[Discussion] Mass Shootings - Yeah, we need a thread just for this...

This year is the deadliest year ever in terms of mass shootings. In a political climate of polarization, it becomes harder to suss out legitimate information from the misinformation propagated by those with political agendas. Complicating this more is the continual resistance of 2nd amendment advocates to allow for political talk surrounding these massacres. This will involve political discussion to see if there are ways we can all agree might be good ways to prevent mass shootings.

This discussion should involve the details of any current, or future mass shooting, and how they compare to past mass shootings. How are they the same? How are they different? Do gun laws have an impact? Does the race of the shooter affect how we treat them? What makes one a hate crime and one an act or terrorism? Are these shootings the price of freedom?

Reaper81 wrote:

Don’t feed the troll, folks.

I disagree with some of Sonny's arguments but I think he is arguing in good faith here.

The New Yorker had a great article about the NRA's questionable finances as revealed through their 2017 tax filings and notes from their audit committee.

It seems that the NRA has exceptionally piss-poor internal operational and financial controls which has resulted in multiple vendors--most of which have connections with current or former senior NRA officials--billing the non-profit for millions of dollars without submitting any supporting documentation as well as billing the NRA through multiple entities to obscure how much they were actually getting paid.

At the center of it all is Ackerman McQueen, a marketing agency based in Oklahoma City, that billed the NRA nearly $41 million in 2017. Ackerman is effectively the NRA's marketing department. Ackerman is responsible for NRATV. It employs the NRA's most visible spokespersons, like Dana Loesch (who gets almost a million dollars a year) and Colion Noir. And, for some reason, Ackerman also pays the NRA's current president, Oliver North, a million dollars a year.

It's hard to tell where Ackerman ends and the NRA begins and vice versa. Staff freely rotate between the agency and the non-profit. A quarter of the NRA's staff is currently managed by ex-Ackerman employees leading to what the audit committee said were “financial conflicts of interest."

For example, when the NRA's board questioned how much money Ackerman was being paid, then president Wayne LaPierre told them he was replacing Ackerman with a DC-based communications firm, Mercury Consulting Group, Inc. LaPierre didn't tell the board that Mercury was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ackerman.

Later, a top Mercury executive was hired by the NRA to run their advancement team, a fund-raising group that targets wealthy members. That executive fed Ackerman more and more work even though much more money was raised from average members and the vast majority of the advancement team failed to cover their own salaries and expenses.

All of this was happening while the NRA has gone $30 million in the red after dropping $50 million on Trump's campaign in 2016. They've maxed out a $25 million credit line, liquidated $2 million from an investment fund, borrowed another $4 million from the life-insurance policies of its officers, and raided another $5 million from its charitable foundation.

The money-making scheme the NRA came up with to get them out of financial trouble, a self-defense shooting liability insurance policy called Carry Guard Insurance, was found to be illegal in New York and triggered a $7 million fine for the insurance company the NRA used (which triggered multiple lawsuits between the NRA and the insurance company that were settled for an undisclosed amount).

And, of course, none of this even touches the link between the NRA and Russia. What's clear, though, is that they were slimy, self-dealing f*cks long before Maria Butina showed up.

Hopefully they will bankrupt themselves out of existence.

Then we'll just have to deal with Gun Owners of America, a "no compromise” gun lobby with 2 million members who split with the NRA because they felt the NRA wasn't fighting hard enough to expand gun rights.

OG_slinger wrote:

Then we'll just have to deal with Gun Owners of America, a "no compromise” gun lobby with 2 million members who split with the NRA because they felt the NRA wasn't fighting hard enough to expand gun rights.

O.O

The NRA literally argued that terrorists on the no-fly list should be able to purchase guns legally. Who is left after that?

thrawn82 wrote:

It;s a definitional problem: If you define terrorism as only those attacks undertaken by nominal Muslims, then certainly all terrorism is Muslim. That's not really an accurate or useful definition though.

Star Trek: TNG - The High Ground wrote:

The difference between generals and terrorists, Doctor, is only the difference between winners and losers.

I recently watched this episode that had a quote that applies.

Reaper81 wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Then we'll just have to deal with Gun Owners of America, a "no compromise” gun lobby with 2 million members who split with the NRA because they felt the NRA wasn't fighting hard enough to expand gun rights.

O.O

The NRA literally argued that terrorists on the no-fly list should be able to purchase guns legally. Who is left after that?

No limits. No restrictions. Buy guns on Amazon like you buy shoes and peanut butter. A chicken in every pot; a gun in every hand.

Gremlin wrote:
sonny615 wrote:
Gremlin wrote:
sonny615 wrote:

Many nations\religions\people were persecuted at one point or another, yet only one group consistently "feels the need to blow up buildings" (BTW, people, not buildings...).

This is...objectively not true. There have been plenty of Christian, Buddhist, and atheist terrorists.

List of Terrorist Incidents in 2018

I'm not sure what you think the point of that is. Yes, there's a lot of Muslim terrorists at the moment, because there are fewer Muslim cultures with lots of strategic power and there's a lot of open conflict in the Middle East right now. But the list of attacks in 2018 also includes the Atomwaffen Division, groups involved in the Colombian conflict, the Mapuche conflict in Chile, the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency, white supremacists, the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon, Italian anarchists, and a lot of others.

Muslims don't have a monopoly on terrorism.

My point was that while Muslims aren't the only ones to commit terrorism, if you look at the list of terror acts in recent years, the vast majority (I didn't count but looking through the list seems above what, 90%?) of terror acts were carried out by Islamist groups. Saying I'm objectively wrong about this is objectively not true

I also don't think oppression or persecution is the reason. It's a matter of ideology and education. The terrorists who carried out the attacks in Sri Lanka were definitely not poor. They were well educated (some in Europe), yet they decided to commit this act of terror.

When a five year old muslim child hears preaching about slaughtering infidels at his local mosque several times a day for the rest of his life (be it in Beirut, Damascus, Ramallah, Sana'a, Brussels or London), we shouldn't be surprised that Islamist terrorism is so strong right now and will continue to be strong as long as this ideology is spread uninterrupted.

Reaper81 wrote:

Don’t feed the troll, folks.

Reaper81 wrote:

:eyeroll:

Having a different opinion is not trolling.
You're violating the code of conduct by being disrespectful. Please stop.

Systemic conditions in the Middle East make terrorism there more likely right now, sure. There being something unique about Muslim ideology, no.

And I certainly never meant to imply that the oppressed were exclusively poor: the very poor often don't have the resources to fight back. One thing that education has historically done is make people aware of the extent of their oppression and how to fight it. Though that's not just terrorists, since you can also get pacifists like Gandhi.

Inciting hate against muslims is probably a much bigger violation of the CoC, if we're measuring things.

I also don't think oppression or persecution is the reason. It's a matter of ideology and education. The terrorists who carried out the attacks in Sri Lanka were definitely not poor. They were well educated (some in Europe), yet they decided to commit this act of terror.

https://www.mylifetime.com/shows/esc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_R...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbo...

Islam does not have a lock on brainwashing, cults, intimidation, domestic abuse, child abuse, sexual assault, assault, misogyny or patriarchy.

Edit: Ugh. Nevermind. I know where this conversation is going, and it's just not worth it.

Tanglebones wrote:

Inciting hate against muslims is probably a much bigger violation of the CoC, if we're measuring things.

I've made a clear separation between muslims and islamism several times.
Criticizing Islamism =/= inciting hate against Muslims =/= Islamophobia

Edit: I made my above statement to give context to reporting posts. I don't feel like engaging further.

sonny615 wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Inciting hate against muslims is probably a much bigger violation of the CoC, if we're measuring things.

I've made a clear separation between muslims and islamism several times.
Criticizing Islamism =/= inciting hate against Muslims =/= Islamophobia

*mod*

True, but the overall issue with the tenor of your posts is the sort of "saying without saying" line walking we sometimes see when a participant wants to spotlight how bad they feel a culture or race is without crossing any hard lines in terms of the rules.

Given where you're posting from I understand the rush to defend your people while framing your adversaries as bad. If you're serious about just decrying "Islamism" while totally respecting Muslim people and the millions who follow the Islamic faith without inciting violence, I'll ask you to be way more specific about who the aggressors are and be careful about pulling out a broad brush.

Generalizing with a statement like: "When a five year old muslim child hears preaching about slaughtering infidels at his local mosque" it suggests all mosques are hotbeds of terrorism without outright saying it. This is one of those grey areas where we have to start thinking more about intentions and whether we're communicating what we actually mean clearly.

Ok, further discussion on this front direct to my PM box please. It's a complicated issue and I'd love to hear perspectives from folks if they flagged parts of this thread. Thanks!

You also can't look at terrorism especially religious motivated terrorism through a narrow time slice.. The simple truth to an incredibly complex discussion is that this "war" has been going on for centuries. I have no idea what the global death count is on all sides but I'm certain it won't skew that much one way or another especially if you consider state sponsored "wars"

Certis wrote:

Ok, further discussion on this front direct to my PM box please. It's a complicated issue and I'd love to hear perspectives from folks if they flagged parts of this thread. Thanks!

Certis, I really don't want to come off as jabbing at you, and while I thought about PMing you this comment/question I feel like it's relevant to the audience here. Please take this with the best of intentions, for what it's worth.

This could be read as implying that this discussion is occurring somewhat at your pleasure, such that any further discussion should be directed privately to you because you're really interested in it. What are the next steps for such a discussion, then? Will any discussion on the topic be sequestered to PM? Will you be bringing particularly informative tracts of the discussion to this thread to share, or will you be approving further comments on the topic?

*mod*

Hi muraii, no problem. I meant further discussion regarding why people flagged certain posts. That's a moderation issue, it wasn't to indicate further discussion on the topic of the thread should go to me privately.

Sometimes we see things flagged and we ask folks to give us their perspective beyond "look at this" so we understand why it was flagged. That's usually done in PM directly if we're not clear, but there were so many flags (including people flagging each other) I wanted to make a more open request as part of my moderation post.

We don't do that within threads because quite frankly it's a communication from a community member to the mod team and often times people don't want to openly share their concerns. Hope that clears it up. If you have further questions, PM me so the thread isn't derailed with mod questions

I would like to chime in to say that according to the scope of the thread, which Certis had me rewrite for more clarity when I started this thread, I don't think bombings are relevant to the topic. Shootings are different in that they lead us to question whether guns should be legal and what kinds of controls we want put on them. I just don't think bombings leads to the same larger discussion this thread was intended to have.

I don't think the overlap is enough to link both these topics. And, in fact, it seems like it might just make it easier for some to turn this into an even worse discussion.

Certis wrote:

*mod*

Hi muraii, no problem. I meant further discussion regarding why people flagged certain posts. That's a moderation issue, it wasn't to indicate further discussion on the topic of the thread should go to me privately.

Sometimes we see things flagged and we ask folks to give us their perspective beyond "look at this" so we understand why it was flagged. That's usually done in PM directly if we're not clear, but there were so many flags (including people flagging each other) I wanted to make a more open request as part of my moderation post.

We don't do that within threads because quite frankly it's a communication from a community member to the mod team and often times people don't want to openly share their concerns. Hope that clears it up. If you have further questions, PM me so the thread isn't derailed with mod questions

Thank you. I did not read what you wrote terribly well nor charitably and I wholly forgot about the flagging mechanic even though you clearly mentioned it.

Someone recently told me that he thought that the phenomenon of the white male mass shooter should be treated as a public health issue. He went further to say that it was the oppression of involuntary celibacy that was driving all these white men and boys to mass homicidal rages and that it was somehow in society's interest to provide them with sex partners or girlfriends.

When I realized he wasn't kidding and reassessed what I thought about him, I realized how differently the whole statement "mentally ill loner" now is in that context.

If this opinion is more widely held than I would hope it is, then the calling a white male mass murderer a "mentally ill loner" isn't the laughably dismissive (and rabidly hypocritical) statement it once might have been. It is a passive threat. It is a shifting of blame from the toxic racism and misogyny it really is onto women for not being the cowed sex objects these monsters want them to be. It is an announcement that the murders will continue, we will do nothing about it, and it might be you next.... unless you spread your legs.

That is precisely what I will think the next time someone utters those words. And I will tell them to f*ck right off.

I mean, I agree on the public health crisis especially in regards to mental health. The rest... Jesus.

Involuntary celibacy? Seriously? How do you counter that? Handmaiden's Tale a bunch of women to keep these aggressors in check? That seems reasonable. I can't believe the crap that comes out of people's mouths sometimes.

bighoppa wrote:

Involuntary celibacy? Seriously? How do you counter that?

IMAGE(https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/real-sexbot-face.jpg)

Nightmare fuel. Thanks for that!

bighoppa wrote:

Involuntary celibacy? Seriously? How do you counter that? Handmaiden's Tale a bunch of women to keep these aggressors in check? That seems reasonable. I can't believe the crap that comes out of people's mouths sometimes.

Chemical castration.

There, now you don't WANT any of the sex you're not getting. Happy now?

Paleocon wrote:

Someone recently told me that he thought that the phenomenon of the white male mass shooter should be treated as a public health issue. He went further to say that it was the oppression of involuntary celibacy that was driving all these white men and boys to mass homicidal rages and that it was somehow in society's interest to provide them with sex partners or girlfriends.

Looking forward to the inevitable "Someone else is getting real sex but I am only getting free government handjobs"-induced homicidal rages.

It never ends.

Paleocon wrote:

Crazy incel theory.

Some quasi-intelectul quack made headlines with this basic premise, I believe after the Toronto shootings and he and others have argued that we need sex robots to help solve this.

Paleocon wrote:

If this opinion is more widely held than I would hope it is, then the calling a white male mass murderer a "mentally ill loner" isn't the laughably dismissive (and rabidly hypocritical) statement it once might have been. It is a passive threat. It is a shifting of blame from the toxic racism and misogyny it really is onto women for not being the cowed sex objects these monsters want them to be. It is an announcement that the murders will continue, we will do nothing about it, and it might be you next.... unless you spread your legs.

This is part of Jordan Peterson’s suite of bullsh*t. If he’s not a fan himself he likely heard it from one. Peterson’s pathetic blend of sadpolitik rhetoric isn’t quite mainstream yet but it’s getting close.

Paleocon wrote:

Someone recently told me that he thought that the phenomenon of the white male mass shooter should be treated as a public health issue. He went further to say that it was the oppression of involuntary celibacy that was driving all these white men and boys to mass homicidal rages and that it was somehow in society's interest to provide them with sex partners or girlfriends.

When I first read this I actually agreed - because I only read the first sentence In some ways these shootings are a public health issue. Unfortunately the guy went off the rails after that first sentence but I am not sure that white male mass shooting isn't a public health issue. It is about how white men believe they have some special place which has bee deigned them and we need to address that so they don't believe that.