Breaking: Mass shooting in Florida

[There you go again]

Gee, firearms sure make the world seem like a safer place... for hate crimes, anyway.

Of course it's a hate crime, as are all intentional murders. Is it going to be classified as a hate crime if there are Islamic terrorist influences or will our fearless leaders do the right thing and focus on the killer's ideology and forgo the PC tap dancing?

Well I agree with you inasmuch as this sort of thing seems like evidence of the "American Taliban" or "Y'all Qaeda." Any bets on the shooter's (or his father's) convictions on his own "moral superiority"? It's always troubling when people act upon the belief that living with morality means attacking the innocent (literally or metaphorically) and usually the meek, because they are different and that difference seems alien and uncomfortable at first. Such attackers never seem to look inward toward the darkness within their own hearts. I'd call this a mass murder, but the threshold to clear for that definition is 'four dead.' This is an order of magnitude beyond four dead, and so we probably need a special name for it. I wonder what that should be... (hint: don't say it should be 'terrorism.')

On the other hand, there are some conflicting reports that the shooter, native-born Omar Mateen, had "some military training." Was this the act of a lone-wolf individual, or were there people and agendas behind this? Who benefits from a heightened domestic climate of fear, which will be used to further justify and drum up emotional support for international wars and aggression? Is this just more obscured psy-ops in western civil society intended to clear a path for heightened right-wing authoritarianism and a foreign policy of aggression? Is this guy the US equivalent of the Brussels-based attackers on Paris? Is it a war of ideology, or is it a synthetic war of ideology to secure a profitable future of heightened power and tyranny for a pro-military-industrial cabal in the west?

How would we ever know the difference between a lone wolf action, a foreign attack, and a manipulative domestic one? This is the question that has been popping up ever since 9/11, but with heightened intensity in recent months. Guys like Omar Mateen may ultimately be psychologically easy to manipulate, and so they often may make perfect proxies for others on "either" side of a conflict. Power in this modern world of late has become far too deceptive and psychological for my taste.

Take your questioning to its logical outcome. Who benefits from a disarmed society? Why is the focus being spread from this to all other mass shootings? What do they all have in common?

[ChromaKey]

Take your questioning to its logical outcome. Who benefits from a disarmed society? Why is the focus being spread from this to all other mass shootings? What do they all have in common?

Well, disarmed seems to be going a bit far, doesn't it? I don't think a total ban on firearms would be reasonable or likely to go anywhere. The problem is basically a statistical one, if you raise the number of especially effective antipersonnel firearms available with few strings attached, they inevitably are going to be more readily available to the evil and to crazy radical elements in our society. And yet, we don't have this problem with M18 Claymores, or M67 Grenades, but I promise you if they had a lobby as powerful as the NRA, we soon could.

Someone decided there needed to be a growing market for weapons like the AR-15, and that brave new market has created a slow-motion disaster. It was unwise, and now we're paying in increasingly large moments of bloodletting, whenever someone wants. There's a market for that, and it's lucrative. No remedy will be 100% effective, but that's a damned poor excuse for policy paralysis. This hobby market is killing people in unprecedented numbers, there is no sufficient justification. Sorry, I guess this is why we can't have 'nice things,' but it's been increasingly intolerable in its current form. Far less harmful activities have been banned after far fewer incidents, and yet we let this slide? Again, who benefits?

[Tarryall]

So what new gun laws would have prevented this? It appears the perpetrator was a security guard with access to weapons and training.

I honestly don't know, probably the one that makes it very expensive to license and own a firearm that repeats faster than a bolt-action rifle, the one that scrutinizes a prospective owner more and more severely as the weapon's lethality over a short time span increases. The one that limits the frequency of this sort of problem in most European nations. It's really too early to speculate until more details are known. According to reports I've read, this guy was investigated by the FBI twice, but did not have a criminal record. It's been written that he bought both of the weapons just a few days ago. I think it's likely he had more military training than a "security guard," but no details have been volunteered by authorities. All I can say for sure is he was committed, he was prepared, and he was apparently well-trained to solo massacre. This level of killing is rare because it requires those things in greater measure than is commonplace; most people this effective do something constructive with their lives.

I had really hoped that Muslims would assimilate and lose the influence of radicals overseas, but Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon bombers and now the Orlando LGBT killer seem to show that the foreign fundamentalist Imans are corrupting the children of immigrants.

[ChromaKey]

I had really hoped that Muslims would assimilate and lose the influence of radicals overseas, but Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon bombers and now the Orlando LGBT killer seem to show that the foreign fundamentalist Imans are corrupting the children of immigrants.

They don't show that at all. They're all the work of radicalized individuals. They look at the substance and outcome of US activities in the world at large and they exact their nihilistic revenge. Killing their religious leaders will only lead to more frenzied rage. Stopping the endless US killings abroad is the only hope for a lasting peace, for there cannot be peace without justice, and there cannot be justice from the tip of a AGM-114 Hellfire missile fired from a cellphone-controlled drone, nor from US boots kicking in doors and terrorizing people in the privacy of their Iraqi, Afghani, Pakistani, or Syrian homes, nor from the atrocities and criminality of US allies with US-supplied weapons.

This is the basic golden rule, applied to the real world. You may be able to keep foreigners out, but you'll never keep people here from radicalizing, and if you try to oppress US civilians generally, you're just going to radicalize still more people, people who otherwise would have led their peaceful American dreams. When there are people who would rather die than yield or submit to our wrongful and degrading expressions of dominance and hegemony, the harder we push, the harder reality will always push back, until ours is an utterly unlivable world. It's madness. No decent man or woman should want any part of this, I certainly don't, and I wouldn't see my nieces condemned to live in the prison world being constructed for them. Anyway, this is getting off topic, but, as we've seen, everything and everyone in this world is truly connected.

[Tarryall]

So CK has decided that this Orlando mass murder was the fault of America and easy gun purchase rules yet millions of Americans buy guns every year and no one gets shot.

[Brookely]

Is this story about gun control? I have to say I do feel bad for the peace loving Muslims in the US.

[Tarryall]

I know a homosexual Muslim man who is blaming ISIS for this attack and wants them excommunicated. In his eyes, Islam isn't about killing innocents during the holy month of Ramadan.

[ChromaKey]

In the eyes of most Muslims and most Islamic, their faith is not about violence and killing. It's been badly demonized in some US outlets, but that was always the equivalent of saying Westboro Baptist Church's own extremity somehow represented typical Christians, rather than an extreme fringe that nobody would claim association with. What's depressing is how many people believe that Islam is somehow about violence because it shows how willing people are to embrace falseness and hate.

[ChromaKey]

So CK has decided that this Orlando mass murder was the fault of America and easy gun purchase rules yet millions of Americans buy guns every year and no one gets shot.

No, I never said that. But I do think they would have massacred far fewer before being stopped like any other common homicidal maniac if they hadn't laid their hands on semiautomatic weapons and military training. Apparently, he idolized the Marines and the Police. If so, perhaps he figured they'd be good outlets for getting even with people generally, after being bullied in school:

...One neighbour told a Florida news reporter his car had bumper stickers promoting the U.S. military, including one with the motto of the Marine Corps, Semper Fi, which means “Always Faithful.” In photographs that Mr. Mateen posted on the Internet of himself, he wears shirts emblazoned with the logo of the New York Police Department – the law enforcement agency that was celebrated for its response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In a news conference on Sunday night, Mr. Mateen’s former spouse said that he aspired to be a police officer, but was emotionally and mentally disturbed, with a tendency to turn violent... One former peer told the Orlando Sentinel Mr. Mateen was an outsider in his high school years and was the target of bullying. “You could tell it hurt his feelings,” Brice Miller said, “but he would laugh it off. He was just dorky,” Mr. Miller said. “He was disliked, but he always tried to get you to laugh.”

(full article) http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/wor ... e30407291/

In the end, it seems he did find a group meeker than himself he could express his pent up aggression upon. I'm not sure that I believe for one second he was radicalized by Islam, but I suppose clarifying details may emerge in time.

[cabinish]

ABC News: ORLANDO NIGHTCLUB SHOOTING SUSPECT BOUGHT GUNS LEGALLY DESPITE FLAGS BY FBI

. . . ISIS has told its supporters they will be rewarded tenfold in paradise for carrying out attacks during Ramadan, an example of them inventing theological precepts to suit their purposes. The group has also made clear its visceral and vicious homophobia by throwing people they suspect of being gay off buildings in their so-called caliphate and stoning them.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/13/us/orland ... index.html