Texas shooter’s warning got lost in sea of SM posts

Washington, May 27: The warning signs were there for anyone to stumble upon, days before the 18year-old gunman entered a Texas elementary school and slaughtered 19 children and two teachers. There was the Instagram photo of a hand holding a gun magazine, a TikTok profile that warned, Kids be scared, and the image of two ARstyle semi-automatic rifles displayed on a rug, pinned to the top of the killer’s Instagram profile.

Shooters are leaving digital trails that hint at what’s to come long before they actually pull the trigger.

When somebody starts posting pictures of guns they started purchasing, they’re announcing to the world that they’re changing who they are, said Katherine Schweit, a retired FBI agent who spearheaded the agency's active shooter programme.

It absolutely is a cry for help. It’s a tease: can you catch me? The foreboding posts, however, are often lost in an endless grid of Instagram photos that feature semi-automatic rifles, handguns and ammunition. There’s even a popular hashtag devoted to encouraging Instagram users to upload daily photos of guns with more than 2 million posts attached to it.

For law enforcement and social media companies, spotting a gun post from a potential mass shooter is like sifting through quicksand, Schweit said. That’s why she tells people not to ignore those type of posts, especially from children or young adults. Report it, she advises, to a school counsellor, the police or even the FBI tip line.

Increasingly, young men have taken to Instagram, which boasts a thriving gun community, to drop small hints of what's to come with photos of their own weapons just days or weeks before executing a mass killing. —