Authorities still haven’t released any official motive for the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, but the media has already started to point the finger at “gun culture” for the crime.
At USA Today, reporters Kenny Jacoby and Lucas Aulbach spoke to a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center about the assassin’s family, who was all too eager to portray the family’s gun ownership as a red flag.
The Crooks family’s digital footprint is small, but some of their few online tracks tie them to internet marketplaces that buy or sell guns.
According to data from a website breach reviewed by USA TODAY, Crooks’ father, Matthew Crooks, made a purchase in 2020 from Botach, a website that describes itself as one of the leading retailers of tactical supplies used in law enforcement, the military and home defense.
The leaked data do not show the specific items purchased or the transaction amount, so it is unclear whether Matthew Crooks’ purchase was a firearm. The Botach website advertises a variety of semi-automatic rifles and many other goods.
The data was hacked from Eye4Fraud.com, said Megan Squire, deputy director of the Southern Poverty Law Center who provided USA TODAY an excerpt showing the purchase. Eye4Fraud.com is a company that screens online purchases on behalf of e-commerce merchants for potential fraudulent activity. Its data was hacked in February 2023 and posted to the dark web earlier this year.
It is unknown who hacked or posted the data, Squire said. The data shows only the one purchase by Matthew Crooks.
Authorities have already said that the gun that was used in the assassination attempt was purchased by the assassin’s father, so we know that there was at least one gun in the home. So what if Matthew Crooks made a single purchase of some kind at a online retailer in the firearms space four years ago. There are literally tens of millions of Americans who’ve done the same.
The Associated Press, citing law enforcement sources, reported the rifle was purchased by Matthew Crooks at least six months ago.
Seven months ago, a Gmail account using the name Matthew Crooks posted a review for a licensed gun reseller in Nevada called CashMyGuns.com. The reviewer praised the business as “the easiest way to get rid of unwanted firearms” and recommended it to others.
Multiple data brokers connected that Gmail account to a person named Matthew B. Crooks. Information in the Google profile aligns with Matthew Crooks’ geographic location, showing other reviews for businesses in the Pittsburgh area, including in Bethel Park, where public records and neighbors’ interviews show the Crooks family lives.
Botach and CashMyGuns.com did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Company officials with authority to answer questions could not immediately be reached.
The purchase record and online posting suggest “gun culture was in the home,” Squire said. “When we see this at SPLC, it just starts setting off a lot of the same flags that we see all day, every day with the folks and groups that we study.”
When they see what, exactly? The purchase of a single firearm? The potential sale of another?
As sociologist David Yamane has emphasized, gun ownership is normal and normal people own guns, but to the Southern Poverty Law Center buying a firearm is a red flag for violence.
At a time when voices across the political spectrum are calling on Americans to take a deep breath and deescalate the political tensions, the SPLC is throwing gasoline on the fire by blithely asserting that gun ownership or “gun culture” is a warning sign that should alarm both average citizens and law enforcement.
Look, maybe the authorities will turn up some actual signs that the Crooks home was a hotbed of support for political violence, but at the moment there isn’t a shred of evidence to suggest that the assassin’s family had any knowledge that their son was planning on murdering Trump at a campaign rally, any more than there’s any truth to the suggestion that simply owning a gun (or four, or fourteen) is a red flag for criminal activity.
Instead of talking to Yamane or someone who could offer a different perspective, USA Today relied solely on Squire and the SPLC to portray “gun culture” as the problem. This won’t be the last shameful attack on gun owners that we see in the wake of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump either. There are far too many gun control advocates who see this dark moment in American history as a golden opportunity to advance their agenda, and that means going after “gun culture” as well as targeting the rifle that was used in the attack.
