domestic terrorism/tragedy: florida nightclub shooting

Paleocon wrote:

I am perfectly okay with yanking someone's firearms and access to firearms for being a knucklehead.

I would imagine most 2nd amendment rights supporters would also be okay with it to at least some degree if it weren't for the "give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile" risk. Just like with abortion rights.

My Facebook feed was cluttered with all sorts of anti-Obama pro Gun nonsense.. the general gist is we should be disarming ISIS rather than our citizens and how much a pro Muslim traitor Obama is. Blah blah blah.. meanwhile the number of Drone Strikes on "War on Terrorism" targets since Obama took office vs the amount Bush Jr. did is striking. I'm not sure what more these morons thinks the US should be doing. The whole war on terror is so nonsensical. There is no way to win this war.. there is no way to engage it properly even.. where are you going to invade? We kill probably an equal amount of terrorists vs civilians creating probably a net positive flow of new terrorist that hate us for killing their uncle's mothers cousin twice removed.

When all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

All the US has focused on for over 50 years is being tough, killing enemies, getting a bigger and bigger stick. One would have thought once we ran our only competitor out of business when the USSR folded we would have thought - oh we did it but instead we kept expanding our military, kept the same strategy, doubled down on it.

RoughneckGeek wrote:

I think "stop bombing the middle east" is a harder sell than "token gun control measures".

Domestic policy is more important than foreign.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

So I have been watching youtube videos of the victims talking about this shooting. Some of them actually had a conversation with the guy and overheard him while talking to police. The shooter states why he did this. According to the survivors he was upset over US attacks on his country. So far I haven't heard any talk at all over US drone and bombing attacks on non terrorists on a attempt to remove terrorists also being a motivating factor in this attack.

I bring this up because before I watched the victims I pretty much thought this was 100% a hate on LGBT issue. Now I only think that was a factor but not the only factor. Meaning he wanted to kill Americans for killing his people and thought killing LGBT people would be the perfect target. I think this is a important point because if he had no hate for the LGBT community he would have just shot up the closest club.

I guess I would rather have people kill random people instead of focusing on a specific group. I would also rather people not go on mass killing sprees at all. Ignoring part of the motivating factor behind the shooting isn't going to stop more shootings from happening. I also think it might go beyond that and people might think American foreign policy has no ties at all to this shooting.

I can understand why members of the LGBT community would only be focused on LGBT hate factor. They probably even should focus on the one issue to not split their message. However, I don't understand why everyone else is not talking about the other factors, well besides guns I guess. Is it because as Americans we can not except that our government policies had a hand in creating this guy?

I'm going to state this first because I know how this post might be misinterpreted: this isn't about Islam, and I'm not actually suggesting or advocating any particular response against any group or faith.

I feel that some liberals (and even some news outlets) are trying to divert attention from the ethnicity and faith of this guy, kind of as a hyper-correction for Trump's broad anti-Muslim nonsense. Obviously the anti-LGBT stuff is a huge component of this event which demands our attention, but downplaying or ignoring the other elements won't make them go away.

We must not forget that there are some f'd up places in this world, where people hold both legitimate and illegitimate grudges against the United States, where terrorists do want to wage jihad against us and our allies. This guy's family is from such a place. Regardless of his complex emotional state, whatever his other problems, this is something we need to confront, too.

Narrowing down the why seem to be getting in the way of focusing on how easy it was.

Jayhawker wrote:

Narrowing down the why seem to be getting in the way of focusing on how easy it was.

But it's an example of what I was saying before, you have to work the whole web. You can't let the 100% blame of the man stop you from examining and fixing the other contributing circumstances, be they anemic gun regulations, counterproductive foreign policy, or a bunch of different things.

Yes, you have to be vigilant about analysis paralysis, and you have to accept that you can't model/account for everything and draw a line somewhere, and you have to watch out for people throwing up a bunch of confusing flak that to distract you, but being too narrowly focused on a single small segment is a problem as well.

gore wrote:

We must not forget that there are some f'd up places in this world, where people hold both legitimate and illegitimate grudges against the United States, where terrorists do want to wage jihad against us and our allies. This guy's family is from such a place. Regardless of his complex emotional state, whatever his other problems, this is something we need to confront, too.

I'd ask in response, do you feel like the same scrutiny should be brought to bear on the other perpetrators of mass shootings? Should we be considering the hateful nature of Dylann Roof's culture, or is this guy *particularly* special because he's a second generation Muslim immigrant? I think that's what a lot of liberals are asking, since roughly 98% of mass shooters in the USA are white males.

Edit: Because otherwise, it seems like the brown shooter is getting singled out for special treatment. And yeah, a lot of us aren't happy about seeing a rising tide of prejudice being exploited, both for its political fallout, and for the fact that a lot of innocent people are likely to be assaulted or killed as a result.

gore wrote:

We must not forget that there are some f'd up places in this world, where people hold both legitimate and illegitimate grudges against the United States, where terrorists do want to wage jihad against us and our allies. This guy's family is from such a place. Regardless of his complex emotional state, whatever his other problems, this is something we need to confront, too.

I wonder how much it's about where he's from and how much it's about him feeling like he didn't really belong either where he's from or where he wound up. It seems this kind of terrorism disproportionally comes from people who aren't necessarily the biggest victims of our crimes nor the most (initially) devout of their belief systems, but from people who seem to need to make a statement about their identity because of their own turmoil in figuring out how to deal with their own sense of alienation.

Just jumping back a page or so to chime in on the guns vs car issue.

I think OG has the better argument re gun ownership causing increase in risk.

Most developed nations have compulsory licensing and insurance programs for cars. It was an evolutionary response to Mr Ford's invention and how cars would injure others and spook horses as society transitioned to automotive transport.

Implicit in car ownership is the fact that you are using public resources to maintain infrastructure and you are statistically likely (some drivers more than others) to cause or be involved in a motor vehicle incident. As a society, we accept the cost of motor incidents caused by others even though we might claim to have superior driving skills and an unblemished driving record.

So by owning a gun and supporting gun ownership, all bearers must acknowledge that as a class of citizens, you will have members that will cause or be involved in firearm incidents, even if you yourself safely store and responsibly carry. It is a bit hyperbole to say all gun owners are potential murderers so I would restate that proposition as all bearers generate the possibility of harm to life and property by the mere fact of ownership, whether personally or vicariously. That is the true debate you must argue in the context of 30,000 annual deaths and the cost to society of not having gun owners directly fund that external cost.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:
gore wrote:

We must not forget that there are some f'd up places in this world, where people hold both legitimate and illegitimate grudges against the United States, where terrorists do want to wage jihad against us and our allies. This guy's family is from such a place. Regardless of his complex emotional state, whatever his other problems, this is something we need to confront, too.

I wonder how much it's about where he's from and how much it's about him feeling like he didn't really belong either where he's from or where he wound up. It seems this kind of terrorism disproportionally comes from people who aren't necessarily the biggest victims of our crimes nor the most (initially) devout of their belief systems, but from people who seem to need to make a statement about their identity because of their own turmoil in figuring out how to deal with their own sense of alienation.

This seems quite relevant. This guy wasn't a "real" ISIS fighter in the same way as those in the Paris attacks, and who knows what his actual peer group was like. If he rejects the US, where else does he actually have to turn?

gore wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:
gore wrote:

We must not forget that there are some f'd up places in this world, where people hold both legitimate and illegitimate grudges against the United States, where terrorists do want to wage jihad against us and our allies. This guy's family is from such a place. Regardless of his complex emotional state, whatever his other problems, this is something we need to confront, too.

I wonder how much it's about where he's from and how much it's about him feeling like he didn't really belong either where he's from or where he wound up. It seems this kind of terrorism disproportionally comes from people who aren't necessarily the biggest victims of our crimes nor the most (initially) devout of their belief systems, but from people who seem to need to make a statement about their identity because of their own turmoil in figuring out how to deal with their own sense of alienation.

This seems quite relevant. This guy wasn't a "real" ISIS fighter in the same way as those in the Paris attacks, and who knows what his actual peer group was like. If he rejects the US, where else does he actually have to turn?

It's not like all the evidence is in at this point, but is there really a reason to imagine this was a specifically political act, other than the fact that the guy seemed to like to randomly swear allegiance to various foreign Islamic movements on occasion? This seems like an issue with mental illness and homophobia-driven self-loathing. I don't know why he was "rejecting the U.S." in any way here. I don't know why that would be a part of this.

Bfgp wrote:

So by owning a gun and supporting gun ownership, all bearers must acknowledge that as a class of citizens, you will have members that will cause or be involved in firearm incidents, even if you yourself safely store and responsibly carry. It is a bit hyperbole to say all gun owners are potential murderers so I would restate that proposition as all bearers generate the possibility of harm to life and property by the mere fact of ownership, whether personally or vicariously. That is the true debate you must argue in the context of 30,000 annual deaths and the cost to society of not having gun owners directly fund that external cost.

And in 2015 gun deaths in the US surpassed car deaths.

Cars are getting safer every year. Guns are not, at all.

My original point wasn't a guns vs. cars comparison. It was to emphasize that owning a gun doesn't make you a future murderer any more than owning a car makes you a future murderer, or that owning a penis makes men into future rapists. (As I've heard spoken in some circles.)

bekkilyn wrote:

My original point wasn't a guns vs. cars comparison. It was to emphasize that owning a gun doesn't make you a future murderer any more than owning a car makes you a future murderer, or that owning a penis makes men into future rapists. (As I've heard spoken in some circles.)

No worries.

My point was that individual behavior does not negate the broader social responsibility that comes with exposing others to risks in the exercise of a right. To put aside valid gun control discussion on the pretext of "I am not a murderer" and "not all of us are murderers" obfuscates the issue that outside of criminal or LEO activity, gun injury and deaths cannot or otherwise rarely occur in an environment where there are no guns or a highly regulated and enforced regime.

Not potential murderers, Bfgp, inevitable murderers.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Not potential murderers, Bfgp, inevitable murderers.

How, exactly, do you get from my statement--"There are no 'good guys with guns.' There are only people who haven't done something horrible with their guns yet."--to every gun owner is 100%, absolutely going to murder someone?

Each and every day about 90 people are killed with firearms, another 200 get shot and live, and who knows how many people use their firearm to threaten or intimidate someone. That's a lot of supposed "good guys with guns" who stopped being so.

I get that you don't like being called someone who might do something horrible with your firearms, but the #NotAllGunOwners bit gets tired.

A lot of gun owners *will* do something bad with their firearms at some point and, right now, we have no way of knowing which ones will f*ck up or break bad. But all gun owners need to step up and start owning the actions of those people instead of trying to shirk responsibility and claim that those people are aberrations and completely not like the "good guys with guns."

OG_slinger wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Not potential murderers, Bfgp, inevitable murderers.

How, exactly, do you get from my statement--"There are no 'good guys with guns.' There are only people who haven't done something horrible with their guns yet."--to every gun owner is 100%, absolutely going to murder someone?

I'm guessing the word "yet" is the source of the confusion here.

edit: in other words, OG, I think you're trying to say something like Schroedinger’s Shooter? "We don't know yet who will and who will not murder someone"?

Maybe Quintin is hearing you say something more along the lines of "if you drive a car long enough, you'll get in an accident no matter how good and cautious you are, so if you have a gun long enough, you'll eventually murder someone even if you haven't yet."

Bfgp wrote:

My point was that individual behavior does not negate the broader social responsibility that comes with exposing others to risks in the exercise of a right. To put aside valid gun control discussion on the pretext of "I am not a murderer" and "not all of us are murderers" obfuscates the issue that outside of criminal or LEO activity, gun injury and deaths cannot or otherwise rarely occur in an environment where there are no guns or a highly regulated and enforced regime.

I wouldn't want to live in a highly regulated and enforced regime regardless of how "safe" it supposedly was. "Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you."

bekkilyn wrote:
Bfgp wrote:

My point was that individual behavior does not negate the broader social responsibility that comes with exposing others to risks in the exercise of a right. To put aside valid gun control discussion on the pretext of "I am not a murderer" and "not all of us are murderers" obfuscates the issue that outside of criminal or LEO activity, gun injury and deaths cannot or otherwise rarely occur in an environment where there are no guns or a highly regulated and enforced regime.

I wouldn't want to live in a highly regulated and enforced regime regardless of how "safe" it supposedly was. "Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you."

You already do - you just don't see the majority of the repression.

bekkilyn wrote:

My original point wasn't a guns vs. cars comparison. It was to emphasize that owning a gun doesn't make you a future murderer any more than owning a car makes you a future murderer, or that owning a penis makes men into future rapists. (As I've heard spoken in some circles.)

Ah, ok. When you put it that way, I see your point more clearly. Thanks for the clarification.

Curiously, how many US GWJers feel as uneasy around an armed society like this particular ex-US writer?

Granted the opinion piece is a bit of good feels click bait telling Australians we should feel smug about taking semi autos off the streets.

But really, bekkilyn, are you making a philosophical statement about individual liberty trumping (see what I did there) social security? I've readily admitted to Australia being a police state in the eyes of an American so maybe I'm more used to surrendering personal liberties. I just can't see how a lax and unenforced gun regime is preferable to living in a strict and regulated environment.

As I understand pro gun proponents on GWJ, most accept more measures can be introduced and that would still be preferable to leaving things as they are. Or am I missing something?

Maq wrote:
bekkilyn wrote:
Bfgp wrote:

My point was that individual behavior does not negate the broader social responsibility that comes with exposing others to risks in the exercise of a right. To put aside valid gun control discussion on the pretext of "I am not a murderer" and "not all of us are murderers" obfuscates the issue that outside of criminal or LEO activity, gun injury and deaths cannot or otherwise rarely occur in an environment where there are no guns or a highly regulated and enforced regime.

I wouldn't want to live in a highly regulated and enforced regime regardless of how "safe" it supposedly was. "Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you."

You already do - you just don't see the majority of the repression.

Good point. It could still get a lot worse though. Wise to be prepared for anything while we still have some teeth.

So *other* than a futile effort of keeping weapons out of the hands of people intent on terrorist/criminal attacks (because RNG is right...more useless gun control rehash is not the topic of this thread), what are we going to do to fix all the hatred and bigotry that causes these sorts of problems? How do we get rid of it? How are we going to deal with the underlying mental health issues involved, because there certainly are many? How do we fix these? These attacks are a symptom of a serious problem in our culture and focusing on the tools these people use to carry out the attack is non-productive because the thing that drives them to hating other people like LGBT is still here infecting us all.

Bfgp wrote:

But really, bekkilyn, are you making a philosophical statement about individual liberty trumping (see what I did there) social security? I've readily admitted to Australia being a police state in the eyes of an American so maybe I'm more used to surrendering personal liberties. I just can't see how a lax and unenforced gun regime is preferable to living in a strict and regulated environment.

As I understand pro gun proponents on GWJ, most accept more measures can be introduced and that would still be preferable to leaving things as they are. Or am I missing something?

I think it's some of both, but like I said earlier, you have the "give 'em an inch, they'll take a mile" risk. And based on some of the conversation I've seen here, that's exactly what would happen, so I don't see most 2nd amendment rights supporters budging even an inch at this point. It's a good part of why I believe that we need to put our focus elsewhere when it comes to preventing more of these attacks and dig the problem of hatred out from its root.

Bfgp wrote:

Curiously, how many US GWJers feel as uneasy around an armed society like this particular ex-US writer?

Granted the opinion piece is a bit of good feels click bait telling Australians we should feel smug about taking semi autos off the streets.

But really, bekkilyn, are you making a philosophical statement about individual liberty trumping (see what I did there) social security? I've readily admitted to Australia being a police state in the eyes of an American so maybe I'm more used to surrendering personal liberties. I just can't see how a lax and unenforced gun regime is preferable to living in a strict and regulated environment.

As I understand pro gun proponents on GWJ, most accept more measures can be introduced and that would still be preferable to leaving things as they are. Or am I missing something?

Hmm. What I am about to say may be typically controversial for me, but bear with me if you will.

I have lived and worked in relatively high crime areas like Baltimore as well as in very statistically safe neighborhoods in the US and around the world. That said, I think the thing that worries me most about, in particular, Southern gun culture is that it doesn't appear to follow any rules surrounding the use of violence.

In inner city Baltimore, I could be pretty confident that I was far less likely to be the victim of a violent crime just by nature of not being black. I was always aware of my environment and governed my behavior accordingly. Driving down the alleys along North Avenue and asking for directions from folks trying not to be seen is a great way to invite trouble. It was pretty obvious once you knew the "rules" how to avoid the risk of violence.

Here in the South, however, the proliferation of concealed firearms, entitled and frustrated folks mad at "the Seekret Mooslim President", and a culture that at the very least accepts the injection of deadly violence in normal human interaction make for a needlessly volatile possibilities in even the most common of situations.

I was at a casual service restaurant the other day with a few of my coworkers and we were all standing in line to order. I was next in line and an angry looking white dude jumped the line and started ordering at the register. I, of course, told him there was a line and he ignored me.

Had this been Maryland or NY, where such gun culture is considered laughably antiquated, I would likely have told him he was a fcuking asshole and to get his ass in line. Here, the cashier and other folks in line seemed genuinely concerned he might pull out a gun. That's just what folks do here when they think folks aren't "respecting" them.

Sort of puts the lie to the "polite society" thing, huh?

In news that should shock no one, the scum of the Earth are coming to protest the funerals.

Groups are promising to drown them out, I hope it works.

Link

OG_slinger wrote:

How, exactly, do you get from my statement--"There are no 'good guys with guns.' There are only people who haven't done something horrible with their guns yet."--to every gun owner is 100%, absolutely going to murder someone?

I wonder if you read everything you type.

Tanglebones wrote:
gore wrote:

We must not forget that there are some f'd up places in this world, where people hold both legitimate and illegitimate grudges against the United States, where terrorists do want to wage jihad against us and our allies. This guy's family is from such a place. Regardless of his complex emotional state, whatever his other problems, this is something we need to confront, too.

I'd ask in response, do you feel like the same scrutiny should be brought to bear on the other perpetrators of mass shootings? Should we be considering the hateful nature of Dylann Roof's culture, or is this guy *particularly* special because he's a second generation Muslim immigrant? I think that's what a lot of liberals are asking, since roughly 98% of mass shooters in the USA are white males.

Edit: Because otherwise, it seems like the brown shooter is getting singled out for special treatment. And yeah, a lot of us aren't happy about seeing a rising tide of prejudice being exploited, both for its political fallout, and for the fact that a lot of innocent people are likely to be assaulted or killed as a result.

This guy isn't being singled out because he's brown, he's being singled out because he claimed allegiance to ISIS.

So here, to clarify: I grant that it's entirely possible that a second generation immigrant from Afghanistan might have snapped, and his ethnic background would have had absolutely no relevance. In this case, Mateen's sympathy for anti-American terror organizations in the middle east came from his own mouth.

I take issue with the tone of a some liberals that implies the "real problem" is white Americans singling out minorities, while effectively downplaying the real threat of groups like ISIS and their proven ability to radicalize home-grown terrorists with ethnic ties to the region. As if the presence of one problem somehow mitigates or obviates the other!

Haven't we been down this road? The dude claimed to be part of several contradictory groups. They didn't radicalize him - he was already angry and bitter and wanted to lash out. He just decided to slap a label on it to make it seem like he was righteous.

I'm not saying that it is impossible for the proposed situation to happen, I just don't like people using this as an example when it is clearly not.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

How, exactly, do you get from my statement--"There are no 'good guys with guns.' There are only people who haven't done something horrible with their guns yet."--to every gun owner is 100%, absolutely going to murder someone?

I wonder if you read everything you type.

I believe he is trying to clarify that he doesn't mean that every gun owner is destined to do something horrible with their guns. They can (and most will) remain "gun owners that haven't done something horrible with their guns yet" until the day they die. It is the idea that people can be accurately categorized into a group of "these people are good guys with guns and will never, ever do anything horrible with their guns, nor allow others to do horrible things with their guns, they are 100% safe" which I think he is disputing.