One strong indicator of a Narrative at work is the presence of people connected to similar previous events:
The parents of one of the Stonewall Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida happened to be in El Paso on Saturday.
I said the over/under was three, although I was anticipating a connection to Las Vegas rather than Parkland. But regardless, we’re already at two. Let’s just say this isn’t the first time there has been an “amazing coincidence” of this type.
- Gilroy Garlic Festival: 3 also survived Las Vegas shooting 2 years ago
- Telemachus Orfanos, 27, died alongside 11 others when a man opened fire at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, north-west of Los Angeles. He escaped death last year when a gunman killed 58 people in Las Vegas.
- A woman from California who survived the Las Vegas attack had been driving to her job in San Bernardino, California, when the mass shooting at that city’s Inland Regional Center began in December 2015.
- Parkland survivor’s dad escaped harm in Las Vegas shooting.
- One of the victims of the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, had been at the site of a mass shooting in Toronto only a month before.
The odds against one person in a country of 320 million being in the vicinity of two such events are astronomical. The odds of this happening at least six times are astronomical squared. What the explanation is, I don’t know, but the probability math indicates extreme skepticism is required.