Pizzagate gunman is now dead. I shed no tears.

You wouldn’t know the name Edgar Maddison Welch from a random flip through a telephone book. But nearly a decade ago, Edgar Maddison Welch committed a crime that showed the dangers of online conspiracy theories.

Yep, Edgar Maddison Welch was the Pizzagate gunman.

Let me explain.

In the run-up to the 2016 Presidential race, someone got their mitts on some hacked emails, and began searching through them for clues to something, anything nefarious that could be tied to the Hillary Clinton election campaign. And after connecting some imaginary dots with some superfluous lines, a conspiracy theory appeared – that allegedly, Democratic operatives were trafficking children in the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor.

How do you come up with all this? I mean, this is serious “Paul McCartney is dead and Elvis Presley is alive” stretching here.

Well, that conspiracy theory became so prevalent among the Internet – heck, even wack job Alex Jones promoted it on his InfoWars podcast – that one person, Edgar Maddison Welch, decided he would undertake his own “search and rescue” mission, and drove from North Carolina to Washington, D.C. – armed with weapons – and entered the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria and started shooting. He wanted to find those children that were being trafficked in the pizza parlor’s basement.

Comet Ping Pong does NOT have a basement. There were no children trafficked in that pizza parlor, then or ever. Welch was arrested. He was convicted in 2017 after pleading guilty to weapons charges in connection with the incident, and served four years in prison.

Last Saturday, Welch was a passenger in a car that was pulled over by police. According to NBC News, the police pulled the vehicle over for a traffic violation, when they recognized Welch – a passenger in the front seat – as having an outstanding warrant for violating probation. Welch drew a gun and aimed it at the police. After refusing to lower his gun, police discharged their duty weapons and shot Welch. He died a few days later.

Excuse me if I don’t shed a tear over Welch’s passing, other than to say that in this great mystery of life and existence, we only get one shot to make something of ourselves. We can choose to achieve greatness, we can rise to the level of charity and humanity and respect.

Edgar Maddison Welch sunk to the level of crackpot. He believed in lies and falsehoods because, frankly, it made him feel better about himself. He believed the horseshit that was fed to him, and ran with it to the point where he entered a family restaurant and brandished assault weapons.

And now, for the rest of time eternal, Edgar Maddison Welch will be known not by his birth name, or the fact that there’s two D’s in his middle name, but instead will remain known forevermore as “Pizzagate Gunman.” Someone who believed in lies because they made him feel better than the actual truth.

In the end, it became a wasteful coda.