A rifle-wielding white supremacist entered Washington's Holocaust museum on Wednesday afternoon, fatally shooting a security guard before being wounded himself by return fire from other guards, authorities said.
Stephen Tyrone Johns, a six-year veteran of the museum's security staff, later "died heroically in the line of duty," said Sara Bloomfield, museum director.
More about Stephen Tyrone Johns at Wapo.
Colleagues called Stephen T. Johns "Big John," for he was well over 6 feet tall. But mostly friends recalled the security guard's constant courtesy and friendliness.
"A soft-spoken, gentle giant," said Milton Talley, a former employee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where Johns was killed yesterday in the line of duty -- shot, authorities said, by an avowed white supremacist who entered the museum with a rifle.
RIP
The shooter's name is James W. von Brunn, an 88 year old white supremacist from Maryland.
Holocaust Memorial shooter James von Brunn ran a website calling for a “Holy Western Empire.”
The Holy Western Empire website (currently offline) included links to a book written by von Brunn’s that claimed among other things that there was a ” JEW CONSPIRACY to destroy the White gene-pool.” The page also details von Brunn’s attempt in”1981 to place the Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System (FED), under legal, non-violent citizens-arrest.”
The idea of a “Holy Western Empire” is popular among some white supremacist groups, and calls for a the establishment of the white, Christian empire based roughly on the Roman Western Empire in the 4th century, although led by the United States.
More details about Brunn and his website and ideology, via MSNBC:
Von Brunn has a racist, anti-Semitic Web site and wrote a book titled "Kill the Best Gentiles," alleging a Jewish "conspiracy to destroy the white gene pool."
In 1983, he was convicted of attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board. He was arrested two years earlier outside the room where the board was meeting, carrying a revolver, knife and sawed-off shotgun. At the time, police said Von Brunn wanted to take the members hostage because of high interest rates and the nation's economic difficulties.
Writings attributed to von Brunn on the Internet say the Holocaust was a hoax and decry a Jewish conspiracy to "destroy the white gene pool."
"At Auschwitz the 'Holocaust' myth became Reality, and Germany, cultural gem of the West, became a pariah among world nations," it says.
More at the Examiner.
Needless to say the blogosphere is abuzz with blame games, but folks, really, the only one to blame here is the sick bastard that went in shooting.
Perhaps people should take a second to send their sympathy to Stephen Tyrone Johns' family instead ranting and railing and casting guilt and blame everywhere but where it should be... again, the shooter.
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