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norwester
Joined: 14 Jun 2006
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 Posted: 06/16/16 6:37 pm ::: |
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Using all of our political will and might to ban "assault" rifles--weapons that are responsible for a tiny fraction...and dropping...number of gun deaths a year in the US--versus trying to do something that will actually affect the number of gun deaths every year in the US is what leads me to believe that there is no real will to be had to actually address the problem. You said it yourself: easy and cheap. Given the number of people who own guns like an AR-15 in the US, it's no skin off any of their noses to ban those weapons. Success!
Except the more expensive methods I point to are actually MORE effective, not less. Plus they have the benefit of affecting a wider number of deaths.
If we ban "assault" rifles, it's not success. We'll just go back to not talking about real ways to address the problem for the next 20 years...or the next mass shooting. Everyone will pat themselves on the back and chalk it up as a win against the "cult of gun". Ignoring the number of kids dying every day, particularly minorities living in poverty (gun violence). Or gay and trans kids (suicide). That's why I'm so annoyed at the "assault weapon ban" talk. It's a waste of resources. It's splashy, but it's nowhere relative to its effect on gun deaths in the US. What's the figure, 2%?
And, no, the "gun control" people aren't mentioning LGBT safety issues/homophobia. Not the mainstream media. Not the sports teams and other organizations trying to express support. They use words like "community". They may even use some sort of rainbow motif. But rarely to I hear the words "homophobic" or gay/lesbian. And if they do mention it, it's just as an aside, but not an "issue" to go into.
I do know why people avoid it, but it's just a reinforcement of how entrenched and accepted an attitude it is in our society, and to not even have that acknowledged is frustrating. Yes, #all livesmatter. That's not the issue I'm talking about here! #IAmPulse
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mercfan3
Joined: 23 Nov 2004
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| Posted: 06/16/16 6:57 pm ::: |
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| norwester wrote: |
And, no, the "gun control" people aren't mentioning LGBT safety issues/homophobia. Not the mainstream media. Not the sports teams and other organizations trying to express support. They use words like "community". They may even use some sort of rainbow motif. But rarely to I hear the words "homophobic" or gay/lesbian. And if they do mention it, it's just as an aside, but not an "issue" to go into.
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Hillary Clinton
This was also an act of hate. The gunman attacked an LGBT nightclub during Pride Month. To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them. We will keep fighting for your right to live freely, openly and without fear. Hate has absolutely no place in America.
Barack Obama
Discrimination against LGBT people must be tackled at home and abroad
Joe Biden
But our prayers are not enough to end these kinds of senseless mass shootings. The violence is not normal, and the targeting of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans is evil and abhorrent.
Elizabeth Warren
'We cannot ignore the fact that this massacre targeted an LGBT club'
Inarguably the 4 most powerful politicians that are pushing for gun control.
Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to move the focus away from gun violence and hate crimes to "Radical Islam."
And although ISIS is very clearly a problem, IMO..we've shown we're very capable of committing gun violence and hate crimes without their help. And this guy was an American, so IMO..ISIS is third on the list of things needed to be addressed here.
edit: No, they are not more effective. At best, they are the same..once again, let me point to Australia's ZERO mass shootings since banning guns. You can't get more effective than that.
edit: I thought Nikki Minaj was openly bisexual?
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myt
Joined: 29 Nov 2007
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| Posted: 06/16/16 8:13 pm ::: |
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| norwester wrote: |
Except the more expensive methods I point to are actually MORE effective, not less. Plus they have the benefit of affecting a wider number of deaths.
If we ban "assault" rifles, it's not success. We'll just go back to not talking about real ways to address the problem for the next 20 years...or the next mass shooting. |
Why does it have to be a either/or choice and not implementation of both options being discussed?
Get the low-hanging fruit, assault weapons ban, while dealing with the larger societal issues: anger management, mental health, un-employement, the need to respect our fellow human beings etc._________________
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Howee
Joined: 27 Nov 2009
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Location: OREGON (in my heart)
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| Posted: 06/16/16 9:15 pm ::: |
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| norwester wrote: |
| Howee, you've made a couple of comments here in this discussion that seem to directly call my intelligence into question because my conclusions differ from yours. |
Never. I have the utmost respect for your intelligence, so forgive that impression if it's one I gave. I DO call into question your logic and perspectives, though.
| norwester wrote: |
| They use words like "community". They may even use some sort of rainbow motif. But rarely to I hear the words "homophobic" or gay/lesbian. And if they do mention it, it's just as an aside, but not an "issue" to go into. |
....and I kinda wanna perceive that as growth. Hell, yes: THIS WAS AN ACT OF TERRORISM AGAINST THE LGBT community. But ya know what? What if it had been an explosion at a church full of people in Orlando? I'd be offended, if 49 people were killed, and the media said, "18 of them were gay. And 23 were black. Only 4 were latino." THESE INDIVIDUALS AT PULSE WERE Humans first. I WANT to believe that even the homophobes are MORE pissed off about this being an act of murder by an Islamist terrorist (even if in a last-minute/superficial way), than they are 'glad' it was gays who were murdered. I really believe there are on-the-fence homophobe-mightbees that may have gained a significant amount of empathy for the LGBT community, albeit at a hideous cost.
There is a more 'Back-Up-The-Road-A-Ways' kind of LGBT factor that I would hope this incident may shed light on: The patent homophobia that helped create this murderer. This may sound odd (even for me!), but *I* have the tiniest shred of empathy for Omar. NOTHING justifies what he did, BUT....his life experience parallels that of legions of young men and women, here and worldwide. People who are under the direct influence of parents like the jerk this guy had for a father, and the religions that fuel it.
As has been mentioned in various posts here, it is so often the self-loathing that create the most heinous atrocities against those whose acceptance they long for.
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Ex-Ref
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Genero36
Joined: 24 Apr 2005
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| Posted: 06/17/16 10:58 am ::: |
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<embed><iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bxXs0Irk57w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></embed>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxXs0Irk57w
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norwester
Joined: 14 Jun 2006
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| Posted: 06/17/16 11:14 am ::: |
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All right, I'll concede that certain politicians are using the "gay" words. It's just not being covered that way in the media.
| mercfan3 wrote: |
| edit: No, they are not more effective. At best, they are the same..once again, let me point to Australia's ZERO mass shootings since banning guns. You can't get more effective than that. |
Perhaps, but you're talking Australia, not the US.
First, there's some disagreement about this "zero" mass shootings statistic that keeps getting quoted with breathless optimism. It all comes down to that pesky non-standard definition of "mass shooting" again.
Second, I think everyone would agree that Australians are different in some key cultural ways than Americans.
Third, to follow-up on that second point, in the research there has been on the subject, there are big differences when you start trying to compare international statistics. Some countries have higher violent crime than the US, despite rigid gun control. Some countries have always had lower violent crime rates even before gun control, so gun control really doesn't have everything to do with their lower gun violence rates.
Even state-to-state in the US there's a hugely variable rate of gun ownership, gun violence, suicide by gun. Fewer than 6 percent of households in Delaware and Rhode Island have guns, compared with more than 50 percent in Arkansas, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Meanwhile, as I stated previously, I'm worried that we're putting all of our eggs in the "ban assault rifles" basket, and none will be left for the other sources of gun violence. Yet those methods have been shown to reduce violent gun deaths from 40-70% (yes, even in the US).
So let's do some math. 32,000 gun deaths per year in the US. 63% are classified as suicide or accidents. I guess we aren't talking about those as "gun violence", leaving us with 11,000 homicides. Let's say there are around 300 mass shootings a year in the US. I think the FBI definition is of mass murder is 4 or more? I've heard mass shooting refer to 3 or more casualties, but that's not necessarily deaths. Still, for the sake of argument, I'll say an average of 5 deaths per, which takes us to 1,500 mass shooting deaths, leaving us with 9,500 "other" gun violence deaths/homicides.
Let's pretend the assault rifle ban reduces 100% of the mass shootings (not supported by data, but for argument's sake). I mean, I guess I can see the seductiveness of saving 1,500 lives with the stroke of a pen (though statistically rifles only cause 2% of the gun deaths in the US annually, so the number is more like 640 people, including suicides and accidents). But the methods I talk about address another 3,800-6,650 lives annually, and arguably if they were applied over a wide enough area would work like a vaccine, since many who study gun violence talk about its spread and "treating" is like they would a virus. Plus there would be a fundamental change in our culture around gun violence, particularly in urban areas.
I guess I feel like once we have a ban of some sort in place we're going to rest on our laurels. Or that we'll have used up all of our political capital, and will never actually address the culture of gun violence. And since talking about bans just closes everyone's ears, it would be more fruitful to talk about other methods. Think outside the box, as it were.
The Epidemiology Of Gun Violence: Race, Region And Policy
Guns in America, By the Numbers
TEDx Talk with Nicole Hockley: Preventing Gun Violence Without Just Talking About The Gun
Nicole was a Sandy Hook mom. She's a member of the coalition called Sandy Hook Promise that formed after that incident. They started out advocating bans as the way to go, but after studying the issue realized that there were more immediate, non-constitutionally related, non-Congressional ways to address the issue. That everyone can do. She defines things we all can do every day to prevent tragedy.
Anyway, it's just not useful to talk about bans in my opinion, at least as our country is right now, because it just polarizes and actually shuts down the conversation. I feel like a more substantive conversation talking about violence would be better long term. But instead we stick to our guns (so to speak), and end up making no substantive progress.
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Last edited by norwester on 06/20/16 3:17 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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norwester
Joined: 14 Jun 2006
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| Posted: 06/17/16 11:15 am ::: |
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Arguably he was gunning "himself" down. Killing the part of him that was gay.
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Genero36
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Genero36
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Genero36
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Genero36
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| Posted: 06/17/16 6:24 pm ::: |
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<embed><iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8FObkPZGPjY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></embed>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FObkPZGPjY
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Genero36
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| Posted: 06/17/16 6:34 pm ::: |
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Westboro Baptist Church to protest at Orlando shooting victims' funerals
| Quote: |
A representative for the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church told USA TODAY that its members plan to picket Saturday outside the funeral for two of the victims of last Sunday's shooting massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando.
"It's not about that person, it's about that whole societal phenomenon," Westboro spokesman Steve Drain of Topeka, Kan., said Thursday night in a telephone interview. "Its never been OK to be gay and its never going to be OK to be gay, no matter how much the spirit of the times calls for the popularity of that sin." |
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/06/16/westboro-church-protest-orlando-shooting-victims-funerals/86013966/
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Genero36
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justintyme
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| Posted: 06/17/16 6:54 pm ::: |
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| Genero36 wrote: |
Westboro Baptist Church to protest at Orlando shooting victims' funerals
| Quote: |
A representative for the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church told USA TODAY that its members plan to picket Saturday outside the funeral for two of the victims of last Sunday's shooting massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando.
"It's not about that person, it's about that whole societal phenomenon," Westboro spokesman Steve Drain of Topeka, Kan., said Thursday night in a telephone interview. "Its never been OK to be gay and its never going to be OK to be gay, no matter how much the spirit of the times calls for the popularity of that sin." |
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/06/16/westboro-church-protest-orlando-shooting-victims-funerals/86013966/ |
Westborough Baptist : Christianity :: ISIS : Islam
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Genero36
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Genero36
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Genero36
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Genero36
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norwester
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| Posted: 06/20/16 3:26 pm ::: |
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Found this to be an interesting and informative article/opinion piece.
What Does the Koran Say About Being Gay?
| Quote: |
| The rationale for the crime, first considered to be a straight mans act of homophobic violence, became self-loathing when it came to light that for years Mateen had corresponded on gay dating apps and was a regular patron of the very club on which he mounted his murderous attack. |
[/quote]What is Islams stance on homosexuality? This question is highly vexed and impossible to answer, as there are not one but many stances, not one but many Islamic schools of thought, and scholars have rightly offered much-needed criticism of the idea that there is one monolithic body called Islam that can be consistent over time and space, let alone have stances.[/quote]
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In contemporary times, Western travelers to Islamic countries have marveled in bafflement at the ability of local men (and women) to engage in same-sex acts while remaining committed to child-bearing marriages.
Is this hypocritical? Or a different world? veteran gay journalist Rex Wockner once asked. Are these straight men really gays who are overdue for liberation? Or are humans by nature bisexual, with Arab and Muslim men better tuned into reality than Westerners? |
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Genero36
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toad455
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