There’s been another mass shooting, at a night club in Florida, with about 20 dead so far. There is something rotten in the USA, and part of it has to be this culture that regards owning an assault rifle as a right, and the use of that weapon as an expression of masculine power.
It needs to stop.
The only problem is that trying to take their guns away sets the gun-fondlers to squealing as if they’re threatened with castration, and the glinty-eyed madmen at the NRA get more money thrown at them to buy up congress. Maybe what we also need is huge reforms in campaign finance so that our representatives would listen more to the people who are moaning in fear in the electorate, than to the smug parasites with bags of money.
Because you know already that no government, state or federal, is going to change a damn thing now.
More information is trickling out. The death toll is up to 50, and the shooter is named Omar Mateen. The story is that he was infuriated to have seen two men kissing.
Now the take-away from all that should be that a) assault rifles in the hands of a single madman can cause horrific casualties, and b) this was a hate crime against the gay community. Unfortunately, I predict that all that will reverberate through the media is that he had an Islamic name, therefore we’ve got to do something about the Muslims.
The narrative has been set. The headline on CNN right now is “GUNMAN WAS PRO-ISIS”.
Jake Tapper wants you to be sure to know that this was caused by radical Islam.
“There are a lot of members of that community and supporting friends and family who are very worried,” Tapper explained. “Obviously if this was radical Islam, which the special agent in charge of the FBI suggested it may have been, that is a community that has been under siege from radical Islam.”
Do they even know that this hatred of LGBTQ people is a property held in common by radical Islam and radical Christianity? Except of course that radical Islam is thankfully marginalized in the US, while radical Christianity is happily legislating against queers from a position of power.
Governor Rick Scott doesn’t want to say openly that this was an attack on the gay community, and thinks the proper response is to “pray”.
Fuck “thoughts and prayers”.
And anti-queer violence, too. The club was for lgbt people. Terrorism, but they won’t call it that.
But you called it an “assault rifle” when it was really just a semi-automatic rifle! That invalidates your point (somehow). /s
As a Brit, all I can say is that it is so sad that hatred and intolerance can be backed up by narrow minded commercial interest and babyish gun worshippers. I feel so sorry for those languishing in such a climate of oppression by such people. Freedom? Don’t make me laugh!
CaitieCat #1:
According to the linked article, “Orlando authorities said they consider the violence an act of domestic terror.” The cynic in me expects this classification to be quietly ignored by far too many, but at least it’s “officially” out there for a change.
See, the problem is there were no good guys with guns there. So what we really need is more guns! Simple logic. For simple people.
I’m felling hollow right now knowing that with 20 dead people and 42 hospitalized nothing will be done to prevent this from happening again. In a week this mass murder will be out of the news cycle and will only be brought up as a statistic when the next mass murder happens. I wonder what it would take for Americans to move from “it happened again” to “never again.”
It might indeed be labelled terrorism if the shooter isn’t identified as a white xtian male.
With the caveat the above-quoted “they” refers to unspecific people or groups, not true: The local police are calling it “domestic terrorism” (The Grauniad):
A reporter apparently asked a (follow-up?) question about whether or not the gun-fondler was connected to daesh, so there is also some discussion about daesh and related subjects.
No, there apparently was, and he(?) — an on-duty police officer — did return fire (The Grauniad):
Please don’t do the NRA’s work of spreading lies.
Condolences to the injured, and to families and friends of the casualties. Horrific, but not, of course, surprising.
According to the BBC:
If this does turn out to be the case, it’s obvious how Trump and the rest of the far right will exploit it.
There was an off-duty cop working security who returned fire on the shooter. In a crowded and chaotic night club. I wonder how many of the dead are from his gunfire?
This is one of the problems that, at least in principle, is easy to solve (or least dramatically reduce): ban weapons.
“good guy with gun” is a contradiction in terms.
————————————————————————–
I can’t help thinking that this was inspired by the recent shooting of Christina Grimmie , also in Orlando.
ugh.
I know unrelated, but, association by similarity of events and location lead to wild conclusions.
—
Maybe we can start treating guns like cigarettes. as in “you know they’re bad for you, if you must use it, take it outside into a designated area (away from everyone else who wants to breathe)”.
Government doesn’t ban them or confiscate them, just taxes them a bit higher than usual goods.
It is the general attitude toward smoking that is reducing the number of smokers to a fringe population, who are reluctantly tolerated, without ridicule or vocal shaming.
.
yeah, sure, that’ll happen, as if…
@11, go away troll.
What a horrifying atrocity.
“good guy with gun” is a contradiction in terms.
————————————————————————–
I can’t help thinking that this was inspired by the recent shooting of Christina Grimmie , also in Orlando.
ugh.
I know unrelated, but, association by similarity of events and location lead to wild conclusions.
—
Maybe we can start treating guns like cigarettes. as in “you know they’re bad for you, if you must use it, take it outside into a designated area (away from everyone else who wants to breathe)”.
Government doesn’t ban them or confiscate them, just taxes them a bit higher than usual goods.
It is the general attitude toward smoking that is reducing the number of smokers to a fringe population, who are reluctantly tolerated, without ridicule or vocal shaming.
.
yeah, sure, that’ll happen, as if…
“good guy with gun” is a contradiction in terms.
————————————————————————–
I can’t help thinking that this was inspired by the recent shooting of Christina Grimmie , also in Orlando.
ugh.
I know unrelated, but, association by similarity of events and location lead to wild conclusions.
—
Maybe we can start treating guns like cigarettes. as in “you know they’re bad for you, if you must use it, take it outside into a designated area (away from everyone else who wants to breathe)”.
Government doesn’t ban them or confiscate them, just taxes them a bit higher than usual goods.
It is the general attitude toward smoking that is reducing the number of smokers to a fringe population, who are reluctantly tolerated, without ridicule or vocal shaming.
.
yeah, sure, that’ll happen, as if…
“good guy with gun” is a contradiction in terms.
————————————————————————–
I can’t help thinking that this was inspired by the recent shooting of Christina Grimmie , also in Orlando.
ugh.
I know unrelated, but, association by similarity of events and location lead to wild conclusions.
—
Maybe we can start treating guns like cigarettes. as in “you know they’re bad for you, if you must use it, take it outside into a designated area (away from everyone else who wants to breathe)”.
Government doesn’t ban them or confiscate them, just taxes them a bit higher than usual goods.
It is the general attitude toward smoking that is reducing the number of smokers to a fringe population, who are reluctantly tolerated, without ridicule or vocal shaming.
.
yeah, sure, that’ll happen, as if…
I regard it as male cowardice. People who need weapons like that, just to live, are cowards. Taking out a firearm and firing at defenceless people: how brave.
“good guy with gun” is a contradiction in terms.
————————————————————————–
I can’t help thinking that this was inspired by the recent shooting of Christina Grimmie , also in Orlando.
ugh.
I know unrelated, but, association by similarity of events and location lead to wild conclusions.
—
Maybe we can start treating guns like cigarettes. as in “you know they’re bad for you, if you must use it, take it outside into a designated area (away from everyone else who wants to breathe)”.
Government doesn’t ban them or confiscate them, just taxes them a bit higher than usual goods.
It is the general attitude toward smoking that is reducing the number of smokers to a fringe population, who are reluctantly tolerated, without ridicule or vocal shaming.
.
yeah, sure, that’ll happen, as if…
Troll? Excuse me? It’s an honest question. Do you imagine bullets flying in a crowded room with weird lighting only go where they are wanted?
13. qwints:
Why? he/it/she was asking a reasonable and relevant question.
Yes it is.
Probably terrorism and a hate crime both.
So who and why?
1. Orlando says domestic terrorism meaning christofascists.
2. The FBI says maybe Islamic terrorism. That maybe really makes things clearer.
We simply don’t know right now.
The style is Islamic terrorism but that doesn’t make things clearer either. We just have to wait here.
PS @Artor. The cop was in a shootout outside the club, according to the CNN report.
FTB is unusable without ad blockers. I get redirected in a looping page (can’t navigate back) with a fake Google telling me to install a security app, dodgy as.
For what it’s worth, MSNBC just read a statement from the shooter’s father. He says his son became very angry after seeing two men kissing in downtown Miami a couple of months ago.
17. raven
Why? It looks like plain old ‘mericun shootout to me.
@13
I don’t see how that’s trolling. That “good guys with guns” can lead to unintended casualties from the crossfire is a pretty fair assumption.
50 people dead, 53 wounded.
The CNN report said he had both guns and explosives and implied he might have a suicide vest. That is typical Middle Eastern terrorism.
OTOH, terrorists can easily copy each other.
From SC at #19, it might have been right wingnut/christofascist.
We all want answers right now but just have to wait. They will appear.
“The FBI” is quoted as being quite definitive it is “terrorism” (live blog at The Grauniad, 12:56 mark):
The estimate of c.20 killed is apparently too low, the quoted live blog (15:24 mark) is now saying:
MSNBC is identifying the killer as Omar Mateen, and they have a representative of the Muslim community in the press conference, which suggests he was Muslim. But it appears at this early moment to be about homophobia.
Well there we go.
The dead shooter was apparently a Moslem. This is going to be labeled Islamic terrorism no matter what his actual motive was.
Goddamn it. Another fucking mass shooting. And the response will be just like *all* the rest of them: absolutely nothing.
Oh, wait. We’ll get our elected officials saying “our thoughts and prayers are with the families and survivors”, as if that does fuck-all to reduce the chances of an incident like this happening again.
****
I live in Florida, though in the Northwest part of the state about 6 hours from Orlando. My parents and sister live down there though. Hell, my sister lives with a few miles of the bar and has gone there several times (thankfully she didn’t go last night). This is scary as hell.
qwints @13:
Artor is not a troll. They’ve been a commenter here for years. The point being made is that gun activists always say “If only there had been a good guy with a gun to stop the bad guy”, but they never take into account the chaos that occurs in enclosed spaces like this. That chaos would prevent damn near anyone from being able to effectively make a shot to stop the bad guy, and given how so many people are gung-ho about their firearms, it might well lead to more casualties as innocent people could get accidentally shot.
The fact that it looks like the shooter is Muslim means that something probably WILL be done, just not about guns.
I”m watching MSNBC and the narrative is already playing out as “radical Islamic ideology” instead of why the fuck can people own military grade weapons. And if some asshole wants to point out that the military version of the M-16 or M-4 is full auto/select fire, go fuck yourself.
rtor@13: CBC (probably actually AP) says the on-duty police officer fired at the gunman outside, then the gunman went inside and the killing started. No mention whether stray bullets from either party in that initial shootout hit anybody.
Artor@13, sorry (weird auto-correct)
(Live blog at The Grauniad, 16:02 mark, my boldfacing)
borax@30: Muslim implies no other issues are worth talking about. And the current GOP will amp up the hate; I’m not looking forward to the wave of retaliatory hate crimes against innocent people that is to come.
Of course it is, because they can’t have the Christians feeling complicit in deadly homophobia.
The father of the gunman said his son had been very angry at seeing two men kiss, and that this had nothing to do with religion.
numerobis@34, CNN just used “lone wolf”. Another fucking buzzword that makes every mass murder an anomaly instead of a result of America’s fucked up gun culture.
Two predictions:
1. Gun apologists will explain that a well-funded and well-organized group was able to get guns in restricted countries, which proves that gun laws aren’t perfectly effective, which means they’re completely useless.
2. The dictionary atheist community will explain how a Muslim who commits an anti-LGBT hate crime is proof of societal barbarism whereas a white person who does is just misguided.
We desperately need to dispose of the pernicious myth of “good guys” and “bad guys” that lies at the rotten core of opposition to gun control. Much of this is obviously fear of non-white people, but more broadly, it’s the delusion that people like one’s self would only ever shoot someone in self-defense and never in anger. That shows up in the argument that mass shooters are almost always motivated by mental illness or by religion. Shootings like this are fundamentally about wounded entitlement no matter what ideology the shooter uses in justification.
Concealed carry is an action movie hero fantasy. Its proponents share the Old Testament idea of a fallen world as if violence were an inherent part of life. That is something we never should accept. Such folks effectively give up on society,
I can’t believe that anyone is seriously suggesting that an armed response from police was inappropriate. There is no country in the world where this doesn’t lead to an armed police response. It’s one thing to point out that this disproves the NRA’s magic good gunnan defense, it’s another to suggest that police officers returning fire bear any responsibility for the monstrous acts of the shooter.
38. numerobis
They may also claim that there are not enough ‘good guys’ with guns.
‘dictionary atheism’ as defined on this site by PZ Myers, does not in any way imply this sort of reaction.
Indeed. The reaction (police officers shooting) to a monstruous act (the original shooter shooting at people) cannot reasonably be the cause of the shooting. It would be positively idiotic to suggest such a thing.
Good thing nobody actually suggested it.
Huh? Citation fecking needed for the claim that someone is “seriously suggesting that an armed response from police was inappropriate.”
How many are dead because the police attempted to stop the shooter? is a vile and stupid thing to ask, and I’m irrationally angry because it’s being taken seriously. I’ll step away from the keyboard now.
No, it is not. Just because an act is justified, does not mean it cannot and/or does not have unintended and/or unavoidable and undesirable consequences. Rejecting or condemning such questions is not reasonable and flies in the face of rational thinking. Everything is/should be open to questioning.
@qwints, actually its not, because anybody who has experience of firefights know perfectly well that in such confines it is almost impossible to guarantee that your rounds will only go where you want them to go, without considering things like ricochets. For insance, to give just two examples, both in New York in the street during the day in 2012 and again 2013, nine and two bystanders respectively were hit by police rounds when they were firing at someone. In that situation the people were more spread out than you would expect inside a club. However, that is not to blame the police put in such situations, the only person to blame is the shooter who started all this.
Well, Florida bans people from carrying guns in an establishment that serves alcohol. How did the killer get inside with his gun given such strong laws?
And what could have possibly caused anger at seeing two men kiss if not for indoctrination by a bronze age death cult with such an excessive amount of ingrained homophobia that in countries controlled by such religion, gays are straight up murdered by the state for simply existing?
Joy.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/12/omar-mateen-id-d-as-orlando-killer.html
“It has nothing to do with religion”
Suuuure…
I see the trolls have already arrived. How utterly predictable.
Just because something *can* have something to do with religion, does not mean it invariably *has* something to do with religion. It is perfectly conceivable that there are atheists who are also utterly homophobic. Not all horrors are caused by religion. Simple xenophobia can and does exist, and some homophobia certainly can be a subset thereof.
Religion has a lot to do with it:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uzctJPEVFuA
The odds are that someone who hates gays enough to kill them for being gay, or hates doctors who perform abortions enough to kill them for that subscribe to religions that condemn these behaviors as evil/sinful/deserving of death/eternal punishment.
I’m not sure anyone *knows* much of anything at this point including the gunman’s father. Relying on family members for rational analysis of crimes might not be the best approach.
53. numerobis
The question is: does *this* shooting have anything to do with religion? It is just not reasonable to make any assumptions without knowing what we currently don’t know about this case.
In general, of course religion has a lot to answer for with respect to homophobia.
Now that the shooter has been identified, brace yourselves for a slew of “See! This is what I’m talking about” from Trump et al.
Conceivable, maybe. But a bunch of google searching on homophobic murders hasn’t resulted anyone who wasn’t a proud member of a fundy death cult.
In the absence of direct statements from the shooter it’s impossible to say what the cause was. Blaming religion, especially a minority religion, is a simple cop out; a way to say “well, obviously the problem is just ‘xyz’ belief system, so if we eliminate that belief system everything will be well.”
The truth must be rather more complicated, as awful people will be awful people regardless of religion. One need only look to the more putrid segments of ‘movement atheism’ for proof, where the same sort of self-reinforcing garbage can be seen at work (albeit to a lesser degree, perhaps a function of newness — less time for the feedback loop to apply — more than anything else.) In fact, the proliferation of terrible beliefs across multiple religions and non-religions should prompt a more general review of overall culture, rather than a laser-like focus on whichever belief system is associated with the latest horrifying act.
Conceivable and reasonable are not the same thing. Religion having *something* to do with it is a reasonable assumption at this point. It is perfectly reasonable to make preliminary assumptions given the high probability.
CBS is claiming that gunmen pledged allegiance to ISIS in call to 911 during shooting.
I’m not sure I want to put the label of “religion” on ISIS. That group promotes a violent, patriarchal ideology with religious overtones that most other religious people say are fake or misinterpretations, or whatever.
However, the gunman has a connection with ISIS:
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/orlando-nightclub-massacre/terror-hate-what-motivated-orlando-nightclub-shooter-n590496
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/ex-wife-of-suspected-orlando-shooter-he-beat-me/2016/06/12/8a1963b4-30b8-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html?tid=sm_tw
Pity she didn’t press charges, then the bastard would have been federally banned from buying or owning firearms.
And once again of course his “pure hate against the LGBT community” has nothing to do with religion.
Lynna, OM wrote:
Lovely graph on that page. It appears that 2002 was the only year in the last thirty that did not have a mass shooting. Not to worry, since that graph excludes domestic violence, gang violence and violence committed during armed robbery, so there were still plenty of firearm-related death that year.
It is seriously fucked up that this is considered “normal” by Americans.
And white homophobes who, deep down, approve the slaughter will proclaim that they have nothing in common with Mateen, and that putting people like them in charge will improve things.
White dude from Indiana arrested near L.A. pride parade route with a bunch of guns, ammunition, and tannerite (explosive that goes boom when shot, but is pretty hard to make go off otherwise).
No one is sure what his intentions were, but folks are rightly paranoid.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-gay-pride-la-weapons-20160612-snap-story.html
It’s OK. It was God’s intention:
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick, who is known for his conservative views, came under fire for tweeting a Bible passage after the shooting that read: “Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”
It was just the Christian God strutting his stuff.
Can’t wait to see the steady stream of christians taking a break from supporting anti-lgbt legislation suddenly using the murder of people like me to attack muslims.
Just STFU
Blaming a victim of domestic violence for mass murder is just evil
+++
And right now on German news it’s all just “ISIS, ISIS, ISIS” with LGBTQ people becoming “collateral damage” and not the targets.
Is there any evidence beyond him calling the police claiming his allegiance?
Lynna@61, No, the claim is the alleged mass murder called 911, and that in that call he claimed to “swear allegiance to” daesh. Assuming both the claim of the call, and of the call’s contents, are correct-ish, that does not mean he “has a connection with ISIS”, other than in his own head. He might, but it also very possibly fantasy.
(And whilst the authorities are saying that have a positive ID of the shooter’s identify, it has not yet been confirmed it is the individual several people are naming.)
I have the forlorn hope that Dan Patrick wasn’t saying the shooting victims got what they deserved for being gay. I’m still furious with Falwell and Robertson blaming 9/11 on feminists and gays.
A paragraph that perhaps hits the point very squarly (from Here in the south, pro-gun hysteria is the norm. In Orlando, we see the results), all emphasis in the original:
Not all Muslims who kill people do it for religious reasons. That much is clear. However, the BBC (one of the most reliable major news sources in this day and age) is reporting that this gunman declared his allegiance to ISIS while speaking to emergency services. He hated gays. Did he hate gays because he was Muslim, or did he use Islamist ideology to justify the fact that he hated gays. To that last question, I ask: does it matter? He killed at least 50 people, and wounded countless others. If he was not a Muslim, or perhaps more to the point, if he was not raised in a homophobic community, would he have wanted to kill gay people after witnessing two men kissing? Probably not.
Note that my argument would equally apply to a Christian who murders gay people. It is the culture of the homophobic community in which a killer of gay people is raised that, I believe is the principal reason things like this happen, and not the religion specifically. That is not to say this isn’t terrorism or that this guy did not have Islamofascist tendencies; religion is an important factor, it’s just interchangeable. Would the media be calling it terrorism if a Christian did something like this, I don’t know. Probably not. But that’s the media’s bias in a culture just dripping with Christian privilege. It would still be terrorism. It would still be a hate crime. It would still make my blood boil with rage at the fact that we still have people in this world to whom homosexuality is this great evil that must be stopped, even if it means sacrificing one’s own life. Fuck these people.
Could this happen without religious involvement? Sure, there are atheist homophobes who might take it this far. The difference, to my mind anyway, is that they are much, much rarer than the homophobes bred by religious intolerance. They don’t have a large community that keeps telling them how bad and evil homosexuals are, and they don’t have an unquestionable holy book that contains proscriptions against homosexual activity. It could absolutely happen, but a culture of religious intolerance makes it FAR more likely.
blf @70, you are correct. I worded that badly. The connection may well be only in the shooter’s head, and we have media confirmation on the 911 call, but not official confirmation.
Link
I always keep in mind Stephen Weinberg’s proposition that good people will do good things and evil people will do bad things, with or without religion, but that for good people to do bad things, religion is required. That, to me, is the difference with atheism. Atheism does not *require* (or even inspire) one to do evil, while religion most definitely does.
President Obama responded. Excerpts:
There is no reason whatsoever why this shouldn’t be seen as both a hate crime and an act of religious extremism.
I’m not sure why anyone would feel it has to be one or the other. 50 people are dead. Nobody is going to forget the hate crime aspect by exploring the gunman. They are part and parcel the same thing.
ISIS claims the attack:
https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/742065604316811264?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
@77
There are already examples of the media harping on the religion of the shooter and treating the orientation of the victims as a coincidence.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ckxcdl0WEAAMZzm.jpg:large
Followup to Holms @56.
Here are some of Trump’s tweets:
What I get from this is that Donald trump makes a mass murder all about him.
And so the merry-go-round keeps spinning. We might skip a lot of the “he was mentally ill!” bullshit (there will still be some, I just overheard a coworker go on about how “I guarantee that he and most others have like depression and shit but they only get treated with pills instead of help”) because it’ll be replaced widely with the “he’s a moosleeem” bullshit instead. But everything else will remain the same.
Assholes arguing that less guns makes more killings.
Assholes ignoring evidence about every. Other. Industrialised. Country. Some with as many guns per capita, who have nowhere near the amount of mass murdering than the US has.
Assholes calling guns a “tool” while ignoring questions about what use this tool has.
It keeps spinning, the same pablum is regurgitated everywhere every time. And the only thing that changes is more hundreds of people have their lives shattered on the altar of gun felatio and death culture.
Blood for the blood god.
Religion: The original weapon of mass destruction. Nevermind that Muslims and Christians pray to the same sky fairy, the latter will never admit to it. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to vomit and cry in a corner.
Right. He has no plan to stop “lone wolves”. You can’t, except by luck. Just ask the Secret Service.
Another excerpt from President Obama’s address to the nation:
Salon link
The full text of Obama’s comments are posted at the link.
Lynna@74, The FBI has now confirmed the mass murderer’s identity (as the individual previously named), and that there was a 911 call, albeit not much about the contents of the call, saying “It was general to the Islamic State.” Also, Omar Mateen was known to the FBI(and interviewed twice, once in 2014 and once in 2014), but they were allegedly unable to verify any of his claims.
He also purchased the guns legally within the last week.
(Based on the live blog at The Grauniad, 20:23 mark.)
An excerpt from Hillary Clinton’s comments:
An excerpt from Bernie Sanders’ statement:
From Democratic National Committee chair and Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz:
Additional link to the recent legal purchase of weapons.
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/gunman-used-ar-15-style-rifle-in-mass-shooting-what-are-floridas-gun-laws/
What red flags are present in state with Florida’s gun laws?
I got yelled at when I pointed out the red flags present.
Teh troll@89, “I got yelled at when I pointed out the red flags present”.
No, you got “yelled at” for “Blaming a victim of domestic violence for mass murder” (for not pressing charges), with Giliell@69 pointing out your claim “is just evil”.
@chris_devries, 73
America is a homophobic community. There’s been no lack of non-muslims assaulting and killing queer people, discrimination and bigotry is common, and lawmakers feel comfortable passing laws that basically ban trans people from peeing.
There is no need to assume a connection to Islam to account for homophobia and transphobia.
MME, I pointed out NO red flags were present with the gun purchases, as they were perfectly legal. Try reading for comprehension.
What is your opinion of Sam Harris?
FoxNews (Faux Noise> already blames Obama’s, Hilary’s, etc “Political correctness” as causing this to happen. He says this is not a tragedy but an expected incident of the jihad to which we are being subjected.
Completely disregards the actual motivation, or ease with which he was able to equip his capability. If FauxNoise really wanted Obama to end this supposed war at once; advocate gun confiscation. If FauxNoise is gonna keep using PC as a disparaging term, lets accuse them of being PC towards NRA.
jefrir’s comment@91 made me think of Anita Staver, wife of inept right winger lawyer Mat Staver. She got some press in the last few weeks for stating she would be carrying a pistol to “protect” herself from trans people using public bathrooms. Her attitude isn’t that far from the alleged shooter’s.
re 92:
in MassMomentumEnergy’s defense: the “red flag” may have been his entry @62.
maybe, maybe
*sigh*
WTF does’ Sam Harris have to do with the price of tea in China?
So if someone sees another shoot and kill someone, knows them and could identify them, but tells the cops they didn’t see anything and refuses to talk, should they bare some responsibility when the murderer kills again?
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/04/us/chicago-shootings.html
I wonder how effective six “good guys with guns” with blood alcohol levels ranging from .06 to .21 would be in a crowded bar when a lone suicidal fanatic shows up and starts shooting.
Why are you even bothering to ask that inane question. Sam Harris is a paranoid Islamophobe. If you agree with him….
Substitute ‘Islam’ for ‘Christianity’ and see how lame and dishonest this argument is. Fucking hell. If that piece of shit shooter had been a fundamentalist Christian pledging allegiance to a Christian terrorist organisation, we would be seeing nowhere near the amount of genuflection and apologetics we are getting now, from the alleged allies of LGBT* persons no less. We all would have ripped Christianity a new one, and faced almost zero opposition from our fellows on the political left.
I’m apparently a terrorist apologist if I have the audacity to suggest that maybe brown people don’t need to prove their humanity to every white person because Islam.
I’ll do a more thorough post over on AtG in the next few days, but jesus christ.
Well, yeah? No one throws bricks at innocent christians when a white christian does a mass shooting, they don’t need the support/protection.
Either way, as far as I’m concerned, if you’re going to use a tragedy against people like me (as a bisexual trans person) as an excuse to attack the same innocent muslims (like my family) that are going to be targets of violence like they are every time an individual muslim does something bad, I don’t want your support.
I must have missed the part of this conversation where people suggested throwing bricks at innocent Muslims.
My anger comes from the deliberate quelling of honest inquiry into the causes of homophobic violence when it makes us too uneasy. It is embarrassing and shameful hypocrisy. Whatever happened to ‘challenge everything, question everything, even if (especially if!) it makes us uncomfortable?’ One does not have to be a bigot to acknowledge that religions other than Christianity have a homophobia problem.
Then you’re just being disingenuous, or are exceptionally ignorant.
People like my family face a shitton of violence every time shit like this happens, and its only helped by this bullshit that tries to pretend a muslim can’t be a homophobic murderer for reasons other than being muslim.
We live in a homophobic culture, and while I’m sure religion can be an exaggerating factor, the homophobia that’s built into our society is just as blameworthy. Yet here you are, focusing specifically on the former factor and denying the latter as some kind of cop-out.
True. But the problem comes when you also blame that religion for other problems and set them out for special scrutiny like Trump.
At this time, I see a “lone wolf” acting, with the root of their problem unknown. Religion probably has a part, but might not the real root cause.
And yes, I absolutely would treat this less delicately if the killer was a christian, because christians don’t face xenophobia and violence literally every time any christian does something wrong.
It’s almost like there’s some kind of nuance to the matter, when the demographic in question is also an oppressed group. Go figure.
People throwing bricks at innocent Muslims when a Muslim does a mass shooting are assholes who need to be locked up. I don’t fucking care who the target of irrational hatred is, anyone who engages in violence because of irrational hatred should be locked up. People hate Muslims and commit violence against them. The perpetrators are assuming that there is a kind of “guilt by association” – that these Muslims believe the same things that the so-called terrorists believe, so they should also suffer. But we all know that this is bullshit, and that it is fucking wrong to hurt people because they happen to maybe (because let’s face it, plenty of Americans think Sikhs are Muslims) believe the same things that justified targets of hatred (the actual misogynistic, homophobic killers and torturers in ISIS) believe.
The reality of actual islamophobia has absolutely nothing to do with this mass shooting/hate crime/terrorist attack in Orlando. If a person is moved to violence because of (in this case) homophobia, and their religion is either explicitly used to justify the violence against gay people, or it fostered a homophobic community in which the shooter grew up such that a gay kiss could provoke a massive hate crime, the religion is an important factor in the attack (and without the influence of religious dogmatism, it is probable that this man would not have killed anyone). And whether that religion is a majority or minority one in the community in which the attack took place is irrelevant.
I also find it the height of irony that some of the people condemning this horrific attack have much more in common with the attacker than with the victims. These homophobic hypocrites have often fantasized in public about God’s Law requiring them to stone gay people to death, and now they have a homophobe who took action, and they are forced to criticize him because he worships the wrong deity. If there is a silver lining (and I don’t mean to diminish the horror of this attack in any way) it is that people now have a fresh example of real LGBT suffering to juxtapose with all of the political efforts trying to deny transgendered people their rights. It is clear to see that LGBT people are far far more likely to be the targets of an attack than the perpetrators. Given the existence of the recency bias, I really hope that this terrible tragedy removes some of the political will to discriminate against LGBT people.
@105
I would almost certainly point to systemic/cultural homophobia as a large part of it. Even people who are too young to get it or are otherwise supportive of LGBT people end up spouting homophobia they absorb from around them, plenty of whom do not belong to any sort of particularly fundamentalist religion.
I went to lower education in as lib an area as possible, and plenty of people who were only nominally religious were still virulently homophobic in ways that are normalized.
Douchenozzle worked for the mercenary company Wackenhunt now called G4S
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/local/fort-pierce-apartment-building-evacuated-has-ties-/nrfFf/
His dad thought he was president of Afghanistan
http://gawker.com/orlando-shooting-suspects-father-is-a-former-tv-show-ho-1781849968:
See, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a religious thing. As Jefrir rightfully pointed out, the US is a homophobic community.
Plenty of institutions have homophobia as a normalized part, and some of the most virulent homophobes I know have been largely secular, because they absorbed shit from society around them.
They claim to be muslims, so, they are muslims.
I don’t care about Sam Harris one way or the other.
I think you are conflating criticism of Islam with criticism of Muslims. The Muslim people deserve our protection, sympathy, and support during the inevitable racist backlash that occurs in the aftermath of terrorist spectacles. But their religion does not.
One leads to the other, especially when done in the way implied by “ripping them a new one.”
Maybe, but your posts do follow his line of reasoning….maybe you need a break.
This is an unwarranted assertion. I have denied nothing of the sort. Take a look at what I actually wrote, please. No doubt an entire shit cocktail of factors goes into any act of violence on this scale; to deny that is idiotic. But to tiptoe around the blatantly obvious spectre of religion, as I have seen people doing all day, is dishonest in the extreme. That was my objection.
What you’re calling “tiptoeing”, I see as “treating a nuanced matter with the nuance it deserves because the group in question is liable to face violence and oppression because of the focus put on it after this even”
Really, Vivec? You think criticizing ideology leads directly to violence and persecution? If so, we’d all better pack up and go home right now, since our continued disagreement with each other’s ideas is liable to lead to a massacre at any moment.
I think it demonstrably does, when done in certain ways. Do you think all criticism is inherently valid, non-inflammatory, or unlikely to cause violence and persecution?
Especially on an atheist blog.
If it was Christian fundy terrorist, the same folks would be singing a different tune.
I think they are all fucked, but that somehow makes me a Sam Harris fanboi (a person I really don’t give a fuck about).
Vivec, your quote is mistaken.
“We all would have ripped Christianity a new one”
It didn’t say “Christians”, nor did it say “them”.
Once again you are conflating two different things. I agree with you however that one can lead to the other. The fact is that some people will do that and that they do that to a minority religion because it isn’t the one to which they belong is also true. However, one must still be able to search for possible causes and identify them and condemn them. Being a minority religion whose members are oppressed by members of a dominant religion shouldn’t give that religion a pass.
Ideas can and should be taken to task for the consequences to which they lead regardless of the minority/majority status those ideas may command at any particular place and time.
“Abortion centers are baby killing factories and everyone who works there is a murderer” is a criticism, but is nonetheless able to (and demonstrably has in the past) encouraged violence.
Absolutely. I don’t need to treat Christians with nuance, because Christians aren’t victims of mass xenophobia every time a christian does something wrong. Might as well ask why there’s no Straight pride parade if we’re going to have a LGBT pride one.
Changing those terms doesn’t alter my point at all. Criticizing islam the way implied by “ripping islam a new one” is the kind of criticism I believe leads to attacking muslims.
I’m literally not saying people should refrain from criticizing islam, just that some ways of doing it are more inflammatory than others and ignoring the role of systemic homophobia in favor of criticizing the religion doesn’t do us any favors.
Were you infesting us during the Charleston Church Murders a year ago? Not so much Xian religion, but rather the “religion” of bigots using the Confederate Battle Flag was under fire, as that seemed to be the inspiration. The Xian fundementalism took second place, which is probably the case here.
This morning before the L.A. pride parade, Santa Monica police arrested a man from Indiana who was acting suspicious. They found several guns, ammunition, and material for making pipe bombs in his car. His name is James Howell…not your typical Arabic name.
As we all know, Muslim clerics aren’t the only ones advocating death to gays. A simple google for “preacher death to gays” returns numerous examples of Christian preachers declaring the same thing. Back in November, Kevin Swanson, a Christian pastor in Iowa who advocates killing homosexuals, held an event which was attended by three Republican candidates: Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, and Ted Cruz. If anti-gay hate is spawned by religion, then it is not just Islam.
Nope, but only Islam gets a pass.
I think we’re actually more in agreement than not, Vivec. I would never advocate ignorant, xenophobic, inflammatory rhetoric. It achieves nothing; it obscures what it should clarify. But an honest, unflinching assessment of the presence (or absence) of homophobia in Islam as it is practiced, preferably from the viewpoint of an insider, would add to our understanding of homophobic violence and benefit all. I am not the person to provide that, but if it is taboo for us to discuss this phenomenon at all, then such an assessment will never even see the light of day, and we will have squandered our opportunity to learn about this problem and how to prevent it in the future.
@127
Agreed, and it’s entirely likely that I misread you. We tend to get a fair amount of “ugh these lefitsts wont point out islam is the most barbaric evilest thing ever and a unique threat to every individual person on the planet in a way that is totally not influenced by socially-ingrained homophobia or political factors” posters right after stuff like this happens.
Evidence? Not here…
Link to a news report supporting Robro #125
http://my.xfinity.com/articles/news-national/20160612/US-Gay-Pride-Explosives-Arrest/
Hatred of GLBT is not specific to any one religion. Until I see the totally religious motive of the Orlando perp, his religion will continue to be a contributing factor, not the cause.
US society basically condoned the mass murder of school children.
What makes you think the US at large will care enough to actually commit to changes if the victims are gay people?
I was the first one to post this story. I still think the bastard could very well be a Christian terrorist, but tannerite cannot be used for pipe bombs. Much like C4 you need a shock wave to detonate it, a lit fuse won’t do anything.
Criticism of an ideology *can* lead to violence against people who are assumed to espouse said ideology. The reality of American bigotry is horrific, and the media play right into the hands of the prejudiced, making life very difficult and dangerous for Muslims living in the USA. Backlash attacks against mosques and Muslim people spike in frequency after terrorist incidents. I am not entirely convinced that it is possible to modulate our language so much that a motivated bigot, upon reading a criticism of Islam, won’t be able to twist these words into further justification for committing a hate crime. People see what they want to see. So I would argue that this unfortunate reality should not cause us to think twice before criticizing the ideology of Islamism or jihadism. Bigots will always find reasons to hurt others, and if it’s not reading something that we don’t write because of a fear it may be used to justify a hate crime, it’ll be something else.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be clear that we’re criticizing *ideas*, and that most Muslims don’t agree with these ideas. All I mean is that we should not hold ourselves accountable for assholes who twist our words and use them to justify their hate. So yes, nuance is important; we must recognize the reality of bigotry in the USA and be careful not to incite more hatred.
Homophobia is rampant in our culture, that much is clear. Legally, the drive for equal rights for LGBT people has surpassed my wildest dreams in how fast it has moved, but the speed of change has left a lot of bigots feeling like their country has left them behind (and it has). Religions I think play two parts in this. Firstly, they have been a major reason as to why our culture is so homophobic in the first place (Christianity, take a bow!). And second, they take these feelings people have, of being poor little oppressed bigots, and give them a faith-based justification. Once the Bible is invoked, or the Koran, conversation stops. A person’s commitment to homophobia cannot be reduced or removed as long as they have God’s Word on their side, and aren’t willing to entertain the possibility that God may be wrong (or non-existant).
If this killer really was Muslim, and really claimed allegiance to ISIS, I think we have to take him at his word, and criticize the fact that Islam gives people a justification for homophobia, and for violence against infidels. The existence of rampant homophobia in our culture that has a non-Muslim source does not mean we can’t talk about violence in the name of Islam-inspired homophobia.
L.A. suspect looks like Elijah Wood
http://gawker.com/police-identify-l-a-pride-weapons-suspect-as-james-wes-1781852370
Still no real information if he was a Christian terrorist or a twink from out of town coming in to have fun with friends.
iggles @127 is 100% correct.
Also, it may seem that Islam gets a pass in certain liberal circles (there are lots of regressive liberals who look at brown people and only see an oppressed class suffering our Islamophobia, but never see the suffering of those who the oppressed class oppress) but I don’t think that’s true here on Pharyngula. It is also worth noting that in the general culture, it is Christianity that gets a pass most often. If the nightclub shooter had been a white Christian, how many news outlets would call it an act of terrorism? How much attention would they draw to his religion, even if he left a manifesto that included Bible verses justifying killing gay people, and clearly spelled out how his violent acts were done in the name of Jesus, to reclaim our culture from the homosexual perverts?
Yes it does:
“Socialism will bring the Gulags to our shore” is the kind of “criticism” that fueled the ilk of McCarthy.
“Capitalism is the subjugation of the working class by the parasitic bourgeoisie” became the motto of many terrorist organization like Action Directe and the Rote Armee Faction
“Islam demands that miscreants be enslaved or slaughter” was used to justify the NSU murder, the closing of European borders which led to the death by drowning of thousands of refugees (can’t allow these “potential terrorist” to enter Europe) and fueled the increase of anti-Muslim violent assaults in Europe and the US.
***
If you want to be treated with respect, refrain from uttering that lie.
iggles wrote:
Why, I remember it as if it were yesterday. An asshole barged into an abortion clinic and started shooting people. The media was quick to point out that he was a radical pro-lifer, and probably a Christian, and therefore all pro-lifers and Christians held a share of the blame for the tragedy. There were repeated demands that the Center for Medical Progress, the organization who provided the videos that so motivated the shooter, be shut down and the staff be subject to immediate charges. Pharyngulites were on the front lines, agreeing that Christians should be blamed for it, and that all pro-life organizations are terrorist breeding cells.
Oh, wait. None of that happened. Instead, the media spent all of their time painting him as a crazy lone wolf. The airwaves, both conservative, and liberal, were filled with people repeatedly proclaiming #NotAllChristians and #NotAllProLifers. The media occasionally took note of the CMP videos, but usually preferred to talk about how obviously crazy the man was, how terrible those with mental illness were, and how his craziness was clearly the sole cause of the atrocity. Most Pharyngulites were appalled by the double standard that no one dared call this domestic terrorism, and that the man’s beliefs were constantly erased or minimized so that the media could take pot shots at a vulnerable group (the mentally ill).
If you don’t see why we might have different reactions to a media that takes vastly different positions on domestic terrorism solely dependent on who the perpetrator is, I don’t know what I can say to you…
Lie?
Are we reading the same thread?
Apparently not.
I’m going to dissect out three major problems I see people fighting over in here. They all matter and I hate to see this community neglect any of them.
#1 What I call “The historical contingency argument for homophobia”, in short the lazy as shit belief that various kinds of LGBTQphobia and even sexism and misogyny stem from religion.
#2 The strategic intersection between racism, Islamophobia and the use of homophobia within Islam by racists and Islamophobes.
#3 The legitimate need to call out expressions of homophobia that exist within religious communities collectively AND individually.
#1 What I call “The historical contingency argument for homophobia”, in short the lazy as shit belief that various kinds of LGBTQphobia and even sexism and misogyny stem from religion.
I put this one first because of the tragedy that just occurred. People arguing that homophobia and transphobia stem from religion have a serious rationality problem. Fucking seriously? You really think that until our species evolved the capacity for religious behavior that there was no way that groups of human beings could tie fear, disgust and anger to sex, romance and related social expressions between male and female people? Or no way that human beings could tie fear, anger and disgust to male and female expressions of social roles and behaviors that were different than the norm for a group? Are you that fucking dense?
It’s related to how we socially regulate behavior between the sexes in general you ignoramuses.
If there are no gods or supernatural religion is a function of ordinary human psychology and social psychology. SO IS XENOPHOBIA AND BIGOTRY! There is no reason to think that somehow religious magical thinking is required for this when the essence of what magical thinking is* occurs just as readily and by necessity in atheists.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive_development#Symbolic_function_substage
If you think that it’s another feature of religious thought on the individual or social level fucking put up or shut up. SC made the rational connection that actually can be tied to something in human behavior at #19, the fact that our fellow human who chose to commit this act was angry at seeing men kiss. The way that such behaviors are made things to be feared, hated and felt disgusted by in some, maybe even most religious communities will only be useful if works on every such expression in every kind of community.
If you want to point out that the vast majority of xenophobic bigotry and related horrors come from religious communities congratulations, you just made an irrational argument by numbers and not one that does something to identify the universal root of the problem in basic human thought and behavior. I do want religious xenophobia and bigotry dealt with and I will talk about this in #3.
#2 The strategic intersection between racism, Islamophobia and the use of homophobia within Islam by racists and Islamophobes.
This shit matters. Don’t be an intellectual and moral coward.
As a white formerly christian person that tries to be an ally this is one of the few times where my perspective might mean something. Ex-Muslims, anti-racists, anti-sexists/misogynists and people opposing bigotry against religious groups as a set want my help and I don’t have good tools for this outside of call outs of the behavior generally (and maybe that can be good enough, I want to be criticized here if there are things I don’t know yet but I’m still think about these things).
I hated challenging Anjuli Pandavar here because there should be call outs of expressions Islamic xenophobia by name when they occur. But it’s simply a fact that call outs towards a minority group are going to be capitalized on by xenophobic bigots, and people who do it unconsciously and don’t think they are bigoted. Do you really think that they would be calling it domestic terrorism as easily if it was some white christian extremist? How readily did they call it domestic terrorism when it was black churches getting shot up? Go try looking at WeHuntedtheMammoth and searching for racism in there and you will find atheists ranting about all Muslims being a threat and often in the same paragraph as they blame women as a group for making white people less safe.
Like it or not dealing with the xenophobic bigots in the majority group will be a strategic issue when members of a minority group needs some criticism and calling out. Xenophobic bigotry has intersectional implications.
#3 The legitimate need to call out expressions of homophobia that exist within religious communities collectively AND individually.
Expressions of xenophobic bigotry that are created, maintained and propagated by religious groups do need to be called out as being examples of muslim, christian or whatever group needs attached by name. There really is stuff in those holy books and other works by figures in the history of those belief systems that are shitty and lead to awful beliefs, ways of thinking, actions and communications. But (yes actually, a “but”) the way that those things in those books will function will be via means that have to do with what human psychology and social psychology do in general, with specifics that have to do with religion. Like it or not this shit is natural to us and we need to think about it the way we do murder itself. God is a “Sky daddy” and the emotions probably work on a similar basis to other authoritarian symbolism in culture.
Think about how Kim Jong-Il and historical figures get treated as literal supernatural figures by their people. And then think about the way that political and social philosophies can easily take their place as humans do what they do in atheistic governments like occurred under Stalin. Sure most christians use that one irrationally most of the time, but it’s still a good example of how people can justify terrible acts against other people. I have no problems believing that xenophobic bigotry work similarly (and are in fact related to the former example, see Hitler. That right, you can now invoke Godwin).
I want to help when it comes to xenophobic bigotry by muslims, but at this point that cannot be unqualified in general, and there are no specific ties to Islamic beliefs in this specific example yet. Getting mad at two men kissing is not an example of religion inspired homophobia.
If we lived in a better world where 95% of the population was atheist, yet that last 5% still committed the majority of terrorism, your position is that we shouldn’t criticize their culture because they are a minority. You’d give them a pass just like you are giving fundy Islam a pass today.
laurentweppe @135
If that’s your position then you might as well indict yourself right now, because you just criticized the ideologies of terrorism, McCarthyism, and Islamophobia, and that could lead to violence against terrorists, McCarthyists, and Islamophobes, as well you know.
If we really ought to refrain from criticism of ideology, period, out of the terror of violent uprising against the ideologues, we might as well draw the shutters on rational thought altogether and vow never to disagree or hold an opinion again.
Jesus fucking shit eating santorum bags
mme: back it up or
iggles; ALL OF THOSE ARE IN POSITIONS OF POWER DO YOU ALSO ASK WHY WE DON’T HAVE A WHITE HISTORY MONTH YOU DISINGENUOUS ASSHOLE?!
Except for the part where I said that it’s good to criticize islam, just to be careful in how you do it because muslims do face violence and prejudice?
Progressives are absolutely not giving Islam “a pass.” Rather, they are protecting non-radical Muslims against the inevitable right-wing Christian backlash. Comparing the reaction towards Christian terrorists, therefore, is disingenuous: The United States is not — despite what the fundies say — primed for a violent backlash toward Christians as it is towards Muslims. Christianity is still the dominant religion in US culture! Punching up is not equivalent to punching down. Stop pretending it is.
Okay now you’re just being disingenuous. That specific kinds of criticism can lead to violence doesn’t mean that all are. No one in this thread is arguing against criticism as a whole, just specific sorts of criticism.
Why don’t you calm down and actually read what I wrote, TS? I know how fond we are of that calculus in SJ spheres, but the merit of ideas is not contingent on the power of the people who hold them. Shocking, I know. Ask your freshman philosophy TA if you don’t believe me. Oppression is not a shield from criticism. It is possible to be oppressed and also oppressive to others, in turn.
Need I remind you, also, that this is not an act of violence perpetrated by a victimized Muslim against the dominant culture, but against the LGBT* community, and that it is actually the bloodiest single hate crime in U.S. history? Should LGBT* people defer criticism of the ideology that may have contributed to their mass murder out of some misplaced sense of politeness or decorum? Do our lives matter that little to you? Do you still think I’m being a DISINGENUOUS ASSHOLE?
Yes, because you continue attacking a strawman argument, as if we’re saying that you should never criticize islam, even after you’ve had it pointed out multiple times that said argument is a strawman.
No, but we (I’m a member of the LGBT community too) should be careful in how we do said criticism, lest we play into the hands of xenophobic, islamiphobic bigots looking for an excuse to attack people like me and my family.
Except the comment to which I was specifically responding was this: (emphasis supplied)
Obviously there is a limit to the heat of rhetoric people should responsibly use, but this specific position was absurd, so I responded accordingly. (Is it irresponsible to criticize capitalism? Christ on a cracker.)
Recall, also, that I specifically condemned the type of rhetoric that leads to McCarthyism and the like, so I’m not sure what people are trying to prove by throwing that against me.
Vivec, I’m sorry that we’ve ended up fighting again, but you really need to back up your assertions instead of flinging them at me willy-nilly. Show me the alleged straw man argument that I’m railing against. (Or are you confusing me with someone else?)
Vivec @#148 has the right idea. There is no shortage of criticism towards Islam within the United States. There is, however, a shortage of nuanced criticism that refuses to paint all Muslims with the same broad brush. There’s a difference between criticism and scapegoating.
@150
That was the impression I got out of your post @141, because you keep using that “well by that argument we shouldn’t criticize anything to avoid motivating people into violence” when I don’t think anyone’s making the argument that criticism is categorically wrong.
I second that. Let’s blame religion when religion is clearly to blame. Blaming religion for un-reasonable reasons will only demonstrate to the religious that atheists are not to be trusted.
100. Siobhan
It reminds of 9/11 when so many muslims came out on television, proclaiming how they were good US citizens who loved the country. They were clearly afraid of what non-muslims were going to do them. It was so sad. No person should have to demonstrate loyalty and goodness because some individual(s) not even remotely related to her/him did something bad/terrible. That is not the way of a civilised society.
The other issue with the focus on Islam’s faults is that it shifts the conversation away from policies which can prevent future tragedies of this sort, and towards policies which will do nothing but make innocent people’s lives worse. Re-examining US gun culture and gun laws could do much measurable good, but instead the conversation is steered towards what can “be done” about Islam.
At the risk of sapping the issue of some of its rightly felt exigency, I think it’s worth a bit of digging and abstraction in attempt to get a better handle on some of the morally relevant moving parts in the dilemma that seems to have emerged as central in these comments. The presumed structure of it, as I see it, is something like the following: Agent A is in a position to do or say something that, while perhaps true and otherwise conducive to goodness is in the present context likely to incite other agents–B, collectively–to commit immoral acts that result in a net increase in harm. Now, this prompts a number of questions, perhaps the most obvious being: Assuming A and B act as just described, how should moral responsibility for the resulting harm be apportioned between A and B? B is, of course, the agent who actually intends the harm and is its proximate cause, but it’s nevertheless true that A seems to be in a position to prevent that harm and, insofar as A is more receptive to moral instruction generally, may be the more promising target of moral intervention.
This is an important question, in the abstract, particularly if you’re any species of consequentialist, but in the present case, there are a number other questions we need answered before we can determine whether this one even arises. In the abstract structure, recall, we’ve assumed:
(1). That A’s action is a significant contributory cause of B’s reaction.
(2). That A’s action would be good in the absence of B’s reaction.
chris_devries @ 132 seems to be calling the first assumption into question vis-à-vis the present case. I don’t know the religious demographics of the perpetrators of these sorts of reactionary anti-Muslim hate crimes, but that information could be relevant. If the vast majority are committed by staunch Christians, it’s doubtful that atheist critiques of Islam or certain of its doctrines or interpretations played much of a roll in their actions. Of course, these are not the only potential consequences of our possible critiques. We need to also consider—especially in the US at this historical moment—their potential contributions to the general political ferment. Of course, we’re not going to be able to quantify with any precision here, but it’s something we ignore at potentially ginormous peril.
(2). also needs addressing, probably even more than (1). Sure, pointing out the contribution of Islam to this atrocity feeds that awful need to shout “I told you so” for those of us who’ve been decrying the moral idiocy of these archaic dogmas for years, but…come on: There needs to be more of good consequence to it than that if we’re to really be justified in that act. (Surely we’re better than you-know-who: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/us/politics/trump-clinton-sanders-shooting-reaction.html) Now, iggles @ has suggested that it could “add to our understanding of homophobic violence and benefit all.” This might well be the case, but a fair assessment of plausibility demands a rather more detailed story here. What we need a clearer answer to, if such an answer there be, is something like this: In the present climate, with a number of Western demagogues and ISIS itself chomping at the bit for a global war against Islam, to what good and tangible end is the act of publicly emphasizing a connection between Islam and the motivation for this horrific crime likely to take us, and how?
All day on twitter I have been seeing people trying to single out Islam has having a special problem with LGBTQ people, that Islam it especially bad and dangerous and we should be terribly worried. But looking at US data from Pew dealing with religious communities and acceptance of homosexuality it seems, overall, to be better than evangelical protestants, and there are a lot more evangelicals to worry about.
http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/views-about-homosexuality/
It was also pretty amazing to see people brush of people like Kevin Swanson and other pastors, and heck, state representatives like Andy Gipson calling for homosexuality to be punished, and spreading hate as jokes and unimportant (Gipson was one of the authors of Mississippi’s recent “religious freedom” bill, I guess that is not important), while posting videos of a couple of imams making similar statements.
Well, the truth, for one. (So long as it really is the truth; the full story is still forthcoming.) The media has a responsibility to report on a situation factually, as long as they’re not unduly exaggerating. But in this case, since the stakes against Muslims (or really, given bigots’ reputation for accuracy and integrity, anyone darker than the caucasian persuasion) are so dire, I think they have a responsibility to be more proactive in correcting public misconceptions before they have a chance to form. For instance, they should provide people with statistics that put this crime into perspective with other mass shootings, hate crimes committed by other groups, and so on. If the media won’t do this, then maybe we should take up the mantle ourselves.
Have the evangelicals condemned this because the shooter supports ISIS, or are they conflicted over the apparent target?
@75
What? Shit, either my wife is doing something behind my back or she’s behind on her quota. What evil are Lutherans required to do? I ask this so I can send her a reminder. Following tradition, should she be writing antisemitic and anti-Catholic tracts? I don’t thing that would fit into her schedule.
@99
What you call genuflection, I call careful consideration and respect for the First Amendment. Yeah, there are a lot of fucked up Christian influences in this country, but most of us know not to group them together because it’s impossible not to have close friends or family in this country who aren’t Christian. Unless you’re a complete douche who actively drives away people who don’t think like you.
160.
Religion definitely requires someone to do evil, unless killing people isn’t considered evil. Just one example among many:
Lots of discussion about the motivation, not very much about the means.
(Look at the post’s title)
162.
Perhaps because the means is not very interesting. Guns are made for one purpose: killing people and other animals. Unless one is really interested in the engineering of guns, what else is there to say, except that a civilised society should ban them?
@John Morales, #162
I think this is because the motivated will find the means, just that guns turn a half-dozen victims into several dozen. The number of people killed is shocking, and yeah, gun control might have kept guns out of this asshole’s hands (at least, automatic weapons), but the bigger problem is that there are people who want to kill gay people, not that America is a society in which it is trivially easy to be able to kill lots of people of whatever group you vehemently dislike. And who knows, maybe it would be easier to get money out of politics and thereby neuter the power that the gun lobby holds over Congress, but if I had to choose between this and significantly reducing the irrational hatred of the *other*, I think the latter is a worthier goal. But that’s just me. And you’re right, the discussion has veered away from the title of the post.
@162
I mean, I think the question of gun control is more or less a settled issue for the commentariat. Some of us disagree on the extent (I don’t like guns at all anywhere but hey) but there’s apparently serious quibble about how we discourse on the cause.
I have a growing suspicion that people are going to keep attacking my first comment before they’ve even finished reading the thread, but I’m going to address this one last time before I go to bed.
This is gibberish. What part of the first amendment? (There are several.) What power do I have to threaten any of these things with a comment on the Internet?
If you even read the portion of my comment that you quoted, you would notice that I did no such thing with either Christians or Muslims. The operative word is fundamentalist. I chose it carefully.
If I understand this correctly, it’s a rather cowardly exhortation to self-censor to avoid making waves.
That’s not an argument for why a position is wrong.
Because throwing schoolyard insults at grieving people* is the province of the non-douche, apparently.
—
*(I don’t want to imply that I had friends or family who were present for this attack – I’m grieving in the sense that I’m grieving for a loss in my community.)
gmacs #160
Yeah, no. Your false dichotomy is false.
@161
And? You seem not to know religious people don’t pick and choose what to follow. I agree that religion is irrational and often harmful, and I’m not endorsing it, but it’s ignorant not to recognize that people’s beliefs and actions don’t fit into a nice little narrative that puts religion as the source of all evil.
I once considered myself Christian while rejecting the OT because of passages just like the one you quoted.
@166
Okay, I think the main part where we have this misunderstanding is that you seem to think that Pharyngula is full of people who will bend over backwards for the Imams or some shit. Did you carefully choose the word “genuflect”? Honestly, I don’t think there are any more points to make than the ones Vivec did.
@167
It was a throwaway about the fact that 70% of the country is Christian, and their viewpoints are as diverse as ours.
The shooter almost certainly did not have an “assault rifle”, aka an automatic weapon. Further, mass shootings happen frequently enough with just handguns and 10 round magazines.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
Please talk about effective gun control, because talking about assault rifles and “assault weapons” is probably literally doing worse than nothing.
gmacs #168
Yeah, you threw it away, I picked it up, dusted it off, noticed you claimed that I am by necessity a “complete douche”, and pointed out that what you said is bullshit. Just because it is offhanded doesn’t mean I’m not going to call out bullshit when that bullshit claims I’m a complete douche.
:P
168.
And because people pick and choose, religion does not require violence? That’s a creative way of seeing things.
Now we must define the “homophobic community”, please, because this is exactly where the anti-muslim bigotry lies. Because he’s a muslim, his community is automatically supposed to be
-comprised of other muslims
who are also automatically
-homophobic.
Yes, there are violently homophobic muslim communities (and violently misogynistic muslim communities, violently anti-semitic communities…). Yet not all muslims are
-part of a muslim community
-violently homophobic
So instead of simply presuming that he got his murderous homophobia from his homophobic muslim community you must present evidence that he was part of one.
There’s another homophobic community that he obviously was part of, which is American society, where we’ve seen a targeted campaign against LGBTQ people, culminating in a bomb in a Target restroom to “protest” against their trans inclusive policy.
+++
ck
And I’d like to point out that “pro-lifer” is an active political position that has a very clear meaning, while “christian” and “muslim” are religions that encompass a large set of different people and positions.
While “their particular version of that religion fuelled their hatred and therefore all people who follow that same particular brand share some responsibility” is a valid position, “a muslim/christian/American did it, therefore they’re all to blame” isn’t.
Demeisen
THIS
We’re at a point in time where the candidate of one of the two political parties calls for a “ban on muslims”, regardless of their age, gender or variety of islam. Apparently now to protect Latinos that same person declared to be all rapists…
gmacs
Well, I know a Lutheran pastor who mistreated his Lutheran pastor wife*, so I’d clearly like to know how your wife is going to make up for that.
*He’s of course still seen as a pillar of the community because that abuse happens behind closed doors and we all know good christians don’t do that shit.
From the bits and pieces filtered out of the news reports, the guy’s ex said he was bipolar and abusive. He was on a watch list for terrorist connections AND the bipolar information would be on medical record, but he was able to buy weapons. America! What a country!
Often times I hear that melodic refrain from the gun fondlers about guns being outlawed/only outlaws would have guns. I’m wondering if anyone has ever compiled the statistics from nations where guns are regulated or heavily restricted to see if that case actually plays out in the land of reality. Specious declarations and hyperbole are too easily thrown about in media discussion and fact-checking has fallen by the wayside. If the US hadn’t fallen into the second amendment proliferation trap it would have been an avenue worth investigating and trying out. But now it’s too late, Pandora’s gun closet has been opened and there’s a fuckton of very simple minded people with redneck rationalization ready to regurgitate. The only real remedy, as far as I can tell, is to leave them to their own dangerous devices and move somewhere sane and gunless.
Can you name an evangelical protestant country which, today, makes homosexuality a crime punishable by death?
Can you name a radical evangelical protestant terrorist group which throws homosexuals from the highest building in the city when caught?
Can you point to any evangelical protestant scripture or teaching which supports the barbaric execution of gays?
This religious relativism argument is ludicrous and wrong. There are fundamentalist Christians who have some strong anti-gay opinions, absolutely. But they’re not slaughtering gays by the dozen.
Have you asked an Imam lately what the Koran teaches about homosexuality? How about CAIR? Do they support LGBTQ rights? I think you’ll find the answer to be no…
Also, for all you arguing that gun laws would have stopped this massacre: this particular Islamic terrorist had not one but TWO firearms licenses as a result of his security work. Dream up almost any gun control law you’d like short of full confiscation and this guy would still have been able to get the guns he needed to massacre these people the way his prophet intended.
FUUUUUUCK!
USA got its Breivik copycat, but with inverted ideological signs.
Breivik also tried to make himself out to be a part of a larger movement, and even had a photo taken of himself in a fantasy uniform.
Before that, Sweden had a serial sniper who shot immigrants and was convinced the silent majority was supporting him.
When the truth dawned on him during trial, he a a fit of rage and attacked his own defence lawyers physically, before the court. It did not help his case.
BTW real IS death squads usually are provided with bombs by their handlers to maximise the carnage. Another sign this was a lone kook, even if the IS would like to take credit.
“He was on a watch list for terrorist connections AND the bipolar information would be on medical record, but he was able to buy weapons”
This means the rules that restrict the access to weapons and/or their enforcement is way too lax. In Australia the (conservative!!!) government introduced strict gun laws after the last big massacre, and Australia has not had one since.
UK introduced strict gun laws after the “Rambo killings” and terrorists have had to rely on home-cooked explosives since, making the logistics much harder.
What good does it do us queers to single out Islam when the real danger is toxic piety? It’s the exact same kind of piety you find on the lips of other religious anti-queer activists like Pat McCrory, Michele Bachmann, Pat Robertson, Shirley Phelps-Roper, Rick Santorum, Kim Davis, etc. If Islam provides a comfortable host for that brand of piety, so too does Christianity and so too does American conservatism.
The more we encourage people to over-focus on Islam, the more opportunities we give these others. They’ll latch on to Islamophobia and ride it to a vantage from which to better harm us all—Muslim and/or queer alike.
They already deny they have blood on their hands because they favor the indirect kills of hounding us to suicide, throwing us out of our homes, and withholding care and services. And, of course, stoking the entitlement, anger, and fear of those who will act directly—while keeping them heavily armed.
Don’t help them get away with pretending the common enemy is Muslims when it’s really anti-queer bigots like them.
A. Noyd, thank you and well said.
mmark, have you heard of Uganda?
Also, have you seen the statisitics for trans death rates in the US?
I would be very much okay with complete confiscation, or at least with the sort of strict rules we have in the UK where a few people own shotguns for hunting, but guns are not generally available. Is there a reason why you’re treating this as obviously ridiculous?
We don’t have just two options. It’s not either “ban all Muslims” or “don’t dare say a word against Islam”.
This is a simple case of nested oppressive systems. In America, Muslims are a marginalized and maligned group, and within American Muslims, LGBTQ people are a marginalized and maligned group. Neither marginalization is right.
There is a pretty pressing need for a fight against American Muslims to allow for acceptance of LGBTQ Muslims, but that fight sure as hell can’t be spearheaded by white Christian politicians or Sam Harrises. That would be as ridiculous as a bunch of white men taking lead in a BLM movement.
American Christians enjoy an enormous privilege in this regard because despite of the majority of mass shootings or domestic terrorism being carried out by someone from their group, the reaction to the mayhem is never “we must do something about Christians”. They never feel like they have their backs against the wall and have to go on the defensive after every single shooting involving a Christian. This is why Christianity doesn’t have to be given “a pass”. This “pass” you guys speak of isn’t a pass but an attempt to prevent the backlash being directed at people who aren’t involved. How many examples do you really need of Muslims being treated unfairly?
Also, exactly what would it look like if Islam wasn’t being given this “pass”? What do you guys envision as the appropriate “non-pass giving” response to this?
In case someone trots out the “where are these so-called good Muslims!?!” horseshit:
Inclusive Mosque Initiative
Prayer being led by women, non-denominational, open to LGBTQ people
Openly gay American imam who performs same-sex weddings
Well, yes, the danger is toxic piety, of any kind. It happens to be about Islam in this case because the shooter declared allegiance to ISIS. ‘Singling out’ Islam is important in the sense that details matter in the final analysis.
It would look like any other discussion of religiously motivated murder: people condemning the attack, taking the killer’s own word for it that he really was motivated (wholly or in part) by his religion, and close analysis of the religious culture or scripture* that might have contributed to the violence.
—
*Before people leap down my throat again, NO, this is not a reference to ‘all Islam,’ or ‘mainstream Islam,’ but the particular brand of Islam that the shooter claimed for himself.
Except…you know…if he hadn’t been able to purchase a fucking assault rifle, the death count would have been much lower.
mmark
Uganda?
No, but I know they’re capable of those things. They’re also not currently running many countries. And I do know what queer people in deeply christian African countries suffer.
Also, some days ago, during a debate in a German parliament about the reform of the asylum rights, a politician argued against classifying the Maghreb countries as safe because gays can be thrown into prison there. An elected member of the christian AfD shouted into the room “we should do that here, too”. And there’s quite a number of gay men still alive who were thrown into prison and there are quite some no longer alive because they were killed.
Seriously, under which rock are you living?
Is ISNA good enough? That was literally 10 seconds on google
Saad
Word.
Within hours of the attacks, the (Christian) lieutenant governor of Texas was tweeting “a man reaps what he sows”, a quote from the Bible, in response to the shootings. If that’s not supporting the barbaric execution of gays with scripture, what is it?
A number of Pharyngulites have already, by dent of about 15 seconds of work on google apiece, amply demonstrated that many Muslims condemn the use of violence against LGBT people and many support equal rights for LGBT.
Now, can anyone find any support for the postulate that guns do anything positive? Anything at all? It seems to me that guns are what is creating the risk. Sure, there are people out there who hate and they are dangerous, but if we didn’t provide them with arms and an excuse, maybe they would not be able to act on their hate quite as effectively. Gun control has worked in Australia and in Canada. Why should it not work in the US? For a free bonus, fewer guns in the US would mean fewer flowing into Mexico which would reduce violent crime in Mexico as well. Where is the downside?
Leviticus 20:13 has always been popular.
Not specifically, because systematic killing of LGBTQ+ folks in majority Christian countries tends to be through things like denial of services and building strong anti-LGBTQ sentiment in the population. Then unorganized groups or individuals carry out attacks more or less at random. Thousands of LGBTQ folks are murdered in Christian countries every year (though, admittedly, most of those are trans women. But, running the risk of painting with a broad brush, I don’t think there is much distinction in the mind of a murderous bigot).
It’s worth pointing out that the Uganda legal and extralegal attacks on gays and lesbians have been inspired and supported by American Christians: http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/scott-lively-anti-gay-law-uganda.
@saad, BLM doesn’t really make sense as an analogy. There *are* white men leading in the anti-police violence movement, and BLM protestors have expressly (and correctly) protested white people for not getting involved. I get really uncomfortable anytime suggest that oppression is an internal community issue because it already reminds me of southern bigots denouncing outside agitators.
iggles, #181
[1] is beng done. I’m not sure how much more obvious that can be.
[2] this is the one I agree with you on. If a Muslim is violently homophobic, I’ll bet anything that homophobia is coming from his religiosity and his relationship with Islam. Just like with a Christian.
[3] is being done by reformist Muslims and ex-Muslims. Unfortunately, the reformist Muslims’ view is the only one that has a significant chance of making a change. Us ex-Muslims are disregarded outright. Any progressive attempts by us to reform our communities is seen as an attack from the outside as if we’re trying to dismantle Muslim communities rather than reform them. Just like American atheists trying to reform Christianity is met with far more hostility than liberal Christians trying to change Christian culture. Never-Muslim atheists and Christians have absolutely no way to reform Islam. It’s just not going to happen and thanks to the bigoted anti-Muslim environment in America, the message (even when well-intentioned) will get muddled up with anti-Muslim noise. The non-Muslim progressives will have to serve as allies in some way, perhaps by providing as much space and visibility as possible to ex-Muslims. I’m at a loss for what else they can do.
qwints, #187
You’re right. Now that I think about it, the BLM analogy isn’t right. Instead, I should have said something like white people being the voice for combating anti-LGBT or misogyny in black communities.
Giliel –
Thanks for the laugh about Uganda – even there the maximum sentence for homosexuality is life in prison, not death. The bottom line is there is no parallel between the treatment of homosexuality in many Muslim countries and this one, lone example.
Huh?? If any Christian Church anywhere in the Western world were to execute a homosexual by throwing them off the highest building in the town there would be instant (and justified) condemnation from every other Christian Church up to and including the Pope. I can’t decide if this is a blind spot on your part or if you and most other people here are just this obtuse.
Thanks for the INSA link, btw, I didn’t know that piece of information. But it’s also not what I asked. And its apologetics, nothing more. Unless and until the mainstream of Islamic thought reverses itself, gays will face barbaric execution as a result of that religion and its adherents.
Dianne –
Agree that’s a horrific thing to tweet, but until the State of Texas starts flinging gay people off the video screen in Cowboys Stadium, it’s not even in the same universe as Saudi Arabia, to name just one example among many.
Saad-
Have you asked yourself why this is?
Because the Christians who perpetrate those crimes to which you are referring don’t should “God is Great” while doing so, they don’t tie their actions to a specific religious doctrine, they don’t gain their motivation by reading and re-reading scripture, the various Christian churches, up to and including the Vatican, don’t either openly or tacitly approve of their actions, and there are no (or very few) Christian pastors teaching that infidels and fags need to be killed.
This wasn’t some random act of violence. This was purposeful. This was targeted. This was religiously motivated. How do I know this? Because this asshole called the authorities – mid massacre! – and told them so.
How many more times will Islamic terrorists have to explain their motivations for slaughtering innocent people before the progressive atheist world wakes up and decides maybe Islam is the problem?
To be clear, I wasn’t trying to imply that we weren’t condemning the attack. I just meant this as part of a general description of what the discussion might look like.
Except, of course, that it is. Many people, including elected officials, have been encouraging the persecution of LGBT people and that encouragement leads directly to this sort of violence. A white man with a Christian sounding name was stopped on his way to a gay pride parade in CA and was found to have explosives in his car. Do you think there is any doubt about what he intended? Or that he was inspired by much the same US based rhetoric that this shooter, who was unfortunately not stopped in time, was?
You asked for evidence that Christians used scripture to support violence against LGBT people. You got it and now you’re scurrying away with the goal posts and pretending that the old ones never existed. A common method of avoiding reality, but a fallacious one.
Oh? Where’s the condemnation of Uganda? Or of Christian parents kicking their gay children out of the house with no coat in subzero weather? Or “ex-gay” camps that end up killing their victims? Do they not count because only throwing someone off a building matters, any other form of execution is fine?
mmark, #190
When the number of Muslim terrorists divided by the number of total Muslims equals a number that you can present with a straight face as evidence that Islam is the problem. I have a feeling that number is less than 1%.
Also, of course when you limit this to Islamic terrorists, you’ll find the motivation is always Islam. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve read in this thread so far.
Going off on a tangent: Mock-worthy asshole geting mocked.
The Daily Mash “Trump unites shocked world in contempt for him” http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/trump-unites-shocked-world-in-contempt-for-him-20160613109492
Oh, yes, and you’re technically correct about Uganda: “moderates” demanded that the original bill be amended so that the penalty was “only” life in prison. Glad to know that you think that life imprisonment is “a laugh”. Says a lot about where you’re coming from.
Any American politician who condemns these killings but is actively working to reduce LGBT people to second class citizen status in any way is a dishonest ass and can go fuck themselves.
Each and every one of those politicians is more like Mateen than they think.
Come to think of it, Mmark’s comments are classic “dear Muslima”: Noting the very worst excesses of what happens in some Islamic countries, rightfully condemning those abuses, then using those abuses to minimize the abuses that occur in Christian countries. Parents kicking their underage children out of the house to die, life imprisonment for being LGBT, overt encouragement to murder people for being LGBT, specific laws persecuting LGBT people, microaggressions…all NBD because they aren’t the oddly specific abuse of being thrown off a building.
Here’s a piece from Canada on the role of organized religion in spreading homophobia, with an introductory comparison to the Polytechnique shootings and awareness of misogyny.
I see also that no evidence is good enough for mmark. *sigh* Someone should nail those goalposts down for once.
I’d suggest planting them in concrete, but Trump’s made off with all the cement to build his wall.
But only Islam is homophobic, amirite? Via Caine.
From The Guardian: “Omar Mateen’s domestic violence was a clue to his murderous future” http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/13/omar-mateen-domestic-violence-clue-murderous-future
If it’s not too much trouble, could someone point out just a single place where fundy Islam gets a pass?
I’m very curious about what that looks like.
Be as specific as possible. Use quotes.
Saad @197 very well put.
Dianne @ 192, the story’s not clear yet on the LA pride guy. The LA Times has reported that he’s bi. The report that he said he intended to harm the parade has been retracted. See http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-gay-pride-la-weapons-20160612-snap-story.html
@188
I’m not sure I agree with that. Most of the gay bashing dudes I knew growing up were either secular or extremely moderate christians. I don’t think we had any particularly fundamentalist churches in the area, it was just good old cultural osmosis “well literally every institution my whole life treats gays like they’re gross and disgusting so clearly hitting them is the right idea” homophobia.
@204: Really? Then what did he have all the explosives and weapons in his car for? I suppose, it being the US, he might actually have had them for some relatively harmless reason, like he really did believe that he needed them for self defense, but it’s a bizarre story altogether. Thank you for the correction.
Regardless, that’s a minor quibble. On a whole, I do agree, I just don’t like necessarily assuming that anything wrong a religionist does is inspired by my religion.
That might be because I know people who will see a muslim kid rob a liquor store and go “WOW RELIGION OF PEACE STRIKES AGAIN” as if a muslim kid can’t have a secular reason to want cash, and I’m just overcompensating.
I’m sorry, but that strikes me as hilarious in a horrifying sort of way.
They literally did that with little Ahmed when he tried to tinker with a clock.
WHY ELSE WOULD A MOZLEM TAKE APART AN ELECTRONIC DEVICE
dianne @206, agreed that it’s bizarre. He certainly broke California law (and probably violated his probation) by driving around with three assault rifles and Tannerite, and his facebook page had some disturbing anti-Hillary, 9/11 truther and anti-new world order stuff. His having a boyfriend doesn’t mean he had good intentions, but there are a lot of false reports going around due to the early false statement by police.
I’ve read the anti-gay passages of Christian scripture and I’ve read the anti-gay passages of the Koran and how various Islamic scholars interpret it. Quick quiz: was it Allah or Jesus who said: those among you with no sin, cast the first stone?
Jesus was a pacifist. Whatever you think of his religion (and I don’t think highly of it) the one thing you come away with after reading Matthew, Mark Luke or John is that God judges in the afterlife, we’re not to do it here.
Allah was – as his religion gained strength – a warrior. He judges harshly and directs his followers to do likewise. Looking at the two false messiahs, you can’t help but notice that one wanted his followers to be peaceful (he didn’t even put up a fight when they crucified him) and the other wanted his followers to mete out punishment.
These are unfortunate facts for some, but they are facts nonetheless. Does it matter that Christians did horrible things hundreds of years ago? No. Does it matter that some Christians are still doing horrible things in Uganda? No. Their ideas are not mainstream, and unless there is a reversal of religious teaching in the Christian world, never will be.
The opposite is true of the Muslim religion. They need to turn away from the violence preached in their holy texts, they need to get farther away from their religion in order to get closer to the liberal, progressive society we all value. This, again, is an uncomfortable fact for some. And it is one that atheists, particularly, should attack head on.
For reference, here is Ayatollah Sistani (a Shi’a) on homosexuality:
And here is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (a Sunni):
When the Pope starts saying things like this the maybe (!) we can have a discussion about whether its worse to be a homosexual in a Christian country or in an Islamic one.
Pardon me, but some of us are having a discussion about a religious fanatic who massacred 50 people in a secular country because they were gay. Perhaps you’d like to join that discussion.
I have no problem condemning Christianity and how some of their followers treat gays. But see above – Islam is special. Especially bad. You can use this argument when a Christian guns down dozens of people in a gay club after calling the Vatican to pledge his allegiance.
@208
Funnily enough, I did make an image macro about this topic for a different venue
Has anybody seen a goalpost? It seems that mmark has been moving it so fast, I’ve lost track
Saad @ 209, but he didn’t design a manufacture a clock from raw materials so obviously he was trying to terrify people. Everyone knows any clock display makes people think it’s a bomb. /s
This whole conversation is so depressing. I’d assume everyone here would condemn the murdere’s dad’s comments about how only god should punish the gays. or the Muslim cleric who demonized gays near Orlando in 2013.. Just like Bill O’Reilly bears some responsibility for the assassination of Dr. Tiller, they don’t get to hide behind the bigotry by condemning the actual shooting. But because the right wing tries to lump all 1 billion Muslims together and ignores the Muslims supporting the LGBT community, everything gets sucked into a #notallmuslims style discussion which is actively harmful. The fact that the fundamentalist Muslim community abuses LGBT people in the same way that the fundamentalist Christian community does shouldn’t be a defense.
Saad already skewered this argument in @194
That it is currently just as bad as christianity used to be doesn’t demonstrate that it is a special kind of bad, just that it’s slower in becoming less bad.
Indeed. And, just to pick a not entirely appropriate nit, let’s also not forget that Christianity started about 600 years before Islam. Let’s see how Islam behaves in 2,600 CE.
I’d say it matters quite a lot to LGBTQIA people living in Uganda.
But thanks for making your priorities so clear.
Hmm…yeah. Let’s see…
Cursing the fig tree.
Whipping the moneychangers.
“Render unto Caesar”
“I come not to bring peace but to bring a sword.”
Yep. Totally a pacifist. Nothing in there that could be used to incite violence. Which is why Christianity has traditionally been such a peaceful religion and has never fought wars to force conversion or take “holy” territory and certainly never fought wars within itself over minor variations in belief. Also why Christianity has never persecuted other religions, never burnt people for their beliefs, and so on. Totally peaceful.
There have certainly been periods in history when Islam was behaving better (on the whole) than Christianity. Coincidentally, they were mostly the periods when Christianity was not just the official or dominant religion in many places, but the actual governing force. Almost as though having a religion, any religion, as your government is a bad idea.
mmark, please. You don’t need to set up a boxing match between the evils of Christianity and the evils of Islam. Both are pretty much equally odious in their written form; in practice, the extent to which Islamic theocracies currently differ from Christian ones has more to do with the history and socioeconomic landscape of their regions than it does to the morality of their holy books.
I’m wondering when exactly Christianity uniformly apparently became queer friendly? As I said, there’s men alive who were thrown into prison, who were castrated for being gay. Some of my relative shared a lovely residence called “Konzentrationslager” with LGBTQ people. And if 70 years is “too far behind” for you, have you folks ever heard about a place called “Russia” where it’s open season on LGBTQ people? Not to mention the violent homophobia and state sanctioned discrimination in many parts of Eastern Europe, many of those countries being EU members.
219.
Indeed. It seems that many people have forgotten that the West has to thank Islam for quite a bit.
We can giggle now when thinking about that, but it wasn’t so funny at the time. And let’s not forget it wasn’t that long ago either, perhaps not in the form of a theocracy, but certainly in the form of religious leaders playing a major part in governmental decisions. The opposition to abortion comes to mind, the persecuation of Jehova’s witnesses in Québec, the genocide in Rwanda …
Indeed.
Why the hell would we want to waste our time having a stupid discussion like that? Of course it’s worse to be a homosexual in an Islamic country than a Christian one. What the ever-loving fuck does that have to do with anything we’re discussing here?
Trying to estimate how bad one thing is in comparison to another is one of the reasons Richard Dawkins was nailed to the wall by some types who (refuse to)/(do not) understand that such differences do indeed exist.
@224
If you’re referring to Dear Muslima/Elevatorgate, it was because he was making a fallacious argument that attempted to use the oppression women face in muslim countries to silence a woman talking about the sexism she faces here. You’ll also find that we are among one of the forefront “fuck Dawkins” communities, so, yeah.
225.
I am not referring to anything specific, but I would appreciate any link to whatever horrific crime Richard Dawkins is accused of.
I call that the “I beat my wife but my neighbor rape his kids so shut up” defense.
***
I fully expect the paranoids to proclaim it as proof that Muslims are trying to enforce a ban on alcohol.
***
You say that like it was a bad thing.
***
Some chat-room 600 years from now:
“I tell you, Islam is nothing compared to Marvelism. Sure, there’s still some insular salafist communities here and there bitching about sushi because soy sauce comes from soy genetically engineered with a few pig genes nowadays, and they used to have some pretty violent people back in the day, and I know that during the last EuroMed federal elections the Muslim Vice-President Abrahamic-Democrat-Coalition said nasty things about people who want to marry uplifted dogs despite herself being married to her own clone, something Muslim Clerics were still against 80 years ago. BUT miss Shegewi clearly distanced herself from all the nutcases who lobotomize pooches while we never hear the Marvelist denouncing the crimes of their co-religionists who murder non-genetically augmented people.
Besides, have your read their holy books? It’s full of murder and genocide and rape and it’s always trying to justify the righteous nature of the faithful who bloody their hands for the cause.”
@226
This is a pretty decent summary, although I don’t know if it goes into the more recent “Supporting Sargon of Akkad/MRAtheists” deal
I call that the “I beat my wife but my neighbor rape his kids so shut up” defense.
***
I fully expect the paranoids to proclaim it as proof that Muslims are trying to enforce a ban on alcohol.
***
You say that like it was a bad thing.
***
Some chat-room 600 years from now:
“I tell you, Islam is nothing compared to Marvelism. Sure, there’s still some insular salafist communities here and there bitching about sushi because soy sauce comes from soy genetically engineered with a few pig genes nowadays, and they used to have some pretty violent people back in the day, and I know that during the last EuroMed federal elections the Muslim Vice-President Abrahamic-Democrat-Coalition said nasty things about people who want to marry uplifted dogs despite herself being married to her own clone, something Muslim Clerics were still against 80 years ago. BUT miss Shegewi clearly distanced herself from all the nutcases who lobotomize pooches while we never hear the Marvelist denouncing the crimes of their co-religionists who murder non-genetically augmented people.
Besides, have your read their holy books? It’s full of murder and genocide and rape and it’s always trying to justify the righteous nature of the faithful who bloody their hands for the cause.”
Indeed, it does. Lovely.
Test test
Yeeeeeeeeah: once again, one of my comment is lost to the limbo of the interwebs because I included an hyperlink in it.
Okay, the same, without the link:
I call that the “I beat my wife but my neighbor rape his kids so shut up” defense.
***
I fully expect the paranoids to proclaim it as proof that Muslims are trying to enforce a ban on alcohol.
***
You say that like it was a bad thing.
***
Some chat-room 600 years from now:
“I tell you, Islam is nothing compared to Marvelism. Sure, there’s still some insular salafist communities here and there bitching about sushi because soy sauce comes from soy genetically engineered with a few pig genes nowadays, and they used to have some pretty violent people back in the day, and I know that during the last EuroMed federal elections the Muslim Vice-President Abrahamic-Democrat-Coalition said nasty things about people who want to marry uplifted dogs despite herself being married to her own clone, something Muslim Clerics were still against 80 years ago. BUT miss Shegewi clearly distanced herself from all the nutcases who lobotomize pooches while we never hear the Marvelist denouncing the crimes of their co-religionists who murder non-genetically augmented people.
Besides, have your read their holy books? It’s full of murder and genocide and rape and it’s always trying to justify the righteous nature of the faithful who bloody their hands for the cause.”
Bart @ 226:
Oh fuck off. “Horrific crime”? Fuck off again. Dawkins was wrong. He’s rather known for being wrong. As for links, find them yourself. ‘Dear Muslima’.
Wait a minute: any longish pos gets eaten by the system now: Am I the only one suffering from it?
227.
Thank you Vivec. I have saved the link and will read it thoroughly when I am a bit less tired. I am vaguely aware of a controversy, but I have been “out of circulation” for a while due to ongoing too much work, and I am therefore “behind the times” in this.
230.
I see. Did you learn this sophisticated style of communication on your own, or was it part of your literary studies?
mmark, #211
But we never were having a discussion about that.
Nice try, dudebro.
When will you stop being a supercilious asshole? You were correctly called out.
Once you get over the concept you are brightest bulb here, and that you will be challenged when you are wrong, you might contribute with more humility, and more listening rather than preaching.
I’m not going to defend the many stupid and inexcusable things that Dawkins has done, but that Rationalwiki article reads more like a biased hatchet job than a fair, objective summary.
Rationalwiki doesn’t claim to be unbiased or objective.
Furthermore, Dawkins is an asshole. Treating a spade like a spade is a pretty fair thing to do.
Nerd, might I suggest you take your own advice?
FTFY
The shooter appears to have claimed loyalty to Islamic groups that opposed each other. He may have been Islamic. Religion may have been his excuse for the massacres, but he was no radicalized ISIS agent. He was just another homophobic US-American with too many guns and too little self control. His terrorist “connections” make as little sense as if someone walked into a nightclub in Qatar and started shooting while shouting, “In the name of the Queen and the IRA!”
dianne @ 240;
Quoted for truth. I have already heard NRA sympathizers doing everything they can to minimize the point that this atrocity was the work of a violent homophobe with overly easy access to guns, and not just any gun but an assault rifle – the result of their selfish, short sighted and irresponsible lobbying.
Instead they try to refocus the discussion onto the topic of Islamic terrorism and then argue that you can’t take away their guns, trotting out the old tone deaf canard that ‘the only thing that beats a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun’, ignoring the fact that trigger happy good old boys are part of the problem, not the solution. Gun toting wannabe heroes in that night club blasting away thinking they are John Wayne would have added to the body count, not lessened it, doubly so since there is such a high correlation between NRA gun-fondling tendencies and reactionary Right wing political beliefs including often violent homophobia.
237.
How rational is a biased non-objective site?
Given the way some individuals talk about him, I think this is a spade that deserves some open-minded and nuanced consideration, but I am certainly open to being convinced.
Bart, #242
You’re way too late to be trying this. Go do your own fucking research, sea lion. Go look at his statements and his tweets for the past several years.
iggles @ 236;
It seems pretty fair to me, and covers most of the bases. Just have a quick look through Dawkin’s twitter feed – he condemns himself out of his own mouth on a fairly regular basis, especially when it comes to his attitudes toward Muslims and women, and his utterly unfounded disdain for feminism that seems to have gone beyond mere ignorance into the territory of active malice. His comments on rape and paedophillia alone are horrifying to behold and should be a cause for concern for any ethical person.
Only his tendency to trade on his public standing has insulated him from the full consequences of his bigoted statements, at least thus far.
@ iggles and Bart B. Van Bockstaele;
If you want a more in depth summary of how Dawkins has descended into a cesspool of MRA-style misogyny and toxic attitudes toward a range of social issues, just search for articles about him on Pharyngula. Here, I’ll provide a link for you;
PZ chronicles Dawkins descent into misogynistic and racist inanity rather well, and this from a man who considered himself Dawkins friend and defended him for as long as he was able, until Dawkins went so far that PZ could no longer align himself with him in good conscience.
Read the articles, they come with extensive quotes and links to the things Dawkins has said and done. Read them, and judge for yourselves.
Thank you Gregory. Link saved.
Thank you. Saying is one thing, doing is quite another. I am intrigued.
@iggles
First you were all over the place with your goal posts, can’t see the categorical similarities between what you asked for and what you were given and want the freaking pope to want gays dead before you are willing to recognize that the discrimination that people experience in their own lives can matter to others as a matter of priority. Now you can’t even meet your own standards of evidence.
You claim an article is subjective via a subjective comment about the article. You can whine “biased hatchet job” all you want but your reasoning, self awareness and ability to recognize and respond to the substance of others (even if to just disagree) are so garbage that you are not remotely worth paying attention to without considerable work on your part.
mmark, have you ever stopped to consider that merely taking snippets of religious texts at face value may offer a distorted picture? While it’s an impeccable stopping point for confirming your preconceptions, anyone who has paid attention to believers for more than 15 minutes would recognize that their religious attitudes and values will often form and shift independent of the long-settled ink. Apologetics remain a booming industry, sects continue to splinter off and proliferate, and church leaders continue to be selective about which aspects of doctrine matter. To invoke scripture as the final arbiter of religious attitude and values is just as tendentious when done by a nonbeliever.
Okay, the Bible presents a more palatable narrative. So what? Why should Christianity get a free pass on its bloody tradition just because its sanctioning of murder occurs off the books? Boy, did things work out well for Christianity. Its path to world power was paved in blood, but this can be safely pardoned because the ideas of the people seating their throne on the corpses of those who didn’t fit into God’s vision weren’t mainstream (for which explicit command in the holy text is apparently the sole criterion). Same goes for today’s stochastic terrorists and “lone wolves” who enforce good Christian values. How convenient!
On the other hand, the radical elements of Islam are automatically mainstream by virtue of what their holy text says, so this becomes some unique demon that only Muslims must wrest themselves from. Never mind the fact that they can be just as devious in interpretation as any Christian and that most don’t identify with these passages or the extremists. That availability heuristic can really stymie proper evaluation.
Christianity has orchestrated violence just as effectively without reliance on step-by-step guides for pushing gays off of tall structures. Why should the medium condemn one while exonerating the other? Why should the vulnerability of holy texts to lawyering and whitewashing be the sole determining factor in badness? Is this not more than a little arbitrary?
I’ll qualify my comments by first disclosing, I’m a competition marksman.
Life has been… Busy for me, so this is the first I’ve heard of this atrocity. Frankly, during a discussion with our youngest child, a grown woman with a life of her own was when I read this page, with increasing horror as I followed various inline links and I stand by my statement with that child. “Some people, I wouldn’t trust with an infant feeding spoon”.
This, from a man who has a civilian model M4, three feet from him, as it’s cleaning day and I’ve been cleaning and lubricating the damned thing. It’ll be inside of the safe soon, where it usually sits.
For reference, for those technically inclined, the civilian M4 has a 16 inch barrel, courtesy of the National Firearms Act, the military version that I lugged around for far too long has a 14.5 inch barrel and has a three round burst mode. In the wars, we kept ours on semiautomatic, lest we run out of rounds in a firefight.
Nothing sucks more than running out of shoot-em up during a firefight.
But, I’ve digressed from my perspective.
I’ve personally interacted with known terrorists, so I do have some experience in the matter of terrorism.
First, they’re not dullards, despite media depictions of them. They’re typically quite bright, even ingenious, they’re convinced upon their views and overall, if one ignores their extremist views, they’re quite personable people. One could grow to quite like such people, save for their extremist views.
One upside to that fact is, once captured, they took great delight in explaining how they’d win in the long germ, bragging about future plans, past acts, etc. Because of that fact, we learned to find ways to capture them, rather than not leave an opportunity to capture them. Good intelligence is hard to come by.
So, while there is some satisfaction in the fact that this terrorist has experienced high velocity lead poisoning, a loss of information has occurred.
As for firearms and current interpretation of the second amendment, we’re stuck with the amendment and current case law.
Frankly, if I were Emperor, I’d stick all firearms derived from selective fire military service rifles, as well as their various components and accessories, under the NFA and call it a day.
For those not conversant with the NFA (National Firearms Act), machineguns, silencers, destructive weapons (artillery, etc) and disguised firearms are NFA weapons, typically referred erroneously as “class 3”, so erroneously named for the class 3 firearms dealer one has to use to purchase such weapons.
Yes, you can purchase a machine gun, howitzer, mortar, suppressor (what is usually called a silencer, they’re not silent at all, just muffled). One undergoes a Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI), if one passes and a local law enforcement official signs that one may possess such a weapon, one can purchase one.
Needless to say, passing an SSBI is not a trivial thing, to the point that since 1934, only three crimes have been committed with an NFA firearm.
Personally, I find that a highly effective law!
As for emotional responses to this, frankly, I’d have rather he beat the middle man 100+ people in and he simply shot himself.
That isn’t demeaning the tragedy of suicide, it’s simply a preference that he’d have harmed himself, rather than others.
As for the NRA and their insanity, there is a point where their logic actually meets reality. After all, if one has a wall of gun barrels around oneself, one now has a reasonably sufficient amount of armor around oneself to be reasonably protected from bullets. That one would be inside of an armory and bankrupt not withstanding.
Personally, I’d go with a brick wall, but that’s just me being practical.
Two hunting rifles (different classes of game), two competition rifles and a pair of competition pistols are enough for me, plus inherited pistols of historic note. Oddly, my house walls aren’t brick, they’re wood.
But then, I trust my neighbors enough to take or granted that they’ll not try to be John Wayne.
Thus far, they’ve not disappointed me.
I just realized that I confused iggles and mark in my previous comment. Iggles only gets the part about the standard of evidence re: the dawkins link, and the rhetoric was 99% focused on mmark. My sincerest apologies, that’s what I get for posting in a hurry.
249.
Unfortunately, they only need to disappoint you once, or you them. Ouch.
They operate under the “Snarky POV”, where the factual claims have to be sourced, but they do not withold from giving their opinions on said claims.
Neutral pov is what you go to wikipedia for.
It is looking more and more like the guy arrested in L.A. was just out to visit his internet boyfriend, go to PRIDE, then have fun shooting shit in the desert.
http://www.wistv.com/story/32202842/police-walk-back-statements-on-man-arrested-with-guns-explosives-near-la-pride
Now his name is forever associated with homophobic terrorism and he’ll be spending quite a few years in prison for not looking up the differences in gun laws between his home state and CA.
What a waste of a young life.
248.
Does it, though? I have read the Qur’an only once, and that was some forty years ago, I don’t remember much. But, coming to North America has motivated me to start reading the Bible again, and I still find it a book so despicable I know of no adjectives that adequately describe it.
Do I need to state and restate the obvious every time? I already said that Dawkins has done things that are stupid and inexcusable. I think they’re stupid and inexcusable enough to speak for themselves, without the need for a biased rhetorical framework.
Honesty and fairness are important, no matter how contemptible you consider your opponent. Is that a controversial statement?
252.
Thank you for that. I had gone to the link and read a bit, even though I don’t have time, and there certainly were a few things that raised my eyebrows. It is an interesting link nevertheless, and a good starting point to find more objective information. Thank you, Vivec. It is appreciated.
@dianne, 198
Using the worst examples one can find, no matter where they are taken from and whether they are relevant is a common tactic, both to minimize other problems, and to blame whole groups. Yesterday Rob Oliphant, MP for Don Valley West in Toronto tweeted
His riding has the highest proportion of Muslims in any Canadian federal riding, 13.6%. So of course people had to start posting things about IS, photos of hangings in other countries, declaring that Muslims hate them (actually, the word they used was “faggots”. Nothing shows your concern about the treatment of a group like using a slur against them). None of the posts dealt with his riding of course, or had anything to do with his local community, simply using the actions of Muslims elsewhere to tar all Muslims.
To qwints, Gregory Greenwood,
He didn’t have an assault rifle. An “assault rifle” is an automatic firearm, aka a machine gun. He had an “assault weapon”, which is a bullshit propaganda term invented by liars, sold to people who don’t know anything about guns, and meant to cause confusion between the two terms. Loosely translated, “assault weapon” means “scary looking semiauto hunting rifle”.
Assault rifles, aka machine guns, are more or less banned for civilian possession already, and they have been banned since 1934. IIRC, there’s been a grand total of 3 crimes involved machine guns since 1934.
Banning “assault weapons” is a do-nothing feel-good scheme sold to rubes like you, making you think you actually accomplished something, when you didn’t. Focus on real and effective gun control please, such as mandatory training and licensing, ala driver’s licenses, and mandatory background checks for mental illness and such, and mandatory insurance requirements, again just like driving. These are real and effective things that we can do right now without a constitutional amendment, and that would be very effective at lowering gun deaths.
@Enlightenment Liberal, I think you were pre-empted at comment #2. No one cares that you and the NRA wan to insist on a different definition of the word. I, the press, and everyone who isn’t inundated in your propaganda stew will continue to call semi-automatic rifles with high capacity magazines like the AR-15 “assault rifles.”
As the article I linked to said:
To qwints
I’m not making some esoteric technical point. I’m partially / mostly on your side of wanting to lower gun deaths.
I am pointing out that your factually wrong position means that you will pursue ineffectual policies. This preoccupation with “assault weapons” / “assault rifles” is a sham, because all semiauto rifles, including hunting rifles, are all equally dangerous. They can all take high capacity magazines.
Further, please educate yourself about the facts of mass shootings. Here:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
Only a small fraction of firearms of mass shootings had “large capacity” magazines. Several mass shootings, like Virginia Tech, happened with only handguns and 10 or 15 round magazines.
You are fooling yourself if you think that banning so-called “assault weapons” aka scary looking rifles will do a damn. All you’re doing is helping gun manufacturers!
You are also fooling yourself if you think that banning “high capacity” magazines will make a measurable dent in mass shooting rates or deaths from mass shootings. It won’t. Most mass shootings happen over minutes or tens of minutes, where the shooter has all the time in the world to reload, and limiting it to 10 round magazines won’t help.
Further, most gun deaths, like 99.9% of them, are not mass shootings. There, your measures are even more useless. Most shootings do not involve more than 10 rounds, and handguns are actually more dangerous because they’re more easily concealed.
I’m pissed because you’re willingly embracing to be ignorant and wrong, and it’s hurting our cause to save human lives. What the fuck is wrong with you!?
Amazing how banning assault rifles would simultaneously do nothing to reduce murder and yet would have such a dramatic impact on legal gun owners. However, I do agree that we’d do more good banning handguns than banning assault rifles.
To qwints
Fucking passive-aggressive asshole. You’re wrong. Stop reveling in your ignorance. That’s what “the other side” is supposed to do. Educate yourself, so that you can craft effective policy. If you’re ignorant, then your policies are doomed to fail, and bans on “assault weapons” that are short of bans on all semiauto rifles with detachable box magazines are useless, and bans on high capacity magazines are almost useless. The only bans that will make a difference are bans on all handguns, or bans on all semiauto rifles that take a quick reloading detachable magazine. Anything else is just a distraction, a waste of our time and political capital, which could be spent on saving human lives.
Correction:
> Anything else is just a distraction
I meant:
> Any other form of a more limited ban of guns by make and model is just a distraction.
There are other things that we could be doing that would be wildly effective with our political capital, such as mandatory background checks for mental illness, mandatory training and licensing ala a driver’s license, mandatory insurance requirements ala driver’s insurance. None of these would require a constitutional amendment, and all would be effective, far more effective than your foolish and ignorant “assault weapons ban” or “high capacity magazine ban”.
I literally just said that banning handguns would do more good.
You’re not “saving human lives” by insisting on having a semantic argument when pretty much everyone knows what I, the media and every other commenter here mean by assault rifle – a semi-automatic rifle with a high capacity magazine, in the US most commonly the AR-15. Just mentally assert ‘AR-15’ every time you see me or someone else say ‘assault rifle’ and you’ll be happier.
And all the usual clueless nutters come slithering out from the woodwork.
uhm, in other words: “violent tendencies”?
as in the most recent case, where he had a history of domestic abuse.
Oh boy, it is looking like the murderous asswipe was a self-hating closet case. That should help keep that stereotype going.
http://gawker.com/orlando-shooter-was-reportedly-a-regular-at-pulse-and-h-1781920316
If said history was ever recorded through a restraining order or charges, he would have been federally banned from buying a gun.
EnlightenmentLiberal @ 258;
I apologies for my poor understanding of firearm terminology. Suffice to say he was armed with a weapon specifically designed to kill large numbers of people (and human beings in particular – this was hardly a hunting or target shooting weapon) quickly, to an even greater degree than a semi-automatic pistol, and he used that weapon to kill 50 innocent people and wound roughly as many again in a relatively brief window of time.
He was able to procure such a weapon with comparative ease despite having repeatedly come to the attention of the FBI as a potential risk for violent crime, and this was the case in no small part because of the reckless political lobbying of the NRA and broader gun lobby who festishize their firearms to such a degree that they clearly consider such atrocities to be an acceptable price to pay to keep their toys.
Tackling gun violence in all its forms is of course a priority, but given the toxic politics surrounding the issue in the US, we will have to pick our battles. Limiting access to the most dangerous classes of weapon that can kill the largest number of people in the shortest period of time may be all we are able to get, and while not sufficient in and of itself, it would make for a fine start if it could be done.
@ 263;
How much will that really help to prevent these crimes, given that many of these atrocities seem to be committed by persons who are entirely neurotypical? This is not primarily a mental health issue, but a firearm regulation issue.
Insurance is of scant use to persons killed because America cannot give up its gun addiction, and requiring it for gun ownership will hardly amount to a meaningful deterrent to a person prepared to slaughter their fellow citizens in the knowledge that their actions will also likely result in their own deaths.
Training is also unlikely to achieve much of a reduction, since training with a firearm is no guarantee that it won’t be abused. Some of these mass shootings have been undertaken by former soldiers who would certainly have received more advanced training than any that could be realistically provided as part of a civilian gun owner’s licensing scheme. Marksmanship training would just make a potential mass shooting killer more dangerous, and some kind of moral or ethical training could easily be sat through while doing nothing to deter a later massacre. The problem is the ready access to lethal weaponry, indeed devices specifically created to make killing large numbers of other human beings as quick and easy as possible. Removing access to such devices entirely is the only sure protection, and the only measure that will meaningfully curb the slaughter.
The rest is, to coin a phrase, no more than a band aid for a bullet wound.
If we want to tread down the banning via constitutional amendment route, wouldn’t banning religion be far more effective?
Cross posted with Moments of Political Madness.
I’ll let the article speak for itself.
Murders of gays, lesbians in U.S. increased last year, group says
To Gregory Greenwood
Again, you are operating on a false assumption that there is a category of firearms that can be identified according to their dangerousness, which we can call “assault weapons”. That’s where you’re wrong.
I keep linking to this site:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
Is no one reading it? I’m linking to it for a reason. It demolishes many of the false myths in this thread, including the myth that “assault weapons” are more dangerous than other rifles and handguns. Again, “assault weapon” is not a meaningful classification. It’s a myth.
Again, let me try to drive this home.
Consider Dianne Feinstein’s proposed assault weapon ban.
http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/assault-weapons
It explicitly allows by make and model this gun:
> Ruger Mini-14 (w/o folding stock)
It also explicitly bans by make and model this gun:
> Sturm, Ruger Mini-14 Tactical
Look at the wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruger_Mini-14
It’s the same weapon. It has the same action, the same bullet, the same muzzle velocity, the same time to reload, the same handling (modulo a pistol grip and forward grip). They can both take 30 round magazines. The only meaningful difference is the collapsible stock for concealability, but has nothing to do with dangerousness once drawn and readied.
This assault weapon ban simultaneously explicitly bans and allows the same gun, depending on the paint job, and existence of cosmetic features.
As another example, I am not a gun owner, but one of my friends is. He has a similar rifle, that has a wood finish, and a 5 round magazine that fits flush with the body so you cannot see the magazine. It looks like a cliche hunting rifle. As a demonstration, over a short period, he takes out the 5 round magazine, attaches a 30 round “banana clip” magazine, attaches a scope, attaches a pistol grip, attaches a forward grip, takes off the stock and puts on a collapsible stock. Finally, he asked me to pretend that it was painted in some military black finish. Voila – a full transformation of any semiauto hunting rifle into an assault weapon. Again, I urge you, look at the pictures on the above wiki page for the Ruger Mini-14, and see how it’s the same weapon.
The entire debate around this issue is maddening, because it’s all based on a lie, the lie that there is a class of rifles that is substantially more dangerous than any other kind of semiauto rifle. It’s a pernicious lie. Knock it off already.
And it makes the assumption that semi-auto rifles are more deadly than manual rifles.
Take a WWII bolt action rifle (Enfield, Mouser, Mosin, K31, etc). Each round is far more powerful than a .223, they all take bayonets if you want to keep people from grabbing your rifle, and they all take stripper clips that can be reloaded almost as fast as a detachable magazine.
iggles (#181)
Way to miss the entire point of my post. Matrim and dianne are saying the same things, too. I know you’ve noticed mmark’s “show me how Christians are just as bad” shit. That’s a perfect example of what I mean by how an over-focus on Islam (or the “details”) lets non-Muslim anti-queer bigots get away with their own mass murder.
EnlightenmentLiberal #272
Huh. I wish I was aware of this “myth” when I was lugging around M4’s, a SAW, or manning a .50 all those years in the military. It would have been so much easier to just walk around with my side-arm. I wish I had known that my handgun was as just as deadly.
Oh, wait, that’s fucking absolute nonsense and you’re a yammering ingoramous.
Never mind.
MME #273
Are you an idiot? Of course a faster-firing rifle is more dangerous than a slower one. You show a clip of a dude taking fucking forever to put rounds down range as an example of how it is comparably dangerous to an AR-15?
A dude that obviously never tried to do it before (“those chargers are weird … the six round magazine threw off my count”). Plus he was actually aiming, not spray n’ pray.
The reason why old wood n’ steel WWII bolt action rifles are more dangerous is because the round and subsequent wound are much larger than an AR-15.
You want speed? How about speed with 19th century guns designed and initially built before the adoption of electricity:
To tkreacher
You’re wrong. The criteria of an actual combat zone is different than a civilian mass shooting. Apples and oranges comparison. There’s no one shooting back, for starters. Several mass shootings have happened with just handguns and 10 or 15 round mags, such as Virginia tech. Most mass shootings would have happened in the same way if all they had was handguns and 10 round mags.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
I keep linking to this site for a reason. I wish someone would read it, and educate themself.
Curiouser and curiouser….
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/orlando-gay-club-shooter-omar-mateen-called-911-bathroom-article-1.2671481
http://dailybail.com/home/abc-immediately-cuts-live-broadcast-when-orlando-witness-men.html
http://www.govtslaves.info/man-overheard-shooters-phone-conversation-shooter-said-there-were-4-others-involved-3-snipers-and-1-woman-suicide-bomber/
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/eyewitness-account-from-within-pulse-nightclub/nrfJF/
Hey! Look at #276!
This thread has jumped the shark!
And how is that jumping the shark?
You can ban all 20th & 21st century weaponry and not diminish the ability for someone to shoot up a bunch of unarmed people crammed into a night club.
Or you can go back to the previously most deadly anti-gay hate crime in the US and just blockade the doors and set the building on fire.
Fire, a stone age murder instrument. Good luck banning that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UpStairs_Lounge_arson_attack
The point of gun restrictions is not to completely stop attacks, it’s to make them more difficult to perpetrate. Claiming that regulation is pointless because it is possible, if not as easy or effective, to use other means is arguing in bad faith.
PS: I am not endorsing MassMomentumEnergy’s “interesting” reality-challenged positions.
Again what is “reality-challenged”?
If you ban everything covered by the 1994 assault-weapons ban, people can still spray bullets in a crowded night club: big ass WWII bullets slightly slower or cowboy bullets just as fast (fun fact, people died in WWII and during the old west from gun shot wounds, so these are obviously effective).
If you ban all guns, and can somehow eliminate the 300+ million guns in circulation, and can somehow eliminate the knowledge to build new ones, people can still block doors and set fires, which is another time honored American tradition of mass murder.
Maybe we should look at the motive element of the equation rather than the means (infinitively adaptable) or opportunity (always present).
Unfortunately, victims of abuse have no moral or legal obligation to report.
Also, if banning guns is that inneffective at reducing gun violence, why are we a huge outlier in gun violence compared to countries that do have gun bans? Even if it doesn’t outright solve the problem, it seems to demonstrably have a sizable affect.
Does someone who witnesses a fatal drive by shooting and can positively ID the perpetrators have a moral obligation to report that to the police?
If they don’t report and the murderers murder again, do they share even a sliver of responsibility for the new deaths?
That’s not directly comparable. Said perpetrators presumably aren’t in a position where they can intimately harm the witness at any given time, haven’t conditioned the witness to accept drive by shootings as normal, and won’t have nearly as hard a time being charged as a perpetrator of domestic abuse will. Also, to my knowledge, there’s not any systematic hostility of police towards witnesses of drive-by shootings.
So, analogy dismissed. Any more questions?
Australia absolute homicide count over time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqwG2caxNo8
UK homicide rate over time:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DJ-KA2WhhLo/UNZr8agpVqI/AAAAAAAAFH4/f6rrTVN7q6I/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-22+at++Saturday,+December+22,+9.26+PM.png
US homicide rate over time:
http://www.americanthinker.com/legacy_assets/articles/assets/Murders%201.bmp
I don’t see a correlation between firearm access and murder in any of those charts.
They are murderers who live in the neighborhood who will kill snitches or have friends who will.
Read the NYT story on memorial day Chicago shootings. In such neighborhoods, drive by shootings are more than normalized.
A claim you make without evidence.
Another claim made without evidence.
That is not implied by your original analogy. That does, at the very least, make it more analogous.
You’re not using normalized the same way I am, unless said neighborhoods actively accept drive-by shootings as a good and deserved thing on the part of the victim.
It’s a he-said-she-said case where a victim might not even be able to demonstrate that they are a victim. If you don’t think that’s inherently harder to charge than a crime with victims that are very easy to see are victims, I don’t know what to tell you.
What evidence would you like me to provide to demonstrate my lack of knowledge on that matter?
However, if said drive-by was directly analoguous to domestic abuse, I would indeed hold that the victim does not have any obligation to report.
Er, that witness.
So in a world where DV victims willing to escape their situation had the same level of normalization as a resident of Chi-raq, and cops treated DV victims with the same level of respect as witnesses to a drive-by, do either or both have a moral obligation to snitch on the violence they have personal knowledge of?
If that is so, why stress over the murder rate in America since it is all concentrated in neighborhoods where people refuse to report and committed by the same few bad actors?
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/04/us/chicago-shootings.html
If victims of domestic violence did not have to deal with the threat of violence, incredibly difficulty of proving their case, or hostility on the part of the authorities, I would indeed consider it more obligatory to report for both cases.
If witnesses of drive-by shootings had to deal with the same threat of violence, difficulty of proving their case, and hostility on the part of the authorities, I would not consider it obligatory for either to report.
Because I deny that real world drive-by shootings are directly analoguous to domestic abuse.
Have you read through the NYT piece yet? Seems pretty damn analogous right down to the PTSD experienced by all.
Doesn’t to me. Like I said, you’re using normalization in a different way than I am and it’s easier to prove than domestic abuse.
@ wzrd1 249
In general (as a Canadian who has fired two things in my life that can be construed a firearm; a light machine gun when I was an army brat in Germany back in the later 80’s early 90’s (it was canada day I think and the local regiment came into the school to chat with the kids ( they were also in a big open square and loaded with blanks)) and my grandfathers old 22) I don’t disagree with your post, except I do think that the minimum barrier for ownership of any kind of firearm (and I guess swords and bows and spears and stuff) should be at *least* as onerous as a license to drive and operate an automobile.
That this appears to be akin to hate speech somehow, especially when the mounting pile of corpses speaks in words too monstrously eloquent to even fathom how much there needs to be some kind of massive change,, is one of the most agonizingly frustrating things in the world.
There are two things I’m going to take away from this whole massacre. Well, three, since everyone keeps reposting that one Onion article. One is a general message I’ve seen evoked in general all over the place (and in one particular tweet), and one is an unsourced story which I can’t help thinking is horribly true.
1) It’s disgusting how Queer deaths are going to be dismissed as “political” if their brought up about gun control, but their sexuality is cheerfully open season for bathroom control.
2) The only sound inside that club while the cops were in there was the constant ringing of cell phones.
How so?
“See this bruise, it was caused by my spouse.”
vs
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure the shooter was Johnny from 58th street, it looked like him and his car, but I was diving for cover at the time.”
MassMomentumEnergy: How dare you come into a thread about a horrific mass murder and dump gun-fondling masturbatory pro-gun videos on the site? You are exactly the kind of clueless, unthinking gun fanatic I despise.
BANNED. Go fuck a .22.
Fucking thank you, between the gun fondling, the weird “greedy old jew” thing from that political thread, and the victim blaming MME can honestly go fuck themselves.
MMe will claim xe needs at least a howitzer.
Also, I despise people who lie with the selective use of statistics. Look at the big picture: the simple fact is that the US gun death rate is exceptional compared to other countries. We are unusual. We have a problem. This has got to be fixed, and every asshole who prizes his guns over the lives of others needs to be slapped down hard.
@313
Indeed, and I missed a chance to point that out, but gun fondlers like MME like to focus on cross sectional data (same place at different times) to the exclusion of any other kind of statistics, which are really vulnerable to factors other than the ones being studied.
For example, a cross section of my house would show I purchased less desserts after going to college, but that is due to my partner (whom I met around that same time) being a diabetic, not anything related to college.
@A. Noyd
What the fuck are you even talking about? We can easily focus on both of these things at the same time. Do you have any evidence at all that pointing out (among other things) that this shooter: 1) announced allegiance to ISIS, and 2) had a homophobic asshole for a father who released a video saying “homosexuals can only be punished by God“, will somehow hinder our efforts to call out non-Muslim homophobia when we see it?
Come on, people. The religious connection is as obvious as it gets. These mealy-mouthed calls to silence our critical brains are not only idiotic, but unconscionable. One wonders what the hell we’re doing on an atheist board if we’ve decided criticism of religion is off-limits.
I mean, I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m absolutely not here for the atheism/criticism of religion.
Iggles
We have a problem with only calling out one religion for special treatment. Either criticize all religions equally, or no religions. If you go for only one, your are showing your prejudices, in this case Islamophobia, as it is the one you are criticizing above all others.
PZ Myers wrote:
It doesn’t seem to matter how often people point this out, the retort is always that the U.S. is unique in some way, and if you find a country that has similar unique properties, the goalposts are simply moved so that the U.S. is somehow unique again, even if it means looping around in circles.
But Canada has vast rural areas and relatively high gun ownership rates, and doesn’t manage to achieve anywhere near the same number of gun fatalities.
Great Britain has a high population density, and doesn’t have the number of gun fatalities.
Ireland has a higher crime rate than the U.S., and doesn’t have the number of gun fatalities.
…
Mesh –
This is the distillation of many of the people arguing with me: Christianity was horrible decades or centuries ago – and they were just as bad as Islam is now. And by extension – let’s see where Islam is in 600 years.
Are we still mad at Italy because the Holy Roman Empire invaded Gaul a couple millennia ago? Right now, in 2016, I don’t care about that. And I also don’t care about the Inquisition, or the 100 years war, or any of the religious wars fought in Europe prior to the peace of Westphalia. Yes, Christians have at least as much historical blood on their hands as Muslims.
But that is not the situation right now, and you can’t make a rational argument that Christians are right now equally as violent or intolerant as Muslims.
Islam is not in some parallel universe where basic human rights don’t come into fashion for another 600 years, it exists in the world we inhabit today. Are we supposed to give Islam a pass? Pat them on the head like some naughty child and say, “When you grow up you’ll think differently?” That’s little comfort to the LGBTQ communities living in Muslim countries right now. And its little comfort to the families of the dead in Orlando.
Also, that the Bible presents a palatable narrative is of the utmost importance when compared to Islam. It is why Christians don’t get “radicalized” by closely reading the New Testament and then go into nightclubs and start shooting the place up.
This one always makes me laugh, been seeing it a lot lately as well. Sure, we have tons of unpopulated space here, so including the entire landmass of Canada makes the population density about 1/10th of the US. But Canadians are not spread out uniformly across the country, that metric does not capture the shape of the population, which is concentrated near the border, and is highly urban. Sometimes I wonder if these people think most Canadians all live in the wilderness, rather than 60% living in population centers over 100,000 people.
EnlightenmentLiberal #285
Oh, you mean except for the fucking fact that there was at least one person shooting back before he even got into the place where he killed 49 people with absolute ease because he had an assault rifle – the person or persons trying to stop him but couldn’t because they were hopelessly outmatched – because of the obvious fucking fact that handguns are not even close to “as dangerous” as a semi-automatic rifle – not to even mention all the people who were shooting back when he was… fucking shot at the end of the massacre – in the very fucking scenario that is the topic at hand?
You mean apples and oranges except for it being the exact same thing? You mean apples to oranges in the apples to apples way?
I know that things are have gotten less hostile around here but I wish you’d just shut the fuck up because what you’re saying is stupid and it’s getting on my nerves.
Way to close that tag, tkreacher. Meh.
Bart, you do not have to comment on everything. There have been multiple times now that you have commented on something, been corrected, then said you didn’t know about the topic as if it’s a defense. If you don’t know much, stop talking. Listen, do some research, whatever, but stop valuing your ill-informed opinions over those of people who actually know shit.
Except, of course, when there is. Wasn’t there at least one person shooting back in this case? With the result that the shooter got chased back into the club to kill more people? Or am I misremembering things?
dianne #324
Yeah, that’s what I was saying in #321, but it was poorly written, tagged, and constructed, so it might not have been clear. Heh.
From what I gather from the somewhat scattered reporting I’ve seen, at least one person did get into a firefight with him before on duty officers arrived. Even if that weren’t the case in this instance, it is still the case in others.
But let’s not let things like reality get in the way – let’s pretend that it’s “apples and oranges” so the gun fetish narrative isn’t disrupted.
iggles (#315)
One wonders what you’re doing on an atheist blog if you can’t argue without completely mischaracterizing people’s arguments. This isn’t about arguments on a blog. It’s about real life. It’s about how criticism of religion can have drastic effects in real life.
The killer’s exact brand of religion is not specially culpable here. As in, it’s not more culpable than the Christianity that is the dominant source of anti-queer bigotry in this country. And pointing out his religion rather than going after the toxic piety itself only empowers the Christians now taking a break from holding their boots to our necks to pretend they care about saving us from Muslim barbarians.
Don’t bring up the brand of his religion, which he shared with queer Muslims. Bring up the character of his particular practice, which he shared with bigoted Christians. And hammer in that point in common. Because there are so many just waiting to make him into a figurehead for Islam when he’s really a figurehead for their own hatred and loathing of queer people.
A. Noyd –
No, he doesn’t share the character of his particular practice with bigoted Christians. Jesus did not instruct his followers to slay the unbelievers. You can keep fighting the keep the Christian boot off the gay neck (a fight which, in most respects, is already over) but there is a Muslim sword coming down on that same neck.
And to the extent Mateen is a figurehead for Islam, it is because he did what many of the most respected figures of that religion command. You’re not going to find a parallel with Christianity because there isn’t one.
I get this argument, I truly do. You’ve made it eloquently and better than anyone else here. But I still don’t buy it because it requires us to equate a bigoted Christian not baking a cake for a gay wedding with a Muslim massacring 50 people in a gay club. I’m not ok with either of them, but fuck me I’d prefer the former to the latter.
This story has featured prominently in Australian news.
There’s an article in the national (independent) broadcaster: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-14/gun-culture-alive-and-well-in-australia-expert-says/7509286
Pullquote (emphasis in the original):
mmark (#327)
The hell it does. How dare you pretend that I’m equating murder with being refused cake, you piece of shit. That’s your own willful ignorance speaking. If you’re not convinced, it’s because you’re the perfect illustration of how Islamophobia gives cover to our usual killers by blinding you to what they do to us. Get the fuck out of here.
@mmark: How do you reconcile the statement, “fighting the keep the Christian boot off the gay neck (a fight which, in most respects, is already over)” with the knowledge that you clearly have that LGBT people continue to face active discrimination in predominantly Christian countries? From the microaggressions of people getting angry at displays of affection to the minor annoyances of cakes to the risk of life imprisonment in Uganda to the risk of being kicked out of the house onto the streets, where life expectancy is extremely low, it is hard for me to see how anyone could honestly declare this “fight” to be “over”.
Not just the gun death rate, as I recall. I remember I once thought Belgium had a higher murder rate than the US … and then it transpired that Belgian statistics lumped murders and attempted murders together, which is not unreasonable for certain applications, but it made Belgium look rather terrible in comparison to the US. Once that was cleared up, the US became the outlier again.
The US has a problem with aggression. A big one.
We could also talk about the other elephant in the room. What do virtually all mass murderers have in common? They are almost exclusively male. The US doesn’t have an aggression problem. It has a male aggression problem.
Just going to drop this here, in case it’s of use to someone.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/orlando-amerikas-muslime-fuerchten-die-aechtung-a-1097460.html
Ah, I think I see mmark’s problem – he thinks that the fight for LGBT equality in the US “in most respects, is already over”. He’s apparently completely unaware of the sort of challenges LGBT people (and particularly LGBT people of colour) face in everyday life, unless those challenges happen to involve being a victim in the largest mass shooting in US history. He thinks anti-LGBT bigotry in the US is all about cakes, rather than violent hate crimes. This, in a country where one state recently felt the need to officially ban the so-called “gay panic defence”, and other states have been strongly urged to follow suit…
In other words, he’s a clueless idiot telling people that they’re imagining their own oppression.
Amanda Marcotte agrees: Overcompensation Nation: It’s time to admit that toxic masculinity drives gun violence.
Onward Christian Soldier…. onward.
(psst: the crusades never happened, amirite?)
Well, they may have happened, but they were a long time ago and we’ve all learned better now. Certainly no modern leader of a predominantly Christian country would ever describe his unprovoked invasion of a predominantly Islamic country as a crusade.
more for Mmark:
“He who is not with me is against me”
(Matthew 12:30)
“But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.”
(Luke 19:27 KJV)
“The Jews suffer persecution because of their refusal to accept Jesus as the Messiah.”
(actually repeated in almost every book of the gospel, in many different verses)
“The Jews were murdered along with the Muslims; many were huddled into the synagogues and burned alive. Thus was Jerusalem saved by the Christians from infidel hands.”
-from documentation of the 1st Crusade… which was justified directly by the quotes posted above.
but no… no comparison to Islamic radicals… nope, none, nuh uh. nothing to see here… move along.
Mission Accomplished.
;)
Rather than use this incident to recognize that LGBTX are an oppressed minority that is often targeted for abuse and the fact that the tools of the massacre are too readily available, redirect ones hate to the religion of the a-hole as more reason to hate the religion one is trying to suppress.
Completely disregard that he was not an ISIS member, nor commanded to slaughter by the hierarchy of Muslims. Focus instead that one aspect of the religion one hates has a line embedded within it against the victims of the slaughter. Wildly speculate thusly: he thought the massacre would be his initiation into the brotherhood of ISIS, to get back at all the members of the “alternative” club he frequented. His 911 call was to announce to ISIS that he was fulfilling their entrance exam and should be welcomed immediately, to convey his soul to the paradise afterlife and not the “other place”.
.
the NRA has fulfilled its stereotype by immediately calling for reducing regulations on gun ownership (for self-defense) and calling it all a result of PC, and go after the terrorists with a religion other than xian.
Even the BBC misdirects. There was a talk show recently where the guest tried to focus on it as an attack on the LGBTX community, while the host kept restating it as “attack on humanity”. Repeatedly. The guest, a well respected journalist, got so exasperated that he simply walked off stage while on camera. I can see that in a more mundane setting that one of the LGBT would prefer that the LGBT label be dropped from the conversation. Talking about this incident is an inappropriate venue for dropping the LGBT label from the discussion. The obvious counterexample is of course the use of #BlackLivesMatter after the church house massacre and trying to override it with #AllLivesMatter.
*sigh*
out of words. I’ll leave it there… ;-(
you’re absolutely right. there is ZERO evidence to indicate this was an attack by ISIS.
and yet… we find media all over the world already labeling the shooter: “ISIS martyr Mateen”.
it’s like they’re trying to sell us something…
your words are good words. They resound of truth, IMO.
332. dianne:
Good point.
To make things worse, it seems American society worships violence. It is one of the reasons I can hardly watch any American movies. For some reason, a movie is considered only worth watching when the swearing expectorating gunning manly-man hero “fucks” every other word and treats women as worthless trash, only good to be used, deceived and bitch-slapped.
I don’t get it.
That was actually Sky News (the UK’s Murdoch-owned answer to Fox News), not the BBC.
338. Ichtyic:
Jesus is also quoted as stating that “he who is not against me is with me”. I can’t help but wonder if that might be the reason Xtians tend not to understand “non-belief”.
mmark wrote:
Wrong. There are several passages in Deuteronomy that say those who disbelieve or believe in other gods must be put to death, as well as in Numbers, but if you want a quote from Jesus, that can be provided as well.
Luke 19:26-27:
Clear as day. Any who will not submit to Jesus’ authority should be brought before him and slain.
Oops. I missed that Ichthyic beat me to that segment.
Indeed, there is evidence to the contrary. The shooter appears to have been trying to invoke every radical Islamic group he could think of, whether or not they agreed with each other or were actively fighting each other as much as “the infidel”. He wanted to be ISIS or something similar and they may well claim him because they want to look as scary as possible, but he was no ISIS fighter. He was radicalized, trained in killing, and enabled in the US by US-Americans.
Are popes considered respected figures of Christianity?
Just wondering.
ISIS would claim responsibility for the Great Fire of London if they thought anyone would buy it.
Omar Mateen was as much a radical islamist terrorist as Dylann Roof was a white supremacist terrorist. Both “self-radicalized”, neither was directed or supplied by by an organized group.
For those in the UK, the anti-fascist organization Hope not Hate has opened a book of condolence, to be presented to the American Embassy.
I always thought you couldn’t get any more absurd than atheists agreeing with ISIS and the Taliban on the true nature of Islam (as if there was actually a true nature to a man made myth), but playing christian apologetic at the same time really tops it.
Just quoting this again. Ever heard of a place called Russia?
Oh yeah, that’s why the overwhelming majority of my friends have either been disowned or dealt with abuse from their christian parents =/
Turning a gay 15 year old out on the street with literally nothing but the clothes they’re wearing might not be the same as pushing them off a building, but the divide isn’t as large as you’d like to claim it is.
Giliell, you don’t have to go to Russia.
I transitioned 24 years ago. In that time, I’ve been assaulted more times than I can count on both hands, and Every. Single. Time. it was a Christian or secular attacker or attackers.
When I was running a local campaign in support of a massive queer rights bill, back in 1994, and had my picture and name in the papers and on TV, it was always Christians who phoned to offer me death threats, and assurances that their god would strike me down. It was Christians who told me I should be raped until I was straight.
I’ve never known a Muslim to call me a name, let alone lift a finger against me. I’ve worked in a company which was 80% Muslim in personnel, and as an out lesbian, found they were never anything but pleasant and polite. Whatever their private thoughts might have been, they’ve been able to get past them and be good members of society. My neighbours in my apartment building are Muslim; I play football with their ten-year-old son occasionally out on the lawn.
In my fairly lengthy experience, Muslims in Canada seem not to be interested in imposing their principles on our society, as opposed to my Christian neighbours, who are CONSTANTLY on guard to make sure nothing secular gets past their beady eyes.
Does that make Muslim views less problematic? No, but it does mean they’re a lot less likely to be a pain in my queer ass. They simply have no power with which to enforce their bullshit, as opposed to the Christofascists like our former Prime Minister.
Tonight, I’m going to a rally downtown at city hall, where the local queer community and the local Muslim community are holding a communal vigil for the victims of Orlando.
I hear that we are , too.
@mmark
Ever consider that the reason you run into this a lot is because these are the only crimes of Christianity you’ll accept? As has already been pointed out, this kind of shit still happens (though not on that scale, obviously, because they’ve already won the game, they don’t need more crusades), but you decided to play the apologist and explain how they don’t count because they don’t dispose of gays ceremoniously shouting the name of their deity and citing the exact section of the Bible that justifies their behavior wholesale. This is clearly a dead end with you. It would be just as productive to debate the existence of racism with people convinced that it can only take the form of public lynching in the town square.
Although a decrease in horribleness is still a worthy observation. Isn’t it amazing how interest in violence tends to decline the more a group gets its way?
Not really, but I must admit to being taken aback by your glaring double standard. All Muslims are tarred by the actions of their radical fringe, but all Christians are automatically absolved because their radicals are never one of their own. You’ve swallowed the apologetics hook, line, and sinker, subscribing to a lofty vision that exists independent of Christian tradition, a True Christianity bound to nothing but the Bible like a genie in a lamp. In your quest to find something especially wrong with Islam you’ve elevated the holy books to an absurd level of authority far beyond even the demonstrable regard of religionists who continue to happily torture them to support what they already believe and want to be true.
Not so long as you’re poised to dismiss all modern Christian violence out of hand on the grounds that it isn’t a carbon copy of Muslim violence. Apparently, the fact that Christianity may illustrate less ceremony in disposing of gays is supposed to be some sort of clinching argument for why the way it orchestrates violence is acceptable.
No, but it wouldn’t hurt to practice a little bit of consistency. To recap, all Muslims are condemned by the actions of their radical minority while all Christians are absolved. Murder springing out of Islam is solely due to the wholly unique trappings of Islam while murder springing out of Christianity is due to weird deviants that do not at all reflect on Christianity whatsoever.
Wow, I can tell you’ve truly invested a lot of time and resources studying the myriad of complex social and cultural factors that culminate in radicalism to reach your knee-jerk, black-and-white conclusions. Kudos!
But now you have me deeply curious. Since Muslims become terrorists by closely reading the Quran, perhaps our resident expert on Islam could help explain why the threat would be such a recent development. Islam has existed long before 9/11, so why now? Why should we see a rise in radicalism at all given that all Muslims who study their holy text are automatically radical? Were the words of Allah just not read as closely back then?
An even smaller divide: shooting them in the face and abdomen with a shotgun at close range. That was just in April this year, in LA – and don’t let the foreign-sounding names fool you, the family in question were Seventh Day Adventists.
mmark:
The fuck it is. If I’m under a rock, you have to be on another fucking planet. Not been paying attention to news lately? Or the last 20 years?
Also, to harp further on the “we don’t hold the past crimes of christians against them” thing.
I can think of two highly significant events in US history that were both justified and encouraged by religion and pretty much anyone would be justified as still holding against christians.
(What is “The genocide of native americans and biblically justifying chattel slavery for 500”)
I love how the wedding cake denial at a few bakeries is the anti-Muslim asshat’s go-to example.
I wonder if gay people in America are aware that cake refusal is the worst stigma and disenfranchisement they have to face today.
Mateen’s wife Noor may be charged as accessory
ck (#345)
That dumbass doesn’t even understand that “character of practice” is the exact opposite of textual details. It’s what individuals do in the name of their religion, whether they have textual support or not. But what is even the point in arguing with someone who thinks that the worst queer people face from Christians is not getting a cake from a particular bakery.
~*~*~*~*~
dianne (#347)
We should be a little more concerned by how he turned to ISIS when he wasn’t fully embraced by the other group he was hoping to become a part of: the police.
A. Noyd wrote:
The Prosperity Gospel is probably one of the best examples of that. There is little to nothing that suggests that Jesus would materially reward his followers in this life for their faith, and plenty to suggest the opposite in the bible. Regardless of this, plenty of people believe it just the same, and frequently take actions based upon those beliefs.
That’s always the great things about the holy books. There’s nearly always a justification that can be interpreted from the text to excuse what you were going to do anyway. Want to kill all the infidels? There’s a passage for that. Want to protect all the infidels? There’s another passage for that. Want to be an isolationist and ignore the oppression of others? Yep, there’s passages for that, too.
ck (#363)
Actually, if I hadn’t been pressed for time when I was commenting this morning, I would have used that exact example!
To this person, but also to almost everyone in the thread:
Also, fuck you, and fuck you, and fuck everyone else. This is not a gun fetish narrative. This is a reality check from someone who wants effective gun control. This is from someone who wants to lower gun deaths. This is from someone telling you that you all don’t have a f’ing clue what you’re talking about, and because you don’t know what you’re talking about, you are bound to create and support ineffective legislation that just benefits the gun manufacturers! Assault weapon bans do nothing except benefit gun manufacturers!
Further, this embracing of ignorance in this thread is appalling. When someone corrects you on a factual matter, you should take that corretion, and apply it, and not revel in ignorance. You need to know about guns, the technologies, the difference between a select fire weapon, an automatic weapon, a 3 round burst, a semiauto weapon, an “assault weapon”, because only then do you have a hope of crafting regulation that is effective at stop the violence!
Jesus Christ people.
…
Assuming a world without body armor, and where engagements happen at close range, no, you’re just wrong. They’re definitely in the same neighborhood of dangerous, especially for the higher caliber handguns. Sure it’s easier to aim with a rifle compared to a handgun, and I won’t dispute that. However, handguns can have high capacity magazines too:
http://www.cabelas.com/category/Gun-Magazines/104442480.uts
In a civilian mass shooting situation, which happen at close range without body armor, handguns and rifles are in the same neighborhood of dangerousness.
But we’ve really gotten off track. My primary purpose here to emphasize that there is no such category of weapons called “assault weapons”, and any attempt to ban a fictitious category of firearms is not going to make anyone safer, and it’s just going to make the gun manufacturers richer because of the increased demand because of the need to work around “assault weapon bans” which just ban guns based on irrelevant cosmetic features. For most practical purposes for the discussion of civilian mass shootings, any semiauto rifle is about as dangerous as any other semiauto rifle, except for caliber differences. They all have about the same rate of fire, about the same power per bullet, the same ability to accept high capacity magazines, etc. In this context, for basically all practical purposes, the terms “a military style rifle” and “assault weapon” are fictions, and pernicious fictions at that, because it’s distracting us from crafting effective legislation.
Gun fetishist: WHIIIINE!!!
EnlightenmentLiberal #365
This is just a mind-breaking level of Dunning-Kruger.
Mind-breaking.
EnlightenmentLiberal @ 365:
Y’know, as one person has already been banned in this thread, you might want to have a care. As for this ^, no, I don’t need to know any of that shit. As a person beyond sick of seeing the continued rise of gun violence in this country, no, I don’t need to know more than I already do. I’m not the least bit interested in fetishists like yourself, who just have to talk gun details, because that’s all that matters to you.
You want to know what people actually need know about? This: Congress Will Not Allow the CDC to Study Gun Violence.
People need to know that Jay Dickey (of Dickey Amendment fame) reversed his position several years ago and now supports research.
People need to know that Over 100 medical groups urge Congress to fund CDC research on gun violence.
These are things people need to know. People need to know the NRA didn’t give a shit about all those people in Orlando dying.
What people don’t need is to constantly hear the gun head details, lovingly described over and over and over and over, as if that will somehow magically transform your fucking killing devices into something that’s just dandy and okay. You can’t even see that your own insistence on talking nothing but guns, especially when the ground is littered with the dead, is not only disgusting, but pointless. You care more about that than those who lost their lives for no reason. You care more about than the pain and anguish people will be living with for the rest of their lives. You care more about that than talking about the rotten core of gun culture in uStates. You actually have the nerve to use the latter as an excuse to go off into a spree of gun detailing. It’s a sickness, and you’re a prime symptom.
@Caine, the point is valid, even if one doesn’t like learning about the topic. If one cannot actually describe specific firearms classes, one cannot propose effective laws.
Case in point was the assault weapons ban, which banned bayonet lugs and in no way impacted function of the newer model rifles created just because of that ban. In short, a few features were altered slightly, the same rifle was being sold, only cosmetics were addressed, rather than function.
Frankly, I’ve been suggesting for many years that rather than a ban, we should reclassify firearms that are derived from selective fire military service rifles into a new class of firearm under the National Firearms Act. In short, treating them like silencers and machine guns.
Yes, one can legally purchase a fully automatic firearm, artillery, bombs and all other manner of mayhem distributing device. The background check is highly intrusive, anyone who is mentally unbalanced won’t pass, nor will drug abusers, domestic abusers, terrorists or drunks. Only those of unimpeachable character are able to pass that background check, since the NFA was enacted, there have been precisely three crimes committed with an NFA firearm, so it is an effective program.
That all said, with our current Congress, we know that not a damned thing will be done. They’re bought and paid for.
How about we let the government impose an large tax on the sale of guns, much like the extra taxes imposed on cigarettes and alcohol. earmark the tax for medical coverage of hospital emergency rooms. Exploit the discouragement aspect of taxing overly popular items. Like fuel taxes used to repair roads and bridges. Rather than trying to ban them, just tax the he~~ out of them.
Only one problem with taxing them. NFA firearms, erroneously referred to class 3 and suppressors already have a $200 tax stamp required (plus that invasive background check), but remain popular.
Placing firearms that are derived from selective fire military service rifles under the NFA would have both the tax and also the added benefit of that background investigation.
I’ve been through that background investigation a number of times myself, as the same investigation is utilized to acquire an N clearance and a top secret security clearance. To say that the government looks into every aspect of your life is an understatement!
No, it is not fucking valid. I realize you don’t give a fuck about me or my point of view on issues, but perhaps you best scroll up and refresh yourself on PZ’s views, as they are pertinent to continued posting privileges.
For every fucking asshole who thinks it’s just so important to talk guns, guns, guns (and here’s a clue x four: people didn’t need to know intense, fetish level details about vehicles in order for legislation to change, for societal views to change, and for safety to increase, and deaths to decrease, so shove that so-called reasoning in any orifice of your choice), go here, and pay attention to something actually relevant, people:
Say Their Names: Photos & Bios of Every Orlando Victim.
How about:
you can have any weapon of any kind if (and only if) you make it yourself.
You’re calling me a liar, because I specifically stated otherwise in this thread, numerous times, and explained my reasoning. As such – because you believe that you can read my mind, and because you therefore believe I am lying, and because you called me a liar – fuck you.
Goddamnit. This is not fetish level detail. Automatic vs semiautomatic is not fetish level detail. Do you want to know if your death-machine-control laws are working properly or not? Knowing the difference between an automatic rifle and a semiautomatic rifle is vitally important to crafting effective death-machine-control laws. Knowing that “assault weapon” is a fictitious term and knowing that “assault weapon bans” do nothing but help gun manufacturers is important to crafting effective death-machine-control laws.
I’ve seen PZ’s new post on this topic, that he does want to stay ignorant, and keep the conversation here ignorant. Therefore, it seems that PZ has removed himself and this blog from any and all intelligent and informed conversation on gun control. If intelligent, informed, and constructive conversation on this topic is not welcome, then fine, I guess I won’t be posting on it anymore after this post, but again, I cannot resist saying that you all have a fucking serious problem. You are part of the problem of gun deaths because you are crafting laws that help the gun lobby, do nothing about gun deaths, under the guise of gun control, and because you’re threatening to ban / will ban me for being pro-gun for pointing out this absurdity.
Fuck.
EL, listen to PZ.
Quit worrying about being pedantically right. Worry about being banned.
I’m not worried about being pedantically right. I’m concerned about the gun deaths in the United States, my country. I want to help the problem. This level of willful ignorance and embracing of willful ignorance will only help to ensure that gun deaths continue unabated because people like you cannot be bothered to educate themselves enough to tell the difference between effective gun control and ineffective gun control. The result is that you were sold the federal assault weapons ban, and you believed that you made great progress, when actually it didn’t do a damn thing, and this placated the anti-gun for a while. I don’t want to see the anti-gun side placated like that again with a placebo law.
PS: Sorry, the federal assault weapons ban did do something: It increased the gun sales of gun manufacturers, as gun nuts had to buy more guns to work around the cosmetic feature bans of the assault weapon ban.