Buffalo ShootingBuffalo Shooting: Suspect Invited Others to Review His Plan

President Biden shared stories of the victims of the racist massacre in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo and repeatedly denounced the shooting as “terrorism.”

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The president condemned the racist rhetoric that reportedly influenced a white man to gun down Black shoppers at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, an act he called “domestic terrorism.”CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
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Before the massacre began, the suspect invited others to review his plan.

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Payton Gendron appeared to post every detail of his plan to attack a Buffalo grocery store.Credit...Brendan McDermid/Reuters

About 30 minutes before he launched what investigators said was a long-planned massacre at a Buffalo supermarket, Payton S. Gendron invited a small group of people to join a chat room online.

Until that moment, the posts in the room on the chat application Discord had been visible only to Mr. Gendron, who had for months uploaded numerous pictures of himself, often posing with his gear and the weapon that officials say he used to carry out the shooting, even sharing hand-drawn maps of the Tops grocery store he openly said he planned to attack.

None of the people he invited to review his writings appeared to have alerted law enforcement, and the massacre played out much as Mr. Gendron envisioned.

A compendium of his posts from Discord circulated online over the weekend, and details of those records were publicized on Monday. But it was not previously known that other users had joined the Discord chat room, known as a server, 30 minutes before he carried out the attack.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Discord expressed sympathy for the victims of the shooting and said that “hate has no place on Discord.”

“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,” the statement said. “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.”

Mr. Gendron appeared to be working to build an audience in the moments before the shooting by passing his Discord link around on web forums where like-minded users gathered. At one point, he appeared to be planning to stream the May 14 attack — for which he has been charged with the murder of 10 people — directly to his chat room. It is unclear whether he did so.

In the opening pages of the compendium he posted online, Mr. Gendron was clear about his goal: He wished to radicalize others, and called on followers to join him in mounting similar attacks.

The Discord chat logs complement a nearly 200 page racist screed that Mr. Gendron released before the attack. That widely shared document was clearly meant for an audience less versed in the slang and references that he had picked up on 4chan, Reddit and other websites on which he spent time. In Discord, Mr. Gendron revealed far more personal details, often emphasizing his thoughts with racist and antisemitic memes and occasionally expressing self-doubt and the wish to commit suicide.

But it is also clear that Mr. Gendron was fully aware that the logs he uploaded would be pored over by law enforcement and others.

A person who actively encouraged an act of mass shooting could potentially be criminally liable, though the bar for any charges would be high, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

Throughout the compendium, Mr. Gendron frequently references working on the Discord transcript, suggesting that the process of posting it online was not as simple as merely downloading it to a server, then uploading it to web forums.

In March, the month during which he had originally planned to carry out the attack, he mentioned configuring the settings on Discord to ensure that others could look at one channel without changing anything.

In another channel — the general chat — he said that other users could type, send images and post emoji reactions, while being unable to delete each others’ posts. And on a third channel, he planned to embed the livestream of himself carrying out the shooting, using the application Twitch.

In early April, he noted that he had to fix rules in Discord, to avoid others being able to delete anything therein.

Discord began life as the chatting feature of a little known video game. The game’s creator, Jason Citron, abruptly pivoted in 2015, abandoning the game and focusing entirely on chat software. In recent years, the platform exploded in popularity with a mostly younger user base.

Like many social media platforms, Discord has struggled to balance privacy and free speech ideals with combatting hate speech and content moderation. Discord has said it takes “immediate action” when it encounters violations like underage users or inappropriate content, responding to reports from users and moderators and using “advanced tooling, machine learning, specialized Safety teams tackling specific abuse situations, and insight from experts outside the company.”

In the report, posted on the company’s website, Discord said it disabled 2,182 servers and 25,170 individual accounts for violent extremism in the second half of 2021.

John Herrman, Kellen Browning and Jesse McKinley contributed reporting.

Jazmine Ulloa
May 17, 2022, 9:31 p.m. ET

Background of suspect in Buffalo shooting appears to have some parallels to those who stormed the Capitol.

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Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

For nearly a year and half, researchers at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, a think tank at the University of Chicago, have been studying the possible motivations of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, particularly the fears that white people were losing out in American culture and politics.

The team, led by Robert Pape, a political scientist and professor at the university, have so far found that most of the participants came from not the reddest or most rural parts of the country but from counties that had seen declines in their non-Hispanic white population. About half were business owners and C.E.O.s, accountants, lawyers and doctors from rural and urban regions across the country.

The information that the police have provided about the 18-year-old suspect shares similarities with the researchers’ understanding of those who took part in the Capitol riot.

The suspect is from Broome County, N.Y., a borderline blue county that went to Donald J. Trump in 2016 and Joseph R. Biden in 2020. And it is one of more than 3,000 counties nationwide that has seen some of the greatest losses of the non-Hispanic white population in the past decade.

Broome’s overall size has remained steady at about 200,000 people from 2010 to 2020, but it has lost 17,000 non-Hispanic white people in that time, according to U.S. census data gathered by Mr. Pape.

Mr. Pape also noted the shooting suspect’s education level. In the manifesto, he had described himself as an engineering science major and had laid out a detailed plan of his targets inside the grocery store. “This is a level of complex planning that we don’t associate with people who haven’t finished high school or are coming from marginal parts of society,” Mr. Pape said.

Mr. Pape said that like those who engaged in the Capitol riots, the suspect appears to have embraced a “violent populism,” borne out of a fear that white people are being replaced by nonwhite people, through factors such as immigration and lower birthrates, a fear that has been stoked by mainstream political leaders and prominent media figures.

The ideas are more pervasive among Republicans but has also taken hold among a large swath of the general population. One in three American adults now believe that an effort is underway “to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains,” according to an Associated Press poll released this month.

Since Jan. 6, Chicago Project researchers have discovered that large portions of the mainstream public believe, without evidence, in the idea that the Democratic Party is deliberately replacing the electorate with immigrants. “Specifically, about 25 percent of people in large urban areas — which include our most diverse, democratic strongholds — believe in this idea,” Mr. Pape said.

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Glenn Thrush
May 17, 2022, 8:32 p.m. ET

U.S. gun production has tripled since 2000, fueled by handgun purchases.

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As gun production has skyrocketed, the newly released data shows a shift in popularity from long guns used for hunting to handguns for personal protection.Credit...Dominick Reuter/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The United States is in the middle of a great gun-buying boom that shows no sign of letting up as the annual number of firearms manufactured has nearly tripled since 2000 and spiked sharply in the past three years, according to the first comprehensive federal tally of gun commerce in two decades.

The report, released by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on Tuesday — three days after a mass shooting in Buffalo left 10 dead — painted a vivid statistical portrait of a nation arming itself to the teeth. Buyers capitalized on the loosening of gun restrictions by the Supreme Court, Congress and Republican-controlled state legislatures.

The data documented a drastic shift in consumer demand among gun owners that has had profound commercial, cultural and political implications: Starting in 2009, Glock-type semiautomatic handguns, purchased for personal protection, began to outsell rifles, which have been typically used in hunting.

Embedded in the 306-page document was another statistic that law enforcement officials find especially troubling. The police recovered 19,344 privately manufactured firearms, untraceable homemade weapons known as “ghost guns,” in 2021, a tenfold increase since 2016. Law enforcement officials say that has contributed to the surge in gun-related killings, especially in California, where ghost guns make up as many as half of weapons recovered at crime scenes.

The numbers released Tuesday revealed an industry on the rise, with annual domestic gun production increasing from 3.9 million in 2000 to 11.3 million in 2020. A relatively small percentage of guns produced domestically are exported overseas, so those numbers are an accurate reflection of gun-buying habits, according to A.T.F. officials.

Currently, there are around 400 million guns in the United States, according to a 2018 survey conducted by the nonpartisan Small Arms Survey, which monitors gun ownership.

The statistics, culled by A.T.F.’s research division from industry, academic and government experts, offered few major surprises. Many of the broader contours and conclusions have been widely known through other sources or anecdotally for months, even years.

But the report’s release nonetheless represents a significant victory for advocates of gun control.

While Democrats have failed at their larger agenda of limiting easy access to firearms, especially semiautomatic rifles, they are succeeding in gradually pulling back an informational blackout curtain that has obscured gun commerce data since George W. Bush’s administration.

A year ago, President Biden ordered the A.T.F., an undersized agency with the oversized task of enforcing the nation’s gun laws and regulations, to collect and analyze 20 years of gun data after a series of mass shootings around the country.

In the introduction to the report, Gary M. Restaino, the bureau’s interim director, wrote that the purpose of releasing the data was to “prevent diversion of these firearms from the legal to the illegal market.”

During a White House summit about reducing violence on Tuesday, the deputy attorney general, Lisa O. Monaco, underlined a similar point, saying, “We can only address the current rise in violence if we have the best available information and use the most effective tools and research to fuel our efforts.”

Her remarks came on the same day that Mr. Biden traveled to Buffalo to visit the scene of the racially motivated shooting on Saturday.

Before boarding Air Force One, Mr. Biden told reporters that he would redouble his efforts “to convince Congress” to enact gun control measures, but conceded that it would be difficult without a major shift in sentiment from lawmakers.

The report, while eagerly anticipated, is considered less consequential than a coming analysis of weapons used to commit crimes — which will tap law enforcement, academic and public health sources — to offer an equally comprehensive picture of trafficking patterns.

“It’s important to know what the scope and size of the overall market is, and the commerce report sheds light on that,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice president with Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control group founded by the former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

“But the next logical step is to get the data on crime gun recoveries, to get that information back in the public sphere, so we can find out how these guns are going from legal manufacturing to illegal use,” Mr. Suplina added.

That report is expected to highlight the role of illegal straw purchasers, legal buyers who sell weapons to people barred from purchasing handguns, and perhaps identify federally licensed dealers who are responsible for selling the greatest number of weapons later used in crimes.

Some of that information has already made its way into the public domain.

This month, the gun control group Brady released an examination of Pennsylvania firearms tracing data revealing that six small retailers in south and northeast Philadelphia sold more than 11,000 weapons that were later recovered in criminal investigations or confiscated from owners who had obtained them illegally from 2014 to 2020.

Over the past two years, gun thefts from cars and homes have surged in many major cities, fueling violent crime, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.

The gun industry has long resisted the disclosure of some firearms data collected by the A.T.F. A series of Republican-sponsored measures, pushed by the National Rifle Association, restricts officials at the bureau from releasing trace data and other information to the public.

The boom in gun production appears to have been partly driven by the expiration of the assault weapons ban in 2004.

After the law was allowed to lapse, “manufacture of the types of semiautomatic rifles and pistols previously designated to be assault weapons steadily increased, particularly AR-type rifles and pistols, which are now commonly referred to as ‘modern sporting rifles’ and ‘modern sporting pistols,’” the report’s authors found.

Payton Gendron, the suspect in the Buffalo attack, used a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle, one of many AR-15 clones available for legal purchase in the country.

Two manufacturers are dominating the handgun market, the report said. Smith & Wesson accounted for 8.2 million guns produced from 2016 to 2020, 17 percent of the overall market, and Sturm, Ruger & Company was close behind, with nearly identical sales and production figures.

The data compiled by the A.T.F. covers a 20-year period, but the graphs included with the report show three periods of intense consumer volatility. One was in 2013, after the re-election of President Barack Obama and the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., which prompted calls for increased gun regulations. The second was in 2016, during the presidential campaign.

The third unsettled period began in 2019 and extended through the 2020 election and pandemic.

Gun production increased across the board during that time. But demand for semiautomatic handguns rose at the fastest rate on record, with pistol production rocketing from around three million to 5.5 million annually, the report found.

The number of imported guns, of all types, has also been rising sharply, doubling from around two million per year a decade ago, to more than four million in 2020, a record.

Many of those were first-time buyers who flooded A.T.F.’s switchboard and email servers for information about how to buy a gun legally, and which weapons were best for personal protection, one A.T.F. official said.

Troy Closson
May 17, 2022, 7:26 p.m. ET

The community vigil just wrapped as speakers pointed out where grief counselors were available, and residents hugged one another as they walked back down the street toward Tops.

“Remember that we are Buffalo strong,” the final speaker said, before adding, “I wish we didn’t have to be strong like this.”

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Credit...Mustafa Hussain for The New York Times
Lola Fadulu
May 17, 2022, 7:24 p.m. ET

A number of members of the “Divine 9” — historically Black sororities and fraternities — were in attendance at the community vigil on Tuesday evening.

“There’s mixed emotions, there are certainly feelings of hurt, there are feelings of frustration, we’re all mourning in our own way,” said David White, 52, the basileus or president of the Buffalo chapter, called Phi Omega, of Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

“But it’s certainly beautiful, refreshing to see the number of people that are coming out, Mr. White said.

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Credit...Lola Fadulu

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Jason Silverstein
May 17, 2022, 7:10 p.m. ET

At a memorial concert and vigil on a corner next to the Tops supermarket, the names and faces of the 10 people killed in the shooting are displayed on posters calling them “The Buffalo Ten.” Mourners joined in a prayer circle next to the display.

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Credit...Malik Rainey for The New York Times
Lola Fadulu
May 17, 2022, 7:03 p.m. ET

Dozens of people lit candles and dropped off red roses and other flowers at a second, growing memorial at the intersection of Jefferson and Riley.

George Wilson, 35, dropped of two white candles, paused, and then looked over the yellow police tape to the parking lot of the Tops supermarket.

He said one candle was for all of the victims, and one was specifically for Katherine “Kat” Massey, who was killed and was once a neighbor of his.

“My daughter loved her, she always spoke highly and dropped jewels when she taught and spoke to the girls,” said Mr. Wilson, who now lives on the West side of Buffalo and works in construction.

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Credit...Malik Rainey for The New York Times
Lola Fadulu
May 17, 2022, 6:58 p.m. ET

Tamika Moore, 48, said she decided to drive 15 hours to Buffalo up from Memphis to pay her respects to the victims of the mass shooting. She took off work from her job working with adults who have dementia and autism. She plans to drive back home tonight.

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Troy Closson
May 17, 2022, 6:50 p.m. ET

Darrell Saxon II, who runs a funeral home in the area, asked at the vigil how the suspect could have had “so much hatred” in him at age 18. “I don’t want to hear anything about no mental illness, the pandemic got a hold of him,” he said. “That much hatred was taught.”

He added that this moment in Buffalo demands more from neighbors in other parts of the city.

“It’s a good thing to see all of you here from all nationalities all walks of life,” he said. “But what’s going to happen next week?”

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Lola Fadulu
May 17, 2022, 6:44 p.m. ET

Drea D’Nur, 41, burned sage ahead of a vigil for the victims of the mass shooting, which drew several hundred people to a grassy, empty lot across the street from the Tops supermarket.

“I burn sage because I know that it does clean the air, literally, materially, the smell just does something for me,” said Ms. D’Nur, who is the founder of Feed Buffalo, a community pantry, and lives six blocks away from the grocery store.

“Seeing the smoke makes me think of ancestors rising and returning home,” she said. “I’m just here to just be with my people.”

Troy Closson
May 17, 2022, 6:38 p.m. ET

At a community vigil with hundreds in attendance, Larry Stitts, the owner of Golden Cup Coffee, called for residents to come together — not just for a few days, but permanently.

“Let’s let this be a start of something new,” said Mr. Stitts, whose business is a block away from the grocery store. “We’re not going to let Jefferson die. We’re going to build it up. We’re not going let that Tops close. We’re going to open those doors.”

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Credit...Mustafa Hussain for The New York Times
Lola Fadulu
May 17, 2022, 6:11 p.m. ET

“Let us lead with love, let us lead with joy,” a spoken word poet named Marquis “Ten Thousand” Burton said to the hundreds of people who gathered for a vigil on Tuesday evening in a grassy lot across the street from the Tops supermarket. The crowd clapped and cheered.

“Do y’all believe a change is going to come?” A singer asked the crowd of people, some of whom were bundled up in sweatshirts and hats as the temperature dropped, after singing a soulful “A Change is Gonna Come.”

The New York Times
May 17, 2022, 6:03 p.m. ET

How we cover mass shootings.

How We Cover Mass Shootings

Marc Lacey
Marc LaceyAssistant Managing Editor

How We Cover Mass Shootings

Marc Lacey
Marc LaceyAssistant Managing Editor

When we identify a suspect in a mass shooting:

The Times publishes a suspect’s name when it is confirmed by authorities. But we do not want to give the person excessive prominence. Studies show that those who commit mass shootings thoroughly research past shootings — some call it the Columbine Effect.

Item 1 of 6

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Jason Silverstein
May 17, 2022, 5:43 p.m. ET

Taisiah Stewart, a survivor of the Tops shooting who said he had recently moved to Buffalo from Georgia to be with family, was in the crowd during President Biden’s visit today. After the president left, Stewart told me his story of running into a freezer in the supermarket once the shooting started, before fleeing from the store barefoot, with splinters in his feet. “I came in contact with my worst fear — a white man with a gun coming after me,” he said.

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Troy Closson
May 17, 2022, 4:56 p.m. ET

The first funeral service for one of the shooting victims may take place on Saturday, Byron W. Brown, the Buffalo mayor, said Tuesday afternoon. He said he was not aware of additional details, including who it would be for, but added that the “process is probably going to start to move more quickly” after the medical examiner’s office finishes autopsies.

Grace Ashford
May 17, 2022, 4:46 p.m. ET

Lawmakers in Albany consider how to make tight gun laws even tighter.

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Gov. Kathy Hochul lays flowers at a memorial in Buffalo on Tuesday, with Senator Chuck Schumer.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

New York lawmakers are reviewing options to strengthen the state’s already muscular gun laws, with Gov. Kathy Hochul expected to unveil a package as soon as Wednesday aimed at shoring up remaining weaknesses in the aftermath of the Buffalo massacre.

At an appearance with President Biden in Buffalo on Tuesday, Ms. Hochul suggested that leaders should not merely blame “hateful philosophies” that she said had leached from dark corners of the web to mainstream cable news shows.

“You could have that hate in your heart, and you can sit in your house and foment these evil thoughts, but you can’t act on it — unless you have a weapon,” she said, adding: “That’s the intersection of these two crises in our nation right now.”

New York already has some of America’s strictest gun control laws, including requirements for background checks, restrictions on assault rifles, and red flag laws. New York has one of the lowest rates of gun death and injury in the country, according to the nonprofit New Yorkers Against Gun Violence.

In fact, one of New York’s most restrictive gun laws — which sharply limits the carrying of weapons outside the home — is being challenged in the Supreme Court, with a decision expected soon.

Even so, lawmakers say improvements under consideration in Albany could have great impact.

“You just want to close every potential loophole,” said Assemblywoman Amy Paulin of Westchester.

Ms. Paulin is the sponsor of a number of bills she believes would help make New York safer. One would require local law enforcement agencies to promptly contribute information on recovered weapons to a federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives database, which would allow better tracing. Another would allow New York to do its own background checks, instead of outsourcing the process to the F.B.I.

Other measures would institute new requirements for gun dealers, including better record keeping and increased staff training.

But advocates have questioned whether New York’s existing laws could be better implemented.

Under New York’s so-called red flag law, for example, relatives, school officials and law enforcement can ask a court to remove guns from the home of a person at high risk of harming themselves or others and prevent them from buying new ones — a prohibition that can last as long as a year. But the law was not invoked against the suspect in the Buffalo attack, even after his threat to murder and commit suicide alarmed a school official enough to alert police.

“There was a breakdown here, but it wasn’t a breakdown of the law — it was a breakdown in implementation,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates against gun violence. He and others are pushing for more robust training for law enforcement and school administrators to know when to use the extreme risk law.

David Pucino, deputy chief counsel at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, agrees.

“This really robust policy wasn’t used and it should have been,” he said. Mr. Pucino supports legislation that would limit the sale of guns to people under 21, similar to the one that Florida enacted after a 2018 mass school shooting in Parkland. But he stressed the challenge of addressing an issue like gun violence at the local level.

“No one law can be a solution to all problems,” Mr. Pucino said. “Especially a state law.”

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Jason Silverstein
May 17, 2022, 4:23 p.m. ET

For those that gathered outside Delavan-Grider Community Center in Buffalo during President Biden’s appearance there today, some said they hoped the president would push for legislation specifically addressing anti-Black hate crimes, similar to the bill he signed in 2021 after a wave of assaults against Asian Americans.

They also hoped the president’s appearance would pressure Buffalo officials to address the segregation and gun violence that had afflicted many Black residents of Buffalo’s East Side long before the shooting.

  1. By The New York Times
  2. By The New York Times
  3. By The New York Times
Catie Edmondson
May 17, 2022, 4:17 p.m. ET

Senate G.O.P. leaders largely declined to condemn or even address replacement theory when pressed by reporters at a weekly news conference on Capitol Hill.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said the Buffalo shooting was the result of a “completely deranged man,” and added that “racism in America is abhorrent and ought to be stood up to by everyone.”

Only Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 4 Republican, who is retiring at the end of the year, directly condemned it, telling reporters: “It’s an outrageous theory. I totally reject it as any reasonable discussion to be had.”

Johnny Diaz
May 17, 2022, 4:13 p.m. ET

The Bidens join mourners after the Buffalo shooting in an area that is a significant virus hot spot.

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President Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, visited a memorial outside the grocery store in Buffalo where a gunman killed 10 people on Saturday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

When President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, went to Buffalo on Tuesday to address the racist massacre over the weekend at a supermarket there, they were visiting a region that has become a significant hot spot for new coronavirus cases.

Buffalo is in Erie County, which is shaded bright orange on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest national map, signifying that community levels of the virus are high. Most of upstate New York and New England, and parts of several other nearby states, are shaded orange or yellow on the map, which was most recently updated May 12.

County health officials announced last week that Erie County “is currently experiencing among the highest Covid-19 reported case rates in the United States.” The health department reported more than 1,000 new cases last Wednesday — the first time it had done so since the height of the Omicron wave in January — and noted that the figure did not include the results of at-home coronavirus tests, which often go unreported.

The numbers of hospitalized Covid patients and Covid-related deaths in the Erie County area have also risen recently.

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A few masks were spotted among those who gathered outside the Delavan Grider Community Center in Buffalo to hear Mr. Biden speak on Tuesday. Credit...Mustafa Hussain for The New York Times

Kara Kane, a spokeswoman for the health department, said on Tuesday that the county’s new-case figures were slightly lower — about 5 percent — than they were the week before.

“Though it is too soon to tell if this marks the start of a longer downward trend, this was an encouraging data point,’’ Ms. Kane said.

County health officials and the C.D.C. are advising residents to follow safety measures, including wearing a well-fitted mask in public indoor settings, regardless of vaccination status. That guidance also applies to schools.

The county does not have a general mask mandate in force, except in certain settings determined by New York State. Even so, officials said that people who test positive, or have symptoms, or have been exposed to someone with Covid-19, should wear a mask in public.

The Bidens wore masks during their visit to Buffalo, though the president removed his mask for his speech about the 10 people who were killed on Saturday at a Tops supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood of the city. As the president spoke, Dr. Biden stood next to him, wearing a mask.

After the speech, Mr. Biden put his mask back on, and then briefly shook a few hands in the crowd.

Concerns about the high level of coronavirus in the community could have an impact on plans for the funerals of the shooting victims, which may attract sizable crowds.

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Alexandra E. Petri
May 17, 2022, 3:33 p.m. ET

Attack hits local Black publications hard, taking one of their own.

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The crowd outside Delavan-Grider Community Center as President Biden gave remarks on Tuesday in Buffalo.Credit...Mustafa Hussain for The New York Times

It was late Tuesday morning, and Al-Nisa Banks was on deadline to close her weekly paper, The Challenger Community News, a family-owned publication operated by Black women that has been highlighting the voices of African Americans in Buffalo and other parts of Western New York for nearly 60 years, before it hits newstands on Thursday.

One of its distribution points is the Tops market where Saturday’s racist shooting left 10 people dead and three injured. Among those killed was Katherine Massey, a freelancer for The Challenger who Ms. Banks said was community-minded and a prolific writer. Her last column addressed gun violence and regulations.

Ms. Banks, who is now the editor and publisher, has been at the paper, which has a staff of about 12 and a network of contributors, for four decades. “This area is no stranger to racism,” Ms. Banks, 75, said. Saturday was another salvo, she added.

For Ms. Banks, the magnitude of the moment and the responsibility The Challenger has to the public feels particularly heightened. The Challenger plans to delve more into history’s role in Saturday’s massacre and bring the story full circle.

The newspaper plans to run the obituaries for the victims at no charge, she said, and provide space for the public to continue the conversation and hold officials accountable. “We will be listening to the promises people make, and stay on top of those,” Ms. Banks said.

For 44 years, Eva M. Doyle has been writing a column each week for The Buffalo Criterion, a weekly newspaper that is the oldest Black-owned publication in Western New York, covering everything from the impact of illegal guns to education issues. Her children know not to call her on Tuesdays when she’s racing to file, she said. But writing this week’s column was especially difficult.

“It’s hard for me to get started right now, because all of this is so much in my mind, and what happened to these people,” Ms. Doyle, 76, a retired teacher, activist and historian who is known in the community as Mother Doyle, said in a phone interview on Monday. She plans on writing about the victims, in particular Ms. Massey. “I am going to write it, but it’s going to take me a while to get my thoughts together.”

The New York Times
May 17, 2022, 3:07 p.m. ET

Read a transcript of Biden’s speech in Buffalo.

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President Biden makes remarks after paying respects to the lives lost in Saturday’s tragic shooting in Buffalo.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden traveled to Buffalo on Tuesday to meet families of the victims of the shooting, as well as local law enforcement, first responders and community leaders. The president was joined by several New York officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Mayor Byron W. Brown, Buffalo’s first Black mayor. This transcript has been lightly trimmed for clarity.

Majority Leader Schumer, Senator Gillibrand and Congressman Higgins, and Gov., thank you for taking my call when I called.

And Mayor Brown, you’ve been — you’ve been wonderful. Thank you. And I know this is a lot of — when a vice-presidential or a presidential trip shows up, it’s — there’s all kinds of paraphernalia and people, and I know it’s not easy.

I want to thank your law enforcement officers for not just what they did in this crisis, but for accommodating us, and all the elected officials and law enforcement officers, first responders, and faith leaders that are here today.

Jill and I have come to stand with you and, to the families, we’ve come to grieve with you. It’s not the same, but we know a little bit what it’s like to lose a piece of your soul, whether it was a son, a daughter, a husband, a wife, a mother, a father. The feeling of having that — as I said to some of you when we talked privately, you feel like there’s a black hole in your chest you’re being sucked into, and — and you’re suffocating unable — unable to breathe.

That’s what it felt like, at least to us, and I’m sure some version of that feels that way to you, the anger, the pain, the depth of the loss that’s so profound. You know, we know it’s hard to believe, and you’re probably not going to believe it, but I can tell you now from our personal experience and many others who we’ve met, the day is going to come it will come, when your loved one brings a smile as you remember him or her. As you remember her, it’s is going to bring a smile to your lip before it brings a tear to your eye. It takes a while for that to happen. It takes a while. It might take more than a season, but our prayer for you is that that time comes sooner or later. But I promise you, it will come.

As a nation, I say to the families, we remember them. We’ve been reading about them. We visited a memorial where it shows the love for them and you’ve all shown by the supermarket.

Celestine Chaney, 65 years old, brain cancer survivor, churchgoer, bingo player, went to buy strawberries to make her favorite shortcake. A loving mother and grandmother.

Roberta Drury, 32, beloved daughter and sister. Moved back home to help take care of her brother after his bone marrow transplant. She went to buy groceries for dinner. The center of attention who made everyone in the room laugh and smile when she walked in.

Andre Mackneil, 53. Worked at a restaurant. Went to buy his 3-year-old son a birthday cake. His son is celebrating a birthday, asking, “Where is daddy?”

Katherine Massey, 72, a writer and an advocate who dressed up in costumes at schools and cut the grass in the park and helped in local elections. The glue of the family and the community.

Margus Morrison, 52, school bus aide. Went to buy snacks for weekly movie night with the family. Survived by his wife and three children and a stepdaughter. The center of their world.

Heyward Patterson, 67, father, church deacon. Fed the homeless at the soup kitchen. Gave rides at a grocery store to neighbors who needed help. Putting food in the trunk of others when he took his final breath.

Aaron Salter, 55, retired Buffalo police officer for three decades. Three decades. Loved electric cars. Gave his life to save others on a Saturday afternoon, and had that man not been wearing that vest that he purchased — bulletproof vest — a lot of lives would have been saved. A beloved father and husband.

Geraldine Talley, 62. Expert banker known for her warm, gentle personality. A friend to everybody. Devoted mother and grandmother.

Ruth Whitfield. Beloved wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother. Sang in the church choir. A caretaker of her husband, bringing him clean clothes, cutting his hair, holding his hand every day she visited him in the nursing home. Heart as big as her head.

Pearl Young, 77, grandmother, mother, missionary of god, public-school teacher, who also ran the local food panty. Loved singing, dancing and her family.

And all three who were injured, Zaire Goodman, 20, shot in the neck but fighting through it; Jennifer Warrington, 50; Christopher Braden, 55, both treated with injuries on a long road to recovery.

Individual lives of love, service and community that speaks to the bigger story of who we are as Americans, a great nation because we’re a good people. Jill and I bring you this message from deep in our nation’s soul. In America, evil will not win. I promise you. Hate will not prevail and white supremacy will not have the last word.

For the evil did come to Buffalo, and it’s come to all too many places, manifest in gunmen who massacred innocent people in the name of hateful and perverse ideology rooted in fear and racism. It’s taken so much; 10 lives cut short in a grocery store, three other wounded — three — three other wounded by a hate-filled individual who had driven 200 miles from Binghamton, in that range, to carry out a murderous, racist rampage that he would livestream, livestream to the world.

What happened here is simple and straightforward: terrorism. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism. Violence inflicted in the service of hate and the vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group. A hate that, through the media and politics, the internet, has radicalized angry, alienated and lost individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That’s the word. Replaced by the other. By people who don’t look like them.

I and all of you reject the lie. I call on all Americans to reject the lie, and I condemn those who spread the lie for power, political gain and for profit.

That’s what it is. We’ve now seen too many times the deadly and destructive violence this ideology unleashes. We heard the chants — “you will not replace us” — in Charlottesville, Virginia. I wasn’t going to run, as the senator knows, again for president. When I saw those people coming out of the woods of the fields in Virginia, in Charlottesville, carrying torches, shouting, you will not replace us, accompanied by white supremacists and carrying Nazi banners, that’s when I said, “No, no.” And I, honest to God, those who know me — Chuck, you know, I wasn’t going to run for certain. But I was going to be darned if I was going to let —, Anyway. I’ll get going.

Look, we’ve seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas; in Pittsburgh. Last year in Atlanta. This weak in Dallas, Texas, and now in Buffalo. In Buffalo, New York.

White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison. It really is. Running through our body politic. And it’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. I mean, no more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America. None.

Look, failure to saying, that is going to be complicity. Silence is complicity. It’s complicity. We cannot remain silent.

Our nation’s strength has always come from the idea — it’s going to sound corny, but think about it — what’s the idea of our nation? That we’re all children of God. All children — life, liberty. Our universal goods, gifts of God. We didn’t get it from the government. We got it because we exist. We were called upon to defend them. The venom of the haters and their weapons of war, of violence in the words and deeds of the — that stalk our streets, our stores, our schools. This venom, this violence cannot be the story of our time. We cannot allow that to happen.

Look, I’m not naïve. I know tragedy will come again. It cannot be forever overcome. It cannot be fully understood either. But there are certain things we can do. We can keep assault weapons off our streets. We’ve done it before. I did it when I passed the crime bill last time, and violence went down, shootings went down. We can’t prevent people from being radicalized to violence, but we can address the relentless exploitation of the internet to recruit and mobilize terrorism. We just need to have the courage to do that, to stand up.

Look, the American experiment in democracy is in a danger like it hasn’t been in my lifetime. It’s in danger this hour. Hate and fear are being given too much oxygen by those who pretend to love America, but who don’t understand America. To confront the ideology of hate requires caring about all people. Not making distinctions. Reverend, the scripture, the — seeing that we’re all part of the divine.

That’s the America I know, that Jill knows. And most deserve the most — look, we are the most multiracial, most dynamic nation in the history of the world. Now is the time for the people of all races, from every background to speak up as a majority in America and reject white supremacy. These actions we’ve seen in these hate-filled attacks represent the views of a hate-filled minority.

We can’t allow them to distort America. The real America. We can’t allow them to destroy the soul of the nation.

As president of the United States, I travel the world all the time. And other nations ask me, heads of state in other countries ask me, what’s going on? What in God’s name happened on January 6th? What happened in Buffalo? They’ll ask.

We have to refuse to live in a country where Black people going about a weekly grocery shopping can be gunned down by weapons of war deployed in a racist cause.

We have to refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit.

We must all enlist in this great cause of America.

This is work that requires all of us. Presidents, politicians, commentators, citizens. None of us can stay on the sidelines. We have to resolve that here in Buffalo, that from the tragedy, this tragedy, will come hope and light and life. It has to.

And that on our watch, the sacred cause of America will never bow, never break, never bend. And the America we love, the one we love will endure. So to the families, from your pain, may we find purpose to live life worthy of the loved ones you lost.

From a hymn based on the 91st Psalm that’s sung at my church, may he raise you up on eagle’s wings and bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of his hand.

That’s my wish for us. We can do this if we resolve to do it. If we take on the haters. And those who don’t even care, it’s just about profit and politics. May the soul of the fallen rest in peace and rise in glory. And may God guide the United States of America now and always.

To the families, as my grand pop used to say when I walked out of his home in Scranton, he’d say “Joey, spread the faith,” and my grandma would — no he would say “keep the faith,” and my grandma would say “no, Joey, spread the faith.” We’re thinking of you. Hold on to each other tightly. Stick together. You’ll get through this, and we’ll make Buffalo and the United States a better place to live than it is today.

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Troy Closson
May 17, 2022, 2:44 p.m. ET

Here’s how Black residents of Buffalo’s East Side reacted to Biden’s speech.

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“We want Biden to give the same support to Buffalo, to the East Side, that other communities get. That Ukraine gets,” one longtime resident said.Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

As President Biden delivered an emotional speech in Buffalo denouncing the attack that killed 10 people in a quiet neighborhood as a racist act of terror, many Black residents of that area said that the address would ultimately mean little without further action.

Mr. Biden began his day with a visit to the Tops grocery store where the shooting took place, lifting his right hand to his chest as he visited a large memorial near the store that lists the names of the dead. Jill Biden, the first lady, added a bouquet of flowers to the pile.

Later, in an address at Delavan-Grider Community Center on the city’s East Side, the president shared stories about the victims and called on the nation to reject racist ideologies.

But several residents of the area said they wanted to see more done to address longstanding issues in their area.

“We want Biden to give the same support to Buffalo, to the East Side, that other communities get. That Ukraine gets,” said Jamarius Cooper, who has lived near the Masten Park neighborhood for more than a decade.

Tim Lewis, 55, who grew up on the East Side and traveled to the community center so his kids could see the area, said that he hoped the president’s stand against racism proved to be a long-term commitment.

But he was disappointed that officials did not greet residents outside after Mr. Biden finished his formal address.

“The families are feeling the effects of this, of course,” he said. “But we are too. It’s kind of a slap in the face. He should’ve just come out here and spoke a few words to give us hope.”

Earlier in the day, some residents struggled to catch glimpses of Mr. Biden as he approached the memorial, while others grew increasingly frustrated at the spectacle it had created.

A crowd of about 150 residents had gathered in the area in the hour before the president’s arrival, standing in front of police barricades. One man standing on a nearby street shouted, “We don’t want him here.”

For Jamie Lash, 64, who is known to residents as “Auntie” for her ubiquitous presence in the area, the visit was deeply meaningful.

“I just appreciate everybody coming to see us,” Ms. Lash said. “Because this gives us a sense of direction and says we ain’t by ourselves. And that means so much.”

But many neighbors expressed dissatisfaction. Dinah Bishop, a nurse who works about a mile from the grocery store, said a speech could do little to destroy longstanding racism in Buffalo.

Shaniah Paige, 39, who lives near the site of the community center, said that if it took lawmakers until this year to make lynching a federal crime, she did not believe that meaningful change would come soon.

“We’re upset. When we’re down, we get free food and photo ops,” she said. “But this is embedded in decades of laws: America was built on racism.”

For Michael Mostiller Jr., who lives two blocks from the Tops grocery store with his wife, Letitia, Mr. Biden’s visit was “exciting.” He watched as the president arrived, pulling out his phone to snap an image. Still, he said he didn’t know what could change.

“We’re caught in a Catch-22 situation,” he said. “When it comes to gun rights — people want their guns. You have to protect yourself. But do you need high-powered rifles? As far as them going after the social media outlets, I don’t think that’s a good idea because of freedom of speech. So I don’t know how they’re going to do it.”

Buffalo has endured extreme segregation for decades, and the city’s Black residents have long said that they fare worse than their white counterparts in many areas of daily life.

Some residents, like Daniel Love, 24, who works at a barbershop across the street from Tops, said that the East Side had long deserved more attention, and that the visit “should have been done a long time ago.”

Others said they worried about whether the area would receive the same level of attention after the visit was over and the next tragedy occurred.

“I could care less about what Biden said, I want to see action,” said Toni Arrington, 27, a hair stylist who stood outside the community center where Mr. Biden spoke. “I want to see our community actually get help. I want to see people actually be protected. We work, we pay taxes, we pay for our protection and we’re not getting it.”

As she stood near the memorial across the street from Tops, Leslie Thomas, 61, said that she understood the visit had irritated some neighbors. But she added that she believed that it was a critical step for the community as it continues to mourn.

“Whether some people want to believe it or not, it's just a president’s duty when something this drastic happens to show up and show his support,” said Ms. Thomas, who owns a boutique on Fillmore Avenue. “Some people are against him showing up. But that’s what leadership does.”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Lola Fadulu contributed reporting.

Emily Cochrane
May 17, 2022, 2:44 p.m. ET

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said he had declined an invitation to appear on Tucker Carlson’s show after vehemently criticizing the Fox News host and network for amplifying the ideas and themes behind the so-called replacement theory.

Glenn ThrushEmily Cochrane
May 17, 2022, 1:44 p.m. ET

Background checks are popular. Why can’t Congress expand them?

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Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, center, talks to reporters in April. Since the Buffalo attack, he has led an effort among Senate Democrats to create a proposal for gun reform with a chance of passage.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Democrats control the Senate, if barely, but the Buffalo massacre has revealed their inability to pass even one of the most popular gun reforms: the expansion of federal background checks, a proposal that enjoys overwhelming public approval.

Grief has given way to anger among many gun control activists who see background checks as the bare-minimum test for Democrats in Congress as they grapple with growing public desensitization to mass shootings.

“This is not splitting the atom,” said T. Christian Heyne, legislative director for Brady, one of the country’s leading gun control groups. “It’s popular. Figure out a way to pass the damned thing.”

It is unlikely that even the most robust background check would have flagged the 18-year-man who has been charged with Saturday’s rampage that killed 10 people, most of them Black. But expansion of federal checks, law enforcement officials have said, could detect and deter many other criminals — and it is the only gun reform that routinely garners 75 to 85 percent support in polls.

In the days following the Buffalo attack, several Democratic senators, led by Dick Durbin of Illinois, chairman of the judiciary committee, and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, have began to confer about creating a proposal that has a chance of passage.

Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said this year he would bring a bill to the floor. But he has not set a timetable for doing so, and Mr. Durbin told reporters Monday that even a modest background-check measure would confront the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.

“We’re kind of stuck where we are, for the time being,” he said.

The previous high-water mark for a background check bill was 54 votes. Nine years ago, a compromise sponsored by Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, and Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, fell six votes short, even though it had been amended to include significant exemptions geared at blunting the opposition of the gun lobby.

On Monday, Mr. Manchin suggested he would consider reviving his old, more-Republican-friendly bill. “If you can’t pass Manchin-Toomey, how are you going to get enough votes for anything else?” he asked reporters.

This kind of legislative churn incenses gun control activists, who want Democrats to feel the same sense of urgency as Republicans have done in their campaigns to block or weaken gun laws.

Many are urging Mr. Schumer and Mr. Durbin to put a vote on the floor — repeatedly, if necessary — to make Republicans defend their opposition to a popular policy, in hopes of shifting the political dynamic ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Igor Volsky, founder of Guns Down America, a gun control group that has been sharply critical of the White House, said Mr. Schumer was not doing enough. The senator, he said, did not offer a clear enough strategy on gun reform while denouncing racism and replacement-theory politics in a far-ranging speech in the Senate on Monday.

“I find it unconscionable that in the aftermath of a mass shooting in his home state, Majority Leader Schumer has yet to lay out any plan or timetable for debating or advancing legislation that would make it harder for extremists to obtain the kind of weapons that killed 10 people in Buffalo,” he said.

A spokesman for Mr. Schumer said that Democrats were working on concrete proposals, and that the senator had made a point of emphasizing that his address was “certainly not a substitute for passing other meaningful legislation to address the gun violence epidemic.”

Some activists are calling for the Biden administration to bypass Congress completely by taking executive action. In fact, Vice President Kamala Harris, the tiebreaking vote in the Senate, had proposed drafting an executive order to expand background checks when she was a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020.

“Executive action allows the administration to show President Biden is acting to reduce gun crime when Congressional Republicans are not,” said Corey Ciorciari, a gun control advocate who served on Ms. Harris’s campaign and helped draft her proposal.

But Ms. Harris has not publicly supported that position since taking office. The administration has been reluctant to expand background checks though executive action, believing it could be challenged in court.

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Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 1:09 p.m. ET

In remarks before boarding Air Force One, President Biden said there was little he could do on gun control via executive action and that he had to “convince the Congress” to take up stronger gun laws, admitting it would be “very difficult.”

“Part of what the country has to do is look in the mirror and face the reality,” he said. “We have a problem with domestic terror, it's real,” he added, noting that some might not like such a remark.

“That's what the intelligence community has been saying, that's what the military has been saying, for a long time,” he said. “There's nothing new about this.”

He said that there were a lot of people in the country like the suspect, “who are just deranged, who are susceptible, who are just lost and don't know what to do. And they are easily taken, they're easily sucked in.” He added, “I don't know why we don't admit what the hell is going on.”

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Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Lola Fadulu
May 17, 2022, 1:09 p.m. ET

“I could care less about what Biden said, I want to see action,” said Toni Arrington, 27, a hair stylist who stood outside the community center where the president gave his remarks.

“I want to see our community actually get help, I want to see people actually be protected,” she said. “We work, we pay taxes, we pay for our protection, and we’re not getting it.”

Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 12:49 p.m. ET

The president made no precise policy announcements, beyond voicing support for getting assault weapons off the streets. The speech seemed to be rooted in expressing the kind of compassion that Biden has long been known for.

Audra D. S. Burch
May 17, 2022, 12:42 p.m. ET

President Biden’s speech was a combination of consolation and a calling for the nation to reject racist ideology. His words come days after civil rights and social justice leaders called on him to convene a summit this week to develop a plan to combat hate crimes, white supremacy and violent extremism.

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Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 12:39 p.m. ET

The president finishes after a call to “take on the haters.” “Hold onto each other tightly,” he says.

Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 12:38 p.m. ET

The president suggests that foreign leaders are bewildered by what happens in America, asking him: “What in God's name happened on Jan. 6? What happened in Buffalo?”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs
May 17, 2022, 12:38 p.m. ET

The United States hasn’t always been willing to call out domestic extremism for what it is. Biden knows this well. When he was vice president, the Obama administration rescinded a report that warned veterans were vulnerable to being recruited by domestic extremist groups after criticism from Republicans.

Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 12:37 p.m. ET

“This venom, this violence, cannot be the story of our time,” the president says, before striking a more pragmatic tone, arguing that while violence can't be completely stopped, “we can keep assault weapons off our streets.” He follows this with a similar comment on hate speech, suggesting that it will exist, but can be monitored and countered.

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Audra D. S. Burch
May 17, 2022, 12:36 p.m. ET

Biden invokes mass shootings of the recent past by naming the cities where they unfolded: El Paso and Atlanta, among others.

Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 12:33 p.m. ET

“I call on all Americans to reject the lie,” the president says, calling out those using divisive, hate-tinged rhectoric for political gain and profit, a not-too-subtle swipe at conservative commentators and politicians who are his political foils.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs
May 17, 2022, 12:33 p.m. ET

Biden is not shying away from describing the massacre as “racist” and an example of “white supremacy.” “What happened here is simple and straightforward. Terrorism. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism,” he says. This is a stark difference from the previous administration, in which some homeland security analysts said they were discouraged from even saying the words “domestic terrorism.”

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Audra D. S. Burch
May 17, 2022, 12:33 p.m. ET

Biden gives each of the victims a name and a face and a story, humanizing them, which is often one of the first steps to starting a national response to a mass shooting. “Evil will not win, I promise you.”

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Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 12:31 p.m. ET

The president calls the shooting, twice, “terrorism.”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs
May 17, 2022, 12:29 p.m. ET

Biden is taking the time to describe each of the victims of the racist massacre. He chokes up as he says one of the victims was a father visiting the supermarket to buy a birthday cake for his 3-year-old son.

Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 12:28 p.m. ET

Biden says he and the first lady are there “to stand with you” and grieve with families. "We know a little bit what it's like to lose a piece of your soul," he says, an apparent reference to both the loss of the president's son Beau, who died in 2015, and the deaths of Mr. Biden's wife and daughter in a 1972 car crash.

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Zolan Kanno-Youngs
May 17, 2022, 12:28 p.m. ET

“You feel like there’s a black hole in your chest,” President Biden says to the families of victims. This moment — consoling victims of tragedy — is one of the more comfortable areas for a president who has publicly documented his own personal loss.

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Audra D. S. Burch
May 17, 2022, 12:26 p.m. ET

The racist mass shooting at the Buffalo grocery store that claimed 10 lives on Saturday is the latest episode in a troubling rise of hate crimes against African Americans, an outgrowth of historic racial fault lines and a divisive social climate.

Though federal data is imprecise, it broadly shows a surge in bias crimes targeting African Americans in 2020, a year marked by the coronavirus pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and a summer of protests against police violence and racism. The number of reported hate crimes against African Americans in 2020 was 2,871, up from 1,972 in 2019. That spike drove a nearly 9.1 percent increase in hate crimes overall.

Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 12:23 p.m. ET

Mayor Byron W. Brown of Buffalo, the city’s first Black mayor, is speaking, introducing the president and first lady. He tells the victims’ families that “we are here to wrap our arms around you.” Mr. Brown, a Democrat in his fifth term, won an unlikely write-in campaign last fall after losing a primary and has been a steadying presence at a series of news conferences since the shooting.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs
May 17, 2022, 12:16 p.m. ET

After members of the New York delegation finished speaking, a couple dozen relatives of victims and community leaders entered the gym serving as the setting of President Biden’s speech. A few members of the audience stood and hugged them as they entered.

Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 12:11 p.m. ET

Senator Chuck Schumer says the gunman “wanted to put a dagger in the heart of the community” and promised to strive to fight white supremacy. Earlier today, Schumer urged Fox News to “immediately cease the reckless amplification of the so-called Great Replacement theory,” which the shooting suspect, Payton Gendron, had cited as an inspiration.

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Jason Silverstein
May 17, 2022, 12:06 p.m. ET

A crowd of hundreds has assembled outside the Delavan-Grider Community Center in Buffalo with President Biden and Gov. Kathy Hochul inside. Members of a community group called WNY Peacemakers kneeled before a line of state police officers and asked everyone to join in prayer. Some in the crowd objected, saying it was a time to express their anger over racism and police violence. “Stand up and fight,” one woman yelled at them. “We ain’t kneeling no more!”

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Credit...Jason Silverstein/The New York Times
Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 12:02 p.m. ET

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s voice cracks a little as she talks about the shooting’s victims and their families, assuring them that though the moment is difficult, “every tear will be wiped away.”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs
May 17, 2022, 12:01 p.m. ET

Representative Brian Higgins, Democrat of New York, calls for the implementation of a domestic terrorism statute during his remarks at the center. Such legislation would empower prosecutors to charge and investigate homegrown extremists with the same tools that are used against terrorism suspects from abroad. Critics say the shift could expand the government’s surveillance authorities too much and be used against minority communities.

Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 12:00 p.m. ET

Gov. Kathy Hochul says that the city will “get through this because this is Buffalo, we are tough,” before adding that the shooting should encourage a “national conversation” to “eradicate this evil and send it back under the rock from which it came.”

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Nicholas Confessore
May 17, 2022, 10:01 a.m. ET

Schumer calls on Murdoch and Fox News executives to stop amplifying replacement theory.

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Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, sent a letter to the Fox News leadership team calling on it to take responsibility for spreading harmful and racist rhetoric.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, urged Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch and the network’s top executives in a letter on Tuesday to “immediately cease the reckless amplification of the so-called ‘Great Replacement’ theory on your network’s broadcasts” in the wake of a deadly racist rampage in Buffalo.

The letter, which followed remarks Mr. Schumer gave on the Senate floor Monday, may signal a new effort by Democrats and others to raise pressure on the cable network and its top-rated host and moneymaker, Tucker Carlson.

Mr. Schumer cited a recent Times investigation showing that Mr. Carlson has for years used his show to relentlessly promote “replacement,” which is the belief, rooted in racist conspiracy theories, that an elite cabal is seeking to replace native-born populations in the United States and Europe with immigrants from Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

A 180-page document posted online by the accused Buffalo killer is laden with racist images and references the most extreme versions of replacement theory, holding that not only immigrants but also Black Americans are “replacers” seeking to drive white people out from their rightful place in the United States.

There is no indication that the killer adopted his ideas from cable news. But Mr. Schumer criticized Fox and Mr. Carlson for promoting related ideas about Democrats and immigration policy, which he said had helped to popularize replacement ideology among a broader swath of Americans.

“For years, these types of beliefs have existed at the fringes of American life,” Mr. Schumer wrote in his letter, which was also copied to Mr. Carlson personally. “However, this pernicious theory, which has no basis in fact, has been injected into the mainstream thanks in large part to a dangerous level of amplification by your network and its anchors.”

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Read Senator Chuck Schumer’s Letter to Fox News About Tucker Carlson and Replacement Theory

Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, sent a letter to Fox News executives urging them to “immediately cease the reckless amplification of the so-called ‘Great Replacement’ theory on your network’s broadcasts.”

Read Document

The Murdochs have staunchly backed Mr. Carlson. Lachlan Murdoch, Mr. Murdoch’s son, last year personally defended Mr. Carlson when a civil rights group called for the host to be fired for espousing replacement theory.

About one in three American adults now believe that an effort is under way “to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains,” according to an Associated Press poll released this month.

The poll also found that people who mostly watched right-wing media outlets like Fox News, One America News Network and Newsmax were more likely to believe in replacement theory than those who watched CNN or MSNBC.

Democrats and liberal groups have sought for years to pressure Fox News, urging cable providers — whose fees provide much of the network’s revenue — to take action and pressuring advertisers to disassociate themselves from it.

Last year, in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, the NAACP took aim at the Murdochs’ valuable football broadcasting business, urging the National Football League to consider Fox News’ criticism of Black players protesting for civil rights when negotiating for broadcast rights with the Murdoch-owned Fox Sports.

In remarks on his show on Monday night, Mr. Carlson denied responsibility for the Buffalo suspect and distanced himself from his rhetoric, dismissing the document as “a rambling pastiche of slogans and internet memes.”

Jesse McKinley
May 17, 2022, 9:51 a.m. ET

As Biden visits Buffalo, investigators assemble a case against the suspect.

BUFFALO — With investigators digging through new details of a gunman’s preparations, President Biden arrived in Buffalo on Tuesday morning to pay his respects and speak to a largely Black community still reeling from a mass shooting at a supermarket that left 10 people dead. He is also expected to call for stricter gun control measures, according to Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary.

The president and the first lady, Jill Biden, visited the Tops Friendly Market where Payton S. Gendron, 18, is accused of opening fire on Saturday, days after posting a racist screed littered with anti-Black and white supremacist sentiments, including mentions of replacement theory, a right-wing ideology that posits a plan to “replace” white people.

Mr. Biden, who has decried the accused gunman’s actions as “a racially motivated hate crime,” is also expected to meet privately with victims’ families and emergency medical workers and make public remarks at a community center before returning to Washington.

On Monday, a new cache of online postings believed to be written by Mr. Gendron were found, suggesting months of preparation and practice for the massacre, as well as an account of how he evaded a state law that could have prevented him from owning a gun.

Mr. Gendron, who was been charged with first-degree murder and pleaded not guilty, is believed to have traveled to the scene of the shooting from his home in Conklin, N.Y., some 200 miles from Buffalo.

According to authorities and statements made in his online writings, he chose the east Buffalo neighborhood specifically because of the many Black residents who live there, going so far as to scout the location at least twice, in early March and the day before the shooting.

Thirteen people were shot Saturday, almost all of them Black, with fatalities including several elderly shoppers and a security guard who exchanged gunfire with Mr. Gendron. The gunman wore body armor and used an assault-style rifle, according to law enforcement officials.

Family members of one of the dead, 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, spoke publicly about the pain they have endured and their outrage that the suspect, who had been held for a mental-health evaluation last year after making threatening remarks at his high school, was able to obtain a weapon.

“We stand here wondering why,” said Garnell Whitfield Jr., a former Buffalo fire commissioner, at a local church on Monday.

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Zolan Kanno-YoungsPeter Baker
May 17, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

Biden calls on Americans to ‘reject the lie’ as he condemns racist rhetoric after the Buffalo massacre.

BUFFALO — President Biden called on Americans on Tuesday to “take on the haters” and “reject the lie” of racial replacement that animated a white man who gunned down Black shoppers in the latest eruption of violence targeting people of color in the United States.

Declaring that “white supremacy is a poison” coursing through America, Mr. Biden flew to this grief-stricken city in western New York not just to mourn the 10 people killed in Saturday’s shooting rampage but to confront “ideology rooted in fear and racism” and accuse conservative political and media figures of exploiting it.

“What happened here is simple and straightforward: Terrorism. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism,” Mr. Biden told a bereaved crowd gathered in a community center. “Violence inflicted in the service of hate and the vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group, a hate that through the media and politics, the internet, has radicalized angry, alienated, lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced.”

This so-called replacement theory, the notion that an elite cabal of liberals is plotting to substitute immigrants or other people of color for white Americans, has become an increasingly common talking point on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show and among some Republican leaders. While Mr. Biden did not specify names, he asserted that certain politicians and pundits were promoting the conspiracy theory and stoking racism out of a cynical desire to score political points and make money.

“I and all of you reject the lie,” Mr. Biden said. “I call on all Americans to reject the lie, and I condemn those who spread the lie for power, political gain and for profit.”

“We can do this if we resolve to do it,” he added, “if we take on the haters and those who don’t even care. It’s just about profit and politics.”

The president’s visit came as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives released a report showing a flood of new guns in the United States, with the annual number of firearms manufactured nearly tripling from 3.9 million in 2000 to 11.3 million in 2020. But Mr. Biden acknowledged that he had little chance of enacting meaningful new curbs on weapons.

His use of the term “domestic terrorism,” however, represented a stark contrast to former President Donald J. Trump, whose White House was accused by homeland security analysts of discouraging officials from even saying the words. Likewise, Mr. Biden’s condemnation of white supremacy was the kind of unequivocal repudiation that Mr. Trump often was reluctant to issue while his administration was said to suppress intelligence warnings about the extremist threat.

But he did not go as far as some on the left wanted him to, stopping short of condemning specific purveyors of replacement theory and other hateful provocations.

Asked later by reporters if certain Republicans or Mr. Carlson deserved blame, Mr. Biden said, “I believe anybody who echoes the replacement is to blame — not for this particular crime — but it, there’s no purpose. No purpose except profit and, or political benefit. And it’s wrong.”

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The bloodshed at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo renewed the national debate over gun control.Credit...Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times

Mr. Carlson said on his show on Monday night that the focus on him demonstrated “the ruthlessness and dishonesty of our political leadership” who wanted to use a tragedy to justify muzzling critics of the establishment.

Within minutes of the shooting, he said, “professional Democrats had begun a coordinated campaign to blame those murders on their political opponents. ‘They did it,’ they said immediately. ‘Payton Gendron was the heir to Donald Trump,’ they told us. ‘Trumpism committed mass murder in Buffalo.’ And for that reason, it followed logically, we must suspend the First Amendment.”

Mr. Carlson invited one of his critics, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader, to debate him on air after the senator directly called him out. But Mr. Schumer, who traveled with Mr. Biden on Tuesday, declined. “Amplifying racist lies and propaganda is simply not debatable,” he wrote on Twitter.

In traveling to Buffalo three days after the massacre, Mr. Biden was confronting the sort of violent white extremism displayed in 2017, when neo-Nazis and right-wing militias marched into Charlottesville, Va., and Mr. Trump declared that there were “very fine people” on both sides. Mr. Biden has often said that episode drove him to run for president.

But the careful line Mr. Biden drew underscored the challenge for a president who came to office preaching unity in figuring out how to take on those preaching hate. Whenever he has spoken more assertively about the politics of division, such as on the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, he has been accused of violating his own promise to bring the country together, leaving him in something of a political box, trapped by his desire to be a unifier while feeling compelled to take on forces rending America apart.

“Look, the American experiment in democracy is in a danger like it hasn’t been in my lifetime,” he said on Tuesday. “It’s in danger this hour. Hate and fear are being given too much oxygen by those who pretend to love America, but who don’t understand America.”

Mr. Biden spoke about each of the 10 shooting victims who died by name, at one point pausing to compose himself when describing a father slain while picking up a birthday cake for his 3-year-old son. “In America, evil will not win,” he said. “I promise you. Hate will not prevail and white supremacy will not have the last word.”

But some residents of Buffalo found the words unsatisfying. “I could care less about what Biden said. I want to see action,” said Toni Arrington, 27, a hair stylist who stood outside the community center where the president spoke. “I want to see our community actually get help. I want to see people actually be protected. We work, we pay taxes, we pay for our protection, and we’re not getting it.”

The bloodshed once again renewed the national debate over gun control, a prime example of Washington’s paralyzed politics, but the president made no specific policy announcements beyond voicing continued support for removing military-style firearms from the streets.

As a senator, Mr. Biden helped pass an assault-weapon ban in the 1990s but it expired after 10 years. As vice president, he helped develop a package of gun initiatives after the massacre of 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.

The Obama administration issued nearly two dozen modest executive actions but failed to pass legislation. Mr. Biden’s own administration has been no more successful in passing gun control legislation in Congress, although he has taken some steps to address the issue, starting with a crackdown on the proliferation of so-called ghost guns, or firearms assembled from kits.

But the gun-rights lobby’s hold on the Republican Party is unshaken, and action on proposals such as universal background checks and a new assault-weapons ban remain stalled in part because of the narrow partisan divide in the Senate.

Speaking with reporters before boarding Air Force One back to Washington on Tuesday, Mr. Biden said there was little more he could do through executive action and that he had to “convince the Congress” to take up stronger gun laws, which he acknowledged would be “very difficult.”

“Part of what the country has to do is look in the mirror and face the reality,” he said. “We have a problem with domestic terror. It’s real.”

The United States has struggled to directly acknowledge the threat of domestic extremism, let alone develop an effective response. The Trump administration slashed grants to nonprofits and law enforcement agencies that focused on domestic terrorism, cutting funding from $20 million to less than $3 million before much of it was restored in 2020.

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People gathered outside the Delavan-Grider Community Center in Buffalo before Mr. Biden’s speech. The president has taken steps to focus government resources on preventing domestic extremist attacks.Credit...Mustafa Hussain for The New York Times

“You have to know who your enemy is and what the threat is,” said Elizabeth Neumann, the assistant homeland security secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention during the Trump administration. “Trump was never willing to acknowledge that. Biden has.”

Even with the president’s readiness to describe the threat, she said the federal government has not made enough progress in working with authorities to prevent violent extremism.

In June, the Biden administration unveiled a national strategy to combat violent extremism, calling for additional intelligence analysts, improved collaboration with social media companies to take down violent videos and expanded digital literacy programs to train the public to identify hateful content and resist recruitment by extremists.

The F.B.I. issued three times as many domestic terrorism assessments for local authorities in 2021 as it did the previous year, according to a senior official. But the official acknowledged the difficulty of policing extremist language while abiding by the First Amendment.

Janet Napolitano, a former secretary of homeland security who serves on Mr. Biden’s intelligence advisory board, said it was clear that the United States had not made enough progress preventing extremist attacks since Charlottesville.

“Treat it almost like a disease instead of crime so we can better diagnose ahead of time,” Ms. Napolitano said. “I think the bully pulpit is the president’s strongest role.”

Marc H. Morial, the president of the National Urban League, a civil rights organization, said uniting the country required directly calling out those who amplify theories influencing domestic extremism.

“Some people say when you do this you’re promoting division,” Mr. Morial said. But such claims amounted to a “diversion,” he added.

“You unite people around purpose,” he said. “You don’t unite people for the sake of being united.”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported from Buffalo and Peter Baker from Washington. Jesse McKinley and Lola Fadulu contributed reporting from Buffalo.

Shane GoldmacherLuke Broadwater
May 16, 2022, 9:07 p.m. ET

Republicans play on fears of ‘great replacement’ in bid for base voters.

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Former President Donald J. Trump hosted a rally in Greensburg, Pa., where he railed against “illegal aliens.”Credit...Kristian Thacker for The New York Times

The mass shooting in Buffalo was the work of a lone gunman but not the product of an isolated ideology.

In a manifesto, the suspect detailed how he viewed Black people as “replacers” of white Americans. The massacre at the grocery store on Saturday trained a harsh light on the “great replacement theory,” which the authorities say he used to justify an act of racist violence — and on how that theory has migrated from the far-right fringes of American discourse toward the center of Republican politics.

Republicans across the spectrum were quick to denounce the killings. But fewer party leaders appeared willing to break with the politics of nativism and fear the party has embraced to retain the loyalties of right-wing voters inspired by Donald J. Trump.

One Republican, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, on Monday called out her colleagues for not doing enough to squash the extremist wing of her own party.

“House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism,” Ms. Cheney, the former No. 3 House Republican who was removed from that role over her criticism of Mr. Trump, wrote on Twitter. “History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”

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“History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse,” Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming said on Monday.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

House Republican leaders have at times tolerated the extremist views from some in their ranks. Last year, far-right Republican members of Congress circulated plans to create an “America First Caucus,” where the section on immigration talked about the importance of “uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.” The idea was scrapped but those involved continued to make waves for their flirtation with white nationalism.

In February, when Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona participated in a conference organized by Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist, Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, called their actions “appalling and wrong,” but he did not formally rebuke or punish them.

Since then, Republicans have used rhetoric that suggests a tacit willingness to try to appeal to elements of the far right. Ahead of November’s midterm elections, Republican candidates have ramped up warnings about the threats being posed to what is cast as real or traditional America. Often unsaid is what that bygone era looks like: white, male-dominated, Judeo-Christian and heterosexual.

Issue after issue has been recast as a reason for Republican voters to fear for their culture and values: Transgender rights threaten girls sports. The removal of statues threatens to expunge Confederate history in the South and other white historical figures elsewhere. Critical race theory is portrayed as rewriting American history — and overhauling how it is taught — to emphasize episodes of racism.

Even the recent baby formula shortage has been falsely reimagined as so acute because of giveaways to feed undocumented children.

More than a dozen candidates and outside groups have run ads warning of an immigrant “invasion” in the country or otherwise diluting the power of native-born citizens. Several candidates have falsely said that Democrats are opening the border specifically to let undocumented people in to vote.

“If Joe Biden keeps shipping illegal immigrants into our states, we’re all going to have to learn Spanish,” Gov. Kay Ivey, Republican of Alabama, said in one television ad ahead of her May 24 primary.

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Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama is among the Republican candidates who have warned of the false threat of illegal immigrants’ voting.Credit...Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters

In another, Ms. Ivey held up her conservative state as a bastion of disappearing values: “When I taught school, we said a prayer, pledged allegiance, and taught the basics,” she said. “Today, the left teaches kids to hate America. But not here. Biden’s critical race theory: racist, wrong and dead as a doornail. Transgender sports: toast.”

Republicans have pushed back aggressively against accusations that their language and actions have perpetuated the kind of racism and xenophobia that appeared to be behind the massacre in Buffalo.

The stoking of fear and grievances was a hallmark of Mr. Trump’s rise, though its roots far predate him. A quarter-century earlier, Pat Buchanan fashioned himself as an “America first” candidate in his right-wing challenge to former President George Bush in 1992, a tagline that Mr. Trump would repurpose. But Mr. Buchanan, who lost the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and again in 1996, was largely shunned by his party for writing about “immigrant invasions” eroding Western society.

Mr. Trump opened his 2016 presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and soon after he promoted a ban on Muslims entering the country. At the time, many top party officials reacted with outrage.

Now, much of the Republican Party and the conservative media apparatus are speaking with the same nationalistic voice, from Tucker Carlson on Fox News in prime time to even more hard-right alternatives like Newsmax and One America News Network.

Mr. Trump no longer seems to be driving the conversation on the right so much as keeping up with it.

At a rally in western Pennsylvania this month, he railed against the “illegal aliens” he said were pouring “into our homeland.”

“Our country is full, we can’t take it anymore,” he said. “They are trying to destroy our country.”

“Unfortunately, the party is becoming one of resentment and anger as opposed to solutions and common ground,” said Mike DuHaime, a longtime Republican strategist. He did not predict it would hamper Republicans in elections this year but said it would pose a challenge eventually. “Resentment and anger can get you short-term victories but it won’t build a governing coalition to build long-term policy change.”

Mainstream Republicans have repeatedly suggested that lax enforcement of the border is somehow part of a longer-term Democratic strategy. In Missouri, Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Senate candidate, said on Glenn Beck’s program last month that Democrats were “fundamentally trying to change this country through their illegal immigration policy.”

Other Republicans have been more specific, suggesting Democrats have political aims.

In Wisconsin, Senator Ron Johnson, who is up for re-election this fall, said last year that “you have to ask yourself why” the Biden administration wanted, as he put it, open borders. “Is it really,” he postulated, “they want to remake the demographics of America to insure their — that they stay in power forever?” (On Monday evening, he tweeted: “Pushing the lie that criticizing this admin’s policies in any way supports ‘replacement theory’ is another example of the corporate media working overtime to cover up the Biden admin’s failures.”)

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J.D. Vance with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia during his campaign for the Republican Senate nomination in Ohio last month.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

And in Ohio, the Senate candidate J.D. Vance pre-empted potential accusations of racism. “Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans?” he asked in his campaign’s opening television ad. Later in the spot, he spoke about how loose border policies were there to ensure “more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

This strategy reclaiming the racist label — and recasting oneself as the victim — has also been used by Blake Masters, a Senate candidate in Arizona, who is backed by the same billionaire, Peter Thiel, as Mr. Vance.

“If you connect the dots as a candidate for office and say, look, obviously the Democrats, they hope to just change the demographics of our country,” Mr. Masters said in a podcast interview last month. “They hope to import an entirely new electorate and they call you a racist and a bigot.”

Political scientists and historians say the harsher, more dehumanizing language stirring fear of demographic change has became more pervasive and salient among Republican voters as pro-business Republicans who were once vocally in favor of immigration have become fewer among their ranks and Republican leaders have declined to push back against the more extreme political language.

The great replacement theory has its origins in France, where it was popularized by a book of the same title published in 2012 by the novelist and critic Renaud Camus. Mr. Camus chiefly argued that demographic shifts in majority white, Christian countries in Europe threaten “ethnic and civilizational substitution.”

By 2017, white supremacist groups embraced Mr. Camus’ ideas, employing antisemitic conspiracy theories. They adopted a new slogan — alternately “Jews will not replace us” or “You will not replace us” — chanted at rallies, most infamously at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., that August, where a white nationalist killed a counterprotester. White supremacists who committed mass killings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Tex., in 2019 both referred to the theory in their respective manifestoes.

“These conspiracies are at the core of the Republican Party right now and I don’t think it’s partisan to say that,” said Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, which won a lawsuit against the organizers of the 2017 Charlottesville rally.

Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, who represents a district in Northern New York and who replaced Ms. Cheney last year as the No. 3 House Republican, ran an online ad last fall about how “amnesty” to the undocumented would “overthrow our current electorate.”

Her office put out a statement on Monday accusing the news media of “disgraceful, dishonest and dangerous” smears in linking her rhetoric to the Buffalo attack in any way.

“The shooting was an act of evil,” said her spokesman, Alex DeGrasse, who added in a statement about “illegals” that she “has never advocated for any racist position or made a racist statement.”

Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said on Monday that “it’s unfortunate that there are sites out there where these people go and get these crazy ideas in their head and act on it.” When asked about his colleagues who have repeated elements of replacement theory, he added: “Nobody should be giving voice to or support in any way to some of these things.”

Reporting was contributed by Azi Paybarah, Karen Yourish, Jennifer Medina, Jazmine Ulloa and Charles Homans.

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Glenn Thrush
May 16, 2022, 8:17 p.m. ET

What do most mass shooters have in common? They bought their guns legally.

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A memorial outside the grocery store in Buffalo where a gunman killed 10 people on Saturday.Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Of all the wrenching similarities between the massacres at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the Walmart in El Paso and the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, one stands out most starkly: Each gun used was purchased legally.

From 1966 to 2019, 77 percent of mass shooters obtained the weapons they used in their crimes through legal purchases, according to a comprehensive survey of law enforcement data, academic papers and news accounts compiled by the National Institute of Justice, the research wing of the Justice Department.

In upstate New York a few months ago, the 18-year-old suspect in the Buffalo shooting walked into Vintage Firearms in sleepy Endicott, passed an instant background check without a glitch and bought a used Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic rifle, a copy of the ubiquitous AR-15 used in many other mass shootings.

The suspect, Payton Gendron, had recently been required to undergo psychological evaluation after making menacing, violent comments to high school classmates, but the episode was not enough to set off the state’s “red flag” law, which bars the mentally ill from buying weapons.

Then he went home, borrowed his father’s electric drill, and removed a restraining bolt, required by state law, that limited its capacity to a 10-round clip. That modification allowed him to load multiple 30-round magazines, making it easier for him to hunt, target and kill Black people, according to a manifesto he posted online.

While mass shootings, defined by many experts as episodes involving four or more fatalities, represent a relatively small percentage of overall gun crimes, they have risen drastically in recent years, with at least eight of the 20 deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history taking place since 2014.

That a majority of these criminals have made their gateway purchases though legal means reflects the profound inadequacy of local, state and federal statutes to detect or deter mass shooters, say law enforcement officials, researchers and the families of people they killed.

“The reality in this country right now, is that anyone who wants to cause harm to themselves, or do someone else harm, can easily acquire the means to do so — legally,” said Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was killed in the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., in 2018.

“Based on what we know about Buffalo, the system seems to have been followed, but the problem is with the system itself,” he added. “The reality of life in America, the big problem, is that these people don’t have to jump through enough hurdles to get a gun.”

The Biden administration renewed its calls to ban semiautomatic weapons and expand national background checks in the wake of the attack in Buffalo on Saturday, as it has done time and again after mass shootings. While White House officials have taken some executive actions — such as nominating a permanent director to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — their legislative efforts have little chance of success.

At the state level, hopes for new gun control measures are even bleaker.

One by one, Republican-controlled state legislatures have enacted laws to undo existing gun regulations that place restrictions on the purchase and carrying of firearms, while some states, like Missouri, are challenging the federal government’s right to impose any regulation on firearms.

The biggest threat to gun control looms just over the horizon: Over the next month or two, the Supreme Court is expected to strike down all or part of a New York State law that curtails the concealed possession of a gun without a special permit, a case seen as a potential landmark decision that could invalidate dozens of similar laws in liberal-leaning states.

“The infuriating part is that we seem to be going backward,” said James Densley, a co-founder of the Violence Project, a nonpartisan research center that compiled the data used in the National Institute of Justice report.

While it is hard to make broad generalizations, Mr. Densley and his partner, Jillian Peterson, discerned several patterns among gunmen in recent mass shootings. Many have clean records and can buy guns legally. If they are underage or young adults, they often obtain guns as gifts from the parents — or borrow or steal weapons from their house.

Many favor long guns, like AR-15s and AK-47s. Semiautomatic rifles account for fewer than 1 percent of overall shootings in the United States, they found — but 25 percent of mass shootings.

And many of those accused of these crimes, like the suspect in the Buffalo shooting, see their killings as public performance, making them inclined to stealthily plan their attacks until they take action, in hopes of maximizing the attention paid to them. That makes them harder to detect, even in a state with relatively strong gun laws, like New York.

“In a lot of cases, you can’t really stop people from buying a gun, unless they are disqualified because they have committed a felony, or because they have been involuntary committed to a mental hospital,” Mr. Densley added. “It doesn’t matter if the red flags are there. The legal bar is high.”

The 19-year-old attacker who killed Jaime Guttenberg and 16 others in Parkland bought his Smith & Wesson M&P15, another AR-15 clone, from a licensed dealer after passing an instant background check, even though school officials warned local law enforcement he had made violent, racist threats.

The 21-year-old man who murdered more than 20 people at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019 targeted Latinos and espoused many of the same racist theories as Mr. Gendron. He ordered his AK-47 clone online, from Romania, and later picked up the gun and ammunition at a Dallas-area gun shop after passing the requisite background checks.

The antisemitic extremist who killed 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 also legally bought the weapon he used.

T. Christian Heyne, the vice president of the gun control group Brady, said the only way to stop mass killings was to enact strengthened universal federal background checks, to compensate for the wide variation in state and local laws. But that proposal has stalled in the Senate despite enjoying overwhelming public support.

“Without a federal baseline, we can’t achieve anything,” he said. “We have just had a report showing gun violence is at historic levels, and now his happens. What are we going to do about it as a country? Are we really this desensitized?”

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The suspect in Saturday’s mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery store was able to legally purchase a semiautomatic rifle.Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

Robert Donald, the owner of the store in Endicott who sold Mr. Gendron his gun, was stunned when federal law enforcement officials contacted him about the purchase.

He said nothing about the young man raised any suspicions; in fact, he hardly remembered him at all. But he told The New York Times on Sunday that “any gun can be easily modified if you really want to do it,” when asked about the illegal modifications Mr. Gendron made to the Bushmaster.

For his part, Mr. Gendron boasted of his handiwork, complete with painstakingly composed how-to pictures, in his online manifesto.

The document is 180 pages. About half of it is a racial screed. About half of it is devoted to a matter-of-fact discussion of the ideal gear — guns, ammunition, pistol grips, body armor, helmets — to buy, online or at flea markets, when planning a mass shooting.

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