Mass shooting in a gay club in Florida

[Art Vandelay]

Edit: When used by other Muslims I think the True Scotsman fallacy stops being a fallacy. They might well hold a definition of a Muslim that does exclude committing such acts and due to the interpretative nature of religions they are justified in holding that opinion. In fact, I think it's a welcome mentality when it comes to the discussion within the Muslim communities.

But by that logic, other Muslims with a much more violent interpretation are just as justified, so the No True Scotsman is still just as fallacious.

[Vypernight]

My wife is going to Orlando this week.  She originally cancelled after hearing about the shooting, but friends she talked to online convinced her to go anyway.  Still, she's nervous, and I'm sure I will be for her as well.  That's especially considering that she is bi and she makes absolutely zero secret of her support for LGBT rights, going out of her way for others.

[SCarpelan]

Edit: When used by other Muslims I think the True Scotsman fallacy stops being a fallacy. They might well hold a definition of a Muslim that does exclude committing such acts and due to the interpretative nature of religions they are justified in holding that opinion. In fact, I think it's a welcome mentality when it comes to the discussion within the Muslim communities.

But by that logic, other Muslims with a much more violent interpretation are just as justified, so the No True Scotsman is still just as fallacious.

It depends on one's perspective. From the perspective of a religious person they can have a theological definition of what that religion requires and what moves you outside the religion. They would probably claim it's objective but it's based on very subjective interpretations. The kind of logic that requires objective definitions doesn't really work in this murky swamp of subjectivity.

A person on the outside should stick with a more objective view. So, yeah. I suppose a better way of putting it is that within a religion the fallacy doesn't matter.

[Even Then]

We've already got the "get over it, you don't get to mourn a tragedy done to your people because it was just peeeeeeeeople who got killed" crowd coming out of the woodwork.

It doesn't matter what the motivation is whether it's racial or whatever. Murder is murder. People get killed every day. Just because they were a bunch of LGBT people doesn't make their lives any more or less precious than anyone else. Stop reveling in some sense of victimization. Instead of bitching on tumblr how terrible this event was we should learn and solidly grasp that theses towel headed sons of bitches are never going to treat non Muslims with respect. Fuck these sand monkeys.

[The_Queen]

Im skeptical about the ability to effectively legislate away mass shootings. There's so many guns it would take decades to make a difference.

I'm with this guy: too hard, why bother. If we had taken that role in the 1980's regarding drunk driving, imagine how much money we would've saved on the failed efforts to decrease it. Wait.

And the fact is most mass shooters aren't mentally ill, at least in a legal sense.  They are likely to have Narcissistic personality disorder or Sociopathy, but those are regarded as different things.  Better programs to help mentally ill people are a good idea, but those personality disorders are believed to be untreatable so it probably wouldn't have much impact on mass shootings.  Taking the guns from our warm live hands, that would.

Mental illness is also a good topic to shift the focus to because it's almost tautological. We just saw a person shoot up a bunch of random people, killing and injuring a dozen or so in the process. Most people think "I would never do that, there must be something wrong with him for killing all those people." And then, next thing you know, they instantly jump to saying the shooter had a mental illness, regardless of whether that is the case. But, fact is mental illness is just a scapegoat that plays to our sympathies (those poor mentally ill, we must help them) and our fears (they'll shoot me next, we must do something). Completely disregard the fact that the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of gun violent instead of perpetrators. All it really boils down to is "take the guns of people with mental illness, not my guns," and we've seen this from the NRA for ages, as they've been blaming "haters, and gangbangers, and knockout gamers" for gun violence. Yeah, such a description is totally not a vague insinuation for taking guns from black people.

I also wonder about mental illness, if the country were to take the NRA serious, whether transiness would be on there.

[Askold]

Perhaps you could make a comparison between trying to ban alcohol and trying to ban guns? Neither of those things is easy to achieve.

We still have people who demand that drunk driving should still be legal but they are a minority and similarly tougher gun control laws could be seen as perfectly acceptable pretty soon as long as you can make the people understand why such things are necessary and how you are not actually losing your "God given" rights just because you need to pass a background check to buy an assault rifle.

[The_Queen]

Drunk driving is an action, not an object.

No, the point is that sensible policies implemented over time can help curb a social ill. If we all took the position you advocate "too many gerns why bother" nothing would have been done about the drunk driving epidemic in the 70's and 80's. But since you want to focus on a nuance that makes no difference without expounding on your reasoning (your M.O.), maybe we should liken it to car registration, as there are 253 million cars in America, mirroring very closely the number of guns (270-300 million). The vast majority of those cars are registered at the state level and able to be monitored by the government if a need arises. But fact is, we don't regulate guns in any meaningful sense, and because of that--coupled with the fact that we do monitor explosives, ricin, and planes--terrorists are now using mass shootings as their method of operation. And this is an instance where no gun control (short of assault weapons bans and gun registries) could have done anything, because he wasn't mentally ill, he would've waited however long necessary, and he wanted to do this.

Nobody is advocating going into houses and taking everyone's guns. What I am saying is that every fucking day or so, we have another mass shooting. Every fucking day or so, we say "never again." And every fucking day or so, we collectively decide "eh, too hard, better to just let people die." And I get it, you're thinking "queen, that's harsh and I don't want people to die,"but it isn't, because our inaction amounts to just that: deciding it's better to let people die. And what I am saying, everything else being a build up to this, is that some common sense policies implemented over time can help curb this social ill of seeing a mass-shooting every fucking day or so.

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

Much as I hate the old bastard, prime minister John Howard did reduce gun suicides and homicides overall since he introduced gun control measures in 1996 to make the things harder to get. Yes I know that Australia and the US are radically different societies, the point is-making guns harder to get in one case did reduce gun crime overall. It worked!

[dpareja]

To quote from another forum:

I wonder how many [mass shootings] Australia's had since the Port Arthur massacre.

None

I have counted them twice

None

[The_Queen]

I never argued for or against gun control, I simply doubted that it's possible to implement effectively at this point.

Okay, then my first post summarizing your point as "too hard, why bother" was correct.

[dpareja]

https://twitter.com/igorvolsky?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

This guy retweeted politicians' statements on this tragedy with how much money they'd taken from the NRA.

[The_Queen]

Also, I never said we shouldn't try.

Okay, so we should implement common sense gun polices that over time may reduce gun violence?

[Eiki-mun]

Gotta admit. I'm so glad I don't have a Facebook right now, for two reasons:

1. I know my family has Trump supporters in it, and you know the kind, and I wouldn't be able to resist reacting to their idiotic remarks.
2. I'd have to restrain myself from making the joke "A muslim killed 50 gay people over the weekend, and Republicans nationwide found themselves at a loss of who to root for." And I don't know if I have that strength of will.

[Askold]

...So many different groups are using this massacre as political ammo.

Even the Brexit folks are doing it now and that one actually surprised me.


Also conspiracy theorists are crawling out from under their rocks. The first theories I saw was that most of the victims had been shot by the police because... I dunno.

The other gunman who was arrested while going to a Pride parade is also getting attention from conspiracy theorists. As it turned out that he was a bisexual man who is in a relationship with another man (and presumably was not planning to shoot at anyone. He was just into guns and brought his guns and Tannerite with him as he was about to join the parade) so now there are claims that Orlando was a false-flag attack.

[dpareja]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4

Australian comedian Jim Jefferies on guns.

There is one argument and one argument alone for having a gun, and this is the argument: "Fuck off. I like guns!" It's not the best argument, but it's all you've got. And there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with saying I like something, don't take it away from me. But don't give me this other bullshit.

EDIT:

Meanwhile, Samantha Bee, as is her wont, nailed it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t88X1pYQu-I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGHWghMfbEU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2kJa4rlK2c

(With an assist from Pat Kiernan.)

EDIT #2:

Let's keep in mind how the manufacturer has advertised the gun used in this and so many other massacres:



EDIT #3, because hey here's more terrifying things about the AR-15:

http://gawker.com/the-ar-15-was-built-for-slaughter-in-war-zones-1781891338

Here's how the Army described the AR-15: