[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?

Totally normal country

Prederick wrote:

The scuttlebutt on Twitter (not verified yet, but JJ MacNab is generally pretty solid about this stuff) is that the 21-year-old shooter placed a manifesto on 8chan saying he agreed with the Christchurch shooter and otherwise full of "Great Replacement" stuff.

He won't be the last, by a longshot.

Good times, good country.

"This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion."

f*cking white supremacist sh*theel who was worried his civilian AK knockoff would overheat from shooting too many rounds and that he might need protective gloves.

Meanwhile the tangerine turd who's spent the past three years wiping up anti-immigrant sentiment amongst his followers paused from golfing to tweet about the "very bad" shooting.

And yet it’s the immigrants and Muslims that we should be scared of.

https://newsone.com/3883517/el-paso-...

Stoichiometric terrorism.

Arm the f*ck out of dumbass racist white kids, feed them a steady supply of propaganda about "subhumans invading" the country, and offer bullsh*t like "thoughts and prayers" when they do the violent bidding as designed and intended.

This is your Republican Party.

Would "White Terrorist" be appropriate to use going forward?

polypusher wrote:

Would "White Terrorist" be appropriate to use going forward?

Have we had any other kind in the US since 2001?

Nope. So branding them as such everywhere could help bust their bullsh*t patriot / savior / martyr self-branding

Stele wrote:
polypusher wrote:

Would "White Terrorist" be appropriate to use going forward?

Have we had any other kind in the US since 2001?

The Orlando nightclub shooting, Boston Marathon bombing, San Bernardino shooting, Ft Hood shooting come to mind.

Paleocon wrote:

This is your Republican Party.

Texas' Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made the time after the shooting to pop on Fox News and warn Antifa from coming to El Paso.

FOX News is on for work, and so far the current blonde lady is speculatively blaming video games and soft parenting.

Earlier guests speculated about A.) Mexican cartels and B.) ISIS (and I sh*t you not, this is after the suspect had been ID'd and the scuttlebutt about the manifesto was well out there).

At this point, I just gotta laugh.

EDIT: And so much talk of mental health.

EDIT EDIT: Saw someone get right to the heart of it on Twitter.

"I don't care what the ideology of the shooter ends up being, our country has a sickness/we must invest in mental health."
The shooter's explicitly stated ideology is not convenient for me, politically.

Trump's getting more shoutouts for terrorist acts committed in the US than Bin Ladin.

I just find it crazy that a white guy kills 20 people and is taken alive but a black guy buying a toy gun is shot in 2 seconds both at walmart.

They need the white guy alive to push the mental illness narrative.

I'm caught, because on the one hand, it is an empty act of revenge that will solve absolutely nothing, and I believe the death penalty is wrong.

On the other hand, if Texas fast-tracked his ass to execution, I wouldn't be sad.

EDIT: Also, the "don't politicize this" arguments are f*cking mind-blowing. The massacre was explicitly political, the shooter literally stated as much. How the f*ck do you politicize something that was already explicitly political?

I'm having a hard time not assuming anyone making these arguments is not being monumentally mendacious or ultimately sympathizing with or agreeing with the shooter.

Looks like we couldn't even make it 24 hours. There was reportedly another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio tonight.

Details are understandably sketchy.

I'm going to bed. F*ck all of this and everyone who enables it.

Prederick wrote:

I'm caught, because on the one hand, it is an empty act of revenge that will solve absolutely nothing, and I believe the death penalty is wrong.

On the other hand, if Texas fast-tracked his ass to execution, I wouldn't be sad.

EDIT: Also, the "don't politicize this" arguments are f*cking mind-blowing. The massacre was explicitly political, the shooter literally stated as much. How the f*ck do you politicize something that was already explicitly political?

I'm having a hard time not assuming anyone making these arguments is not being monumentally mendacious or ultimately sympathizing with or agreeing with the shooter.

Honestly you should be assuming it, we have decades of evidence supporting both conclusions.

Wow, there was another mass shooting in El Paso.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Wow, there was another mass shooting in El Paso.

Oh crap I meant Dayton. This is insane.

Baron Of Hell wrote:
Baron Of Hell wrote:

Wow, there was another mass shooting in El Paso.

Oh crap I meant Dayton. This is business as usual.

Fixed that for you

They seem to be taking their time releasing the identity of the Ohio shooter.

Fredrick Brennan should be charged with abetting mass murder.

Anyone who talks about video games or mental health as somehow causing this is either disingenuous or has been asleep for the past thirty years.

There's a direct link between Timothy McVeigh, Columbine, Anders Breivik, 2014 Isla Vista killings, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the Christchurch shooter, and the El Paso Walmart shooter.
They all shared the same ideology, mentioning the earlier examples in their manifestos or inspiring the later ones.

The police caught that Coast Guard guy who had an armory and was planning to assassinate Democratic politicians. They were going to grant him pretrial release but that was appealed so at least he's still detained. Sooner or later the FBI is going to fall short and one of these terrorists is going to assassinate someone.

Per the Breaking News Consumer's Handbook, I'm not going to post much on the Dayton, Ohio shooter yet.

The police caught that Coast Guard guy who had an armory and was planning to assassinate Democratic politicians. They were going to grant him pretrial release but that was appealed so at least he's still detained. Sooner or later the FBI is going to fall short and one of these terrorists is going to assassinate someone.

You mean a politician? Because they've already assassinated quite a few people.

Gremlin wrote:

Fredrick Brennan should be charged with abetting mass murder.

Brennan stopped having anything to do with 8chan back in 2016.

The guy who owns, hosts, and runs things now is Jim Watkins. He funds everything via an alt-right news channel he created as well as selling audio books, which he also narrates, via Audible and Amazon.

He should be charged and extradited from the Philippines. The government should also use terrorism financing laws to go after all his and his businesses' money until the lights go out at the 8chan server farm.

OG_slinger wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

Fredrick Brennan should be charged with abetting mass murder.

Brennan stopped having anything to do with 8chan back in 2016.

The guy who owns, hosts, and runs things now is Jim Watkins. He funds everything via an alt-right news channel he created as well as selling audio books, which he also narrates, via Audible and Amazon.

He should be charged and extradited from the Philippines. The government should also use terrorism financing laws to go after all his and his businesses' money until the lights go out at the 8chan server farm.

Haha haha yeah right. Where would Trump and family get half his twitter post memes and conspiracy theories. It’s basically a good chunk of his cabinet in those forums.

I have no idea why, but this one (these two) just really infuriate me, perhaps because, despite the fact that I knew they would, watching Cornyn/McConnell et al do their utterly spineless, mendacious song and dance act feels extra disgusting.

If we didn’t act after Sandy Hook we will never act. The ship has sailed on the GOP doing anything remotely positive.

Yes, that too. I know people do a lot of comparisons RE: race and religion and other stuff, but Dunblane happened, laws changed across the UK.

A classroom of kindergartners died in Connecticut and America said "this is the price we are willing pay."

TheGameguru wrote:

If we didn’t act after Sandy Hook we will never act. The ship has sailed on the GOP doing anything remotely positive.

There's still hope. The GOP is losing its financial incentive to ignore gun violence.

The NRA is essentially self-destructing at the moment thanks to years of internal graft and corruption. It barely gave $1.6 million to conservatives during the 2018 midterm, down a shocking 90% from its $16 million spend during the 2014 midterms.

There's also been a serious brain drain at the NRA with senior political strategists and fundraisers who seamlessly coordinated with Republican campaigns leaving the organization because of all the inner turmoil. That's left Republican muckety-mucks terrified that a major part of their get out the vote and fundraising effort isn't going to be contributing much in 2020.

And behind all that has been a pretty danged successful anti-gun grassroots groundswell around groups like Moms Demand Action (founded by a mom after Sandy Hook) and Everytown who have been working at the federal, state, and local levels to defeat the expansion of the sh*tty gun laws pushed by the NRA and pass real gun control.

I will change my tune when I see anything remotely useful being done. I’m not holding my breath.

I hope this ends the "good guy with a gun" bullsh*t. Reports are saying that police killed the Ohio shooter in less than a minute but he still managed to kill or wound 35 people.