It may be culturally incorrect to say this, but drugs are the X factor in any number of mass shootings. Particularly when mentally ill people start self-medicating. And Connor Betts, the Dayton mass shooter, a socialist who supported Elizabeth Warren, was apparently a heavy user.
Hours after the August 4 attack, agents with the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives visited the home of Ethan Kollie in nearby Kettering, according to a probable cause affidavit. Kollie told the agents he enjoyed firearms, owned two pistols and had bought body armor and a firearms accessory for Betts earlier this year, the affidavit says.
The 24-year-old allowed agents to search his home, where they smelled marijuana and saw a water pipe, commonly used to consume cannabis, and a Draco pistol, the affidavit says.
Clearly, a genius.
Betts had just carried out a mass shooting with the aid of accessories that Kollie had obtained for him. Kollie then welcomes the Feds to tour his apartment where he’s got drug gear lying around because he apparently assumes that drug laws no longer apply, and is too dim to realize that the Feds want someone to drag in to court after a bunch of people were killed, and they’re not going to just ignore his pot stash.
But Kollie keeps making things worse.
Agents interviewed Kollie again, this time at his place of employment, on Thursday. During that interview, Kollie told agents he had done hard drugs, marijuana and LSD with Betts several times a week between 2014 and 2015, the affidavit says.He also told agents that he had smoked marijuana every day for the past decade, according to the affidavit.
Way to dodge that perjury trap. Or not.
When Kollie filled out the ATF paperwork to obtain the Draco pistol in May, the affidavit says, he checked the “no” box when asked whether he had been a regular user of marijuana or any other controlled substance.
The takeaway is that Betts was a fairly heavy user. Did that make him more likely to support Elizabeth Warren?
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