courtesy heavy.com

More than 24 hours after Travis Reinking shot up a Nashville area Waffle House restaurant, murdering four people and wounding two others, he is somehow still at large and the subject of an expanding manhunt.

After Reinking fled the scene of the shooting completely naked, police believe he went to his apartment, put on a pair of pants and may have escaped into the woods.

“A man believed to be Travis Reinking was last seen in a wood line near Discovery at Mountain View Apts. on Mountain Springs Drive near the Waffle House,” police tweeted. “The man was seen wearing black pants and no shirt.”

A police helicopter and a police dog tried to track the suspect after the shooting, but the dogs lost the scent, police said.

Again, Reinking had a prominent run-in with the law before yesterday’s shooting. He managed to get himself into a “restricted area” outside the White House last year.

Reinking said he wanted to meet with US President Donald Trump and told a Secret Service officer at the northeast entrance that he was a “sovereign citizen” who had a “right to inspect the grounds,” according to a Metropolitan Police Department incident report dated July 7, 2017.

He was charged with unlawful entry, an arrest report states, but the charges were dismissed after he completed community service.

At the FBI’s request, Reinking’s Illinois firearms authorization was revoked, and four weapons — including the AR-15 style rifle used in the Sunday’s shooting — were seized

Authorities in Tazewell County, Illinois, later returned the seized weapons to Reinking’s father, who gave them back to his son, police said.

And, against all odds, he is apparently mentally ill.

Reinking’s brush with law enforcement in the nation’s capital was not his first. Documents obtained by CNN affiliate WBBM from the sheriff’s office in Tazewell County, Illinois suggest a troubling pattern involving guns and what one police report described as “delusional” behavior.

“Travis is hostile toward police and does not recognize police authority. Travis also possesses several firearms,” an officer said in a May 2016 incident report. At the time, Reinking’s parents had called emergency services to report their son believed pop star Taylor Swift was stalking him, and he had made comments about killing himself.

He once showed up at a co-worker’s home wearing a pink dress and carrying a rifle. It’s not clear if that was before or after he told police that Taylor Swift had hacked his Neflix account and wanted to meet him at a local Dairy Queen.

Also . . .

Around the same time, the Tremont Police Department responded to a call to a public pool, according to another incident report. The pool director told the responding officer that a man in his 20s barged into the pool wearing a pink women’s housecoat, the report states. The man dove into the pool and took off the coat and swam around in his underwear. When he got out of the pool, he shouted at lifeguards that he was a man and exposed his genitals to them, the report states.

So again, we have a clearly mentally disturbed individual, someone who had numerous interactions with law enforcement over the years due to his erratic behavior. He had brandished firearms at others and despite dozens of red flags raised over the years, got little or no help from family or authorities. But somehow this will be blamed on the NRA.

Oh, wait . . .

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63 COMMENTS

    • He was trying to kill Trump last summer, long before Trump started in on his anti-gun departure, so it’s possible but seems illogical (of course, the guy also picks up Taylor Swift on his fillings, so that guarantees nothing)

      • No, he didn’t, he wanted to meet with Trump, Trump wasn’t at the White House, to talk about their mutual enemies.

        Continuing to repeat this lie is unhelpful.

        • Barn is a long-standing Never Trumper. He is incorrigible. Don’t waste any effort with Barn.

    • You clearly don’t understand propaganda.
      Just as we have always been at war with Eastasia, every person that owns a gun, or is not fiercely against the ownership of guns except by government officials, is a member of the NRA.
      It does not matter if one has never had a membership, made a donation, read any of the magazines, or visited the website; Membership in the NRA is more of an unavoidable and inevitable tainting of people who tolerate guns (except those belonging to government) in any form than something one actively obtains.
      Worst of all, though, are those members of the NRA who actually ARE members of the NRA, and the worst of them are the Life Members.
      Unless they’re dead. Then, they vote Democratic, and are in favor of commonsensegunsafetycontrol. They also comprise the 97% of NRA members quoted in polls who want Universal Background Checks and a ban on assault weapons with high-caliber magazines.

    • His father returned the rifles *THE FBI GAVE TO HIM* back to his son. Ask yourselves; does the FBI usually give immediate family members seized firearms from a felon/mental incompetent? Seems like an odd choice of action, especially when forfeiture is both justified in this case and easier from a process standpoint (and I understand these guns weren’t particularly valuable or notable)

      I wonder if we find out this papa was also a long time FBI informant who was ‘keeping an eye on’ his radicalized son for the feds.

      • “At the FBI’s request, Reinking’s Illinois firearms authorization was revoked”

        Disregarding yesterday, how the hell does that work? Where was due process with that action to revoke some BS commie Ill process? The guy took a gun to the Whitehouse it would be a SS issue not FBI.

        News that the FBI is in on the manhunt. Why? Murder is a state crime not fed. Ignoring that the FBI is really busy attempting to find their ass.

        • There are processes for both repeal and appeal of the FOID Card, the Illinois state issued permission slip for residents to own a gun. It sucks, but it is a far cry from the hoops some states make you jump through for every single transaction.

          One of the things that can trigger a repeal is a request from law enforcement. However, there has to be a specific, legitimate reason that gets reviewed.

        • It doesn’t matter if he lost his FOID in Soviet Illinoistan. If he was living in Tennessee and was not considered a Prohibited Person by the FBI, then his dad was legally able to give him his guns back. He also had one AR15 and a handgun and 2 other guns that are presumably still at his dad’s house in Illinois, not four ARs like the Occupy Canadian commies tweeted. This whole thing smells like a good, old fashioned Alex Jones conspiracy, and they’re ready to pin it on Alex Jones for “radicalizing” some wacko.

  4. Again- this is bad, either way.
    We don’t want nutjobs to have guns, but, when the government gets to declare you sane or insane in order to decide what Civil Rights you get….well….
    In China, you can be locked in a mental institution for “Political Mania”. Symptoms include:
    Regularly attending political rallies, an obsession with having a say in the political process, and an obsession with democratic forms of government.
    They lock you away- involuntarily, of course, for decades for this illness.
    Putting mental health restrictions on a Civil Right will result in the same thing here.

    • The Soviets and other Warsaw Pact countries used to do that, too, before their system fell. If you were a political dissident or put yourself out there in a way that attracted negative government attention, they’d just commit you to a mental institution (or a gulag) for a long, long time. As you can see, the lefties in this country seem to be glomming onto that idea, too. There are some genuinely mentally ill people running around that probably need to be committed (with due process, of course), but I could also see the lib-progs using this idea (once they have political power) to put away under various pretenses otherwise-sane people whose political thinking they don’t concur with. I’m confident the lefties are also considering Vietnam-style re-education camps as another tool for “fixing” political opponents in the future.

        • The things they shove down our throats right now don’t cause “permanent damage.” There are things that cause nightmare, things that make you fat, and things that make sex take a really, really long time, but if you stop taking them their effects are usually totally reversible. Of course Leftists are always the first to advocate for high-velocity lobotomies to make their political enemies docile. Just wait til they bring back chemical castration again, only this time for those convicted of being Republicans instead of homos!

  5. Our country was BETTER when turds like this lunatic were sent to a looney bin. I lived in the large city of Chicago where the landscape is teaming with crazies. Daddy is an indulgent(and criminal) idiot…I hope they get this murderer.

  6. Aw what a bigot of you to call him mentally disturbed? He just wore a woman’s dress! She might identify as a woman when she put it on, and switched when he took it off. Yknow, the gender fluid thing. And it’s misogynistic to say a dress is for females only.

    • Yes. Can’t be suggesting that tranny inclinations is a signal of being crazy (but a gun “fetish” is).

  8. This freak believed that Taylor Swift was stalking him and hacking his phone! What’s the point of any gun laws if we have incompetent officials that don’t care if someone like running around with a rifle in a pink dress??????

  9. So in other words, life for the general public is exactly the same as the day he was released after hopping the White House fence in an attempt to kill the president last summer.

    The authorities didn’t feel the need for such concern then, I don’t see why we should be concerned now.

  10. The proposed ” Extreme Risk Protection Orders ” like SB 501 ,or SB 18 — In Pa. consider simply owning a gun or having recently bought one ….. as EVIDENCE of mental instability to be considered. — Thats right , YOU are ALREADY Guilty if they say so !

    “” SB 18
    Senate Bill 18, sponsored by Wayne Fontana (D), seeks to provide for “extreme risk orders,” where in ex parte hearings (i.e. in the absence of due process) an individual can be stripped of their constitutional right to Keep and Bear Arms. The text can be found here. Better yet, it even provides — immunity … to the person seeking an extreme risk order, even if there were purposeful omissions or misstatements in the petition! ”

    https://blog.princelaw.com/

  11. I think the .38 special is underated.granted it won’t keep up with a .357 but loaded hot it will do anything a 9×19 will do and even better.Your not going to have the capacity of a Glock that’s for sure but most DGU’ s aretwhat ? 2.5 shots fired?? How you get a half a shot?. A five shot snubby .38 is okay

    • My bedside is a Model 15 , .38 Special . If that doesn’t persuade the perp to go elsewhere , I up the ante to the Win 870 12 gauge PDX rounds. Hope I never have to even think about using them , but….

  14. At the time, Reinking’s parents had called emergency services to report their son believed pop star Taylor Swift was stalking him, and he had made comments about killing himself.

    Anti-depressants + methamphetamine?

    • More likely paranoid schizophrenia. Which seems to be a common affliction with mass killers.

      • Too true. To compound things, Paranoid Schizophrenia often does not show itself until late teens or early adulthood. Bad time as one could already have purchased arms while seeming fine. We need a better test for afflictions like these. A few years back researchers (Indiana school of medicine) were trying to study DNA to develop a predictable pattern of those with schizophrenia. Honestly this type of research is worth funding as these ticking time bombs are becoming easy fodder for gun control establishment since it endorses the narrative that you can be fine and then “go crazy” like the Vegas guy and dozens of other high profile cases. If we can prove at some point that someone has genes that all but guarantee schizophrenia development, it will be a hard discussion we need to have about this data being available for background checks. We need to harden our targets. It goes without saying this testing would have to be 99.9+% infallible.

        • The problem is, as I understand it, Paranoid Schizophrenia is not an A-B, yes-no kinda thing.

          The ‘spectrum’ ranges from ‘peel them off the walls’ schizo to someone who seems kinda normal, but who has ‘personality quirks’.

          Like someone showing signs of Asperger’s syndrome at one end, and full-blown Autism at the other.

          A guy wearing a pink dress and diving into a public pool and flashing people is one thing, adding threatening behavior with firearms is far more problematic…

  15. Let’s hope he points a sort piece of silverpipe at a deputy and they put him out of fucking misery.

  16. Years ago shortly after I started working for a very large computer corp, I was working the night shift when a coworker showed up very late for his shift in boxers and a jacket. One of my coworkers called management and they had a security guard escort him out, and he went home.

    It turned out he went off his meds when his wife left him, and took their kid. He wasn’t violent just depressed and not coping well with the stress. Last I heard he moved back out of state to live with family. Not everyone who is nuts is dangerous.

  19. I’ve heard a story that Edgar Allan Poe was booted from West Point because he showed up to formation in the uniform of the day, which was white gloves. Apparently he failed to put on the rest of his uniform. But he never killed anyone as far as anyone knows, just dreamed up gruesome ways to do so.

    • Before he was appointed a cadet at West Point, Poe was an enlisted member of the Army, achieving the rank of Sergeant Major of Artillery at a young age. However, become dissatisfied with the Army, Poe sought and eventually received a discharge before his five-year enlistment was up. A few years later, he applied for and was accepted as a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. There again he became dissatisfied and began a campaign of racking up demerits by not going to formation, chapel and so forth. At his court-martial, he pled not guilty, knowing it would result in his dismissal from the Academy, rather than a conviction and brig time. I don’t know if the story is true about Poe appearing in the uniform of the day in white gloves only, but it sounds consistent with what is known about his attempt to get dismissed from the Academy, and he had certainly been in the Army long enough to know how to play the system.

  20. Now does “Shall Not Be Infringed” apply to this whacko?

    This guy has no business having access to firearms. Should be locked up is the obvious first answer.

  21. Sure, the NRA must be the reason why this guy was never thrown in the looney bin. That must be it.

  22. Some people just can not be fixed ! I hope he gives himself that frontal labotamy , via lead insertion to the frontal lobe. Why waste taxpayers time and resources. Let the coward repair his mental illness once and for all. Bet he wont though.

  23. Once again I am not surprised the parents knew and refused to do anything to stop their murderer from killing innocent people. It’s a common pattern… They are the people who can give all the evidence necessary to stop their crazy son from murdering with legal guns. It will keep happening until the parents are held accountable for their offspring.

    People are going to get mad at the black rifle rather than the parents or the government. Look what happened with the Parkland shooter. Americans don’t like responsibility and rather blame objects.

    By the way, if you ever hear a white guy say Taylor Swift is stalking them or going to meet them randomly, that’s a common sign of a crazy white guy who is likely going to shoot someone. I have seen that with numerous people.

    • Why is it always Taylor Swift?

      Why not Ethel Merman? I mean, her singing could drive people over the edge. Why not Ethel?
      Or Yoko Ono? She could break earthenware plates. . .

      I’m confused.

  24. I see that TTAG is now deleting comments.

    The guy who said that law enforcement is allowing him to be out so they can push for more gun control.

    I guess you’re only allowed to parrot the cookie cutter phrases of “ban this” and “mentally ill that”, and any insistence that the government has an agenda and will put the lives of its citizens in jeapordy to push it are Verboten.

    Hell TTAG now even gives the gun grabbers an open forum here, but to those of us who want more freedom? Nope…

    I guess TTAG has been bought off by the big police lobby, now that RF no longer runs things.

    P.S. Let’s see how long it takes before my comment is deleted too.

      • Next thing you know Sheriff Israel and the BCSO will give him a medal for “bravery” and “courage” for helping them continue their war on American’s God-given rights.

  25. I live 50 miles away from Nashville Tennessee. I’m glad I moved here from California so that I can practice my second amendment civil rights. I carry daily, and I visit the Nashville almost every weekend.

    The father was wrong to give his mentally ill son his guns back. Or to not have secure them and have his son steal them from him. This part only makes everyone look bad.

    • Daddy MoreBucks will buy his son out of trouble, or at least arrange for a verdict of diminished responsibility for care in a psychiatric institution.

  26. Let me FIFY…

    Known Whack-Wolfe Shooter Still Not Found

    Surprising no one, White House then Waffle House-guy still not found. The Whack-Job who fled naked into the woods after shooting up a restaurant on Taylor Swift’s orders has not yet been located by the authoritah’s who couldn’t’ keep an eye on him after stalking the White House. Investigation revealed that he had a history of irresponsibly handling wardrobe choices, public pools, his underwear, and music — capitol offenses, all. Some observers argue he is not responsible — that finding coherent direction in Taylor Swift lyrics is prima facie evidence of delusion — and are calling for better mental health services.

    Related, James Shaw Jr. who wrestles the gun from Flappy-Whacky to “… make him work for this kill.” has not been charged for the moment he admittedly controlled the fire arm to throw it “over a counter” in his own words.

    Authoritah’s do know exactly where Mr. Shaw is, because there’s no telling when, of if, he will hero again. Local prosecutors indicated that neither Waffle House nor Mr Shaw has been charged with discrimination on the basis of mental health, gender presentation, or musical taste, although investigation continues.

    Certain Republican law-and-order types are preparing to introduce the “You Listen to What? act for Sensible Gun Control” making certain musical preferences grounds for denial of gun ownership on the basis that anyone voluntarily listening to that is obviously insane. The problem, sponsors say, is as always finding common ground. The DoD has declined to provide a list of “music” is used in detention and psy-ops citing both national security and the Geneva Conventions. The DNC has declined to comment on the record, until they “… can decide who’s more icky.”

    John Denver and Frank Zappa were unavailable for comment. Senator Chris Rock and Twisted Sister released a joint statement reading in part: “F*** Yeah, Keep People Who Listen to That S*** Disarmed …
    We have a list.”

  27. White House, Waffle House, Bug House. It’s a downhill progression for that crazy Reinking bastard if he isn’t found dead.

  28. Good lord… It’s starting to look like certain parts of the government WANT this kind of stuff to happen. (Note that I said it *looks like*, not that it does…but man, does it ever really look like…)

  29. “A man believed to be Travis Reinking was last seen in a wood line near Discovery at Mountain View Apts. on Mountain Springs Drive near the Waffle House,” police tweeted. “The man was seen wearing black pants and no shirt.”

    Pants and no shirt? How was he recognized?

  30. Another example of wanting more gun laws, while not enforcing the laws already on the books. Some government officials not doing their job. Parents probably afraid of their son and afraid to say “NO!” Knowing their son may have mental issues and giving him guns is the ISSUE not gun laws. The parents should have asked for help or had the guns stored elsewhere.
    However, after temporary medical issues (not permanent mental issues) have been cleared. It would’ve been acceptable to return someone’s guns. Physical illnesses can make people that are very unlikely to harm anyone to react violently due to irritability and stress. After that illness is cleared up the person will return to their normal self. This isn’t the case with the shooter. He should never have been given the guns. Possibly not been allowed to have guns from the start depending on when his mental issues began. His parents should have been aware of early problems.

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