I saw a great article examining his possible motives on NPR. They pointed out the likihood that, as much as everyone is trying to point fingers, his was probably not a political killing in the way we’re imagining it.

For those who study political and extremist violence, the substance of the messages on the bullet casings is far less revealing than the simple fact that the shooter made the inscriptions at all. They say this act, combined with information revealed through other news reports and contained within the charging document in Utah, indicate that the suspect was thinking deliberately about how he would ultimately be situated within the universe of mass shooters and high-profile killers in the U.S.

“What he was doing here with this act was very performative,” said Senters. “He was performing ‘Internet culture’ — and specifically mass shooting culture in general — with the etchings on the shell casings being memes, with the joking about having a manifesto. It’s all very performative in that regard.”

The whole thing is worth a read, but I found the closing bit rather chilling:

“If you look at how long we’ve been talking about the Charlie Kirk shooting, there is perhaps a worrisome thought that can form that, oh, if someone is looking to sort of make their name in this online shooter space, then maybe a targeted political shooting is now a better way to do that than a mass shooting,” he said, “because we’ve become so sort of like inculcated to the tragedy of mass shootings that [they take] up space and the mass discourse for a handful of days before we all move on to the next thing.”