I'm sure everyone by now has heard of the Orlando shooting. I guess it hit me hard despite not having really anything to do with anybody there. I suppose my own being transgender gave me a sense of connection. Who knows.

For those not in the know: A few days ago, someone walked into a popular gay nightclub at began shooting. 49 people died, 50 were injured. Whatever the exact motive, homophobia was obviously a major part of it.

Claims about the shooter include being an Islamic extremist, being mentally unstable or mentally ill, and himself being gay and self-hating.

All three were probably true to some extent. Growing up he could have been raised with homophobic attitudes. He could naturally have been somewhat mentally unstable or vulnerable to instability. Growing up and realizing or suspecting himself of being gay, among a backdrop of homophobia, having that dissonance could have aggravated his mental state. Maybe he snapped when he thought that the enjoyment of those around him was unattainable to him.

Who cares, I guess. It's just speculation. In any case, the world now has nearly 100 casualties more.

http://www.cityoforlando.net/blog/victims/

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/12/us/orlando-nightclub-shooting/

http://gawker.com/orlando-shooter-was-reportedly-a-regular-at-pulse-and-h-1781920316

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/orlando-religion-anti-gay-bigotry-1.3631994

Just the last few days were stressful enough, and then this happened. What can be said? Was anyone here affected? Could anything have boon done to prevent this? What caused this to happen?

My personal tribute follows.

You can blame religious motivation as usual. In fact, as far as I know everyone who is anti-gay, etc, is so for religious reasons.

I'd be interested to hear reasoning for anti-gays who are not religious.

I've come now to believe that the religious motivation isn't solely the problem, in this case and in general. In this case, some sources have pointed out that the shooter was not very religious. And even if one were to assume that only religion has spread homophobia, I think past protests in France against marriage equality and the general attitude of this/our generation has shown that a lot of religiously rooted beliefs have been co-opted and that their original reasoning has been supplanted with secular-friendly (il)logic.

I know that appeals to nature remain the same for hateful atheists. It's easy to be ignorant after all of all the examples of homosexuality that nature demonstrates (and then I've had these same bigots loop back in their logic and say things like "well humans are so great that we shouldn't let other examples of nature be proof it is ok anyway").

Regardless, it ends up being a philosophical and moral debate because you can't use hygiene as an excuse, if you're icky about Gary sex then don't have it, etc.

It's easiest to either attack their own inevitable emotional insecurities (amoral probably) or to appeal to their favorite subject. Someone taught me about Bonobo monkeys and I guess since then I've managed to do a 180.

When all typical rationales are exhausted, you're basically only left with behavioral replacement and teaching techniques or psychoanalysis. In mid 2000 I remember building up a lot of hate because of the slurs people used, the strong emotions, and when these strong emotions can be displaced, they are, unless they are diffused.

This sort of last case is the work that makes monuments out of the lives of people if you manage to succeed, I would like to think.

It's not just religious at this point in any case, this sort of person's upbringing, seemingly inherent mental instability, and sexuality were all at odds with each other, and this sort of case can be reproduced in someone who is also fervently anti-religion simply by virtue of LGBTQ people being the social underdogs. You'll end up with kids growing up with esoteric homophobic ideas if you don't clearly articulate that one must simply not hate an entire set of people for a non-relevant and non-present reason.

It could be possible, however, the shooter's parents have come out and said the man was not religious but has shown violent homphobic tendencies in the past. However, he was also reportedly an ISIS hopeful. Maybe he suddenly found god in the worst way possible.

I would say the climate has been brought on by predominately religious folks, and unfortunately I can't say it is only the zealots now. But, I've heard many an atheist still make gay jokes. There's a bigger picture here than religion. His ex wife also reported domestic violence over small things. The guy was deranged.

What disheartens the situation even further, conservatives and/or homophobic people praised the attack carried out by this man. This man, who happens to be an ISIS sympathizer, is born in the United States legally, who had purchased weapons legally. Obama saw this coming when he called it at a town hall in Indiana. The NRA decides to blame the President, yet they are the ones letting mass murder happen.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 19 2016, 7:02 am by KrayZee.

I live right by it, and everyone on my news feed has lost their minds over this. I have a lot of friends that fit the SJW archetype, and they have gone full blown "ban guns" mode.
If a conversation goes on long enough, they find a way to place some of the blame on conservative Christians.

I'm like 90% liberal, but I was completely bitched out and blocked by an old friend just for having a rifle in my profile pic (which I had before the shooting), and not taking it down to show solidarity with #OrlandoStrong.

I can straight up tell my conservative friends that the are fundamentally wrong about something, but if I so much as say to my liberal friends "Oh yeah, totally agree. But what about -" and you'd think I told them the wall just got 10 feet higher.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 20 2016, 7:58 pm by ClansAreForGays.

Just wanted to point out that this entire event seemed to be an event of Islam. This guy on youtube did some research and has quite a few videos talking about gun control and Islam. There are also some comments on the NRA.

Some key points brought up in the video(s):
- Rifle was not an automatic weapon, and instead was just a rifle similar to a hunting rifle. The crime probably could have been commit with a pistol, or any other common gun.
- Man was Islamic and had done the act in the name of Islam
- Gun crime in US has been on downfall while availability of semi-automatic pistols and rifles has risen
- Gun crimes in "controlled" countries like Australia or other European countries have been on the rise
- For some strange reason all focus has been placed on gay sentiments and gun control, instead of the ideology of Islam

As devastating as these kind of events can be, there are still reasons why they happen and propaganda galore. Real problems probably exist that can be addressed to prevent these kinds of events that have nothing to do with removing the second amendment. Anyone that actually sits and reads the Quran will probably be disturbingly surprised about what Islam calls for. Beating of wives, raping of women followed by a court hearing where the raped women can easily be condemned as an adulteress (which can result in execution), killing of anyone that denies Islam, and the list goes on.

I'm not really an expert, and do have trouble figuring out which information is false and which is true, but at least bringing up this kind of discussion I'm sure is helpful. To me it seems like much of the gun control talk comes purely from ignorance and propaganda.

Anecdotally: those I speak with in Seattle (where I live) really don't have any experience with guns, and haven't even seen a gun in real life. I lived in a very rural farmland where guns were used largely as tools and protection (police were roughly 30 minutes to an hour away). In my personal and direct experience with guns they made me feel safer, however, whenever this topic comes up IRL I'm always ganged up against by a bunch of city goers who really don't know anything about guns. They don't know the difference between automatic and semi-automatic, how long is takes to reload a magazine, how many bullets can be shot per minute, what the actual gun-crime rates are (especially contrasted between the US and other countries with anti-gun ownership laws). It makes discussing this topic pretty much impossible, at least in person.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 30 2016, 5:12 pm by CecilSunkure.

It's a pretty bad idea to rely on a video that was posted 1 day after the event, as if it accurately reports all information known about the situation. I stopped watching at the 1:22 mark when he says that killing homosexuals is "the norm" for Islam.

What this guy didn't know when he made the video so soon after the event, is that Omar is now known to be at least bisexual and possibly homosexual, he used hookup apps like Grindr and had visited that same bar at least a dozen times in the past. The bar is also 2 hours from his home - so he went quite far out of his way to go and shoot those specific people up. His first wife knew that he had an interest in men and seemed to be ok with it - although obviously they got divorced.

Given that information, it seems a lot more to do with his personal struggles, being unable to reconcile his own sexuality with the teaching of his faith and the wider American culture, than him being some jihadist warrior for Islam, wouldn't you say?

I'm gonna have to ask for a source on that one...

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2530362
The exact opposite of what you say seems to be the case.

"Following enactment of gun law reforms in Australia in 1996, there were no mass firearm killings through May 2016. There was a more rapid decline in firearm deaths between 1997 and 2013 compared with before 1997 but also a decline in total nonfirearm suicide and homicide deaths of a greater magnitude. Because of this, it is not possible to determine whether the change in firearm deaths can be attributed to the gun law reforms."

The debate isn't about gun crimes rising or falling - it's about WHY they're falling and if Howard's reforms were the reason for that fall, or if it can be contributed to other factors.


My favourite analogy about gun laws is Carl Sagan's matches analogy when he was tackling overabundance of nukes in the Cold War (starts at 5.07):


People are right in that if you take away guns people will always find a way to still kill each other. Hell, we've been doing it since the dawn of time. And that's true, but you have to look at the efficiency of the weapons. Say you've got one murderer in a room with a hundred people. Everyone has knives. That murderer will take out a couple of people before being taken out himself. Now imagine everyone has got guns. The murderer will take out a larger group of people before being taken out. Now imagine everyone has got nukes. Well, everyone is dead because the murderer shoots first. That's kind of a ridiculous example but that's the point I'm trying to make - you can't stop people wanting to kill each other - but you can make it so if someone DOES decide to go on a killing spree their options are limited.

If you knew a serial killer was about to begin their rampage would you rather he have a knife, a gun, or a nuke? I think the answer is clear, no matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on.

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Jul 1 2016, 10:24 am by Oh_Man.

I'd rather have a nuke. I'd run away from the killer, and sell it to North Korea or some other tinpot state, and live the rest of my life in luxury.

The problem is that in America there are millions of guns so even if you outlaw them, people will still be able to get them ridiculously easily, and then responsible people who want to buy guns for protection won't be able to purchase them. In other countries where there isn't such a gun craze, outlawing guns works, but it won't work in a country that's been obsessed with the right to own guns since its conception.

@CecilSunkure: Besides what Lanth has already noted, it's already understood Omar was not religious to any significant degree. He said words to pledge allegiance to the Daesh but there wasn't anything legitimately substantial connecting him to Islam.

Even attempting to blame Islam for it is, I think, a largely fruitless endeavor since there are plenty of Muslims who are not homocidally hateful of LGBTQ people, or are LGBTQ-postivie, or are a part of the LGBTQ community themselves. It also detracts from the bigger picture that Muslim religious leaders, just like any other religious or community leader (religious leaders are virtually a subset or equal set relative to community leaders) effectively, have the responsibility, power, and social influence to alter the cultural atmosphere.

But ultimately Omar had multiple issues to deal with and insufficient resources to deal with them, whether it was due to lack of access, fear of prejudice, or otherwise. I don't see why some media channels can't seem to get understand the facts that he had insignificant ties to Islam and he was not substantially religious by any measure.

Heck, even linking the attack to to Islam is silly since the logical chain that so many seem to make is that "Shooter claimed allegiance to ISIS (dubious - not very substantial) implies connection to violent extremist Islamic terrorist group (odd - most of ISIS's victims are Muslim) implies Islam is violent (arguable, but I'm no theologist) implies all of its followers are violent implies persecution is justified (outright fallacy, easily disproven, amoral)."

EDIT:

Dug this up, http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/12/04/news/how-american-gun-deaths-and-gun-laws-compare-canadas . Canada actually has a relatively high guns per capita figure and although it's not on par with the US, we have a low rate of gun-related homocides and mass shootings. Not that I know what to do with this information. It just makes me think that the US has a cultural thing with violence and power (by capital or by arms).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 1 2016, 11:06 pm by Sand Wraith.

Just because a problem can't be fixed overnight doesn't mean one should abandon trying to fix the problem altogether.

Australia has a buyback scheme where gun owners were encouraged to sell their firearms at market value to the government who would purchase them no questions asked. Of course this is expensive for the tax payer but it was effective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_buyback_program#Australia

Recycle guns for parts and materials!

I'm sure some sort of magazine size limit and magazine limit would be enough while generally preserving the gun culture of the US (if that's so important, I guess). The primary issue with these mass shootouts is the huge capacity for destruction. If instead, in each recent mass shooting, each shooter could only have ever fired at most 5-10 shots before having to reload, maybe things would have been different.

Although they still would have occurred. Idk, something's just fucked up with America's culture. Maybe it's the obsession with power and status?

Unfortunately, the Orlando Shooting disproved this. 49 were murdered and another 53 injured - the SIG SG 516 can at most hold 30 rounds at a time, and the Glock just shy of 20. Given he was in there for several hours and the general panic of the scene, he had a lot of time to reload in the chaos; more than enough even with smaller magazines. The Aurora shooter I believe used general chaos to his advantage too - many bystanders thought he was just cosplaying.

I would tend to agree with you, except after looking into Islam more it became immensely clear to me that Islam is a religion of hate. It's so terrible for humanity that a good course of action for the U.S. would be to label Islam as an ideology in order to get it out from under constitutional protection. This is just an opinion I am currently entertaining, but if we start reading things like this it's easy to see Islamic practice includes beating, stoning, and killing of gays. They believe it's merciful to end their perverted lives.

When an understanding of Islam matures suddenly violent events like the one in Orlando may start to become expected.

• "Whomever you find doing the actions of the people of Lut then kill the one doing it, and the one it is done to"
  
• "Verily, you practise your lusts on men instead of women. Nay, but you are a people transgressing beyond bounds (by committing great sins)"

(I'm not sure if these translations are correct, from above link, I don't read Arabic)

These people believe in Sharia law; women have no say, they believe in slavery (including sex slaves), beating/killing wives, stoning infidels to death. The Orlando shooter, as far as I can tell, pledged to ISIS and frequented a nearby Mosque. Mosques act as Sharia law courts. Sounds a lot like Islamic practice to me! A quick google search like this one shows a lot of links talking about both topics. Sure, there can exist reformed Muslims in the U.S. -- that doesn't change the Quran and it doesn't change the millions of violent followers that vastly outweigh all reformed Muslims.

For example, if many violent events, murders, mutilations, rapes, brutalities, etc. occurred in the named of Christianity in current times then it would't matter if there were some reformed Christians. Clearly there would be something terribly wrong involving Christianity to incite such violent acts. Maybe it would be Christian teachings, or maybe particular Christian leaders who were the cause of the problem, or maybe a mixture of causes. It just wouldn't matter. In our reality reformers are just irrelevant when it comes to Islam due to sheer numbers and frequency of violence.

There is an old saying: "Gun control to stop violent shootings is like spoon control to stop obesity". As tempting as it is to fantasize about everyone on earth living as peaceful citizens, blaming guns for shootings like the Orlando incident really is akin to blaming spoons to obesity. We have to consider the people committing the actions of obesity and shootings; obese people probably have problems causing their obesity other than the convenience of spoons. I'm sure we can agree on this. When we consider guns, I don't think anyone would think that the convenience of guns has much to do with shooting. Obesity is often caused by excess convenience, and removing spoons alone will probably not do much to curb massive food convenience.

Shootings are caused by things such as psychological problems, cult followings, violent religious beliefs, terrible human conditions, etc. These causes will not be addressed by gun control similar to how obesity convenience will not be addressed by spoon control. Criminals will still seek out weapons illegally, and anyone looking for violence will either acquire an illegal gun, or move onto other violent weapons like knives. Obese individuals will still have easy access to food. Stopping obesity is a matter of tackling the convenience dilemma, while stopping mass violence is matter of addressing the previously listed causes (and possibly many other causes); these causes should not be pigeonholed.

In China the state brutally enforces gun control and knife attacks are rampant. These are probably caused by the totalitarian state and the terrible living conditions of most citizens. China as a current example (knife attack at a children school), and history in general, really do show that violence cannot be stopped by force. Especially "legal" force. If legal force ever worked to stop acts like this, then this act wouldn't have happened; murder and shooting people is illegal. That didn't stop the incident from happening. Why would adding more laws work to stop the incident? This isn't a law problem. Perhaps it's an Islam problem.

We're free to draw our own conclusions based on the information we can gather, and I'm just trying to provide an alternative view to this tragic incident that should be at least considered. As with all politically charged current events it can be very difficult to sift through false info without journalistic skills, so take whatever you hear with a lot of skepticism -- even if it sympathizes with your own self-interest.

Post has been edited 7 time(s), last time on Jul 5 2016, 5:00 pm by CecilSunkure.

He also pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda. Oh, and he also pledged to Hezbollah. The problem? They're all enemies to each other! Each group hates the other two groups, so pledging allegiance to all three is nonsensical.

Honestly, the sections you pulled out sound awfully familiar to Leviticus. While it's easy to take excerpts from an ancient text and point out the barbarism found inside, you seem to have made a strawman out of Islam rather than focusing on the Orlando shooter and why he may have done the things he's done. Random contradictory pledges and sporadic visits to a mosque are weak compared to his family and friends saying he was not very religious and he had his own struggles with homosexuality that would have fueled the outburst.

It just so happens that Islam is the dominant religion in these regions where there are active struggles for power. Let's not pretend Christianity had a peaceful approach while it was a surging religion in developing regions during earlier times.

Do you believe people with mental health issues should own guns? Do you believe people with violent criminal records should own guns? If you think the barrier to entry should be harder for people who pose a greater risk of misusing them, then you believe in gun control in one form or another. When people say "gun control", the vast majority don't mean "prevent everyone from owning any guns": they just don't want dangerous weapons to fall into irresponsible hands. These tragedies are just a reminder that something needs to be done, and while we may not agree on what needs to be done, we both believe things aren't fine the way they are now, correct?

We can label Islam however we want, but it's not gonna stop a mentally-unstable person from performing these types of crimes. In fact, the more we demonize ISIS and/or Islam, the more likely people like the Orlando shooter would pledge to them before performing a selfish act of terror on society.

These are good points. However, what is weak or not can be largely qualitative. I can say that any family living in the U.S. would probably make statements claiming they have no idea why it happened, or claim he wasn't religious. It is in the family's self-interest to make these claims. This can raise my own skepticism and make their statements "weak", while frequenting a Mosque probably hurts the Shooter's self-interest and the family's self-interest. And so, I would qualitatively trust in these a bit more.


I totally agree here. If Christianity were the religion of choice in these regions and we swapped Islam for Christianity (as a thought experiment) I would probably have a similar reaction.


Perhaps my response was a bit knee-jerky. I'm used to those in the Seattle area calling out for an all-out ban of all guns, and eradicating the second amendment. So naturally I sort of assume that's what everyone here means too when we bring up the topic of "gun control". I apologize for that assumption


While I agree about the mentally disabled point, I'd actually be wary of removing basic human rights (like the second amendment) by labeling someone as mentally unstable. We have to consider how this might be abused; suddenly if a particular entity can label individuals as "mentally unstable" they can in effect remove a basic human right from targeted individuals, and this idea scares me. It's not as simple as saying the Orlando shooter was unstable and there should be heavy regulations involving the mentally unstable when it comes to guns.

Also I do agree with your point -- if ISIS/Islam/NameYourOwn gets a lot of demonizing attention then someone looking for a violent group will be more likely to pledge to them. Sure. But in the reality of Islam there exists a sea of violent acts justified by and in the name of Islam. Whether or not it is demonized, and whether or not some individuals in the U.S. who would a-priori seek such groups exist, these doesn't change the nature of Islam in current times. I would claim such volume and frequency of violent acts surrounding Islam makes a-priori criminals statistically irrelevant. The discussion I'm attempting to bring up is how the current state of Islam can actively create violent events, which is different than considering violent individuals that existed a-priori.

I see this argument a lot in the gun-control debate and take serious issue with it, first because it screams paranoia, and second: it's not difficult to create a system where you rely on multiple independent parties making abuse very difficult. One such system could be giving the FBI/local authorities the power to delay a gun buy for up to a few weeks, and require a psychologist or the courts to deem the person fit or unfit during this period. Could also have internal affairs and such organizations watch for and look into fishy cases/parties within the system that show unusual statistics.

Sure, but this begs the question; does that matter? Will that really do anything to stop violent shootings? So really it's two things:

• Giving more power to a government entity is a valid cause for paranoia, and can be viewed skeptically.
  
• Even if government power is used in the case of the unstable, is it even relevant?

To you this can sound "paranoid", perhaps unreasonable. To me it may seem that focusing on the mentally unstable is just ignoring the problem of Islam, plus it's a tricky topic deserving its own separate attention. You say you see this argument a lot, but what is wrong with it? The ease or effectiveness of dealing with the mentally unstable has what exactly to do with shootings like these? Maybe it would be helpful to make some points about how the Orlando incident is definitely only a matter of mental instability, and not Islam. I've tried to make points showing the shooting was an incident of Islam, so surely there are some valid points in favor of classifying the shooting as caused by only mental instability.