies of his Discord diary — essentially a transcript of his postings to his private chat log — briefly surfaced elsewhere online after the shooting, along with a 180-page screed attributed to him. Both were laced with white supremacist beliefs echoing a baseless extremist conspiracy theory about a plot to diminish the influence of white people.
President Joe Biden, visiting Buffalo on Tuesday, repudiated such beliefs, saying: “Now’s the time for people of all races, from every background, to speak up as a majority … and reject white supremacy.”
Gendron was arraigned over the weekend on a murder charge; a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf and he remains jailed under a suicide watch. He is scheduled to appear in court in Buffalo again Thursday.
Meanwhile, the House passed legislation late Wednesday night that would bolster federal resources to prevent domestic terrorism in response to the shooting.
The 222-203, nearly party-line vote was an answer to the growing pressure Congress faces to address gun violence and white supremacist attacks — a crisis that escalated following two mass shootings over the weekend. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a member of the congressional committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol, was the lone Republican to vote in favor of the measure.
But the legislative effort by Democrats is not new. The House passed a similar measure in 2020 only to have it languish in the Senate. And since lawmakers lack the support in the Senate to move forward with any sort of gun-control legislation they see as necessary to stop mass shootings, Democrats are instead putting their efforts into a broader federal focus on domestic terrorism.
“We in Congress can’t stop the likes of (Fox News host) Tucker Carlson from spewing hateful, dangerous replacement theory ideology across the airwaves. Congress hasn’t been able to ban the sale of assault weapons. The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act is what Congress can do this week to try to prevent future Buffalo shootings,” Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., who first introduced the measure in 2017, said on the House floor.