The racist Florida shooter’s ideology extends to ordinary people

‘Ron DeSantis’s Florida recenters the world through the lens of an America defined by whiteness and Christianity.’ Photograph: Corey Perrine/AP

On Saturday, Ryan Palmeter, a 21-year-old gunman, entered a dollar store in Jacksonville, Florida, and killed 52-year-old Angela Carr, 19-year-old AJ Laguerre Jr and 29-year-old Jerrald Gallion. All three victims were Black Americans. This shooting comes on the heels of an even larger mass shooting of Black Americans last year, in Buffalo, New York, where 18-year-old Payton Gendron murdered 10 people.

In less than two years, two young white men have committed two mass murders of Americans motivated by an explicit desire to kill Black people.