1y ago

‘Thwarted diabolical plot': Man arrested minutes before mass shooting at Northern Virginia church, police say

www.nbcwashington.com ‘Thwarted diabolical plot': Man arrested minutes before mass shooting at Northern Virginia church, police say

Authorities have arrested a man who they say was minutes away from carrying out a mass shooting at a church in Northern Virginia on Sunday morning.

Investigators said they were able to stop the potential massacre at Park Valley Church in Haymarket thanks to someone who saw troubling posts on Instagram and called police

Authorities arrested a man who they say was minutes away from carrying out a mass shooting at a church in Northern Virginia on Sunday morning.

Rui Jiang, 35, was taken into custody with a loaded gun and extra ammo at Park Valley Church in Haymarket. Authorities said he was on a mission to kill.

“This was a thwarted diabolical plot to kill churchgoers in Haymarket, Virginia … and local law enforcement stopped it,” Chief Kevin Davis of the Fairfax County Police Department said.

“Minutes. Minutes. The congregation was making their way into the church. He was in the vestibule of the church about to enter,” Davis said. “So, minutes or seconds away.”

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96 comments

Another mass shooting narrowly averted and the only comments here are how stupid religious people are because they happened to thank their God.
Maybe take a moment to reflect on if this level of tribalism and callousness represents the sort of person you want to be.
- What's a tankie for cultists called?
  
  Fundamentalist
  
  A thankie?
- Nah religion is harmful i'ma shame them
  
  Is it? The meta analysis I've seen is less clear.
  
  Nobody's talking about mental health, just their effect on society
  
  How many wars have been fought because of someone's god? How many people have been murdered because they worshiped the same god in a different way? How many children have been abused because the adults thought they were following their god's will? Religion is harmful.
  
  You guys really harp on that one gold nugget found in a pile of shit. Wow you get slightly lower alcoholism rates if you believe in skydaddy. Big freaken deal. It doesn't excuse or makeup for anything.
- I have and it does. Now restore Roe v Wade
  
  I fully support a woman's right to choose without conditions because I believe it's wrong to require that someone keep someone else alive with their own body. It removes that person's agency and reduces them to less than a person. We can't require that people donate organs after they die, so we obviously can't require that they host another person against their will.
  A person should have more rights and protections than a corpse. Obviously.
  
  Don't assume the poster's position on that issue... I believe in God and I believe in the right to abortion too, everything is not black or white.
  
  Sure.
- Thank you. I'll get hammered with downvotes but not everyone who believes in God is a moron, or a Republican, or a Trump supporter, or anti-science, or homophobic, or judgmental or any other shit like that. Some of us are pretty normal.
  
  You must be a pretty terrible Christian, because the Bible is overwhelmingly anti-science and God's stance on homosexuality couldn't be any clearer. I don't think you're allowed to pick and choose what parts of the Bible to follow 🤔
  
  Christians are a diverse bunch. I've seen people claiming the label who do and do not believe the Bible is inerrant or sometimes even inspired. I've seen people who claim the label practice rituals that look very similar to what some Wiccans do.
  The reality though is that every Christian picks and chooses. People should be held responsible for how they behave, not the labels they claim or the trauma you've incurred by people claiming that label.
  I understand why so many take issue with right wing American evangelicals who can't even manage to align with Jesus himself, but the bigotry I've seen today is just depressing.
  
  Who cares that the rituals are a bit different? It is still the religion with the highest kill count and the source of worldwide problems. Just within my lifetime Christianity led a crusade into Iraq that killed a million people and sent crises all over the region.
  
  Any person's opinion of how "good" or "bad" of a Christian I am is meaningless to me. I think and do what I feel is morally right by me.
  
  You arent wrong. Neuroscience has proven that your God believes the same things you believe. Isn't that amazing? The being that like 14,000,000,000 years ago made the entire universe and has been managing every moment with at least a precision of .000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000044 seconds while managing 2-8 x 1,000,000,000,000 galaxies each containing 1-4 x 100,000,000,000 stars happens to agree with you about masturbation.
  Amazing.
  
  You’re allowed to believe whatever you like. I’ve been an atheist since I realized the other kids believed in Noah, but let people keep whatever tiny thing gives them comfort, especially if they do it while expanding the church to accept anyone.
  
  You're right. Believing in the literal existence of any god or supernatural entity obviously doesn't imply that the believer is a moron in a general intellectual sense. There are plenty of highly skilled and academically-inclined religious people, including scientists. However, such beliefs do reflect an inability or stubborn unwillingness to align with a scientific worldview, which in turn suggests some form of psychological weakness. I mean, honestly, what would you think of someone who believes in the literal existence of fairies, ghosts, and invisible dragons and organized their world view around those beliefs? You may not actively dislike or discriminate against such people, but you would wonder at their psychological constitution and susceptibility to delusion. And surely you would be worried if they became a majority and started voting for politicians whose goal is to align your society with their invisible magic dragon worship. It's just so...utterly ridiculous. That's why atheists use the shorthand moniker "moron" when referring to religious people. We don't mean that religious people are literally intellectually incapable, just that they hold an inexplicably stupid and inconsistent worldview. The negativity component doesn't apply to the fairy-believers and dragon-worshippers because they are an unthreatening fringe. Christians and Muslims, however, are large, dangerous, and politically influential groups who have shown a tendency towards forcing their views on others. And a majority of Christians, especially the most vocal ones, do vote for Trump. I don't hate all individual Christians or Muslims, who can be perfectly nice people, but I really do hate public and especially political religious expression.
  
  I can definitely agree with you that many religious people attempt to force their beliefs on others. Many also use faith for monetary gain or power. It's a serious problem.
  
  I never once ever called a person a moron for believing in skydaddy. I know it simply isn't true because I have worked with plenty of wicked smart skydaddy followers. Also I was one and didn't get any smarter when I left religion.
  The rest of the stuff yeah sure you are all basically the same. Don't really care that some of you pretend to be otherwise on the internet. I have seen how you vote and that is all the data I need. Sorry your Pope is having legal issues now.
  
  Weird. I'm a moderate liberal who voted for Biden but by all means continue to believe in your stereotypes. I'm also not Catholic and could give two shits about the Pope.
  
  Don't cut yourself with that edge.
  
  2005 wants their one-liner back.
  
  I'll stop saying that when theists stop thinking atheists eat babies or are in league with some sort of archfiend that only exists in their own religion.
  
  Excuse me, I know many Atheists who have a pact with a Great Old One. Some of them enjoy the flavor and better spell selection. /s
- Lemmy stinks like shit lately. I never subbed to r/atheism for this reason. Then we got Hexbear pretending that pictures of pigs pooping on their balls is activism. This is like every other reddit alternative: after a few months, only the most unsavory people stick around. It's miserable here.
  
  I mean ... what did they think the result of those low effort posts would be, exactly? I've been on the Internet long enough to see far, FAR worse than that. All it does is clutter up a thread.
  OTOH, threads like these are great for my blocklist. Makes it easy to screen out histrionic bigots that can't differentiate between an Episcopalian or United Methodist with a gay priest who's worst crime against humanity involves providing housing for folks in their community and some batshit nuts Evangelical White Nationalist.
- It's like a time machine back to 2014 with all these comments and overused insults.
  
  If you go back even further you could see the Twin Towers before the faithful crashed planes into them.
  
  I thought 9-11 was about America supporting Israel
  
  2014? Oh, my sweet summer child.

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