US Orlando Shooting at Pulse

[FortyTwo]

The reason he killed and terrorized people is that he was a radicalized Muslim. I have not seen anything that demonstrates that his motive was homophobia, except a comment his father made. A friend of his from his mosque reported him to the FBI two years ago for making statements supportive of the Boston marathon bombing and the 9/11 attacks. He recently scoped out Disney as a possible target.

It is beyond horrible that the killer chose a busy nightclub where mostly young, mostly gay, people go to feel safe and celebrate life. That is what terror is--to make people feel unsafe in the future, unsafe in the present, unsafe in their world.

This is such a clear illustration of what I'm talking about that it's almost a gift. These two paragraphs correspond exactly to how (mostly conservative) media is trying to spin this. Focus on how the shooter was a Muslim. Bring focus away from the fact that this took place at a gay nightclub. And yes, it was a gay nightclub, not a place for "mostly young, mostly gay" people to hang out. It was named for the heartbeat of a gay man who died from HIV/AIDS during the deadliest time in US history for the gay community. It is for gay people. Gay culture. You absolutely cannot separate the nightclub and the culture in order to make it seem like this was some sort of attack on all the fun-loving people of the United States. That is an incredible disrespect.

You can say we have to do something to help, and I get that feeling. Unfortunately, acting in haste, like staging sit-ins to get hastily prepared bills hastily passed, usually results in a bad law and a bad precedent. The political handwringing before these young people are even laid to rest is unthinkable. If it were as easy as banning a certain type of gun, I would help collect them all and melt them down myself. When the shooter's rifle jammed and failed, he began killing people with his handgun....If there magically were no guns at all, he would make a bomb, or cut off people's heads with a knife. The hatred didn't come from the guns, it came from the killer. He explains his motive clearly.

It's not "as easy" as banning a certain type of gun. Don't you think I get that? I am facing a future where horrible **** like this is a very present reality for people like me. Taking away assault rifles, or even guns in general, or even knives, or whatever utopian scenario could be thought of, would not destroy homophobia, nor would it make humans any less capable of violence. A homophobe would happily strangle a gay person if they thought they could get away with it - and this actually happens. This is about reducing the number of incidents, trimming down the number of deaths per incident. There is no question that unless someone was ridiculously well-trained, they would face a massive struggle trying to kill fifty people in a busy nightclub. You'd practically have to be James Bond to kill fifty people with a handgun when they're able to run around and grab things and stop you. If someone runs at a killer with an assault rifle, the killer will just mow them down. If someone runs at a killer with a pistol or a knife... much better chances, yes? This is just common sense. If this sounds like something way too morbid to think about, well, tough luck, because it's something a lot of people have to think about all the damn time.

In a way you're absolutely right. We cannot stop people from being killers. There's a horrible dark side to human nature and it's always going to exist. What we can do is take the things that will make their killing easier and quicker away from them. If it's a choice between 10 lives and 50 lives - and that's an effing horrible choice to have to make - I'm always, always going to go with the course of action that results in the least suffering.

 

[Mischief]

He was in there for hours, he could easily have killed lots of people with a knife.

Naturally he could have killed 49 people with a knife and wounded another 50. Assuming, of course, that they were all unconscious before he started.

 

[Mischief]

I'm not sure why people keep describing the motivation as that of a radicalized Muslim. It's been clear from the start that his motivations weren't that simple.

What motivated Orlando killer? It was more than terrorism, experts say

What has also been clear from the start is that he specifically targeted a gay nightclub. that he wanted to kill gay people.

 

[FortyTwo]

If there are a few things I want people reading my responses in this thread to take away, it's these:

1. This shooting was specifically homophobic. The shooter did not spin a wheel and pick some random nightclub that just happened to be filled with gay people - this was an anti-gay shooting, at a gay bar.
2. In order to prevent similar shootings from ever occurring, we need to advance gun control legislation and have a serious national discussion on what restrictions would best solve the problem. What those restrictions would be, beyond "ban anything more serious than a pistol," is beyond me - I can't pretend to be an expert in guns, however passionate I might be. But it's a conversation that needs to be happening.
3. The shooter's motivation is pretty clear to me. He was a radical Muslim who subscribed to homophobic traditionalist religious rhetoric and idolized overseas terror organizations (while not knowing what the hell he was talking about - he affiliated himself with both ISIS and Al Qaeda, two opposing organizations which hate each other). Anything deeper than that, psychologically, religiously, I don't care about. We should absolutely not be focusing on the shooter's background, because that's what he wanted to happen. Unless this information suddenly proves useful to a federal investigation into co-conspirators, which is very unlikely IMO given that, like I said, he obviously had no real affiliations and didn't know anything about the conflict he thought he was representing. There doesn't need to be any discussion about this. All discussion does is contribute further to the agendas of hyper-conservative demons like Trump, who hate Muslims as a group and will step over corpses to make their bigoted point.

 

[beancounter]

Mod Post
Friendly Reminder

No one here (other than IS) can dictate what the narrative of this thread will be.

Everyone is allowed and encouraged to discuss whatever view they want that is relevant to the topic, unless it breaks the rules.

 

[FortyTwo]

Mod Post
Friendly Reminder

No one here (other than IS) can dictate what the narrative of this thread will be.

Everyone is allowed and encouraged to discuss whatever view they want that is relevant to the topic, unless it breaks the rules.

Kay.

 

[Mischief]

Mod Post
Friendly Reminder

No one here (other than IS) can dictate what the narrative of this thread will be.

Everyone is allowed and encouraged to discuss whatever view they want that is relevant to the topic, unless it breaks the rules.

I'm trying to figure out what in the world prompted this....

 

[beancounter]

We should absolutely not be focusing on the shooter's background, because that's what he wanted to happen.

All discussion does is contribute further to the agendas of hyper-conservative demons like Trump

Focusing on the motivations of a mass shooter is very important in understanding how to identity and treat similar individuals and hopefully reduce the number of incidents in the future.

Discussion contributes to the understanding of the event and events like this. Discussion should never be seen as a bad thing or unnecessary. Otherwise it's de-facto censorship. The view that "I'm right, and any other view is wrong, and therefor the subject shouldn't be discussed further" sets a bad president, and allows greater divisions among people who are unwilling to listen to others and gives them a safe space to crawl into.

 

[Spang]

Post #41 covered that.

Another quote from the article:

He idolized cops, fetishized guns, hated queer people, hated Black people, abused his ex-wife, used steroids, and worked for G4S, which is a multinational corporation that profits from technologies of social control, prisons, colonialism, and border imperialism (see chap. 4 of Angela Davis’s “Freedom is a Constant Struggle” for a discussion of what G4S is). This was a guy who thoroughly internalized US ideals of “manliness.” He was the product of a long history of patriarchal values in US culture and politics. He over-conformed to the ideal of “manliness” that all of us cis-men in the United States were socialized — through family, coaches, teachers, religious leaders, media, etc. — from childhood to internalize.

 

[Mischief]

Discussion should never be seen as a bad thing or unnecessary.

Do you see the irony in this? I suppose not.

 

[Joe]

You are always so formal, I appreciate that.

Putting under a spoiler because it's off-topic:

...

I just wanted to thank you for the articulate explanation that you put within spoiler tags. Best wishes with your college studies.

 

[FortyTwo]

Focusing on the motivations of a mass shooter is very important in understanding how to identity and treat similar individuals and hopefully reduce the number of incidents in the future.

Discussion contributes to the understanding of the event and events like this. Discussion should never be seen as a bad thing or unnecessary. Otherwise it's de-facto censorship. The view that "I'm right, and any other view is wrong, and therefor the subject shouldn't be discussed further" sets a bad president, and allows greater divisions among people who are unwilling to listen to others and gives them a safe space to crawl into.

Okay but like, I can't physically stop anyone from talking about what they want to talk about. I can make suggestions, or if I wanted to, even try to make people feel terrible for discussing different things, but I can't actually stop them from doing it.

Because that would be censorship.

Taking away someone's point of view, even if someone else thinks that point of view is unwarranted.

Basically Fascism, according to some.

In a nutshell: if I say "don't discuss this, it's a bad thing and unnecessary," you're totally free to go "yeah well, I'm gonna discuss it anyway because I disagree." And I could whine at you, but other than that, well, not much I can do.

Unless I'm a moderator, in which case, the suggestion carries a bit more weight.

 

[Andy_T]

Taking away someone's point of view, even if someone else thinks that point of view is unwarranted.

Basically Fascism, according to some.

No, censorship is not fascism.

While I personally do not like censorship, and try to do without it, where possible, I was confronted with a few situations (on this forum and others) where some comments needed to be removed quickly in order to avoid an escalation of discussion to name-calling and worse. However, you will notice that this forum is pretty laid-back, and moderation is normally quite light, so it does not happen often.

There are a number of things that we all do not like to hear, and for that reason, do not allow here (propagation of meat and animal products, racism or hate speech are some examples here)

So - please - while I understand that censorship is often one of the oppressive measures of fascist regimes, do not claim that any kind of censorship is basically the same.

 

[FortyTwo]

No, censorship is not fascism.

While I personally do not like censorship, and try to do without it, where possible, I was confronted with a few situations (on this forum and others) where some comments needed to be removed quickly in order to avoid an escalation of discussion to name-calling and worse. However, you will notice that this forum is pretty laid-back, and moderation is normally quite light, so it does not happen often.

There are a number of things that we all do not like to hear, and for that reason, do not allow here (propagation of meat and animal products, racism or hate speech are some examples here)

So - please - while I understand that censorship is often one of the oppressive measures of fascist regimes, do not claim that any kind of censorship is basically the same.

I totally agree. My post was in reference to someone else's claims of Fascism. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

 

[Spang]

Sarah Rupp is a communist and a poet. She wrote an article that requires a subscription to read all the words. She writes that gun control won't help her, because it excludes her. She has a history of mental health issues.

I want a gun because I’m queer, and I look queer. I want a gun because I am out of the closet. I want a gun because I’m a puntable five feet tall, heavily tattooed, and a woman. I want a gun because I spend every Saturday at the lesbian bar, one that looks eerily like Pulse, except our outdoor courtyard has a beach volleyball court. I want a gun because I’ve been raped by a man. I want a gun because I’ve been stalked by a man. I want a gun because my friend was stabbed to death by a man. I want a gun because I’ve been followed home by male strangers – not once, but twice. I want a gun because one day I think all of my friends and I are going to need guns when we defend our future trailer park commune from the corn warlords of the apocalypse. I want a gun because I kind of miss shooting beer bottles in the deserted mall. And I know capitalism, and I know myself: malls and beer cans will only get emptier and emptier.

This next paragraph is behind the very affordable paywall:

We often see the media portray mass shooters as mentally ill, but that’s only true if you consider masculinity a mental illness. The attack in Orlando wasn’t galvanized by anything other than homophobia. And you know what sucks? Queer people are four times more likely to make a suicide attempt than straight people. Which means queer people who have struggled to stay alive cannot own guns in most states. There is also incessant talk by media pundits of allowing the FBI to deprive anyone on watch lists of the right to buy firearms. Which means a whole lot of our friends won’t be able to buy guns legally.

 

[Andy_T]

@Spang , sorry but that does not sound like a very convincing reasoning for me by a person with a history of mental illness why she needs a gun.

And I do see here also the risk that the presence of a gun makes it easier to not only consider suicide, but to follow it through: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/

Again, the idea that "if people at the Pulse nightclub" had been armed, to think that a number of (possibly drunk), untrained civilians shooting around in a dark night club could have accomplished without bloodshed what the SWAT team had lots of problems with (to subdue the attacker) does not seem very logical to anybody but an NRA member.

 

[Spang]

Again, the idea that "if people at the Pulse nightclub" had been armed, to think that a number of (possibly drunk), untrained civilians shooting around in a dark night club could have accomplished without bloodshed what the SWAT team had lots of problems with (to subdue the attacker) does not seem very logical to me.

That's not her argument. That's not mine, either.

 

[Andy_T]

How else then to interpret this sentence?

I want a gun because I spend every Saturday at the lesbian bar, one that looks eerily like Pulse, except our outdoor courtyard has a beach volleyball court.

 

[Spang]

As I interpret her argument, and I can read the entire article, she wants a gun because hyper-masculine men have guns, because cops have guns, because rapists have guns, etc.

 

[Mischief]

As I interpret her argument, and I can read the entire article, she wants a gun because hyper-masculine men have guns, because cops have guns, because rapists have guns, etc.

That's pretty much everyone's reason for wanting a gun. (Everyone who wants a gun, that is.)

It's what has landed us in this predicament in the first place. The fact that it's the reason given by one lesbian does not make it more compelling.