Have been reading up on El Paso—because war is God's way of teaching Americans world geography and mass shootings are His way of teaching us American geography. I would not have guessed it's as big as it is: almost 700,000 and #22 on the population list, between Boston and Detroit. It's bigger than (besides Detroit) Nashville, Portland, Memphis, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Kansas City, and Miami, all of which I think of as "major American cities," a category I would not have thought to put El Paso in. If you add in Juarez, Mexico, on the other side of the Rio Grande, and suburbs, the metro area has a population of around 2.7 million.
Before Saturday, there had been 12 homicides so far this year in El Paso. In the present century, the number of homicides per year has ranged from 5 to 23, with an average of 16. For reference, Minneapolis, a much smaller city, has been averaging over the same period about 40 homicides per year. I saw Beto O'Rourke and the El Paso mayor say, in separate interviews, that they "knew" no one from El Paso could have committed this atrocious crime, an odd claim considering there have to be some nuts in a city that big. But it is a safe big city, and the killer did drive nine hours from his home in a Dallas suburb to the El Paso Walmart, where he knew there'd be a lot of brown people to shoot. About 5 in 6 residents are Hispanic.
US News rates El Paso the eleventh best place in the United States to retire. The weather is warm and dry and costs are low. The average home price is under $160,000. The city is home to the University of Texas at El Paso, which has an undergraduate enrollment of about 21,000. The university is still known for having won the 1966 NCAA basketball tournament, when their all black starting five defeated in the championship game legendary Coach Adolph Rupp's unintegrated team from the University of Kentucky. Today, about 80 percent of the UTEP student body is Mexican-American. The in-state tuition is about $7500 per year.
In the last presidential election, Clinton received 69 percent of the vote in El Paso County (to 26 percent for Trump). By way of comparison, Clinton got 66 percent of the vote in Traverse County (Austin), 61 percent in Dallas County, and 54 percent in both Bexar County (San Antonio) and Harris County (Houston). Of course, rural and small-town Texas is unending and overwhelmingly Republican, which explains why the Walmart shooter probably did not break a single law till he began firing in the parking lot. Carrying around an AK-47 and as much ammo as one of our marines on foot patrol in Fallujah is A-OK in Texas.
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