This one is at Umpqua College in Roseburg, Oregon. Ten people are dead.
I feel cynicism and despair. Nothing will be done. We are targets in the sights of the NRA, and there will be the usual excuses from armed lunatics.
More gun control NOW.
I’ve just heard on the evening news that the shooter was “mentally ill” — I’ve heard this repeatedly now. I’m going to demand some consistency.
If this guy was so sick in the head that he should have been institutionalized before he committed this crime, then we need to round up all the sick fucks on 4chan and get them medicated right now. If you’re not willing to do that, if it is too much to label a huge fraction of the privileged male population mentally ill, then stop claiming somebody who is actually representative of a common attitude is diseased.
Not good enough. It’s time to repeal the second amendment. Past time. And past time for people to stop being afraid to say it.
Josh, #1
Seconded. Firepower is not a god damn human right. If you put together a list of fundamental human rights, owning and walking around with weapons will be the odd one out to anyone who gives a shit about the lives of their fellow human beings.
B-b-but if they take our guns (Thanks, Obama!), then how will we ever defend ourselves against the government??!!
This keeps happening, but nothing ever changes. There is too much money and too much cultural baggage attached to firearm ownership in the US, and until that link can be broken the powerful in society are going to continue standing in the way of needed change, and innocent people will continue paying the price.
Even easier: just add the words “Unless they are in” to the beginning, and we should be all good.
(Sorry for the double post – I’ll shut up now)
A comment (now deleted) on the Oregonian news page linked to above claimed that this story should be treated “as a hoax, until proven otherwise.” The poster, apparently, thinks that some nebulous government agency creates such hoaxes as a propaganda wedge, with the eventual end goal of getting everybody’s guns….
I want to say Oh. My. God. except that I don’t have one.
(God may be dead, but Satan is surely alive and well, and working for the NRA; or maybe it’s the other way around.)
Apparently Michelle Malkin has tweeted that calling too early for more gun control after a mass shooting should be forbidden. I suspect her definition of too early is some figure in years equal to the number of digits in pi.
I live in Roseburg. I know people who work at UCC. I’m still waiting to hear if any of the victims is someone I know. At most I’m sure that I know someone who knows one or more of the victims.
quotetheunquote@6, such claims are becoming inevitable any time a tragedy like this happens. The slightly less irrational conspiracy mongers will claim the shooter was a “Manchurian candidate” brainwashed into killing people by the feds.
I agree with Josh. I’ve had it.
Time to repeal the 2nd Amendment.
microraptor @ 8: Ugh. I’m sorry to hear that.
The police send officers to the scene.
The FBI sends agents to the scene.
The NRA sends spin doctors to the scene.
NRA doesn’t have to- plenty of people ’round here will do it for them.
With today’s shooting, we now have a total of 142 school shootings since the Massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
http://everytown.org/article/schoolshootings/
timgueguen:
Every mass shooting resets the “too early” clock. Fortunately for the gun lobby, such shootings come around frequently enough that it’s probably always “too early”.
Plainly, it stops being “too early” if it ever gets to the point where you can ask “why bring this up now?”
@3 Usernames! (╯°□°)╯︵ ʎuʎbosıɯ:
Is there really anybody in the US, or rather the world, that believes that having a gun will stop the US government if it so happens to have business with you?
@16 Peptron:
I believe they’re called the Oath Keepers
@16 peptron:
Well, how many people are hanging around the Bundy ranch these days?
Ben Carson has weighed in. What he said falls into the “stupid stuff” category.
Link
A thread that was started last night, possibly by the shooter is still up. The thread is purported to have been started by the shooter, but that has not been confirmed.
https://archive.moe/r9k/thread/22785073/#22785729
The thread begins:
That latest report 13 dead and more than 20 injured in Oregon. Appears there might have been a religious motive.
@timguegen #7:
Unless I’m much mistaken, her understanding is that pi = 3.
I would like to contrast this with yesterday’s reports about a certain Republican front-runner working himself up with regard to the possibility of accepting refugees from Syria who might hate America. Donald, you can find many, many more people closer to home who hate America than the people who simply want to escape a war zone after four years of danger and chaos.
On the gun-control aspect:
A bunch of firearm fetishists have been running around crowing that the school was a “gun-free zone”. This is a flat-out lie.
Under Oregon state law, since 2011, Concealed Carry is permitted on all state property, including colleges. The school’s web page has a statement that guns are prohibited except as permitted by state law–which would include Concealed Carry.
So, yeah, if you encounter a gun-fondler claiming that this is evidence that disarming the populace just leaves us as sheep for the slaughter, point out that they’re full of shit.
peptron@16, a lot of Americans do believe that privately owned firearms protect them from government tyranny. A lot also believe they protect America from invasion. I’ve seen a story posted several times over the years that claims a Japanese admiral admitted after the war that Japan didn’t try to invade the US because they knew there would be a “sniper behind every tree/blade of grass.” The story is silly. Besides the fact the Japanese never intended to invade the US it relies on the supposed Japanese admiral being aware lots of Americans had guns, and lacking enough national chauvinism to believe American civilians would be a threat to Japanese soldiers.(I’m sure I saw the same story attributed to a KGB officer, which is even more silly.)
Hey, maybe this will be the straw that breaks…
oh, fuckit.
45th time is a charm.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/cuttlefish/2015/10/01/45th-school-shooting-this-year-this-on-will-be-different/
@ freemage # 26
It was also being reported on CNN within an hour of the shooting.
You know, in another act of irony, there was just a recall started in this county over a representative who’d called for stronger state gun regulations. All the gun fondlers are going to to be crowing about how this is his fault, I’m sure.
The shooter apparently announced his plans on a 4chan board popular with “incels” (short for involuntarily celibate; a term adopted by men full of self pity and righteous anger because they can’t get laid; the kind who feel entitled to sex.)
The thread was full of encouragement. Also manosphere lingo like “beta cucks.”
Dave Futrelle is on it:
http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/10/01/umpqua-community-college-shooter-apparently-announced-his-plans-on-4chan-yesterday/
This makes three school shootings that I am aware of in OR, in my lifetime, two of which have happened in Roseburg (the last was nine years ago at the high school). Roseburg, incidentally, happens to be an economically depressed, mostly white, extremely conservative town with a huge pro-owning-guns-and-shooting-guns culture.
@Lynna, OM #19:
The other GOP candidates’ inevitable too-early-to-call-for-gun-control responses will be much the same. The next presidential debate is for the Democrats on October 13th; I’m hoping they have something more rational and humane to say than this firepower=freedom bullshit.
As someone living outside the US this makes absolutely no sense to me, why give your population access to military-grade firearms designed to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible? Why give your jealous bitter exes, your gang members, your paranoid neo fascists and your lonely bitter young men these tools of destruction? Self defense? It isn’t working.
Here in Australia we banned semi autos, the mass murders stopped-simple!
I know I’m preaching to the choir but this shit just infuriates me.
Repealing the Second would likely take a decade or more. The NRA is simply the mouthpiece paid for by the gun manufacturers; it gets a ton of money to take the heat in place of the arms makers. We could begin by making these dealers in death a pariah in the states where they live. We could severely restrict – if not ban outright – arms importing and exporting. Laws to restrict ammunition, enforce strict background checks, repeal as many “open carry” laws as possible, put reliable “lock the gun” technologies on the books, bullet trace technology, enforce the existing laws against drawing a weapon on a law enforcement officer (which would curb the Bundy crowd), put folks on the Supremes who aren’t afraid to “regulate the militia” and so on would stand a better chance to curb some of this carnage. But until the whores in Congress who take money from the gun makers to scuttle any gun legislation are turned out of office and treated as the pariahs they are, invest in a bullet resistant vest and wear it when you go to your local super or movie palace.
Repealing the Second would likely take a decade or more. The NRA is simply the mouthpiece paid for by the gun manufacturers; it gets a ton of money to take the heat in place of the arms makers. We could begin by making these dealers in death a pariah in the states where they live. We could severely restrict – if not ban outright – arms importing and exporting. Laws to restrict ammunition, enforce strict background checks, repeal as many “open carry” laws as possible and boycott the states which have them, put reliable “lock the gun” technologies on the books, bullet trace technology, enforce the existing laws against drawing a weapon on a law enforcement officer (which would curb the Bundy crowd), put folks on the Supremes who aren’t afraid to “regulate the militia” and so on would stand a better chance to curb some of this carnage. But until the whores in Congress who take money from the gun makers to scuttle any gun legislation are turned out of office and treated as the pariahs they are, invest in a bullet resistant vest and wear it when you go to your local super or movie palace.
Dave Silverman has indicated that he opposes effective gun control laws when he was at CPAC. (To be fair, he may have been cynically intentionally misleading the CPAC’ers in order to get more money from them after their free memberships were up.) I’m more leery than ever about supporting organizations like American Atheists that actively work against my interests. Including my interest in not being murdered.
I’ve also read that Oregon has already in place a compulsory mental health check for concealed carry permits. Whats that you say? This isn’t a gun control issue its a mental health issue? Great – thanks right wingers. Your evil has now compounded into another slaughter.
freemage @24, Correct. Persons with concealed carry permits can carry a gun onto a post-secondary campus in Oregon. On the Chris Hayes “All In” show this evening, an interview with a vet who is also a student and the carrier of a concealed weapon was featured. The vet had a gun and was on campus when the shooting started.
The vet said that he and others in his study group were far from the building in which the shooting was taking place. They started to go out to see if there was something they could do, but were herded back into their classroom by school officials. He said that was probably a good thing, as there was too much open ground to cover between them and the shooter, plus they had no communication with SWAT or other police officers — meaning that police seeing the vets with guns drawn may have mistaken them for shooters.
More guns on campus is not the answer. The vet with the concealed weapon did say that he identified himself to the teacher in his classroom and agreed that he would protect the students there, if possible, if necessary.
When we get more government massacres than we get school shootings, I’ll start listening to the defend-from-government idiots.
We don’t need to repeal the Second Amendment, we just need to get the word out that it has nothing to do with private citizens owning guns. It had to do with keeping a citizen’s militia, rather than hiring a mercenary army. The government armed the militia – it’s in the Constitution.
(I figure if we can get folks to realize just how mistaken they have been, they might start reconsidering other things, too.)
President’s comments on the massacre:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-news/watch/obama–us-has-become-numb-to-mass-shootings-536820803777
Transcript of President Obama’s remarks: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/angry-president-argues-thoughts-and-prayers-are-not-enough
The shooter’s name has been released. It is Chris Harper Mercer.
http://www.nytimes.com/live/shooting-at-umpqua-community-college/gunman-identified-as-chris-harper-mercer/
Rightwing online sources are already claiming the Chris Harper Mercer was an atheist, and that he was a member of Black Lives Matter. Garbage. None of that has been confirmed.
This kind of garbage is backed up by claims that the shooting took place on a gun-free campus, which is not true. It is true that the single security guard on the large, spread-out campus was not armed.
I just hope people don’t get hung up on the assault rifle thing again, this time. Handguns are probably the cause of this incident more than anything else, and those have always been excluded from discussion by even liberal lawmakers.
Lynna wrote:
Probably from the dating profile tidbit reproduced here: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/umpqua-college-terrorist-identified-as-26-year-old-chris-harper-mercer
It indicates he said he’s mixed race, and non-religious, which I guess is enough for the RW to declare he’s a member of BLM and atheist. Of course the profile declares himself conservative repeatedly, but that’s of no consequence.
microraptor @8:
I was a senior at Virginia Tech when the shooting there happened. My personal experience was that watching the news coverage, and particularly the way it was covered by outlets like CNN in their attempts to politicize it and turn people against each other, only helped to burn in the trauma. Please remember to practice self-care if necessary and turn off the TV and news websites. My condolences to you, your friends, and your community.
Charles C Johnson (about the worst source I can imagine) is claiming that the shooter was Muslim and non-white. It is too early to say anything about the guy and his motives.
Too early to be definitive, but some of the hints around suggest that MRA ideas were part of the toxic mix. Those can’t be banned, only resisted, but they’re a cancer.
biogeo @44
Thanks. I’m okay, and yeah, I’ve only been watching the news in snippets to see if any new relevant details have been released. It’s pretty confused right now- reports are somewhere between 10 and 13 victims killed- 10 has been the latest number so that appears to be the most accurate (apparently there were 911 calls reporting up to 15 fatalities). Which is “good.”
The animal shelter I volunteer at (which is just a couple of miles from the campus) is already looking at what we can do for them- we’re talking about organizing a group of therapy dogs to visit the campus or bringing students over to the shelter to interact with the dogs and cats there.
Since every white murderer to make the news is described as “mentally ill,” I considered making a post of my own to explain why this is stupid complete with analogies and everything.
However, since I actually am mentally ill (or close enough), it means I don’t have the spoons to take on novel creative tasks in addition to my existing workload.
Which means that this post serves as a little tiny demonstration of my greater point, though without the cool analogies and all.
Very sad to point out that Bernie’s response is shit. Mental health problem! Passing mention of gun control. And then blaming violent movies – I thought we were done with that garbage in the 90s?
http://www.joemygod.com/2015/10/01/sen-bernie-sanders-calls-for-expanded-mental-health-access-in-wake-of-oregon-shootings/
For anyone with two braincells to rub together it is clear that mental health is not the problemm. That is, unless US cizens are multiple times over more mentally ill than europe.
Europe (the continent, not EU) had according to Wikipedia 24 school shootings over last 100 years. US has abot as much school shootings each six months.
The only reliably measurable variable with the potential to explainin this discrepancy is the availability of guns.
mickell
Usually, that’s just one person…
kellym
Silverman is on record for saying that if you impose gun controbad menwill rape women in the street and nobody will be able to stop them. That’s gun-fondling “pro women” atheism for you.
+++
And really, nobody has any idea why. Angry young (usually white) men are just a force of nature and they simply happen much like tornados and rainfall.
+++
PZ
Isn’t it funny how race and religion are never an issue when the shooter is a white christian? IIRC you can even call yourself a white christian supremacist, shoot a bunch of black people at a church connected with the Civil Rights Movement and still nobody can say anything about why you did it… (force of nature, see above)
+++
zibble
You know, while it’s silly to say “movies (or video games) made him do it”, it’s equally silly to say that “well, he was fed on a steady diet of media in which angry men simply ignore the law, kill a bunch of people and become the hero by this (rewarded with a compulsory hot chick!) but that sure doesn’t have anything to do with him becoming an angry man who ignored the law and killed a bunch of people.”
Culture influences and shapes us all and a culture that is filled with misogyny and glorifies guns and violence is a culture that breeds misogynist violence.
Reading some of the stuff that google dragged up when i searched for “incel” … Now i have to go brush my teeth.
Here’s what’s known of him so far, which of course doesn’t matter much. It’s lack of gun control that matters.
Charly wrote:
I don’t think that’s fair. You don’t necessarily need to be mentally ill to need mental health care, much like the way you don’t necessarily have to be sick or hurt to need the services of a physician. I’ll definitely agree that it’s almost certainly wrong to blame this atrocity on mental illness, though.
A priest from Roseburg, interviewed on the BBC this morning, claimed that, after the gunman had established people’s religion, Christians were shot in the head, and others in the legs. His final comment was that if the students had been armed they could have fought back. This from a priest.
@ck, the Irate Lump #54
I think this is a misunderstanding. I do say, imply or mean what you interpreted. I am completely on par with you that US needs better mental health care system than it has. But not because it has mental health problem in comparison to the rest of the developed world, but because it has healt care in general problem in comparison to the rest of the developed world.
And all of that is a red herring thrown in these debates by gun fondlers (and as far as I see sometimes even well-meaning liberals), because with regards to shootings, the root of the problem are guns, guns and again guns.
From the Grauniad article linked to in #53
The shooter’s dating site profile included this
If we’re not ready to get rid of the 2nd amendment (which I think is the only long term viable solution, really), how about a little something less extreme: Virtually every mass shooter has one thing in common with virtually every other mass shooter: They’re almost always men. Furthermore, they’re 90+% white or part white. Now I’m not saying we should PROFILE white men, but maybe we could, you know, anti-profile women and non-binary people and maybe, non-whites as well. Because who ever heard of a woman in a burka shooting up a school? No one! Doesn’t happen*. So women should be able to get a license for a gun with only minimal background checks (mostly to make sure she isn’t planning to give the gun to a guy who might do something dangerous with it) whereas a man should undergo, ahem, standard procedure, which should be an extensive background check, long interview, and denial of license for any signs of a history of violence or privileged beliefs.
Sadly, I believe I just proposed a stricter limitation on selling firearms to women than currently exists.
*In the US and, after all, where else matters except maybe Britain?
Every American should watch this video:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/president-obama-was-wrong-australia-is-not-like-the-us-20151002-gjztja
As quoted by Lynna, #19:
Early warning clues like wanting to own guns, maybe.
Tom Tomorrow, from 31st August: The Routine.
Charly, #50
I’m not sure we can say that the only reliably measurable variable is the availability of guns. European countries vary greatly in this – Switzerland, for example, has higher per capita gun ownership than the US, while Germany, England and Sweden have quite low levels. Availability of guns on its own is not the cause, though I would say that it is a symptom and aggravator of the underlying problems in the US. It certainly doesn’t help. But the Swiss can, apparently, be trusted with their ridiculous superfluity of deadly weapons, where it seems that the United States cannot. At least not yet.
What the US has that most of Europe does not is a rampant and noxious gun culture. Which can’t be easily isolated from the rest of the culture. There are many things in the popular psychology, media and collective imagination of the US that support gun culture, such as the fetishisation of social independence, lauding of aggressive personal agency and belief in the justice and efficacy of reparatory violence. I fear there is not going to be an easy solution to all that, indeed, the belief that deep-seated social problems can be solved with easy solutions is perhaps part of the cultural malaise we’re talking about here.
The Nordic countries (minus Denmark) actually have high gun ownership per capita, but most of those are hunting guns, or guns specifically designed for a particular sports shooting event. Sweden is the 9:th most gun-dense country on the planet. Lots of Elk hunting rifles. There are occasional shootings with those hunting rifles, but the number of casualties is limited by the low rate of fire of the guns.
The thing that actually is really low is the ownership per capita of guns designed primarily to shoot people. I think you can see how that might lead to less shootings.
Basically, nobody owns a gun of any kind unless they can show that they have a legitimate and specific reason and the proper education needed to safely store and operate that type of gun, so you can’t for example own a handgun unless it’s the specific kind of handgun that you need for your sport.
The US has a lot more guns per capita than pretty much every other country, but I think that in and of itself would be fine if the guns where legitimate tools for a specific use, like hunting or sports shooting. The problem that you have in the US is that people engage in weird fantasies about protecting themselves from criminals with guns, or even more absurd fantasies about fighting the government with small arms fire.
The second link in PZ’s OP – the one that links to a We Hunted The Mammoth article about 4chan’s connection to this atrocity – really hammers home the point that 4chan has truly earned its reputation as the cesspool of the internet. Not only did the shooter post on 4chan about his intent to launch the attack, and received encouragement and advice on how to go about it (including suggestions on groups that ‘deserved’ to targeted) from these creeps, but after the attack became public knowledge they reacted mostly with joyous enthusiasm. It is utterly repulsive, and seems like a strong argument for an in depth investigation into the website administration and the behaviour of much of its regular user base. This sort of thing can’t simply be ignored.
The murderer singled out Christians, had body armor and a lot of ammunition
The Washington Post has made a graph showing all mass shootings this year (defined as 4 or more deaths). Result? There hasn’t been a single week without at least one. The longest stretch is four days. So yeah, all of the “it’s politicizing tragedy to talk about gun control right after a mass shooting” means “never, never talk about gun control.”
Also, I read an interesting comment on twitter that using “shooter” and “gun control” rather than “murderer” and “gun safety” is using NRA-preferred terminology to distance from the horror. I’m going to try to start changing the terms I use accordingly.
Argh. Correction: there was one eight day stretch. I was looking week by week and didn’t catch that one four-day stretch in one week butted up against the four-day stretch in the next week.
Fighting the government with small arms is completely viable: it’s that kind of weaponry that defeated the US in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It defeated the mighty British Empire in the thirteen colonies.
It’s that kind of weaponry that fights civil wars everywhere, until you start getting military units defecting to your cause — and even then it’s small arms that form the bulk of your militia. It’s also the kind of weaponry that the Bundy Ranch defends itself with, in the US of A.
When you start shooting at the government, unless you have mass public support and often even if you do, you’re going to get yourself killed. And probably your loved ones. And likely your neighbourhood will get bombed. People will flee, or drown trying to flee. I don’t think the gun nuts think too hard about that part.
carlie, #66
Minor correction: their list tracks 4 or more victims (not necessarily fatalities), but that doesn’t take anything away from their point. It’s not like those shooters mean to merely injure people.
Also, there have been about 50 school cases per year since Sandy Hook (Lynna’s #13). That probably beats the Taliban’s record by 49 a year.
Cartomancer
Wrong.
Switzerland has about half the US gun ownership per capita and about a third of it’s gun death rate. So while it’S no 1:1 corelation, it’S quite a good one. Sure other factors play a role such as culture, which guns are owned and which regulations are in place, which proves that effective regulation does have an effect. Austria and Germany have, for example, very similar numbers of guns, and very similar cultures, but Germany has a significantly lower rate of gun deaths.
INterestingly, people not involved in criminal activity, especially women murdered by their exes, and suicides* are overwhelmingly committed with legal, registered guns.
*If MRAs gave a single actual fuck about men they’d campaign for gun regulation and reduction, because nothing is more deadly to men than their own guns.
@64 Gregory
I made the mistake of reading that threat and holy fuck, those people are very, very sick…
@ 64 Gregory Greenwood
But, according to 4chan apologists it is only the /b/ and/pol/ boards that are full of scumbags. Every other board is full of tolerance, love and intelligent discussion! Bollocks. This board where the shooter announced his scheme was not/b/ or/pol/ but /r9k/, the home of “nice guys” who don’t have a girlfriend and naturally blame feminism and “bad Boys” for their loneliness. So add another board full of angry misanthropic bigots. I remember in another discussion about 4chan on another Website, one apologist offered up /an/ (animals and nature) as the “nice” board on 4chan which was way more representative of the site as a whole than the likes of /b/. So I checked it out. On the first page was a thread asking what were the most jewish looking animals. And so HILARIOUS pictures of tapirs, elephant seals and goblin sharks started filling the thread quite quickly. So yeah even the “nice” threads are full of nasty bigoted shitheads. They are no fucking redeeming qualities to that shithole of a website and I question why anyone with a shred of decency or empathy would hang out there.
So clearly 5 days must pass before we can discuss gun control or it’s “too soon”. (Yeah, I know, that does leave one 8 day gap when the discussion is possible, but how often does that happen?)
Graph showing American deaths in terrorism vs gun violence
Scroll down for the graph showing the trend. Even the idiot who made that abortion chart should be able to get the point.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- #70
You made me wonder about the numbers. I first thought it was near nothing in France but firearm ownership is about 30%, which is about the same as Germany. Now I’m really freaking out before that number: how the hell do that many people feel the need to own a firearm? Even if “external” fatal injuries are low, the point is that I don’t want my kids to go in homes with firearms, so I should actually care about forbiding them visiting 30% of their friends.
I mean, it’s not as if the odds of a zombie apocalypse were non-negligible. And if people enjoy shooting, they can do so in specific clubs without any need to own a killing machine themselves. And if they are collectors (hey, stamps are quite nice too!), they do not need any bullets. WTF?
Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia @ 71;
I know exactly what you mean – it is enough to make you despair for humanity all over again.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
w00dview @ 72;
Their specific obsessions may differ, but the toxic hatred and rampant bigotry is always the same. 4chan is the preferred online gathering place for all manner of homophobes, racists, misogynists and sundry other stripes of intolerant arseholes, whatever its would-be defenders try to claim. At this juncture I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
That doesn’t surprise me in the least. I have fortunately had only limited contact with 4chan, but from my own personal experience, and that of every other decent person I know who has had any contact with the place, there is no such thing as this fairy tale ‘real’, ‘decent’ 4chan that gets a bad rap because of what are alleged to be ‘just a couple of problem areas’ – it is hateful bigotry all the way down.
I have long said that bigotries are like pustules; they almost always form in clusters. As that applies to bigoted individuals who rarely only espouse one bigotry, but instead are prejudiced against several innocent groups all at the same time, so it is with 4chan – there is no containing this rot. Either you expel the hate-mongers or they poison everything they can reach.
@51 Gilliel
Which has nothing to do with the representation of violence in movies or video games. You get the glorification of violence and misogyny in things like VeggieTales, for instance. Whenever people talk this nonsense, they’re not talking about the *ideas* in media, they’re just talking about the literal on screen depictions, because people are superficial like that. It’s the same thinking that watching gay porn makes you gay.
But as a second point, the depiction of violence in the media is not within the authority of the government. Gun policy is. To change the culture of mass shooting in America, we are going to have to sacrifice either the first amendment or the second, and the first is a hell of a lot more important to a functioning democracy.
If only he had done something seriously dangerous.
Like build a clock.
You know, I’m sure mental health plays into all this. But I hear people go on about their fears of gun registration, and then they try to shift it to talking about the mentally ill. It makes me think “Hold on. What about my rights? You chose your gun. I didn’t choose chronic depression.”
@76
This a thousand times. I remember sitting in Sunday school at about 9 years old and seeing the one about Joshua and The Battle of Jericho. I’d just started to realize how unnecessarily violent the characters of the Bible were, and thought: If they really just needed to get to something on the other side of Jericho, why didn’t they just walk around and continue on their way. Instead they walked around 6.5 more times and brought the walls down. And I knew even then that the biblical version probably included massacring the people of the city.
Oh, right, the French-Accented peas dropped a slushy on Joshua’s (Larry the Cucumber) head. That totally justifies destroying a city.
NBC has an article up right now called “Chris Harper Mercer: What we know.” I find it very interesting that, if the above thread is to be believed, the internet collectively knows a whole lot more about him than the media seems to.
The French gun owners are probably people who hunt and participate in gun sports. I bet a ton of French people own sharp cooking knifes, too. I wouldn’t worry too much about that.
The ones that I would worry about are people who say that they own guns for “personal protection”, or for other nonsensical reasons such as “learning about responsible gun ownership”.
Thanks Saad, I hadn’t caught that.
I have an idea: since guns are everywhere and we can’t stop them and yadda yadda, every person who works with the public should get an extra 25% of their salary as hazard pay. And the NRA has to foot the bill, what with them being the ones causing the hazardous situation to exist. They should be taking on the burden of what gun freedom means since they’re the ones pushing it.
What did the murderer say about himself? For one thing, Chris Harper Mercer self-identified as a “conservative Republican.” Link
170 faculty members at the University of Texas at Austin signed a petition against campus-carry laws. The faculty members do not want guns in their classrooms. <a href="History professor Joan Neuberger co-organized the list as part of anti-campus carry group Gun-Free UT’s efforts to state their opposition to the policy […].
“If people feel there might be a gun in the classroom, students have said that it makes them feel like they would be much more hesitant to raise controversial issues, and I know, as a professor, I would be hesitant to encourage students to debate really important and controversial ideas,” Neuberger said. “The classroom is a very special place, and it needs to be a safe place, and that means safe from guns.”
According to Neuberger, the list demonstrates to the campus carry working group that there is faculty opposition of the policy. Gun-Free UT has garnered more than 1,900 signatures through a change.org petition and is holding a rally on Oct. 1.
The Daily Texan link
More detail on the gun rights extremist group to which the the sheriff of Douglas County, Oregon, John Hanlin, belongs:
Link
Congress of course won’t do anything, but if they did a good start would be to outlaw police departments from selling confiscated guns and putting them back into circulation. I’m not sure how many this would take out of circulation, but it’s something.
Donald Trump has weighed in on the Oregon massacre:
Link
A bit of a follow-up to one of the earlier comments, Oregon college shooting is 994th mass gun attack in US in three years. Nine hundred ninety-odd mass shootings in three years is almost one a day. As the article points out, “guns kill more people in America every six hours than terrorist attacks did in the entire year of 2014.”
Because, of course, the USA is the world…
And one more reason I despair for the country. I’m thinking there should be a “XX days since a mass shooting” sign, or more publicity for existing ones. I suspect the duty of resetting it would get depressing.
This is a followup to comment 85.
The extremist sheriff, John Hanlin, posted a Sandy Hook “truther” video in 2013. The video claims that conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre should be taken seriously. One of those theories is that the Sandy Hook shooting was a “false flag operation” meant to prompt gun control laws.
Hanlin posted a video in which doofuses claimed that the government sponsored or “pulled off” the Sandy Hook shooting. Hanlin’s preface to the video was, “Watch, listen, and keep an open mind.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-hanlin-sandy-hook-truther
George Zimmerman, the guy who shot unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, has weighed in on the shooting in Oregon:
Salon link
I’d rather have a few people slipping through cracks than throngs running through the open pipeline.
Funny how Trump doesn’t apply this fatalistic approach to his own policies. It’s already been explained how, even if his dream wall were in any way feasible to construct, it would never be completely effective in keeping all those evil rapist Mexicans out.
Amazing. And this is the current darling of the right. Obama proposes changes that would take steps to address a clear, undeniable sickness in our society, and he is denounced as attacking Christians. Trump throws up his hands and lectures us about how this is just the world we live in, implicitly telling Christians they’ll just have to roll with the punches as their friends, lovers, and children are filled with holes on school campuses, and this apparently satisfies them.
Lynna @92,
That man is one of the worst human beings on the planet, and our system has not only allowed him to literally get away with murder, but has enabled his violent and antisocial behavior.
I really hope one of his run-ins lands him in prison before he kills more people.
numerobis @68
The US and ARVN forces in Vietnam were not defeated by the Viet Cong, which was virtually annihilated during Tet-68. It was the professional North Vietnamese Army, trained and equipped as light infantry, which won the Vietnam War.
The American Revolution was being lost by the poorly trained and equipped American army until the French sent over massive amounts of arms and other equipment and several hundred drill sergeants (mainly Irish, since they could speak English). The French turned the American army into a genuine army, properly trained and equipped. Plus the French victory at the naval Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781 prevented the British from reinforcing or evacuating Cornwallis from Yorktown, which led to his army’s surrender.
In 1943, a couple of thousand Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, armed with rifles, pistols, molotov cocktails and a few machine guns (given by the Polish Underground or stolen from the Germans), took on a reinforced Waffen-SS Panzergrenadier brigade. The Germans officially suffered 100 casualties (killed and wounded) but the Polish Underground estimated the number was closer to 300. 13,000 Jews were killed in the ghetto during the uprising (about 6,000 were burned alive or died from smoke inhalation). Of the remaining 50,000 residents, most were captured and shipped to concentration and extermination camps.
History tells us that civilians armed with rifles and pistols do not do well against trained, equipped military troops.
@79 gmacs
lol, they seriously had french accents? Justifying the bigotries of the past with the bigotries of the future (or maybe just ripping off Monty Python…)
Going off of my previous point, there’s a great video on youtube about how the original Karate Kid movie justified creepy, violent, obsessive behavior through emotionally manipulative storytelling. It might be “violent”, but it’s an example of how the real media problem isn’t depictions of gun violence, but the ideas behind even supposedly family friendly positive kids movies.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Gz_iTuRMM
Zibble @97:
I remember reading a text review that pointed that sort of thing out. I certainly didn’t remember those parts, and it makes me hesitant to rewatch the movie. Creepy.
by the logic of the legal concealed carry advocates the way to insure the safety of the population is not to ban guns or even just make gun ownership more difficult.
it is mandatory gun ownership and carry with compulsory annual training and qualification.
uncle frogy
Especially not ones without long supply lines and a place they could and would rather go back to.
unclefrogy wrote:
Which only brings up the question: What do you do with the people who fail the qualification and show no indication of ever being able to pass it? Prohibit them from leaving their home without armed chaperone? Make them wards of the state and imprison them for the rest of their lives? Execution?
It’s a very definite, clear Monty Python homage. And they are French Peas (there is a recipe called Frenc Peas). VeggieTales leans heavily on Python and the old Bugs Bunny movies for its style and humor.
(Yes, I know a lot about VeggieTales, at least up until circa 2005-ish, when my kids grew out of them.)
of course they will need armed chaperons or body guards or in the presence and part of armed groups unless there are legal waivers that the NRA approves.
uncle frogy
zibble
Congratulations!
You just equated being a mass murderer with being gay.
You can go on and deny the influence of culture on, you know, culture for as long as you like.
Before I waste any time, are you also one of those people who tell Anita Sarkeesian that she’s totally wrong criticising misogyny in video games because really, things that come out of people’s heads have totally nothhing to do with the things that end up in people’s heads?
Giliell @ 105:
Have you hit the response of “I’m gay married” yet?
Go back to this thread, start with #70. It’s…enlightening, even if zibble did just dump a depth of bigotry, then refused to come back and defend their stance.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- @105
Giliell. Seriously. All they said was:
“violence in video games makes you violent” is the same argument as “watching gay porn makes you gay”.
They were saying exactly the reverse as what you’ve read.
I concur that if “violence in culture” was that a causal effect, we would just be living in a permanent war state. Which doesn’t mean there is nothing to say or discuss about how much violence infuse our way of living and our internalisations.
(thread derail: the issue with violence in cultural delivery is that we are left with very little access to something else)
Priest alleged to have pulled gun on boy because he was a Dallas Cowboys fan:
Unless, of course, the child is guilty of being black in the presence of the
policegoons.Okidemia
THis argument makes only sense if “being violent” is as innate and unchangeable as “being gay” is.
Do you believe that this shooter was “violent” in the same sense a gay person is gay? In that case, let’s just stop those discussions because well, angry young men, just a force of nature, nothing you can do against it. Or do you think that person was raised within a toxic culture that glorifies violence and “lone heros” who stand up to “them”?
Again, nobody has said that there’S a 1:1 causal effect. The glorification of violence in the media, the constant narrative in which conflict is solved violently is ONE piece in a puzzle. The people who make said media don’t get their ideas from god either.
@105 gilliel
Jesus Christ, are you seriously that fucking obtuse?
Okay, taking a deep breath here. I will try to explain this clearly for you. Make an effort to actually read it.
When politicians talk about “violent media”, they’re not just talking about fascist, violent male power fantasies like Dirty Harry or dumb misogynistic games like GTA. They are talking about ANY representation of violence onscreen, regardless of the actual *ideas* behind that violence. That means no left wing Stephen King horror, that means no 12 Years a Slave, that means limitations on violence for ANY REASON, even if you’re using it to get the audience to understand the real life violence real life people go through. Not to mention that some of those real life victims (like a good friend of mine) gravitate towards hyperviolent horror movies (that I personally can’t begin to stomach) because it relates to the extreme physical and sexual abuse they experienced growing up.
Furthermore, the real problem in culture is not the depiction of violence, but the *ideas* behind the violence. Censoring depictions of violence would do nothing to affect those ideas in other genres. Ever see “Revenge of the Nerds”? The protagonist outright rapes a woman in it, but there’s no “violence”. Misogyny and the “might makes right” mentality are present throughout our culture, even in G-rated kids films. To make a genuine difference, you wouldn’t censor images; you’d have to censor *ideas*, which is blatantly unconstitutional.
I am the opposite of such a person.
I hope you recognize that being *so* off base in your assumptions is a great hint that you should maybe stop making them.
@106 Caine
I came back and defended my position plenty until the thread disappeared off the front page and I assumed people stopped replying. Why don’t you try getting over it, you pathetic creep?
Also, do you not see the irony of stepping into a “does fantasy encourage violent behavior in the real world” debate to complain that I don’t respect your rape-simulation device?
Stopped reading right there.
Bye, have a nice life.
@112 Gilliel
Sorry, I forgot only you’re allowed to be condescending.
It’s fine though, I wouldn’t want to make it difficult for you to be a knee-jerking sanctimonious twit.
https://twitter.com/rorycarroll72/status/649997781159940096/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The link is to a photo of the current display in a gun shop in Roseburg, Oregon. The display features the “gun salesman of the year,” which is President Obama wearing some sort of middle eastern head wrap. The gunshots owner has ordered more assault rifles and she seems to be giddy with happiness that her sales are going to increase.
Back right after Obama was elected in 2008, that gun store ran on “get your guns before [Obama] takes them away.”
microraptor @116, Is that the majority attitude in that community, or just, for the most part, the attitude of the gun shop owner?
Cross-posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread:
Republican politicians have been happy to emphasize the importance of mental health care in response to the shooting in Oregon. Across the board they have called for better mental health care care. It’s one way of blaming people as opposed to backing better gun regulation.
Here’s an issue they fail to emphasize: many Republican governors have rejected the Medicaid expansion that is part of the Affordable Care Act.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/03/if-you-want-mental-health-services-to-prevent-violence-medicaid-expansion-is-critical/
People who claimed that the Umpqua Community College campus was a gun free zone:
Donald Trump
Mike Huckabee
Carly Fiorina
Professor William A. Jacobson writing for USA Today
David French writing for National Review
Newt Gingrich
Erich Pratt, Gun Owners of America
It’s pretty prevalent in the community. Ooh that liberal President, just you wait, he’s going to be coming to take away everyone’s guns any day now. Never mind that he’s done exactly nothing. I haven’t bothered to check but I’d be very surprised if I could find a handgun for sale in any store in town right now. Only possible response to an armed gunman- got to make sure you’ve got more guns than he has, don’t you?
Blah.
@ #118 Lynna, OM:
My parents
I hesitate to send them this, as they’ve likely already seen and hand waved it away.
At link: Armed vet who was present on Roseburg campus during shooting explains why his good guy gun wouldn’t have helped anything.
I’ll cop to not having read the entire thread right off the top – but from what I have scanned, I can’t argue with anything I have read so far.
But, what I have not noticed (or found via text search) is anyone else mentioning that his mother claims he has Aspergers, which is on the Autism spectrum. I’m no expert on Aspergers, but I do know it effects different individuals very differently. Is this considered a valid “mental disease” – and is it possible that all gun nuts suffer from Aspergers or something similar? I’m prone to believe they are all suffering from some kind of mental deficiency, but I have no idea how one should classify such idiocy.
Direlobo, conservative estimates of autism is 1.3 per 1000, with Aspergers being 0.26 per 1000. How does this relate to the number of households with guns, which is a little over 30%?
Asperger’s is not a disease. Don’t be a neurotypical oppressor.